Islam and Western Society

[Remius]

In Christianity for the last 100 years at least you can say the bible is wrong, burn it, step on it, do whatever. People may not like you, turn your back on you but how often have Christians killed people or rioted over it? There is a modern Islam but it's is very quiet and afraid, because speaking out is just to damm dangerous. As long as the nutbars can frighten the average Achmed, then nothing will change. Saudi Whabbism needs to be directly challenged, they have had 2 generations to heavily influence the Sunni Islamic world and have succeeded in pushing the average Achmeds towards a more radical and much less open minded view.

I would argue that has more to do with western values of democracy and respect for individual rights.  This happened in africa where those concepts are somewhat murky but they undersatnd their religion the way they see it:

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/tens-of-thousands-of-muslims-flee-christian-militias-in-central-african-republic/2014/02/07/5a1adbb2-9032-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Western countries tend to have a more moderate way of thinking due to advances in societal norms and tolerance compared to the Middle East, Asia and Africa where cultures tend to clash way more.  Plus winter keeps us inside  

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Africa is it's own morass  8)

meanwhile back at the ranch http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/SOMNIA/article23174708/

 

[McG]

Africa is it's own morass  8)

meanwhile back at the ranch http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/SOMNIA/article23174708/

So what?  That article is of Saudi Arabia.  This thread is of western society.  The western Muslim Community is not accountable for Saudi Arabia.

 

[McG]

Getting on topic, maybe you want to note Shahina Siddiqui, a Manitoba Muslim community leader appearing at the Senate committee on national security and defence, approached the government asking for resources & help for fighting radicalization of youth.  From the Winnipeg Free Press today:

"There is very little capability across Canada within the Muslim community to handle this," she said.

"They are not trained." She said the recruiters to radicalization are well-trained, well-funded and very savvy, and Muslim organizations don't have the resources to fight the propaganda.

"These are our kids," she said. "We don't want them to die in foreign lands. We don't want them to commit acts of violence."

 

[Jed]

Getting on topic, maybe you want to note Shahina Siddiqui, a Manitoba Muslim community leader appearing at the Senate committee on national security and defence, approached the government asking for resources & help for fighting radicalization of youth.  From the Winnipeg Free Press today:

Always with a hand outstretched to receive government support. Buck up and take it on yourself as everyone else did. At least any of the pioneers that came out to relatively unsettled western lands in North America. These people of all nationalities and religions that worked together to make relatively secure and peaceful communities.

 

[Remius]

Always with a hand outstretched to receive government support. Buck up and take it on yourself as everyone else did. At least any of the pioneers that came out to relatively unsettled western lands in North America. These people of all nationalities and religions that worked together to make relatively secure and peaceful communities.

North America was hardly a creation of peaceful coexistence.  War, genocide et al figure quite nicely in the picture.  Religious strife also happened in North America as did cultural clashes.  Subsidies, incentives and government help also played a part back then as well.  Especially when a community bucked up and tried to take it upon themselves. 

So what would be your solution Jed?  Let the Muslim community in Canada handle this on their own?  or can law enforcement and the community at large play a role in helping?  Is this a Canadian problem as well (I think it is).  How about working together like we've done on a lot of other things?  we have one leader who appears at comitee explaining their challenge and the answer is "figure it out for yourself?"  Yeah that'll make it better...

 

[Colin Parkinson]

So what?  That article is of Saudi Arabia.  This thread is of western society.  The western Muslim Community is not accountable for Saudi Arabia.

Paid for by Saudi dollars in North Van. Guess which enlightened view they are going to preach

Carpets to cover approximately 500 square meters. This has already been taken care of by donors from Saudi, who are always in the fore-fronts donating generously. May Allah reward them. http://northvanmasjid.ca/?page_id=8

More on the subject http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=1b82c2bc-dfa1-46f6-954e-635a5e15c1bb

 

[Jed]

North America was hardly a creation of peaceful coexistence.  War, genocide et al figure quite nicely in the picture.  Religious strife also happened in North America as did cultural clashes.  Subsidies, incentives and government help also played a part back then as well.  Especially when a community bucked up and tried to take it upon themselves. 

So what would be your solution Jed?  Let the Muslim community in Canada handle this on their own?  or can law enforcement and the community at large play a role in helping?  Is this a Canadian problem as well (I think it is).  How about working together like we've done on a lot of other things?  we have one leader who appears at comitee explaining their challenge and the answer is "figure it out for yourself?"  Yeah that'll make it better...

Oh come on. I never said it was a bed of roses and it was all singing kumbya around the campfire.  I am just on overload of every minority group in the country playing the victim and no one or no group taking personal or collective responsibility.

I fully support Canada as a Nation addressing a situation as serious as the rising tide of Muslim terrorism that is affecting us globally.

Just as if I had been living when Japan conducted the 'Rape of Nanking' or the Nazis began exterminating the Jews I would have been in the front of the line to sign up and I would have tried to drag all my buddies along as company.

We can all start addressing issues by speaking in plain language, being honest and avoiding political correctness. No doubt tact suffers, but we attempt to remain courteous and respectful while stating our opinions things will improve and solutions will be found.

 

[cryco]

It boggles the mind, such medieval thinking runs their country. He didn't have to tear up the Qur'an and record it though. That's playing with fire in SA.

 

[CougarKing]

A woman representing a Muslim community group has an argument with a senator from Ontario province:

CBC

The terrorism battle is not a fight with Muslims, says Shahina Siddiqui

Emotions ran high in a Senate committee when Manitoba Muslim leader Shahina Siddiqui got into a heated discussion with an Ontario senator.

Siddiqui appeared at the Senate committee on national security and defence on Monday as part of a study on security threats facing Canada, speaking as the executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association and National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Northwestern Ontario Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak and Siddiqui squared off after Beyak suggested Muslims were being thin skinned when it comes to the language used to describe terrorist activities.

Here is a transcription of the exchange.

Senator Lynn Beyak:
"I just wanted to say that comments I get from constituents all the time is that we all have to stop being offended. Stop being thin skinned and work together. They're tired of hearing excuses. If 21 Christians were beheaded by Jews they'd be called radical extremist Jews. And if pilots were burned in cages by a Christian, they'd be called radical, violent Christians.
"We have to work together. Stop being so thin skinned and find a solution to a world wide problem. So what would you answer to people who are legitimately concerned not about you or me or Jews or Christians but about Canadians in general who are sick of the fighting and want some action? Everybody being offended because somebody says something they perceive as nasty or untrue even though it's documented. They're tired of us being offended and thin skinned and they want us to do something about people who are threatening to blow up malls and are burning pilots in cages and who are beheading Christians."

Shahina Siddiqui:
"The number one targets of these groups are Muslim. Seventy thousand Pakistanis have been killed by terrorist attacks. The same numbers goes across board. So it is not about Muslim versus Canadian, or Canadian Muslims versus Muslims. It is humanity versus terrorism. When you talk about offence, offence is a very mild word to use.

"What we are dealing with is slander. We are dealing with defamation. We are dealing with accusations made. A person's reputation is all one has. So when I am called a terrorist supporter or somebody who caters to that you are attacking me at a very fundamental level, my employment. I have two Canadian grandkids. How do I tell them that your own country, your own people, are turning on you? I don't have the heart to tell them that the Canada I chose to be my home and I will defend to my last breath, is attacking my faith, my community in general. We don't do that to any other community. Three Muslim youths were killed by a self-proclaimed atheist and if you go on his Facebook you will see his anti-religious rant, nobody called it terrorism. An individual belonging to a fundamental Christian group who killed four of our Mounties, nobody called it a Christian terrorist."

"This is what we are facing. We are not saying don't call an ace an ace but what we are saying at least before you say that get your facts straight. Right? Get the information because otherwise we will tear each other apart as you were saying. We have to have the trust in our democratic values that we can overcome this evil with those values not by ignoring those values. That's my submission to all of you, is don't give into the fear. Don't give into the propaganda, just as I tell my youth, don't give in to the fear and the propaganda. They are someone who hates humanity. And all of us are human beings. But if I am made to feel as a Canadian Muslim a second class citizen I will speak up. Because if I don't I would be doing a disservice to the democratic values that I chose to be my home."

Beyak:
"Christians and Jews have been offended and slandered for millenia. It's got nothing to do with that. As our witness told us last week, being offended is no excuse to kill, pure and simple."

Siddiqui:
"Do you think they are killing because they are offended? No, they are killing because they want the land. They want the money. They want to control and to govern. They want to implement their hate ideology. They're not doing it because they are offended."

Siddiqui: (on mosques funding organizations connected to radicals)
"That's absolutely a very good question, we've been struggling with this since the 1980s. I can tell you that my own organization [was] offered $3 million and we refused even though I had not a penny in my account at that time when I started the organization because this is a Canadian organization and we do not need funding from anywhere else. The same thing about our mosques in Manitoba. We were offered money from Libya when we made our first mosque we refused it, right? Now, are there some mosques that have accepted money from overseas because it was legal to do so. Right? So if we want to curtail them then we have to make it illegal for funding, but not only for Muslims, but all groups."

 

[FJAG]

It boggles the mind, such medieval thinking runs their country. He didn't have to tear up the Qur'an and record it though. That's playing with fire in SA.

Doesn't boggle it all that much if you read their Basic Law of Governance which was proclaimed by their King in 1992 right after Gulf War 1.

http://www.saudiembassy.net/about/country-information/laws/The_Basic_Law_Of_Governance.aspx

Note particularly articles 1, 7, 13, and 23. In 1992 this was nothing new but just a restatement of the then existing situation which was and is that the Qur'an and the Sunnah are, in effect, the constitution of the land.

One shouldn't be surprised when their position is so clearly and simply stated.

:cheers:

 

[Loachman]

An example of European Muslims standing up against radicals in their communities?

Reuters

While I appreciate those who did show up, and meant what they were saying, this has since been revealed to have been a media exaggeration (at best):

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/22/media-hoax-20-muslims-holding-hands-become-1000-strong-ring-of-peace-at-oslo-synagogue/

The weekend’s feel-good story about a Muslim "ring of peace" formed to "protect" Jews at an Oslo synagogue turned out to be a complete fabrication by the mainstream media, according to an eyewitness report, local officials, and attendees' photos.

According to a local eyewitness, only about 20 or so Muslims formed the "ring of peace" around the Oslo synagogue. In fact, pictures from multiple angles show that there wasn’t enough people to form a ring, so the locals instead formed a horizontal line in front of the synagogue.

A local news outlet explained how the media got to its "1,300 Muslims" number. "According to police, there were 1300 persons present in the event. Very many of them ethnic Norwegians," read a translated report from Osloby.no.

Demonstrators also reportedly chanted, "No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia," conflating criticism of Islam and hatred of Jews.

Photos pulled off of social media appear to corroborate the narrative that only twenty or so people formed the "peace ring."

Multiple news outlets, including wire services for hundreds of news sites, ran with the false narrative that 1,000 or more people–sometimes all of them Muslim–formed the ring of peace outside of the Oslo synagogue.

The AP incorrectly reported, "More than 1,000 people have formed a 'ring of peace' outside Oslo’s main synagogue at the initiative of a group of young Muslims."

AFP reports almost identically, "More than 1,000 people formed a 'ring of peace' Saturday outside Oslo’s main synagogue at the initiative of a group of young Muslims." The newswire agency has no excuse for the false report, as it had a photographer taking shots of the "ring" at the scene–and one shows a man who appears to be at the end of the line of hand-holders, with his left hand in his pocket.

The far-left Think Progress site published a story titled, "More Than A Thousand Muslims Form Human Shield Around Norewegian Synagogue After Copenhagen Attacks."

Reuters reported, "More than 1000 Muslims formed a human shield around Oslo's synagogue on Saturday, offering symbolic protection for the city's Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark last weekend."

Even Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, "More than 1,000 Muslims formed a human shield around an Oslo synagogue on February 21, offering symbolic protection for the city's Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark the previous weekend."

In even worse news, it appears as if the organizer of the Muslim "peace ring" is a virulent anti-Semite, 9/11 truther, a gay-basher, and an Israel-hater.

Ali Chishti, who helped to organize the event, said bluntly in 2008, "I hate Jews and how they operate," reports Daniel Greenfield. Chishti added in his conspiracy-laden rant about the Jewish people, "It is a fact that during the attacks on the Twin Towers [World Trade Center] 1600 Jews were absent from work. OK, OK, what’s even more suspicious, is how unusually many Jews there were present in Mumbai on the day that Pakistani terrorists struck. How come?"

At a March, 2008 meeting in Oslo promoting his 9/11 conspiracy theory that the Jews were responsible for the World Trade Center attacks, Chishti read his speech titled, "Therefore I Hate Jews And Gays," Haaretz reports.

As it turns out, as many as 40 times more Northern European Muslims attended the funeral of a Copenhagen Muslim terrorist than those who decided to form the non-existent "ring of peace" around an Oslo synagogue.

 

[63 Delta]

It boggles the mind, such medieval thinking runs their country. He didn't have to tear up the Qur'an and record it though. That's playing with fire in SA.

Fire has a tendency to spread. Hopefully such defiance will be contagious.

 

[cryco]

Doesn't boggle it all that much if you read their Basic Law of Governance which was proclaimed by their King in 1992 right after Gulf War 1.

http://www.saudiembassy.net/about/country-information/laws/The_Basic_Law_Of_Governance.aspx

Note particularly articles 1, 7, 13, and 23. In 1992 this was nothing new but just a restatement of the then existing situation which was and is that the Qur'an and the Sunnah are, in effect, the constitution of the land.

One shouldn't be surprised when their position is so clearly and simply stated.

:cheers:

Not surprised that they follow the articles, just a little freaked out that they would create these articles to follow in the first place. It's amazing that a country would have a 'holy' book written in some pretty primitive conditions as their constitution. Complete disregard of progress, evolution, fairness and science.

 

[Brad Sallows]

What more is wanted?

When extremists in Canada have approximately the same status with respect to their co-religionists as the Westboro Baptist Church has with respect to Christians, and when people in or out of a religion may freely mock and criticize it without any practical fear of retribution, that will be enough.

It's essentially a problem of peer pressure.  Right now the peaceful factions are under pressure and fearful to provoke the angry factions.  I want that emphatically reversed.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Most people are still talking rubbish ...

When some white-trash, nominally Christian nutbar blew up an office building Texas I didn't tear my hair and run around apologising for being a white male of nominally Christian heritage ... I shook my head and went about my daily business. Equally when some white, male, nominally Christian nutbar killed a bunch of kids in Norway I didn't run out and demonstrate to "prove' that I am against such madness. No one expected me to do either.

Why, then, should my former colleague Prof Sabah Towaj "need" to apologize for something some darker skinned nutbar does in some dirty little corner of a country he left decades ago? He doesn't of course; I don't expect him to; if you expect him to do that then I expect to see you out demonstrating the next time some white kid attacks a black kid ... what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I disagree.  What is happening with Islamic Jihadist's is not a one off or isolated incident such as Brevek or McVeigh.  It is systemic, preying on it's own kind more than any other, and spreading.  These nutjobs need to find themselves ostracized by their coreligionists and their moral, economic and physical support cut off.  As many and indeed yourself have mentioned, ER, what needs to be done, needs to be done from the inside, by the Ummah.

If no one on the inside starts the ball rolling, nothing will change.  If they can get out in the millions to protest frigging cartoons, then if they disapprove of what the barbarians are doing with their religion, they can get out in the millions and show it. 

And you can be damn sure that if there was something being done by a members of group I'm a part of such as, Islam, that was systemic, barbaric, preyed on the rest of us and I thought was an abomination and needed to be stopped; I'd be out in the streets or whatever voicing my displeasure.

 

[Jed]

I disagree.  What is happening with Islamic Jihadist's is not a one off or isolated incident such as Brevek or McVeigh.  It is systemic, preying on it's own kind more than any other, and spreading.  These nutjobs need to find themselves ostracized by their coreligionists and their moral, economic and physical support cut off.  As many and indeed yourself have mentioned, ER, what needs to be done, needs to be done from the inside, by the Ummah.

If no one on the inside starts the ball rolling, nothing will change.  If they can get out in the millions to protest frigging cartoons, then if they disapprove of what the barbarians are doing with their religion, they can get out in the millions and show it. 

And you can be damn sure that if there was something being done by a members of group I'm a part of such as, Islam, that was systemic, barbaric, preyed on the rest of us and I thought was an abomination and needed to be stopped; I'd be out in the streets or whatever voicing my displeasure.

Well said.

 

[McG]

If no one on the inside starts the ball rolling, nothing will change.  If they can get out in the millions to protest frigging cartoons, then if they disapprove of what the barbarians are doing with their religion, they can get out in the millions and show it. 

That is happening in Canada.  You are just dismissing it because some crowed in a third world nation protests to emphatically on topics you disagree with, or because Canadian Muslims don't resort to the same soccer hooiganism riots of the issues that you do support.  Every posted example of moderate Islam's prevelance in Canada, you have dismissed while pointing to Yemen or Pakistan.

And you can be damn sure that if there was something being done by a members of group I'm a part of such as, Islam, that was systemic, barbaric, preyed on the rest of us and I thought was an abomination and needed to be stopped; I'd be out in the streets or whatever voicing my displeasure.

I don't know what groups you self identify with but, for example, everytime the KKK does something stupid under the auspices of being white are you parading through the streets in anger?

 

[Remius]

I disagree.  What is happening with Islamic Jihadist's is not a one off or isolated incident such as Brevek or McVeigh.  It is systemic, preying on it's own kind more than any other, and spreading.  These nutjobs need to find themselves ostracized by their coreligionists and their moral, economic and physical support cut off.  As many and indeed yourself have mentioned, ER, what needs to be done, needs to be done from the inside, by the Ummah.

If no one on the inside starts the ball rolling, nothing will change.  If they can get out in the millions to protest frigging cartoons, then if they disapprove of what the barbarians are doing with their religion, they can get out in the millions and show it. 

And you can be damn sure that if there was something being done by a members of group I'm a part of such as, Islam, that was systemic, barbaric, preyed on the rest of us and I thought was an abomination and needed to be stopped; I'd be out in the streets or whatever voicing my displeasure.

So when Joseph Kony was out doing all sorts of despicable things in the name of God with his Lord's Resistance Army you were out in the streets?  How about all those other Christian Militias in Africa?  (Assuming you are christian of course).  If you were, great, but most Christians in Canada with the exception of Facebook and Twitter didn't do very much to voice their displeasure either.  And I don't blame run of the mill Canadian christians for any of that. 

I'm with ER on this.  I get it.  You're angry at Islamic terrorists therefore taking it out and blaming Canadian Muslims is your only way of doing anything.  Really, where are the millions out protesting cartoons here?  i haven't seen it.  So I'm not sure what your point is.