Progressive Muslims: Friends of Imperialism And Neocolonialism

Who Is Husain Haqqani? *** Re-post

2011-11-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

(Reposted given current events ... originally posted nearly three years ago... if only people had paid attention to this nefarious dude then...)

The new Pakistan People's Party (US puppet) regime in Pakistan has nominated Husain Haqqani as the new Pakistan ambassador in Washington.

The question is whose interest is Haqqani going to represent?

Mr. Haqqani, is co-chair of Hudson Institute’s Project on Islam and Democracy" and a scholar with Hudson's Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World.

The Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World, launched in January 2006, is a think tank established at the Hudson Institute by Hillel Fradkin, a neocon and a signatory to a Project for a New American Century letter to the President equating the Palestinian Authority with Al Qaeda.

Click here for the center's web site that is full of the usual neo-con type rants with an "intellectual" and "academic" face.

Haqqani has also been a guest speaker at Zionist outfits, such as the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), and at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's policy conference in March of 2007.

At the time when Daniel Pipes was nominated by Bush as member of the Board of Trustees of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) -- Mr. Husain Haqqani wrote an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal to support his nomination, declaring Pipes as a respectable scholar of Islam and the Middle East.

Haqqani is co-founder with Stephen Schwartz (a good friend of Daniel Pipes), of the Institute of Islamic Progress and Peace (IIPP), an organization set up a couple of years ago "to fight Islamic extremism."

"

In December 2004 he (Stephen Schwartz) was touring with Husain Haqqani, a neocon connected Pakistani. In an article Schwartz was described as being the "executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Islamic Progress and Peace (IIPP)." "

"There's a silent Muslim majority internationally and in the U.S. that does not agree with the extremists who have taken control of many of the nation's mosques, say Schwartz and Haqqani. They are touring the U.S. in an effort to promote the IIPP, a new non-profit organization to combat Muslim extremism in the U.S."

Speaking in a meeting organized by the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Haqqani said that Muslims throughouit the world are suffering from "judaphobia" and that the Saudis are drilling this into them. He said that 800 out of 1,200 American mosques are controlled by Wahabi extremists.

He also criticized the American Muslim leadership for making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "as the core" issue; the core issue, according to Haqqani is Muslim backwardness. He said Edward Said was wrong to insist that the Jewish-Arab relations changed with the creation of Israel. "That’s not true. Pumping in hatred changed it," Haqqani claimed.

I don't think I need to say more.

***This blog entry is a modified version of an item that appeared on Angry Arab's blog - that was attributed to "A top expert on Pakistan, who does not want to be identified" - I did the "fact checking," found the web links, and added some additional information.

Moderate / Proggie / Housie Muslim patron accused of rape.

2011-09-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

via Press TV

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of King Abdullah, has landed in hot waters as a Spanish court reopens a three-year-old rape case against him.The court started a probe into allegations that the Saudi multibillionaire raped a model on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea in August 2008, according to a ruling seen by AFP Wednesday. The case concerns Prince Talal, who is being asked to respond to a complaint of sexual assault against him by a model who was 20 at the time. The prince denied the allegations and said he only heard of them on Tuesday. A May 24 ruling by a court in the Balearic Islands said the complainant, who was not named, believed a drug was added to her drink in a nightclub on the island after she met the Saudi prince. A judge in the Balearic island of Ibiza in May 2010 had ordered the case closed for lack of evidence, but the provincial court of the Balearic Islands overturned that ruling on May 24 and a court in Ibiza on July 27 reopened the proceedings to formally request assistance from the Saudi authorities to take a statement from the accused. The 56-year-old prince has holdings in Citibank and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Forbes magazine lists him as the 26th richest person in the world with assets of $19.6 billion.

For prior posts on this "prince" click here and hereThe "prince" is basically a patron of "moderate" "proggie" and housie type Muslims - especially at Harvard University - the current individual to carry the title of: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life is, one, Malika Zeghal.

Petition and open letter to Mona Eltahawy

2011-08-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

Click here to view and sign petition/open letter.

Mona Eltahawy, we ask sincerely and with all due respect, that you publicly and categorically respond to those communities which you claim to represent or belong to and respond to the following:

(a) Make a clear and categorical statement in which you explicitly outline and detail your position on the Palestinian-led global BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. As a public personality (and activist), your reluctance to state a position one way or the other is irresponsible and politically problematic, leaving us with no choice but to judge based on your behavior. We have a right and a necessity to know categorically whether or not you support the BDS call and movement.

Please state whether or not you support this movement, and explain your normalization with the State of Israel in relation to the broad-based and grassroots call by the majority of Palestinians for a boycott - by all conscientious individuals and institutions - of all Zionist Israeli institutions, public or private, that are responsible for and complicit in the ongoing occupation and siege of Palestine.

(b) Retract your statement in which you allege that the 25th January uprising had nothing to do with Israel and the US. Acknowledge the overwhelmingly visible presence of solidarity with Palestinians and anti-Israel banners and signs, as well as those in resistance and opposition to US-led imperial control, alliance with Mubarak and exploitation of the region. Apologize publicly for the irresponsible actof making such a misleading, inaccurate and unauthorized statement.

Zionists throw an Iftar dinner

2011-08-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Many so-called "large" housie Muslim organizations who the Muslim community in the US have stated do not represent them, were NOT invited to the Ifter dinner thrown by Mr. Obama.

However, some of these groups did get an invitation for the Zionist iftar dinner:

The evening's 65 guests include prominent Muslims and Jews, such as Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University; Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and the founding rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., and the New York Synagogue in Manhattan; and Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University.

UPDATE: At 11:04 p.m., the Israeli Embassy released a partial list of guests to the iftar. They included Paul Monteiro, Associate Director, White House Office of Public Engagement; Dennis Ross, National Security Council; Victoria Nuland, Spokesperson, Department of State; Suzan Johnson Cook, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom; Congressman Eliot Engel of New York; Ghait Al-Omari, American Task Force on Palestine; and Omer Bajwa, Yale University.
Talib Shareef, imam of Masjid Muhammad mosque in Washington, D.C. and president of the Muslim-American Military Association, lead prayers during iftar.

Notably absent from the guest list were representatives of the largest Islamic groups in the U.S., such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). A spokesman for Mohamed Magid, the president of ISNA, said he was invited but had a conflicting event. A spokesman for the national CAIR office said that a representative of the group was not invited. In addition, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Democrat who is the first Muslim elected to Congress, was invited but was unable to attend because of an injury, according to an embassy official.

So, the list of attendees is not complete, probably some of the housies want to stab the Muslim community in the back in secret

on tweeter now a Mona El Tahawy parody account

2011-08-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

Follow on tweeter:

Mona El Tahawy
@MonaETahawy
I'm huge in Tahrir Square, really. Parody Account

"I will not praise nor depreciate #FlagMan's actions officially/publicly as I must leave my media appearance options open."

see also Ikhras's latest post on this native informant: Mona el Tahawy and the Transnational Fulul al Nidham

a Mona Eltahawy update

2011-08-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

Mona Eltahawy has been extensively covered on this site (you can search her name here) ... just an interesting update to see what she has been up to lately. As readers of this blog are aware Mona Eltahawy is a supporter of Zionism. More recently with the events in Egypt, she has become a media darling - and she has made wild claims misrepresentating the nature of the events there - specifically around Zionism.

As many will be aware, today #flagman took the zionist flag down from the "embassy" in Cairo ... and replaced it with the Egyptian flag. This event has widely celebrated all over the Arab and Muslim world as an act of creative resistance.

So, here is what Mona Eltahawy "retweeted"

Elazul Elazul
by monaeltahawy
FYI: "Flagman"'s Action is illegal, and means we (Egypt) are liable under international law for Breach. It's also an Act of War. #2Wrongs

Ali Abunimah tweeted in response to a Mona Eltahawy tweet:

OMG @monaeltahawy really worried about "legality" of #flagman's action. Did she ever care about "legality" of Israeli massacres? Shameless!

and here is what Mona Eltahawy, not having any substance to respond to Abunimah's astute observation, tweeted back:

@avinunu What's shameless is your bitchiness. You sound like a shrill diva. Woman up, grow some ovaries and stop trying to pick a fight

Ramadan Mubarak

2011-08-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Ramadan Mubarak, and here is a listing of sell outs who attended last year's Iftar Dinner, as the US regime continued its bombings and occupation of Muslims.

via: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/13/expected-attendees-white-house-iftar-dinner

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release August 13, 2010
Expected Attendees at the White House Iftar Dinner

This evening, the President will continue a White House tradition of hosting an Iftar celebrating Ramadan in the State Dining Room. This is the second Iftar hosted by the President. The Iftar is the meal that breaks the day of fasting, when Muslim families and communities eat together after sunset.

Below is a list of some of the expected attendees at tonight’s White House dinner celebrating Ramadan:

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

The Honorable Andre Carson, United States Representative (Indiana 7th)
The Honorable John Conyers, United States Representative (Michigan 14th)
The Honorable Rush Holt, United States Representative (New Jersey 12th)

COMMUNITY MEMBERS

Ms. Saleha Abedin
Mr. Ahmed Ahmed
Dr. Akbar Ahmed, American University
Mrs. Anila Ali, Council of Pakistan American Affairs
Mr. Bill Aossey, Midamar Corporation
Mrs. Fatema Bayat
Mr. Salam Al Marayati, Muslim Public Affairs Council
Rev. Chloe Breyer, Interfaith Center of New York
Mr. Hasan Chandoo, Oppenheimer & Co.
Ms. Sarah Darwish
Dr. Mahmoud Eboo, Aga Khan Council of the United States
Mr. Walter Edwards, Harlem Business Council
Mrs. Sana Fadel
Mr. Imad Hussain
Mr. Hassan Jaber, Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services
Mr. Muhammad U. Khan
Ms. Saaliha Khan
Imam Mohamed Hag Magid, All Dulles Area Muslim Society
Mrs. Shahnaz Masumi
Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Islamic Society of North America
Mr. Farooq Mitha
Ms. Dalia Mogahed, Director, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies
Mr. Mohamedraza Moledina
Mrs. Shabnum Moledina
Mrs. Laila Muhammad
Ms. Naheed Qureshi, Muslim Advocates
Mrs. Ranae Quraishi, Muslim Public Service Network
Ms. Intisar Rabb, Boston College
Dr. Jane Ramsey, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs
Ms. Nadia Roumani, American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute
Mrs. Sally Steenland, Center for American Progress
Ms. Sadaf Syed
Mr. Mustafa Tameez
Mr. Ibrahim Vajzovic, United Bosnian Association
Mrs. Sara Najjar Wilson, Arab American anti-Discrimination Committee

ADMINISTRATION MEMBERS

The Honorable Dan Poneman, Deputy Secretary of Energy
The Honorable Ron Sims, Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Ms. Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff, Department of State
Mr. Mustafa Javed Ali, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Mr. Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development, Department of Homeland Security
Mr. Mazen Basrawi, Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Department of Justice
Technical Sergeant Sabrina Marie Bullock-Labaran, U.S. Air Force
Sergeant Major Agha Jalil Durrani, U.S. Army
Ms. Rehana Hakeem, Department of State
Chaplain Abdullah Hulwe, U.S. Army
Mr. Rashad Hussain, U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference
Mr. Adnan Kifayat, Department of Treasury
Ms. Sehreen Noor Ali, Department of State
Ms. Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities, Department of State
Ms. Hannah Rosenthal, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Department of State
Mr. Irfan Saeed, Department of Homeland Security
Lt. Commander Abuhena Saifulislam, U.S. Marine Corps
Mr. Osman Shinaishin, National Science Foundation
Mr. Kareem Shora, Department of Homeland Security
Mr. Shaarik Zafar, National Counter Terrorism Center

DIPLOMATIC CORPS

Mrs. Shamim Jawad, Spouse, Embassy of Afghanistan
His Excellency Yashar Aliyev, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan
His Excellency Akramul Qader, Ambassador of the People's Republic of Bangladesh
His Excellency Roble Olhaye, Ambassador of the Republic of Djibouti
His Excellency Sameh Hassan Shoukry, Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt
His Excellency Pietro Sambi, Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See
Her Excellency Meera Shankar, Ambassador of India
His Excellency Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaida’ie, Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq
His Excellency Erlan A. Idrissov, Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan
His Excellency Avni Spahiu, Ambassador of the Republic of Kosovo
His Excellency Ali Suleiman Aujali, Ambassador of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
His Excellency Aziz Mekour, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco
Her Excellency Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy, Ambassador of the Sultanate of Oman
His Excellency Ali Bin Fahad Faleh Al-Hajri, Ambassador of the State of Qatar
His Excellency Adel A.M. Al-Jubeir, Ambassador of Saudi Arabia
His Excellency Husain Haqqani, Ambassador of Pakistan
His Excellency Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, Ambassador of the Russian Federation
His Excellency Habib Mansour, Ambassador of Tunisia
His Excellency Ilhomjon Tuychievich Nematov, Ambassador of the Republic of Uzbekistan
His Excellency Abdulwahab A. Al Hajjri, Ambassador of the Republic Yemen
His Excellency Ufuk Gokcen, Ambassador and Permanent Observer, Organization of the Islamic Conference
The Honorable Deitan Mish, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of the Republic Albania
The Honorable Ali Alaoui, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
The Honorable Tesfaye Yilma Sabo, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of Ethiopia
The Honorable Salman Al Farisi, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of the Republic of Indonesia
The Honorable Walid Rahman J. Al Hadid, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
The Honorable Noraini Hamid, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of Malaysia
The Honorable Bello Ringim, Economic Minister, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
The Honorable Suleyman Gokce, Chargé d'Affaires at Interim of the Republic of Turkey
The Honorable Dominick Chilcott, British Chargé d'Affaires at Interim

(neo) conning the Shi'a Muslim community in the US

2011-06-05T21:02:00.000-07:00

Two good recent articles on the neo-con infiltration of the Shi'a Muslim communities in the United States:

1. The Secret War: The Zionist Spy and the Formation of the Shia-Con

In a recently published tell-all book, Is it good for the Jews?: the Crisis of America's Israel Lobby, neocon Stephen Schwartz describes how some Shi'a clerics and leaders from inside the US were groomed and promised positions of power and clout if they openly accepted and indoctrinated the Shi'a masses into accepting the neocon agenda. These Shi'a clerics and leaders were referred to as "Shia-Cons" by US government officials and were funded and supported by the neocon movement months before the Iraq war. Lawrence Anthony Franklin, was instrumental in nurturing groups such as the Universal Muslim American Association (UMAA) which lead to the formation of other Shi'a groups.

UMAA:Whose Tune Are You Singing?

In addition to the questionable endorsement of Daniel Pipes from at least one member of UMAA’s management, UMAA provided a platform in 2003, for the very master-mind behind the war on Iraq, namely the then U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz was one of the first officials to push for an invasion of Iraq, immediately in the aftermath of 9/11, and less known to the public is that he was also investigated for passing classified documents to Israel through an intermediary in AIPAC. Although in recent times, UMAA has attempted to distance itself from the event; their formal response has been a weak apology at best....

curiouser and curiouser

2010-09-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

One seriously has to wonder at not only Feisal Abdul Rauf's reactionary politics, but also his judgement on who he chooses to hang out with, and who ends up supporting such a project! We might not know the specifics of what Mr. Rauf had in mind when he first thought up Park 51, but we can get a good idea by looking at some of his supporters.

Ameena Meer formed an organization "Muslims for Peace" to raise funds for the Park 51 project, and here is what she was raising funds for:

As for the charges against Imam Feisal, as someone who listened to his new-agey-self-searching qutbahs over the past 15 years, they were down to a word, spiritual and reassuringly apolitical. He never failed to remind us to be grateful for being American Muslims.

Really? Mr. Rauf is "apolitical?" Of-course he is not, he just refuses to discuss US imperialism, he has no problem with being political, so long as he is opportunistically serving the US regimes (both Bush and Obama).

we need the points of view of all Muslims who are open to dialogue, from Hamza Yusuf and Reza Aslan,Irshad Manji, Parvez Sharma, El-Farouk Khaki and anyone else who wants to make peace with his or her faith.

All of whom are supporters of empire at best, with some of 'em outright anti-Islam and anti-Muslim (yes I count Hamza Yusuf as a pro-empire figure.) Where does she get the idea that (aside from Hamza Yusuf) those others want to make "peace" with Islam? They are already at peace with their pro-empire/zionist faith!

And then there is this:

The director of the "Amityville Horror" remake says he's been subjected to a real-life nightmare courtesy of an ex-wife who duped him into thinking he was a dad -- for 17 years.

It wasn't until Andrew Douglas took a paternity test last year that he learned Ameena Meer had conned him into thinking he was the father of her daughter, court papers say -- and now he wants his ex to pay through the nose for the heartbreaking lie.
He's suing her for $671,991 in damages -- the amount he has paid in child support over the years -- as well as legal costs for their 1999 divorce, and an unspecified amount in punitive damages.

Meer, the head of Muslims for Peace, an organization that has been collecting donations for the mosque near Ground Zero, denied intentionally misleading her ex. "Of course I didn't lie," she said.

how rats flee a sinking raft

2010-09-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

While reading Ikhras's post on Hussein Ibish I thought just how ironic the whole Park 51 situation has become. Hussein Ibish, as regular readers of this blog might remember, was one of the original founders of the Progressive Muslim Union North America (PMUNA) and a search of this blog will turn up numerous entries on his antics.

But at the time, six years back, many of the proggies were quite happy with Feisal Abdul Rauf (although, I've not been able to find any specific references of Ibish lovin' Rauf - if someone does, please leave that info. in the comment section.)

Here we have an article by Raheel Raza of the reactionary statement issuing mill Muslim Canadian Congress written in November of 2004 on the founding of the PMUNA (I refuse to link to their website, but a google search will turn up references).

I went to NYC ostensibly to attend the launch of the Progressive Muslims Union of North America and I got there two days early. My hosts in Manhattan are part of a group that had decided that through science and technology, Ramadan and Eid can be predicted in advance so that Muslims can begin and end together. The decision was for a Sunday Eid and they invited me to join them at the Eid prayer and celebration.

We drove to the Dorral Arrowood Convention Center in Rye Brook New York where the auspicious event was arranged by ASMA (American Sufi Muslims Association). 300 men, women and children prayed together in the great Ballroom – yes, side by side with no partition. These people have broken away from the traditional mosque culture (where usually women are relegated to another area) because they want to offer prayers with their families, friends and loved ones, and they took another bold step by inviting an Imam of their choice. And what a brilliant choice!

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a dynamic man with a vision as large as his heart. Author of a new book titled “What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims in the West”, he was educated in England and Malaysia and has a degree in Physics from Columbia University. Founder and CEO of the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA Society) and Imam of Masjid Al-Farah, a mosque in New York City, twelve blocks from Ground Zero, he has dedicated his life to building bridges between Muslims and the West and is a leader in the effort to build religious pluralism and integrate Islam into modern American society.

Regarded as one of the world’s most eloquent and erudite Muslim leaders, Imam Feisal is a charismatic public speaker and has appeared in national and international media such as CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and BBC. He has been quoted in the New York Times, New York Daily News, Jerusalem Post, and Associated Press.

The Imam’s sermon could have been easily accepted in a church, synagogue or temple as he spoke about two kinds of religion – good and bad. He talked about Islam with a small “i” and said it means submission to God by anyone: Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist. This must have sat well with John Bennet, a lone Buddhist in the congregation who heads Imam’s Feisal’s Cordoba Initiative. Imam Feisal is the architect of the Cordoba Initiative, an inter-religious blueprint for improving relations between America and the Muslim world and pursuing Middle East peace. As a tireless advocate for an ecumenical solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has impressed his vision on US lawmakers and administration officials, most recently as member of the National Inter-religious Initiative For Peace in Washington DC.

Young people surrounded the Imam after the sermon but the surprise did not end there for me. Following the prayer, there was brunch and live music – some enthusiastic families also indulged in a bit of ‘bhangra’. I was also astounded to see the Imam’s wife does not cover her head. Daisy Khan leads women in prayer at their mosque and is involved in interfaith dialogue at an international level. Upon my questioning, she said “I’ve done my own ijtihad (research and reasoning) and found that modest dress is what is required so I believe this is fine for me.” Wow, I felt I had found the ‘progressive’ Muslims.

And now she has this to say about Abdul Rauf:

"A hundred million dollars can help people sell their souls" (3:26)

who's who on Council of Foreign Relations

2010-09-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

The Council of Foreign Relations is a pro-empire "think-tank." Its membership includes such imperial luminaries as:

Dick Cheney
Condoleezza Rice
Paul Wolfowitz
Robert M. Gates
John D. Negroponte
Richard Perle
Leslie Gelb
Colin Powell
Alice Rivlin
Madeleine Albright
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Henry Kissinger

The CFR Religious Advisory Committee includes some interesting Muslim names:

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Salam Al-Marayati, Muslim Public Affairs Council, Los Angeles, CA

Reza Aslan

Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel has joined the ultra Zionist (and I mean that in all of its negativity) ADL organization that is now supposedly going to be taking on anti-Muslim issues - yeah right. Eboo Patel has previously hooked up with war criminals, so this step is not much of a surprise.

Park 51: A manufactured controversy

2010-09-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

While I think the article below accurately analyzes the geopolitical aspect of this manufactured controversy, I would caution readers with regards to other aspects, because it relies too heavily on reporting done by Asra Nomani who, as regular readers of this blog will remember, is not exactly a credible source, and herself has a background in manufacturing controversies (she was one of the main forces around the Amina Wadud led Friday prayers manufactured controversy.)

Asra Nomani:

"If not america, where else? America has a history of bringing human rights to the world, of bringing social justice to the world. It is obviously from america that muslim women should do this."

It could be that Feisal Abdul Rauf and his friends (that includes Asra Nomani) may be looking for a scapegoat in this affair, and may use the developer, who initially paid for the site, as an excuse to back out.

The plot hatched maybe thick, but Muslims should focus on opposing Islamophobia, and at the same time raise issues about the legitimacy of "leadership" exercised by Abdul Rauf, his wife Daisy Khan, and their circle:

The entire ‘911’ Mosque controversy has been made into world news by CNN and other select media. The US head of the military command in Afghanistan, General Petraeus got into the fray with a plea to the Florida pastor not to burn Korans, a move which naturally led several other wanna-be preacher bigots to say they too planned to burn Korans on the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Center event. The President, Barack Obama, got into the act by praising the building of the mosque as a symbol of Americans’ religious freedom and tolerance.

At the end of the day it all fuelled a “Clash of Civilization” tension across America, and had the convenient effect, whether the mosque is built on the site or not, of reinforcing the US Government version of the collapse of the World Trade towers on September 11, 2001, namely that the destruction was carried out by two commercial hijacked jets being deftly rerouted into the two towers. And that the Boeing jets had been allegedly hijacked by 19 Arab students, armed only with paper box cutters, who had just been trained at a Florida flight school to fly small Cessna-size private planes. By keeping alive the myth of the “Second Pearl Harbor,” as George W. Bush once called 9/11, perhaps some people such as Barack Obama or General Petraeus hope to keep attention on the need for US military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even spreading the war beyond Afghanistan.

Tariq Ramadan opposition to Park 51 - for the wrong reasons

2010-09-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

Tariq Ramadan, interviewed on Democracy Now expressed his sympathies for the bigot Islamophobes and recommended against the Park 51 project from going forward:

So, in my position, if this is a symbol—and we have to listen to this collective sensitivity of the Americans after what happened in September the 11th—is to say, look, on that, we can understand. We are not accepting anything which has to do with, you know, a free Muslim zone, but we should listen to what is said and what is felt.

Ramadan's position is confused, to say the least, and anyone listening and/or reading the transcript can see that obviously enough. Essentially what he says is that while Muslims should continue struggling for our rights, we must also try to understand Islamophabia, and not thread on this "collective sensitivity." It is like saying to the attacker: "I'm so sorry I hurt you with my presence, let me go ahead and move back to the back of the bus" an apology for being Muslim.

And it is also very similar to Feisal Abdul Rauf's statement:

Muslims need to understand and soothe Americans who fear them, the imam said; they should be conciliatory, not judgmental, toward the West and Israel.

All the time we are supposed to ignore the horrendous crimes committed against Muslims by the US/British regimes.

Ramadan at the close of the interview does mention that the Park 51 project is supported by the US State Department, but this is, of-course, not the reason for his opposition.

I think that I would just take—you know, something which is to consult the community. I think that it was a project on his own he was going to have and supported by the State Department, supported by other religious communities, and there is a lack of internal communication. I think that this is where the problem started.

To understand this position, we would like to remind our readers that Tariq Ramadan is not all that different from Feisal Abdul Rauf: Ramadan was an advisor to the criminal Blair regime and serves a similar function as that of Rauf. The difference is that Ramadan did (at one time) have a significant following in Europe, Rauf on the other hand focused almost all of his energies on acting on behalf of the US regimes.

IF the Park 51 project should go ahead at its present location, it needs to be inclusive of the Palestinian, anti-war, and other social justice groups. And Feisal Abdul Rauf, being a US regime's spokesperson, should be removed from any and all leadership positions. Opposition to Park 51 should not be based on lending a sympathetic ear to bigotry.

Park 51 CIA connections

2010-09-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

An interesting article on the Park 51 project's advisory board member's CIA connections, nothing surprising but a good read:

...one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group, the Cordoba Initiative, that is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque, is a 52-year-old Scarsdale, New York, native named R. Leslie Deak. In addition to serving on the group's board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization's total operating budget—though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period.

Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as "business consultant" for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three "strategic advisers." These include retired four-star General Bryan "Doug" Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed "all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism," and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he "managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget" and "served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001."

Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid on Park 51

2010-09-10T01:00:00.000-07:00

Eid Mubarak to all conscientious brothers and sisters.

Imam Talib, in an interview with Illume Magazine correctly points out:

“The way that this whole issue (Park 51) is playing out is the result of what I call a failed strategy on the part of Arab and southern Asian Muslims to be accepted into American society or assimilated into American society and a successful strategy on the part of the status quo [and] ruling class on the other hand.” Abdur-Rashid believes that the failed strategy of Arab and southern Asian Muslims was in not promoting a dialogue with African-American Muslims once they arrived in America, especially after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Immigration Act of 1965.

“An important part of their assimilation strategy has been to put an immigrant face on Islam in America,” said Abdur-Rashid. “Many of the immigrants who have come here have been financially well off. This has enabled them to found influential national organizations as they pursue a strategy of empowerment. All immigrants want to be empowered; all immigrants want to be part of American society. They’ve worked to put an immigrant face on Islam in America.

“As these immigrants have come here, two things have happened. One is that their goal has been to assimilate into White America, since we all know there are two Americas. And the America that these southern Asian and Arab immigrants have strived to assimilate to is not the America you and I are sitting in right now,” said Abdur-Rashid. “In doing this, the fact is that they came to this country and, for the most part, ignored the presence of African-American Muslims. [They] made no attempt to link with us, work with us, dialogue with us.

“Up until the past couple of decades, when you said Islam and Muslims in America, people have always thought about African-Americans. All of the famous Muslims in America up until this decade have been African-Americans who have had a tremendous impact on American society. Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar. The list goes on.

“It’s failed not because these same Muslims had ill intent towards African-Americans; it was because they didn’t know the territory,” Abdur-Rashid continued. “They underestimated the underbelly of American society and the role that racism toward people of color has always played in American society. After Sept. 11, their artificial white privilege was revoked and they just became another kind of nigger in America. And the status quo started treating them like that.”

Imam Talib has made an important point, that just one or two other African - American Muslim leaders have also raised in recent months, most notably Imam Musa who has called for a move away from cathedral Islam in the US and towards a Re-Africanization of Islam in the US.

However, I would add that this business of assimilating into the worst aspects of the US is not just an immigrant Muslim phenomena, post 9-11, and even pre-9-11 African-American Muslims also embarked on this project. I need not go into those details in this blog entry, but I'm sure Imam Talib is not unfamiliar with this trend.

The question is whereto from here? The alphabet soup Muslim groups, given their dismal track record, have obviously failed in providing a clear response to the hate filled Islamophobia we have witnessed recently, and contrary to the blabber from Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Muslim community center is *not* about to solve our concerns. But the controversy has succeeded in exposing the failure of this liberal/pro-regressive strategy of hooking up with the US State Department and becoming representatives of the Bush/Obama regimes.

What we need is a serious re-think not only on part of the immigrant Muslims, but also non-immigrant esp. African - American Muslims. This re-think is not all that complicated, and does not really require millions of $$$ spent on conferences (aka "halal" dating venues) - what is needed is a refocus of Muslims, in the US, on Islam, on social justice, on oppressed communities, focusing our energies on the horrendous situation in poor neighborhoods throughout the US - African-American, Latinos, Asians, and even poor Whites., a situation made dramatically worse because of the economic depression. And Muslims must put our fears aside, and also focus our energies on stopping the US empire's continued war crimes against our sisters and brother Muslims all over the world.

If Muslims had our act together, and were not into becoming the next great thing on Wall Street, or the US State Department, or spending energy on thanking people who don't care a hoot about Muslims perhaps we would have been on the forefront of organizing communities to withstand the robber baron thefts. Unfortunately, we are far behind, and there are not even a bare handful of Muslim groups that are involved in such serious, and Islamically required work. Instead, we have to contend with the likes of State Department designed "dream Muslims" who are nothing more than a distraction.

Inshallah, the events of these past few months, and the sincere prayers of our sisters and brothers will bring about a much needed change.

Moderate Muslim smokescreen- Dream Muslim

2010-09-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

In fact, Abdul Rauf, who has been employed by the FBI to give sensitivity trainings and by US State Department to tour the Middle East and facelift the crumbling US image abroad, is described by supporters as a “dream Muslim.” Fareed Zakaria, the hawkish pundit affiliated with The Council on Foreign Relations, went so far as to return the medal given to him by the Anti-Defamation League after the ADL voiced its disapproval of the Center and its founder.

“Dream Muslim” is an interesting designation, especially as Abdul Rauf was unknown to the majority of the Muslim Americans before Park 51. His career has been more devoted towards ambassadorship of Islam, particularly to government circles, than outreach to Muslim Americans themselves.

If the soul of “moderate” Islam is the issue at hand, there is something amiss in designating as representative, an individual possessing little equity with the 10 million-strong demographic of Muslim Americans. According to Zakaria, Feisal Abdul Rauf, “has spent years trying to offer a liberal interpretation of Islam” and “argues that America is actually what an ideal Islamic society would look like because is it peaceful, tolerant and pluralistic.” Equating Islam with an America whose roots lie paradoxically in imperialist Protestant evangelicalism and Enlightenment god-abandonment, is hardly reassuring.

Meanwhile, the alphabet soup of Muslim and Arab organizations, in the US, continue their appeasement. They have obviously not learnt even an iota of a lesson from this manufactured "controversy." Ikhras reports:

Park51 continues to serve its house function; leading Muslims away from the urgent priorities of opposing the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine and shifting Muslims’ attention to pleading for recognition from the empire and expressing gratitude for its acknowledgement of their legal rights. A number of recent examples on how the Arab-American and Muslim-American “leadership” encourages the Arab and Muslim communities to ignore Zionist politicians’ war crimes and thank them for consenting the establishment of an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan.

and now hybrid Muslims

2010-08-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Here is Governor David Paterson latest comment around the Park 51 debacle:

“This group who has put this mosque together, they are known as the Suffi Muslims. This is not like the Shiites,” Paterson said. “They’re almost like a hybrid, almost westernized. They are not really what I would classify in the sort of mainland Muslim practice.”

It might be easy to just dismiss Paterson's comment as just another piece of ignorant nonsense coming from an uneducated US politician. BUT such a characterization would not take into account the context within which these remarks were made, and the fact this dividing up Muslims as "good" and "bad" Muslims is something that Feisal Abdul Rauf himself has encouraged.

Feisal Abdul Rauf's self image marketing has included an almost Obamasque distancing of himself from many Muslims who in fact are struggling for peace and justice. But just as Obama has not entirely succeeded in his denial of being a Muslim, so too Feisal Abdul Rauf has not been able to entirely shed the "radical Imam" image, no matter how hard he tries to play to the tune of the US State Department.

If one looks at the list of "friends" on the Cordoba Initiative - they do not list a single Muslim or Islamic group, all of them are either Jewish (the liberal Zionist type) Christians, Buddhists, and some secular groups. This attempt to run away from the Islamic character of the center only ends up feeding the Islamophobia, because it reveals Feisal Abdul Rauf and his project's growing discomfort with being Muslim, which is exactly the purpose of the Islamophobic campaign against the mosque. This is just one reason why Abdul Rauf is the wrong person to head up such a project.

There is another group called Stop Islamophobia - that includes a variety of peace and justice groups, along with Arab and Muslim groups. it is strange (but not surprising) to say the least, that the Cordoba Initiative fails to list a single one of these supporters on their web site!

If the Park 51 Mosque / community ctr. (whatever) is to go ahead, then it must expand - and include within it more representative Muslim groups, Palestinian groups, anti-Zionist Jewish groups, and anti-war groups. Such an expansion would bring a clear reflection of the needs of Muslims in the United States, along with providing a much needed venue where peace, social justice, and anti-war groups can organize against the US wars on Muslims. (Swimming pools etc. are all fine and well, assuming that climate change does not bring a massive shortage of water in New York City.)

Of-course, the Islamophobes will go nuts for a while, but in the long run, such an effort will only benefit Muslims, because it will show the US establishment forces, that we Muslims are not about to play into the "good Muslim" game. However, i have serious doubts that Feisal Abdul Rauf, and Daisy Khan are up to such a task. This project needs to be removed from the hands of individuals, and given to the larger Muslim communities - including us all in all of our diversities - where those struggling for Palestine will not be excluded because the project leader is a self-proclaimed supporter of the "state of Israel."

liberals and Park 51

2010-08-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

Two recent articles on the Park 51 fiasco and Feisal Abdul Rauf

Cordoba House Advisers Include Liberal-Zionist Rabbis

On Sunday ABC’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed Faisal Abdul Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan, along with Rabbi Joy Levitt who heads a Jewish Community Center in New York.

Here are some of Joy Levitt's opinions:

…Join us in telling Congress and the Administration: Because we are committed to Israel’s security, we want to see a security fence that will help protect Israelis from terrorism, but not one that cuts so deeply into the West Bank that it will sacrifice security in favor of settlements, and make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

Moderate, rational voices often get drowned out in the crisis of the moment. On American college campuses today criticism of Israel is often barely distinguishable from anti-Semitism. But those who cast Israel as the villain and attack Zionism do the Palestinians no favors.

Here we have a liberal zionist equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism - and that the zionist entity should not be considered a villain. It is interesting to see how Daisy Khan and Feisal Abdul Rauf will go to any lengths to appease Zionists, and cry boatloads about "extremists" amongst Muslims. Lets be clear, the likes of Daisy Khan and Feisal Abdul Rauf speak only for their own tiny constituency (including liberal imperialists who like to bury the question of oppression under the goobly talk of new age psuedo-sufism).

The above link includes the full interview, wherein Daisy Khan expresses concerns about "extremists" - like others of her type she fails to define an "extremist." Given how her husband hob nobs with the upper elite of the United States, obviously she does not consider as extremists, those who invaded and destroyed two Muslim majority countries (just in the past decade) resulting in the deaths of upwards of a million Muslims.

Earlier Sunday evening, at sundown, reporters were allowed to watch Mr. Abdul Rauf dine at the American ambassador’s residence with a handpicked group of Bahraini youths, but diplomats tried to prevent journalists from conversing with the guests.

How Liberal Mosque Defenders Are Playing into the Hands of the Islamophobes

Time and again, the public is reminded of the fact that Park51 is not in fact a mosque but an Islamic community center that promotes interfaith dialogue.

Daisy Khan and Imam Rauf, the leading figures behind the Park51 initiative, have not only repeated this mantra, but have in fact produced it. When liberal defenders have wittingly or unwittingly referred to Park51 as a mosque, the response from folks at the Cordoba Initiative has been gratitude in the form of this corrective: Thank you for your support, but Park51 is not a mosque.

Desperate attempts to render inaudible the community center’s Islamic origins have also included several name changes. What was once referred to as Cordoba House became the Community Center at Park Place, and most recently, the amorphous namesake, Park51.

But these efforts -- to present the community center as innocuous via nomenclature -- are just part of the problem; the very same rhetoric is being materially reproduced in the architectural plans for Park51. The structure, as it is currently imagined, literally looks nothing like a mosque. What we see instead of minarets or a crescent moon, is an eyesore that screams of capitalist excess. There appears to be some Islamic influence in the geometric art that may be visible through its glass exterior, but the aesthetics of this structure overwhelmingly suggest that its design is a carefully constructed attempt at attracting as little attention as possible. The gaze of those working and visiting the area will seamlessly move from Park51 to the other glass monuments that line the financial district, and it appears that this is precisely the point.

This kind of architecture proposed by Feisal Abdul Rauf is of-course not an accident, his whole purpose is to create an American Islam (not too far of a variation from Progressive Islam). The architecture described above is representative of who and what Feisal Abdul Rauf wants to ally with in the United States: an eyesore that screams of capitalist excess

Feisal Abdul Rauf and the Zionists

2010-08-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Ikhras blog reports Abdul Rauf stating: "I support the state of Israel"

Readers who have followed this blog over the years should not be surprised at all - a central aspect of the US project to change the face of Islam has been to gain acceptance for Zionism amongst Muslims. Early in the history of the Progressive Muslim Union (PMUNA) we discussed the issue of Ahmed Nassef (the then executive director of the now defunct PMUNA) speaking at a conference put on by the anti-Palestinian group: Hillel.

Ziyad al-Assali, a then board of advisor member of the (now defunct) PMUNA, had been roundly condemned for working on a similar agenda as the neo-cons with respect to Palestine.

Also see our past posts on "Israel" and moderate Muslims and on Hussain Haqqani (the current Pakistani ambassador to the US).

As a reader pointed out - the Park 51 project is part and parcel of the reform Islam project, and none other than Fareed Zakaria (another former advisory board member of the (now defunct) PMUNA) has made it clear that that is what it is about:

"The debate over whether an Islamic center should be built a few blocks from the World Trade Center has ignored a fundamental point. If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the proposed institute. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it."

Park 51 lessons

2010-08-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

The so-called "debate" on Park 51 seems to be taking place in some kind of a strange twilight zone... But lets just take a little more of a historical view of the situation, from the perspective of what this blog has been about for the past six years. Our objective was to expose the so-called "Progressive Muslims" who had fallen (wittingly or unwittingly) in with the worst of the neo-cons who were (and are still) intent on changing the face of Islam. We wanted to warn both the Muslim community, and those Progressive Muslims who would pay some attention, about the dangers of affiliating with the imperialists.

The Progressive Muslims (specifically as represented by the Progressive Muslims Union North America (PMUNA) ) went on a campaign to discredit established Islamic practices and beliefs, and held themselves up as the model "good Muslim" with supposed "liberal" (read "western" ) values. They failed to see the absurdity and contradictions of what they were doing. Eventually they collapsed under their own weight of infighting and power hungry personalities, and dispersed their energies elsewhere.

Now, fast forward 2010 - we see that, while not self-identified as a "Progressive Muslim," Feisal Abdul Rauf, who holds some of the same values and strategies of the proggies, is being attacked by both the liberal and neo-cons. Feisal Abdul Rauf, over the years, has provided a space to many proggies, including Ahmed Nassaf (founder of PMUNA) and the notorious Mona Eltahawy (through his Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow program). Feisal Abdul Rauf did not just hold these conferences, he was, and is an active representative of the US state department, a consultant to the FBI, was involved with the Bush regime, and is involved now with the Obama regime. Rauf also apparently received significant funding from the (Saudi) Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal we have previously discussed this so-called "prince" on this blog here and here

The fact is Feisal Abdul Rauf is (or wants to be) very much part of the same people who are slamming him. Rauf is exactly what the neo-cons and the liberal imperialist want from a Muslim "leader"; a complacent liberal, who willingly and happily goes off to visit US puppet dictatorships in the "mid-east" to represent the US State Department. BUT even with all that, he is still not acceptable. Those of us who have watched events unfold over the past five or six years should not be surprised at all at this state of affairs, we knew that compromising our values, our traditions, our religion was not the way to go, and we would not even gain anything in this world (let alone the hereafter).

Update: A couple of links thank you Gambit57:

Solid post. Only would say to flesh it out with some more embedded links. 2 that readily come to mind:

1. Rauf's own "I am a Jew" statement:

2. Zakaria's statement here:

"The debate over whether an Islamic center should be built a few blocks from the World Trade Center has ignored a fundamental point. If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the proposed institute. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it."

source:

There are a few voices who are attempting to point out that Rauf is in fact a "moderate" Muslim i.e. a success story for the kind of Muslim "leader" that the Rand Report encouraged, and exactly the kind for which the neo-cons had been clamoring for... These few voices recognize the value of Rauf for the US project to change the face of Islam. But now he has been so vilified that he no longer has the kind of utility that he may have once had, and I would expect that if he has not already been ditched, he is going to be very soon.

The question now is if the larger Muslim leadership (not only the proggies, liberals, moderates etc. ) is willing to understand the lessons - and understand that giving up on our principles is not going to get us a seat at the table in the US (just to be clear, an Iftar dinner at the White House is not a seat at the table). Only through a principled justice oriented social struggle in conjunction with other oppressed "minorities" are we going to earn our civil rights. No one respects a House Muslim/Arab - least of all the owner of the house. It is high time the Muslim "leadership" (including non-proggie types) wakes up from whatever slumber they have fallen under, and renew our sense of purpose and justice in North America.

on Feisal Abdul Rauf and the Park 51 travesty

2010-08-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

Two articles on the so-called "ground zero" mosque and Feisal Abdul Rauf who is heading up the project.

Abdul Rauf has been close to the US establishment for a number of years now, serving as a US State Department Muslim representative during both Bush and Obama regimes. Abdul Rauf is as much of a "good Muslim" that anyone get without actually giving up Islam. Yet, even as "good" of a Muslim Abdul Rauf is, he is just not good enough for the US establishment, and he has been effectively abandoned in the "ground zero" mosque Islamophobic controversy.

Meanwhile, Abdul Rauf continues to serve the State Department on his latest tour of sheikhdoms and monarchies (i.e. US allies and puppets) to talk about all of the rivers of milk and honey that can be found in America - all for Muslims. Abdul Rauf is apparently a Sufi Imam, according to some web sources, it is unfortunate those who are on the beautiful path of Tasawwuf should fall for such an obvious fraud.

Readers of this blog will remember that the Rand Report strategy also including a recommendation to support "sufis" in their effort to reshape Islam. This post is not intended to malign Tasawwuf, but it is intended to point out how the imperialists are using Muslim leaders, and how some Muslim leaders have fallen right into their trap.

Ikhras blog writes:

It is no surprise that Imam Abdul Rauf’s itinerary includes countries like Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries, which are already staunch US allies. The man wouldn’t stand a chance trying to convince citizens of Kabul or Baghdad that the US is a tolerant, egalitarian entity.

We’re all for dialogue as long as the US boot is not on the neck of those it’s trying to “dialogue” with. Is Imam Abdul Rauf unaware of atrocities the US is committing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq? Has he no concept of decades-long US support for Israel throughout its colonial occupation of Palestine?

This is as ridiculous as a Vietnamese-American cleric flying around to give a good impression of the US around the time of the My Lai massacre.

For a Muslim to ignore US atrocities and focus on the its supposed “regime of religious freedom and equality” is an expression of American arrogance. House Muslims, with their knowledge of English, their degrees from American universities, their spacious houses in the suburbs and their consumerist lifestyle, perceive their position on the empire’s sociopolitical ladder as more valuable than the lives of dispensable Muslims languishing in refugee camps. An Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan is more “cool” and worthy of advocacy than mosques in Afghanistan and Iraq the US has bombarded.

And also on another blog:

Repeatedly some Muslims have attempted to appease the imperialists, be it through their cookie cutter condemnations, or by becoming “moderate” “liberal” “progressive” type of a Muslim. These Muslims have still not learnt a very basic lesson of the Qur’an – that attempting to appease the oppressor will only lead to an increase in their act of oppression. Attempting to “fit in” by acting in concert with the FBI, or becoming a US State Department’s token “good Muslim” spokesperson a la Feisal Abdul Rauf (the individual who is heading up the so-called “ground zero” mosque) will end up backfiring. As Ali Abunimah said: “If the State Department could design a Muslim it would be someone like Rauf.”

Ikhras takes on Mona Eltahawy

2010-07-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

I know this blog has not been updated in a long time, lack of time is my excuse --- but wanted to point to a a new blog that is working on exposing the

cowardly Arab and Muslim-Americans not only fail to address the ills and crimes of America, but in what appears to be overcompensation for their minority status, they immerse themselves in American political folklore complete with the flag-waving, sloganeering, and transparently phony expressions of patriotism.

They have an article critiquing Mona Eltahawy on her take on the Islamophobic laws being passed in Europe against the wearing of the niqab. Mona Eltahawy was one of the early supporters of the proggies, and a search for her name on this site will turn up multiple critiques of her positions.

Here is what Ikhras writes about her recent mediocre rants that she likes to pass off as "journalism."

Eltahawy momentarily expresses unease with the “racist political right wing” but then concludes with making her position clear that “The French were right to ban the veil in public.” With this unequivocal statement, Eltahawy entrusts Islam’s interpretation and Muslim women’s right to choose to a state in top-down fashion instead of bringing about change on the grassroots level. Not any government, but one that has had a long racist, colonial history. This is not shocking coming from someone who brandishes her normalization with “Israel” on her website: “Ms Eltahawy was the first Egyptian journalist to live and to work for a western news agency in Israel.” Ms. Eltahawy, if you cannot support the fight against sexism and Islamophobia, then please Ikhrasi!

Ikhras should note that the cowardly Arab and Muslims that they are working to expose more than often also go by the misnomer "Progressive Muslims" "Liberal Muslims" self proclaimed and identified by the imperialists as "Moderate Muslims" and even some traditionalists have been caught up in this nefarious wave.

a list of native informants

2009-04-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

CAIR has its problems: a supposedly civil rights group "cooperating" with the notorious anti-civil rights FBI is entirely absurd (to say the least) --- but then you have these native informants who take boot licking to an entirely new level:

via malangbaba

We, the undersigned American Muslims, have long known the true character of CAIR and its allies. Therefore:

We observe that they denounce "terrorism" in general terms but not the specific actions of Islamist groups like Hamas or Hezbollah. They denounce violence but not the ideologies behind it.
We observe their commitment to radical aims, their attempts to chill free speech by calling critics of radical Islam "Islamophobes," and their false, ugly accusations against moderate American Muslims who disagree with their agenda.
We reject any claim that CAIR and its supporters are legitimate civil liberties advocates or appropriate partners between the U.S. government and American Muslims.
We congratulate the FBI for adopting a firmer attitude toward CAIR, as a defense of Americans of all faiths from the menace of radical Islam, including Muslims of all backgrounds - Sunni, Shia, Sufi, secular, etc.
We call on the U.S. Department of Justice to affirm and continue this decision.
We call on the entire United States government to follow suit in rejecting relations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The statement is signed by Kemal Silay, president of the Center for Islamic Pluralism; Supna Zaidi, assistant director of Islamist Watch; M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Imaad Malik, fellow with the Center for Islamic Pluralism; Ahmed Subhy Mansour with the International Quranic Center; Khalim Massoud, whose email address is Reform Islam; Nawab Agha Mousvi of the American Muslim Congress; Kiran Sayyed of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance; Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism; a group called Shia Protest; and Jalal Zuberi, Southern U.S. director with the Center for Islamic Pluralism.

boot kissing Muslims

2009-04-07T00:15:00.001-07:00

Check out a series of posts by Malangbaba on some Muslims who don't seem to get it that you don't kiss the (US government/FBI) boots that kicks you.

One needs only look at the historical role of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to know that it is a racist and anti-democratic organization which has repressed any and all communities of color, or dissenting communities, and in particular during times of Imperial wars abroad. In fact, the tactics being used by enforcement agencies against the Muslim communities, were practiced and perfected on the Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, labor-rights, and civil rights communities under the auspices of COINTELPRO in the 60s and 70s, not to mention the general racism and repression doled out from before and since then.

The only respect gained has been for the very similar gatekeeper and collaborationist organizations which have sold out the rights of their communities in exchange for having a "place at the table" with authorities.

At a time when the US government is waging war in multiple Muslim countries, directly, covertly, or by proxy, and acting like a modern-day pharaoh, is the duty, and moral obligation, of Muslims to be like Musa (as) or to be like Qarun?

The need for changes within the Muslim communities is long overdue, and this change can only come when Muslim community members, Imams, activists, and masajid start making it clear that not only do these Muslim organizations not represent us, but also that we seek our source of power and security from Allah, and in conjunction with other oppressed communities, like Musa (as) and not from those in power, like Qarun.

Click here to read more

Rand Muslims in Pakistan

2009-01-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

The author in this article goes on a rant about "wahabbis" in Pakistan, and comes up with a solution to "resist" so-called fundamentalism. The Rand Report has articulated that the US could co-opt so-called "sufis" to be on their side.

As has been the intent since its writing, the Randists want to subvert resistance to a violent empire - and Rand Muslims would be happy to see Muslims surrender to the Zionists, and allow them to take over the deen and Muslim societies.

The politically moderating effect of Sufism was recently described in a RAND Corporation report recommending support for Sufism as an "open, intellectual interpretation of Islam." Here is an entirely indigenous and homegrown Islamic resistance movement to fundamentalism, with deep roots in South Asian culture. Its importance cannot be overestimated. Could it have a political effect in a country still dominated by military forces that continue to fund and train jihadi groups? It is one of the few sources of hope left in the increasingly bleak political landscape of this strategically crucial country.

Rand Institute Muslims

2009-01-18T21:05:00.000-08:00

Umar Lee discusses, and highlights how to spot ("signs of") a Rand Institute Muslim - RIM (s)

What does RIM stand for? Rand Institute Muslims. A few years back the Rand Institute did a study on how to defeat the Islamic Movement and the rise of Islam worldwide. One of the main ways to defeat Islam they argued was to promote a mystical and apolitical Sufism. In America we have many Sufis, or those who lean towards the Sufi persuasion, who are Rand Institute compliant Muslims thus making them RIMS.

What are some signs of a RIM?

click here to read more

Profile of a neo-con proggie: Raheel Raza

2008-12-27T13:31:00.000-08:00

Raheel Raza writes for Islamist Watch, a project at the Middle East Forum

The Middle East Forum is an outfit run by Daniel Pipes. Among other things, Pipes is known as a “Smearcaster” by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

(http://www.smearcasting.com/index.html ) and America’s leading anti-Muslim bigot.

Thanx to Dr. Maxtor for his post on Raheel Raza's not-so-strange bedfellows...

(sorry for lack of updates on this blog --- inshallah, next year will try to do a better job - especially with the advent of the liberal imperialists, we will need to refocus).

liberal Muslims and liberal imperialists

2008-10-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

The cartoon below - by the wonderful Brazilian, Carlos Latuff, - depicts the "difference" between the two pro-empire US candidates McCain/Obama. This should serve as a warning to Muslims. Already we are seeing so-called Muslim leaders hooking up with the liberal imperialists, in anticipation of an Obama (a liberal imperialist) presidency.

This change, from the neo-con imperialists to the liberal imperialists, will result in largely cosmetic shifts in how the US continues its atrocities against Muslims and Islam around the world, but it will have important ramifications for how we are going to continue the work of exposing the native informants. Expect many more Muslim "leaders" to hook up with the Obama team, and shamelessly pander to his policies.

Hamza Yusuf, for example, ignoring Islamic precepts that forbid Muslims to support anyone who has promised to attack other Muslims, at an ISNA conference, endorsed Obama:

The well-known preacher Hamza Yusuf, who is particularly influential among the young, received thunderous applause when he called on America’s Muslims to vote for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Barack Obama.

Obama’s pledge to withdraw US troops from Iraq is, according to Yusuf, reason enough to vote for him. Says Yusuf: “Iraq is the Arabic word for Vietnam.”

Since when did Islamic scholars think of their job description to include endorsing imperialist presidential candidates - who have promised to do nothing, other than to further strengthen the hands of the enemies of Muslims and Islam.

Sure, Obama has promised a reduction of forces in Iraq - but not a complete withdrawal, nor an end to the occupation. Giving Hamza Yusuf the benefit of the doubt, that he does not understand Obama's Iraq policies (most people don't), but did he fail to read up on Obama's other clear cut anti-Muslim policies?

Obama has promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and drop bombs on Pakistan (that he applauded Bush for doing)? If he is not reading up, or closely examining policy statements, then he might better serve Muslims by not making statements on topics about which he appears to be seriously naive.

US Presidential hopeful Barrack Obama has termed the cross-border raids by the US forces into Pakistan as a small step in the right direction.

Obama supported the raids but described them as “baby steps” by the Bush’s administration

Obama criticized the war in Iraq as a strategic blunder, not an act of aggression that has resulted in the slaughter of over one million innocent people. He presented the US occupation, which has shattered Iraq as a functioning society, as though the Bush administration was favoring that country at American expense. “Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we’re wallowing in deficits,” he complained.

So Obama came to this year’s AIPAC conference determined to dispel all remaining doubts that he’s a Friend of Israel. “We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran,” he assured AIPAC.” I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything and I mean everything.” He swore he wouldn’t talk to the elected representatives Palestinians, Hamas. To thunderous applause he declared, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,"

An even more troubling development is an endorsement by several liberal Muslim "leaders" of the repugnant violent attacks, and invasions of Muslim majority countries.

Following is from a report put out by the liberal imperialist group called "U.S. Muslim Engagement" (more on that group, and this report in the next few days but you can check out who is who in that group by clicking here ).

During the past several years, it has become clear that military force may be necessary, but is not sufficient, to defeat violent extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, or to prevent attacks elsewhere.

The liberal imperialists (such as Obama) are very clear that they have no intention of stopping the violent attacks, and invasions. But what they want is a kinder, gentler, hypocritical face on these attacks, and a more efficient killing and propaganda machine.

Tarek Fatah and Frontpage rag and Quilliam in America

2008-10-14T22:35:00.000-07:00

A couple of good postings around the web:

Dr. Maxtor does a write up on Tarek Fatah:

But what drew my attention was T-Fat's interview(google it) on FrontPageMag. Yes, thats the same internet neocon rag founded by judeofascist David Horowitz(remember "islamofascist awareness week"?).

Traditional Islamism has a write up on the British regime's Quilliam Foundation tour of the US --- exposing not only Quilliam Foundation, but also the "think tanks" and pro-Zionist organizations who hosted them... click here to read all about it...

Malaria No More ?

2008-10-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

The group that invited Hamza Yusuf to speak at the event sponsored by the Tony Blair Foundation has got to be one of the most political "charity" organizations I've come across.

Imam Zaid, in his last clarification, encouraged Muslims to work towards eradicating malaria, and recommends that "this is an issue that should transcend politics."

Unfortunately, the reality is that we live in a political world, and I think it would be very naive to think that we can just ignore how some charities work, and the kind of political individuals who are involved in such organizations.

There is a notion that we can just ignore the war crimes (or minimize the crimes by calling them "politics") of Bush/Blair and their ilk, and work with them on single issues, such as "malaria." I think that is plainly absurd - how can one work with people who are complicit in the killing of hundreds of thousands, upwards of a million, with one hand, while pretending to "do good" with the other? Perhaps we need to be reminded:

And when they are told, "Do not spread corruption on earth," they answer, "We are the ones who put things right!" (Qur’an 2:11)

Malaria No More's board of directors is a study in charity politics, composed of individuals with high powered resumes - not a single one appears to have any prior direct experience with the issue (malaria) (The science and health advisory board (four individuals) does appear to have some who might be familiar with the issues):

Four or five of those on the board of directors, are members of the notorious pro-empire, Council on Foreign Relations.

Two members especially stand out:

John Bridgeland, the vice chairman: co-directed the policy transition for the Bush-Cheney Presidential Transition team and was Deputy Policy Director for the Bush-Cheney 2000 Presidential campaign.

And

Ann M. Veneman (Executive Director, UNICEF)

"The notion that Veneman would be placed in a position to decide how to feed and care for the planet's most destitute children is every bit as alarming as the notion that Wolfowitz would be charged with providing aid to developing countries."

"Indeed, as Ravi Narayan, coordinator for the global secretariat of the People's Health Movement, wrote in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the members of the executive board of UNICEF: 'Ms. Veneman's training and experience as a corporate lawyer for agribusiness do not qualify her for the substantial task of leading the agency most responsible for the rights of children worldwide. There is no evidence in her tenure as U.S. secretary of agriculture, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, or deputy undersecretary for international affairs of the USDA of her interest in the world's children or their health and well-being.

The CEO is especially interesting, he is the founder of "priceline.com" - now, that might be a more or less business venture - but how exactly does that transfer over to malaria?

Well their website answers that question - and should serve as a red flag to anyone seriously interested in working to improve health care conditions - malaria, or otherwise:

Malaria No More is not a typical global health organization. We aren't strictly a funding body, or a grassroots movement, or an advocacy shop, or an on-the-ground implementer. Rather, we are a uniquely entrepreneurial organization with elements of each. What unites these disparate activities is leverage.

Lets go ahead and give 'em the benefit of the doubt --- but why would Muslims want to affiliate ourselves with a group that debuts with a Bush event?

On December 14, 2006, the President and the First Lady hosted a White House Summit on Malaria.

Attendees included representatives of the U.S. government, including key leaders from the President's Malaria Initiative/U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department, the National Security Council.

And lets briefly compare this group with the highly respected and effective public health organization, Doctors Without Borders. You'll find that half of the members of their Board of Directors are Medical Doctors, and their advisory board are mostly made up of community based individuals (who understand the need and how to effectively respond) - Not high flying political/big business individuals (who have zip connection with the issues, and no way have the know how to respond effectively). Click here for an article on Doctors Without Borders's work on malaria.

Perhaps Malaria No More has made some difference, fine and well ---- but puleeze, lets not delude ourselves that they are beyond, or transcending politics. Muslims very much need to evaluate the politics of groups that approach us (especially important for those of us in leadership capacity) - otherwise, we may well find ourselves in cahoots with some of the worst war criminals.

And then we'll only have ourselves to blame.

smiling with a war criminal (and the war criminal smiling)

2008-10-06T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on a post regarding the group, Malaria No More. Meanwhile, here are some pictures (from the Tony Blair Foundation/Malaria No More event) that were proudly posted on the Muslim Students Association National website. I don't know who all the individuals are - but the web site notes that:

Both MSA National Vice President Randa Kuziez and MSA National West Zone USA Respresentative Yasmin Elhady were invited to participate in the intimate 100-person audience, while thousands of internet users logged in to watch the live streaming video.

I am assuming that the pictures below include either or both MSA officials.

NOT a single word on their web site about Blair's complicity in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine ... not one word.

New clarification by Imam Zaid

2008-10-04T10:01:00.001-07:00

Imam Zaid has written a new clarification regarding Hamza Yusuf's participation at the Tony Blair Foundation event. The original posting on this site has been modified to include the new statement.

For now, I will keep the original statement by Imam Zaid as a matter of record.

HOWEVER, I do think this is somewhat of a novel situation - because of the kind of erroneous charge that were made against an individual - and, after consulting some others, I may decide to either only have excerpts of the original statement available, remove it altogether, or come up with some other alternative.

There were hundreds, and thousands who came just to this site searching for "tony blair hamza yusuf" (at least two or three days *before* the event took place - and I think there were a couple of other sites that had the info. up several days before I did) - with hundreds from the San Francisco Bay Area, where main offices of Zaytuna is located.

The only comments (that I stopped publishing) people were leaving on this site (before Imam Zaid's initial statement) were in defense of Hamza Yusuf attending the event. I do hope that they they now recognize, just how serious of a problem it is for for an Islamic scholar to share a panel with a war criminal.

See also Traditional Islamism's blog entry on this issue.

Tony Blair Foundation, the liberal imperialists, and the case of Eboo Patel

2008-10-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

Muslims, and non-Muslims who oppose the taghut, contemporarily manifested as imperialists and neo-colonialists, sometimes misunderstand and misanalyze the situation to only focus on the Republican neo-cons in the US. This erroneous single minded focus results in their support of liberal imperialists and war mongers such as Obama in the US, and the Labor (sic) Party in the UK.

There is a certain assumption that it is OK to hang out with the Democrats, Clintons, Obama, and members of the UK labor party, since they are not members of the neo-con cabal. An exception to this assumption has been Tony Blair who, because of close association with Bush, ended up being completely discredited, and whoever went near him got discredited. But Tony is now attempting to rehabilitate himself - hoping that the world will simply forget about his war crimes.

Tony Blair, however, still does belong to the liberal imperialist camp. I expect that he will focus on recruiting liberal and progressive type Muslims who would 1) be all too willing to ignore his war crimes, and who 2)have been critics of so-called "fundamentalists" and/or have been involved, in one way or the other, in the project of pacification of Muslims (Radical Middle Way, being one example).

No Muslim who has a memory of Tony's crimes, and truly has a heart connection with the Muslim umma, would ever willingly agree to work with him on any project.

Think about it, suppose an unrepentant and unpunished man responsible for the murder of your family, your husband, your wife, your children, was to invite you to work on a project to clean up some trash in your neighborhood. What would you do? Would you be willing to dishonor the memory of your family, and say, well, he is doing some good, and just go and join him? Knowing fully well what he has been responsible for?

"Indeed this community (ummah) of yours is one community (ummah), and I am your Lord, therefore, worship only Me. (Qur'an 21:92)

and there is the well known hadith:

"The Muslim Ummah is like one body. If the eye is in pain then the whole body is in pain and if the head is in pain then the whole body is in pain." (I don't know the source, if someone does know, please drop in a comment).

Sure, if Blair or Bush or other war criminals were serving a life term in prison (without the possibility of parole) and as part of their sentence, they were required to pick up trash, OK, I can see that... Maybe you are a Muslim, working as prison guard, and would be supervising them to make sure they get the job done right... no one would have any objections in such a situation.

Amongst those that Tony has recruited is one, Eboo Patel, a liberal Muslim, who has been making the rounds in the US on National Public (sic) Radio (aka National Petroleum Radio) - and was listed by the liberal "alternative" Utne Reader in 2002, as one of "thirty social visionaries under thirty changing the world."

Lets take a closer look at Eboo Patel to see just how much of an "alternative" he is...

1. Eboo Patel's organization "Interfaith Youth Core" is going to be a major part of the Tony Blair Foundation:

The Faiths Act Fellowship is an initiative of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and is coordinated by Interfaith Youth Core.

2. Patel has some big time, not so alternative, names backing him up:

Through the Clinton Global Initiative, a project that brings together worthy causes and big-name benefactors, the ex-president (Bill Clinton) has spotlighted Patel’s work and brought him to the attention of Queen Rania of Jordan, who helped set up an international exchange program, and actress Markie Post of “Night Court,” who held a fundraiser and opened doors in Hollywood.

Remember Clinton? That is the guy who continued the devastating economic sanctions on the people of Iraq for 8 long years. Remember Clinton's secretary of state, Madeline Albright?

In 1996 then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, in reference to years of U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq, “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

To which Ambassador Albright responded, “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

The most monumental of Clinton's war crimes, however, has been his policy of sanctions on Iraq, supplemented by the maintenance of intense satellite surveillance and regular bombing attacks that have often resulted in civilian casualties. UNICEF reports that in 1999 more than 1 million Iraqi children under 5 were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and some 4,000-5,000 children are dying per month beyond normal death rates from the combination of malnutrition and disease. Death from disease was greatly increased by the shortage of potable water and medicines, that has led to a 20-fold increase in malaria (among other ailments). This vicious sanctions system, causing a creeping extermination of a people, has already caused more than a million excess deaths, and it is claimed by John and Karl Mueller that Clinton's "sanctions of mass destruction" have caused "the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction [nuclear and chemical] throughout all history" (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999). U.S. mainstream reporters, who have so eagerly followed the distress of the Kosovo Albanians, somehow never get to Iraq for pictures of the thousands of malnourished children.

And last, but by no means the least, like Vali Nasr, like Reza Aslan, Eboo Patel is also connected to the "brain of imperialism" The Council of Foreign Relations.

He (Eboo Patel) is on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations (from bio in Newsweek)

Coming up next - we'll take a closer look at some of the staff at Tony's foundation, and Saleema Abdul Ghaffur.

God Save the Deen

2008-10-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Eid Mubarak!

This article is a few months old, and has made its rounds on the net, but given its relevancy, worth reading again... stay tuned to this site for more on the Tony Blair Foundation, and their supporters....

The complete article is available here, below are selected excerpts.

God save the Deen

By

Fahad Ansari

Since the events of 9-11, there has been a relentless campaign launched to reform Islam to transform it into something more palatable to Western society. The vision is a secular and cultural Islam at peace with the world through her submission to her oppressors rather than to Allah; an Islam devoid of jihad, shari’ah and khilafah – the very things we are commanded by Allah to implement in order to establish Allah’s deen on this earth. Detailed studies such as that of the RAND Corporation in the US outline the means towards achieving this goal. A 2003 report by RAND entitled Civil Democratic Islam categorises Muslims into four categories: fundamentalists, traditionalists, modernists and secularists. Its recommendations include

- financially supporting and promoting the modernists and their viewpoints
- supporting the traditionalists against the fundamentalists
- promoting Sufism
- challenging the fundamentalists’ interpretation of Islam, revealing their links to jihad groups, demonstrating their inability to rule, portraying them as terrorists and encouraging journalists to dig up dirt on them
- encouraging division among the fundamentalists
- selectively supporting the secularists and discouraging the secularist alliance with anti-US forces on such grounds as nationalism and leftist ideology

A joint Home Office and Foreign Office document from 2004, Young Muslims and Extremism, indicated that a similar strategy was at play in Britain. Codenamed ‘Operation Contest’, the document speaks of measures through which government endorsements could be used to promote certain elements within the Muslim community such as supporting “moderate” Islamic media outlets, promoting Muslim organisations, individuals and forums that are seen as government friendly, and encouraging “moderate” Muslims to challenge the “extremists”.

...

Much of this has occurred in the context of the Radical Middle Way Project, a speakers tour funded by the Foreign Office through the Home Office with the objective of fighting extremism or in other words, pacifying Muslims. One example of how this Project is being used to turn people away from struggling for justice will suffice. A few months ago, a sister I know, who is very active in campaigning against injustices at home and abroad, was bought tickets by her friends to attend three lectures by a leading speaker of the Radical Middle Way Project. Her friend told her they believed she was becoming too “extreme”. I would describe this sister as many things – active, passionate, radical – but extreme, hardly. If it’s because of her belief in jihad, shari’ah and khilafah that she is extreme, then the vast majority of Muslims are extremists, and I will proudly add my name to that list.

Shockingly, while the government has repeatedly harped on about the need for British Imams, it is funding this roadshow of scholars flown in from places as diverse as US, Canada, Yemen and Mauritania. One should not question the intention of the scholars themselves but it does seem that they have allowed themselves to become pawns of the government, being manipulated by it to complete its agenda. The roadshow has served as a platform to bash so-called Wahhabi groups in the most cynical manner, as we begin to divide ourselves even more upon the lines our enemies have drawn for us. In doing so, these speakers ironically take on the very characteristics they so vehemently attack.

Running alongside all this has been the pop-nasheed culture, which sister Yvonne Ridley has already spoken volumes about so I will not delve too deeply. Suffice it to say that the culture is symbolic of the inferiority complex we suffer, wishing to be more Roman than the Romans themselves, entertaining ourselves for the sake of entertainment. The end result of all this has been a dilution of the deen of Allah, a weak and pacified Islam willing to accept the status quo in which Muslims are oppressed and subjugated; an Islam in which Muslims are content to sing and sway the night away to nasheeds, to concentrate on bettering their life in the West and to condemn the actions of their brothers and sisters who courageously resist occupation and oppression with whatever they have. Even making dua for them now has become a crime – how long before we are told by our imams not to even pray for the mujahideen?

...

As an antidote to post-7-7 syndrome, British Muslims themselves organized their own roadshow (Roles and Responsibilities of Muslims in Britain) earlier this year in which scholars, community leaders and activists who have grassroots support in their communities spoke. This wasn’t about foreign imams telling British Muslims how to behave in Britain; this was about British imams, born, raised and resident in this country, speaking to British Muslims. Despite the record turn-outs for the tour, no support or even sign of recognition was forthcoming from the government as in addition to condemning terrorism, Muslims were told not to forget about Palestine, to continue to be active and to stand up for justice, irrespective of the consequences. The masses heard the message and are sure to spread it.

Slowly but steadily, more and more Muslims are waking up with the realisation that it is not terrorism or extremism that is being targeted but Islam itself. Our enemies will continue to attempt to divide us and to reform Islam as they have done throughout the centuries. But we must always bear in mind our Lord’s words that “they plot, but Allah also plotteth; and Allah is the best of plotters” (Surah al-Anfal; 30)

Zaid Shakir on Hamza Yusuf

2008-09-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

(update: For some reason, this item was removed from Zaid Shakir's web site, and also from several other sites - this letter will remain here as a matter of record, especially since it is already in wide web circulation, and squarely in the public domain.

update 10/3/08: Imam Zaid has written another post clarifying reasons for why the original post was removed from his website. Further down this entry, you can find Imam Zaid's original statement, that (for now) will be kept here as a matter of record.

HOWEVER, it is clear that the sponsors of the Tony Blair Foundation event are not in any way to be blamed for Hamza Yusuf's participation, there was no treachery on their part. I assume that, with this statement, Imam Zaid and/or Hamza Yusuf are taking full responsibility, while also explaining the reasons, for Hamza Yusuf's erroneous participation at the event in question.

Click here for more information on the group Malaria No More that organized the event with the Tony Blair Foundation.

)

Misunderstanding Not Treachery

By Imam Zaid on 03 October 2008

The blog entry I wrote several days ago in defense of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf was based on my misunderstanding of the events leading up to Shaykh Hamza’s participation the malaria eradication program sponsored by the Tony Blair Foundation in Los Angeles, September 25, 2008. In reality, it was a lot of misunderstanding and a breakdown in communication that led to Shaykh Hamza’s participation in that event and not any treachery or deceit on the part of the organizers. The organizers tried to communicate that the venue, sponsorship, and participants in the program had changed due to the cancellation of the original host. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Shaykh Hamza was traveling right up to the day of the program, he never received the above information.

As soon as this was clarified to me, I responded by immediately removing my post from the NID website, as what I had written did not accurately reflect what had actually happened. Although that message was only posted for a few hours, it spread far and wide. I now encourage anyone who still has that message posted on their websites to remove it, and replace it with this one.

To reiterate, there was no treachery on the part of the organizers in their dealings with Shaykh Hamza. No matter what your opinion of any of the organizers, you should not allow a false accusation against them to stand uncorrected. To do so is to deviate from the teachings of our religion.

I further encourage anyone who has been involved in the vital work to eradicate malaria, one of the few remaining public health scourges on this planet, to continue that work with anyone who is making a difference. This is an issue that should transcend politics, and it is an issue that Muslims should be highly motivated to be involved in because of the disproportionately high numbers of Muslims who are suffering from it.

At the end of the day, we have to be submissive to the truth and the pursuit of good and justice, wherever they are to be found. We have to work hard not to allow our passions, especially those that are stimulated by the fleeting vicissitudes of the world and time to move us away from the truth. Let us be ever mindful of the commandment contained in the following verse:

O you who believe! Stand up firmly for God, as witnesses to fairness, and let not the hatred of a group of people lead you to deviate from justice. Be just! That is closer to piety, and fear God. Surely, God is well-informed of all that you do. Qur’an 5:9

-----------------------------
A couple of comments regarding this letter by Zaid Shakir.

1. The news of who the event was being sponsored by was broken at least a week ago, not only by this site, but also by other Islamic forums. I do hope that, for the sake of minimizing any potential fitna, that in the future, better investigation about the sponsoring group will be done (I appreciate Imam Zaid's acknowledgment in this regard).

2. Please, Imam Zaid, don't patronize those of us who took Hamza Yusuf to task for his participation at this event - it is not about "political passions" it is about caring about the millions of human beings who have been victims of the likes of Tony Blair and Bush and others...

THAT is what moves those of us who question Hamza Yusuf, not only in this particular instance, but also some of his other affiliations and actions. And being moved and detesting oppression, and oppressors, is very much a part of Islamic teachings.

3. Finally, lets be clear, no matter what Hamza Yusuf has said at that event, it does not mitigate the reality that he gave credibility to Tony Blair by the very fact that he showed up. This indeed *is* a political issue, and something that the likes of Tony Blair, and those around him, are masters at... it would be useful if Muslims (especially those in leadership capacity) would also have some basic understanding of these kinds of politics, so as not to fall in this kind of a trap.

However, Imam Zaid's letter does indeed help clarify, and help minimize the damage done - and that is a good thing, and well appreciated.

Inshallah, this incident will serve as a lesson.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and the Tony Blair Faith Initiative

*******Note that this letter contains erroneous information - there was no treachery involved, and the organizers did indeed attempt to inform Hamza Yusuf about the venue and sponsorship of the event. This error has been, acknowledged, clarified and corrected by Imam Zaid (see above).

As such, one can assume that Imam Zaid and/or Hamza Yusuf are taking responsibility for the erroneous participation at the war criminal Tony Blair's event.*********

By Imam Zaid on 29 September 2008

Insha Allah, This message finds you all in the best of health and spirits and enjoying the blessings of the last days of Ramadan. There is something you should know about Shaykh Hamza’s participation in the Tony Blair Faith Initiative Program recently held in Los Angeles. He was manipulated and set up by the organizers. He had absolutely no knowledge that the program was being sponsored by Tony Blair’s organization. I know because I was used by the organizers to help facilitate the set-up.

I had been working with an organization called “Malaria No More,” to help get Muslims involved in an effort to eradicate Malaria in Africa, a laudable goal as a majority of those suffering from Malaria in Africa are Muslims. Saleema Abdul Ghaffur works for that organization and had approached me about the issue several months ago.

I was asked by Saleema to help Malaria No More and the UN Development Fund to help get Muslims involved in the effort through a program they were sponsoring in the Los Angeles area to expand the effort at eradicating malaria. They also asked me to put them in touch with Shaykh Hamza because they wanted him to speak as a representative of Muslims, to be joined by Rick Warren as a representative of Christians, in an effort to raise awareness around the issue.

There was no mention of any involvement of Tony Blair’s organization as the sponsor of the event. In fact, Saleema knew that I would not help in any way if Tony Blair’s organization was the event sponsor because I had been invited to the launch of Tony Blair’s organization in New York a few months back, and had flatly refused to attend stating that Tony Blair was in part responsible for the murder of over a million innocent Muslims in Iraq because of the role he played in the current war there. Shaykh Hamza would not have agreed to participate either under those circumstances because he has consistently and vociferously condemned that war, which is part of the public record.

This is the background for Shaykh Hamza’s involvement with the event. All of this transpired over a month and a half ago. I stopped monitoring the events after that. In the couple of weeks leading up to the event Shaykh Hamza was in Morocco and assumed that the event was proceeding as a joint effort between Malaria No More and the UN Development Fund, and that it was timed to coincide with the convening of the UN General Assembly in New York, September 25, 2008.

Three days after he arrived back in the States, Shaykh Hamza went to LA for the event. Rick Warren had canceled at the last minute, something he was not informed of. He was taken to a hotel meeting room, having never been informed, or even it being hinted that the event was sponsored by Tony Blair’s group. When he arrived at the hall, he realized he had been manipulated by the Tony Blair people in order to attempt to give some type of legitimacy for his work among Muslims. He was constrained and did not wish to be there, as is clear from the footage of the event. I told him he should have left, but he felt he had given his word and preferred to take the risk of the kind of abuse he would receive for attending than to break his word, as he had promised to attend.

That is what happened and that is how Shaykh Hamza ended up at the program. He was set up and all of us involved should have been more diligent in monitoring the event and investigating the sponsors. However, the last thing any of us would have suspected is this type of treachery.
Since he was there, Shaykh Hamza condemned Tony Blair to his face and warned him of the sad fate he would have when he met his Lord, precisely because of the role he played in the war. He does not endorse in any way the work of Tony Blair’s organization, nor does have any past (or future) connection with Saleema Abdul Ghafur. His only intention was to help eradicate malaria, a disease he was personally afflicted with during his years of study in Mauritania, and a disease whose devastating effect he has witnessed first hand during his years of traveling and studying is West Africa.

Shaykh Hamza has not asked, nor would he ever ask that I write these words. I felt that I am obliged to write them because I was instrumental in getting him involved in this mess. I would caution those critics whose political passion moves them to cast aside Islamic teachings such as verifying news or having a good opinion of other Muslims or respecting scholars, as I would caution myself, to fear Allah.

These are the days of praying for Allah’s mercy and forgiveness, not the days of blind condemnation of other Muslims. Allah will treat us during this month as we treat each other. If we do not beseech Him to be merciful and to forgive others, He will not shower His mercy and forgiveness upon us. What we receive from Allah is a reflection of what we offer Him. Is there any among us so secure with Allah that we do not need His mercy and forgiveness? Is there any among so sure of his or her standing with Allah that we can squander the precious moments of this blessed month in slander and scandal-mongering, as opposed to trying to do some good for our souls?

I might add, that because of this treachery, I have ended my relationship with Malaria No More, and have already initiated an effort to explore how Muslims might effectively address the disease through the auspices of Islamic Relief.

May Allah bless us all during the balance of Ramadan, and may He bring our hearts together and guide us to understand who our real enemy is.

the battle for Islam

2008-09-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

The article linked below discusses the official British regime's attempted colonization of the Muslim hearts and minds, so as to severely distort our understanding of Islam. There are both official and unofficial attempts at this distortion - it is not only the hired Muslim "thinkers" - but also those who are not necessarily on the official payroll, but who support and work towards the aim of the US/British regime's attempted distortion of Islam.

The most current incarnation of this colonial policy began under the former British regime's prime minister, and prime anti-Muslim/Islam war monger: Tony Blair. The current policy of the British regime is only a continuation of the fitna started by the Blair regime.

Tony Blair, himself, continues his work of distortions through his new "Tony Blair Foundation." Hamza Yusuf, in turn, gavee credibility to Blair's project by allowing himself to be called upon, and speaking at his foundation, and on the same panel. Mr. Yusuf has also been affiliated with the notorious Radical Middle Way project, along with a host of other so-called "traditional scholars."

(Note that according to Zaid Shakir, Hamza Yusuf was set up with regards to the speaking engagement at the Tony Blair Foundation).

The RMW recently, under the British Home Office's direction, expanded its project to spread their distortion to Egypt - under the title of "Projecting British Islam."

This article is an important read, especially to place the current imperial/colonial policies in historical context:

On 18th of July 2008, BBC News reported that the British government has devised a plan to hire “thinkers” from the Islamic world to discuss issues affecting Muslim communities. Some of the issues that are going to be examined will concern the role of Muslim women in society, loyalty to the State and of course the radicalisation of the Muslim youth. The government-approved list of theologians will be designated to re-interpret or “properly” interpret (as the government likes to put it) Islam so that it transforms into a politically flaccid, government-swayed version of religion.

Ms Hazel Blears, Communities Secretary, stated that ‘it was the government’s job to support the Muslim leaders on controversial issues.’ As to who will be asked to represent the Muslim community at this ‘elite’ gathering still remains a mystery, but one thing is certain, the panellists congregated by the government will have virtually no religious credibility in the Muslim community. Their ill-advised offering to the government has already sealed their fate. This government initiative is the latest project in a series of plans to win the British battle for hearts and minds.

‘Hearts and Minds’ campaigns are usually understood as Western attempts to emotionally and ideologically ‘liberate’ oppressed nations from tyrants, dictators and religious theocrats. The primary objective of ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaigns is for Western forces, who somehow always end up playing the role of the liberator (and never the occupier), to win over the loyalty and allegiance of native populations by selling them promises of freedom, security and development.

Today, ‘The Battle for Hearts and Minds’ is a cliché that is spearheading the American ‘War on Terror’. It somehow makes the current conflict all the more moral and principled.

Over the past few years, the Labour party has initiated a comprehensive plan to launch a major upheaval in the way that the Muslim community functions in Britain. Projects have been launched targeting almost every segment of the community. Through MINAB, the government has proposed the formation of a body that would generate government approved mosque imams, through Citizenship Foundation programmes such as the Bradford based initiative ‘Nasiha’, the government has attempted to penetrate Muslim families by encouraging them to report ‘radical’ members of their household to the authorities, and through government backed forums such as the Radical Middle Way, British Muslim Forum, and the Sufi Muslim Council, the government has attempted to siphon off Muslim affiliation away from the Muslim world. The Muslim community as a whole is viewed with suspicion. This attitude towards Muslims is not new; the current government has a well-established precedent to follow in the annals of the British Raj in India.

read more here

Hamza Yusuf and The Tony Blair Project

2008-09-23T00:11:00.000-07:00

update to this post see Imam Zaid's clarification regarding Hamza Yusuf's attendance at this event.

(via the comments section - thank you Khalid)

From Tony Blair's website:

I (organizer of the event) am excited to be able to write to you today about a special event on 25th September 2008 that I will be hosting for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in Los Angeles.

I (the organizer of the event) am going to be joined on the panel by Tony Blair; Hamza Yusuf, a significant and influential Islamic scholar; and Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, of Malaria No More and an activist for Muslim women and Islam in the West.

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur previously served on board of directors of the now defunct and discredited Progressive Muslim Union North America.

Hamza Yusuf has been part of the speakers "roadshow" of the British regime's colonial Radical Middle Way project.

Hamza Yusuf, a one time Islamic scholar, should of-course be fulfilling his responsibility of exposing the imperialists and neo-colonialists. They have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and now making noise about killing even more in Iran.

Unfortunately, Hamza Yusuf appears to have no shame, and instead of telling Blair to take a hike, he will sit on the same panel, at an event hosted by this war criminal's foundation - who acted as a partner with the Bush regime in the killing of Muslims.

While people like Yusuf and Abdul-Ghafur hob nob with war criminals, we see that a mostly non-Muslim group held a war crimes trial in Istanbul in 2005.

Following is part of a declaration from the trial, that calls for an investigation of both Bush and Blair for war crimes, and crimes against humanity:

That there be an exhaustive investigation of those responsible for the crime of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq, beginning with George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, those in key decision-making positions in these countries and in the Coalition of the Willing, those in the military chain-of-command who master-minded the strategy for and carried out this criminal war, starting from the very top and going down; as well as personalities in Iraq who helped prepare this illegal invasion and supported the occupiers.

That should be enough for any Islamic scholar of integrity, to not only refuse such an invitation, but to also organize a Muslim led trial of Blair and Bush.

It is interesting that supporters of Hamza Yusuf will (rightly) condemn extremists amongst Muslims who have killed other Muslims, yet they will not apply the same standard towards people like Blair who are also responsible for killing Muslims. They will, instead, come up with bogus one liners such as Yusuf's "from protest to engagement." It is this kind of double standards, amongst such so-called scholars, that leads to them losing whatever few shreds of credibility they still might have...

the latest futile attack

2008-09-16T01:37:00.000-07:00

Muslim Matters writes on the latest efforts of the neo-colonialists' attempt to distort Islam, in this case, yet another vulgar attack on the Prophet (pbuh).

It is interesting, as the article notes, that the proggie AltMuslim website (edited by Shahed Amanullah) interviewed the author, and even encouraged readers to buy this filth.

Sherry Jones’ interview with AltMuslim is apparently meant to allay suspicions,soothe tempers, and encourage us all to read (to buy!!!) her book before making judgments on it.

Click here to read the article.

Read also The Attack Continues, on Ummah Pulse.

my dear brothers and sisters, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than offensive cartoons, preposterous videos, and poisonous essays published in national newspapers written by ignoramuses lacking even a shred of personal moral fibre (yes, I mean you Johann Hari), in comes the latest volley in the attempt to character assassinate our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and his family.

Amongst those coming to the defense of the author of this obscenity is none other than the notorious Asra Nomani, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Literature moves civilizations forward, and Islam is no exception

That sentence says it all about the proggies, and their neo-colonial orientalist friends: First, to even regard this filth as "literature" suggests something is seriously wrong with Nomani's understanding of Islam (surprise surprise).

Then she also suggests that Islam is a civilization, no Nomani, Islam is a deen, it is a way, a religion - it may (or may not - depending on its followers) inspire civilization, but it is not a civilization. Our understanding of Islam may deepen, or it may remain shallow, or remain stagnant...

BUT:

Islam does not move forward or backwards, or sideways - it remains a Religion as revealed by Allah. And within Islam, as a revelation, as a guide to humanity, there are bounds within which we humans are expected to live.

It is the liberals who refuse to acknowledge that there is indeed halaal (what is allowed and even encouraged, so that humans may fulfill our potential) and haraam (what is disallowed and discouraged, so that humans don't lose our humanity) for Muslims, and indeed for all humanity. Giving up on these bounds, the liberals then feel "free" to go about calling pornography "literature."

It is unfortunate that Muslims go on the defensive when we get attacked this way. There is no reason to feel that way - we should respond clearly, unambiguously, and without any hesitation - and expose the hypocrisy of these attackers on Islam, and their defenders.

down memory lane

2008-08-03T02:13:00.000-07:00

Do you all remember the Progressive Muslim Union North America? Here is how google remembers them - how very apt! All that remains is an abandoned web site that google posts a warning about.

Take heed - Quilliam Foundation, Radical Middle Way, and other such projects - if you don't change your ways, then this the future that awaits:

Their flagship online rag - Muslim Wake Up is also more or less dead, and abandoned:

Google is running their worst spam type ads. on that site:

British regime's committee of "Islamic" scholars

2008-07-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

An interesting piece by Soumaya Ghannoushi on the British regime's attempts to impose a pro-empire "Islam" on Muslims. However, it needs to be noted that the problem here is not just that these "scholars" are accepting government money, nor is the problem in Muslim countries merely that the "official ulema" are government employees.

The issue here is what kind of a government: the British regime is partners with the US in its war on Islam, the problem with most Muslim governments are that they are little more than colonial puppets of the US.

Similarly, the problem with a "Prince" or any other super wealthy individual, funding a so-called "Islamic studies" program at the pro-empire Harvard University, is his ideological background that leads to himself being called a "Prince" in the first place. And how such individuals amass such huge quantities of wealth, while most of the rest of planet is barely struggling to get by.

It is important to highlight these issues because, otherwise, we can end up not examining what the "sultan" is about - what are his/her political positions, and the kind of pro-empire "Islam" they are promoting.

The question to ask is: when all the noise has died down, what will this initiative have achieved? The answer is very little. The likelihood is that Blears' committee of theologians will fare no better than Ruth Kelly's Muslim Action Committee, Sufi Council, or any of the other government-created paper bodies. The terrorists and would-be terrorists won't look to the government's scholars for fatwas, and ordinary Muslims are unlikely to give them much attention. It may help Blears, who insists on poking her nose in all things Islamic, to learn this old Islamic piece of wisdom: "If you see the scholar frequent the sultan, then point your finger at him and beware."

Islam may not have an ecclesiastical institution that monopolises religious interpretation, but it sets rigorous requirements for the acquisition of the title of "alim" or "learned scholar". At the forefront of these is autonomy from the ruling authorities and their agendas. The scholar is the voice and conscience of believers, not rulers and ministers.

Blears would do well to ponder the fate of religious ministries, government fatwa councils and muftis in the Muslim world. In the eyes of Muslims, they are part of the state apparatus, and thus devoid of moral authority or religious legitimacy. Their imams and muftis are state officials in religious clothing. They receive their salaries, like their sermons and edicts, from the government. This, in a nutshell, is the crisis of the Islamic religious establishment.

Terrorism is, in many respects, an effect of this reality. With the erosion of the traditional learning institutions generated by the process of modernisation and the emergence of the official scholar, radical groups became their own source of interpretation. They scavenge scripture for texts that validate their political positions. If they are to be confronted, it is not through government-picked and sponsored figures, committees and councils. Only the model of the honest, proficient and independent scholar can challenge them.

The British Regime's Official "Islam" in Egypt

2008-07-25T00:25:00.000-07:00

The old time colonizers don't seem to realize that their time is over - here they are using a bunch of loyal subjects of the Queen, to spread a pro-empire version of "Islam." At least they are honest about it - they even call it "projecting British Islam."

It should be clear that what they are projecting, is not just about how Muslims live in Britain - at least two of the organizations listed are on the payroll of the British regime, and are representing the same regime that has been partners with US neo-cons. Readers of this blog will recognize the names of the organizations - esp. Quilliam and Radical Middle Way.

There is quite a bit of discussion and debate taking place on a variety of blogs with regards to this British attempted colonization, and distortion of Islam - one such blog is Traditional Islamism - check it out. And also check out the ongoing discussion on Sunni Forum - click here to read the 17 page (so far) thread.

the debates + more on the "Prince"

2008-07-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

A few months back, the Sunni Forum board had a wide ranging debate on the issues surrounding the British government sponsored group Radical Middle Way. While somewhat acrimonious at times, I think the debate and discussion just about covered all of the various concerns - click here to read the thread.

My own view is that no Islamic scholar, nor any Islamic group should be taking funds from a government that has been partners with the US in its war on Islam. And especially not to promote any specific form or school of Islam.

As I have implied earlier, with regards to Farid Esack, nor should Islamic scholars be part of any project, or academic program that has been primarily (maybe even 100%) funded by someone like "Prince" Al-Waleed Bin Talal. This "Prince" funds an "Islamic Studies" programs at Harvard - to promote a form of, no doubt, empire friendly Islam. And then also gives money to support Bush senior, and praises and partners with the likes of Rupert Murdoch (owner of the anti-Muslim, neo-con supporting, ultra right wing FOX news).

This is Al-Waleed's palace:

Al-Waleed's $130 million palace in Riyadh includes a 75-foot-high foyer is framed by dual winding staircases. In all, there are 317 rooms, covering 400,000 square feet. The palace has 520 TVs, 400 phones, and eight elevators. And of course swimming pools (indoor and out), a screening room, a bowling alley, tennis courts (indoor and out), and an Astroturf soccer field (that's outdoors). The staff, all 180 of them, carry walkie-talkies.

I can understand that there are scholars of Islam - even Muslim scholars of Islam - who are primarily academics. However, the task, and role of an Islamic scholar is different than that of a western university professor who is an academic. An Islamic scholar has to not only be a scholar of Islam, but also give primacy to living, and making appropriate choices, in accordance with the Qur'an and Sunna. This role does not change whether one is living in the US, England, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, or Iceland.

Lets be clear, we are talking about the knowledge of Islam here, Allah's revealed religion. We are not playing games here, scholars have a greater responsibility to take seriously the Qur'an and Sunna, and such issues as sources of funding, contradictory agendas, and the role of the present day war on Islam. This war not only includes the obvious and severe violence against Muslims, but also attempts to ideologically corrupt how Islam is presented (and this form of corruption can be more subtle than the obvious neo-con anti-Islam hate mongering).

I would hope that most, if not all, of our Islamic scholars are savvy enough to not get tempted to join this project at Harvard, and be more vigilant with regards to sources of funding, and institutional pro-empire agendas.

click on image below to get a larger/clearer view:

The Absurdity of Muslims For Obama (part II)

2008-06-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

Click here to read part I

see also Obama and our (Muslim) identity

What will it take for some Muslims to figure out that this Presidential campaign is not about who is going to be nicer to us Muslims. It is about who can pander most to the Zionists, and who can make the claim to be the most effective in administering American imperialism.

Why would any Muslim want to involve themselves in such a sordid affair?

Especially, especially, given the fact that the direct target of US imperial violence are Muslims.

So now, two sisters got told they can't be seen with the guy if they got hijaab on...

Frankly, what were these Muslims doing there in the first place? Were they there to register their protest against this guy encouraging the Zionist entity to completely take over Al-Quds, and thereby ethnically cleansing what remains of the Palestinian population? If so, they should've been outside the event carrying Palestinian flags - and making it clear that no self-respecting Muslim is going to vote for this Obama guy, nor for that other dude McCain.

As one Arab blogger noted: "To Arab and Muslim supporters of Obama: he does not want your support. He has made that clear. Please leave him alone."

I am reminded of these still so relevant words of brother Malcolm (audio) - listen and learn.

The enlightened moderate dance

2008-05-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

The dude dancing is the Chairman of Federal Board Revenue of Pakistan (the FBR is more or less the tax collection agency of Pakistan). At the tail end of the video, Mr. US Puppet Mu(Bu)sharraf joins the dance. The audience is made up of a cream of the liberal/progressive/enlightened moderate elite of the country.

At one point, the singer asks that maybe the camera should be turned off... but apparently the camera person decided it was OK to film all of this... and then she tells the FBR dude to do the step one more time...

This, dear Muslim brothers and sisters, is just a taste of how the puppet liberal/proggie elites of Muslim majority countries spend their spare time (their full time job is, of-course, licking the boots of the imperialists).

Chairman Federal Board of Revenue Pakistan, Abdullah Yusuf Dancing to a song's tune in a party held in Army House Islamabad which is paid by the Poor Tax Payers Money... Musharaff, Shaukat Aziz and other Blood Sucking Mosquitoes are also present along with their wives. In the end Musharaff also starts to dance but the camera is moved away

Critique of the Quilliam Foundation

2008-05-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

Quite interestingly, his (Shaykh Quillam) tract on the ummah and khilafah holds a certain resonance with contemporary Britain and through his writing, it is clearly evident that the sheikh-ul-Islam not only rejected sectarian nationalism, but also affirmed the unity of the ummah and allegiance to Muslims. Thus, it seems quite ridiculous that the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation calling for secularism, the westernisation of Islam, the end to notions such as Jihad, and extremely opposed to the notion of a global ummah and khilafah would have chosen the Shaykh (Quillam)'s name as the title of their foundation. The foundation was formed to ‘tackle extremism’, ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘radicalism’ in the Muslim community, and they have assumed that this goal can be achieved by claiming that Islam is non-political. In actuality, they are openly attempting to promote a form of Sufism, claiming that it is the ‘mainstream understanding’ of the deen. Members of the foundation frequently quote their notions of ‘mainstream Islam’ making extraordinary large claims about the way Islam is, and should be practised in the UK, while all the time maintaining a call for a radical secularist outlook.

I make no qualms about it, they disgust me. Not only because of their contrived views, which stem either from baseless opinions or constructed notions of Islamic law, but also due to the fact that every nuance from their mouths is steeped in ignorance (though they claim to have a mujhtahid amongst them!), while they foolishly manage to contradict themselves at every turn. The lack of true scholarship is clearly manifest in every argument they present, as well as the lack of Islam in their actions. However, the good news is that they have been exposed for all their depraved attempts (possibly unintentionally) to corrupt the deen of Allah the Most Sublime Preserver and those who believe in Him. The truth of the matter is that they are insignificant, with most of their pasts and intentions extremely questionable. But then again, ‘these are good times to be in the "moderate Muslim" business. If you press the right buttons on integration and "radicalisation" and hold your tongue on western foreign policy, there are rich pickings to be had - from both private and government coffers.

read all of the article here

The (Saudi) Prince and Farid Esack

2008-05-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

While doing some research on Harvard University and its support of the proggies, I came across this:

"Farid Esack was William Henry Bloomberg Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School for the 2006-07 academic year, and is now (2007-08) the (Saudi) Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies."

This so-called "Prince" is worth 20.3 Billion Dollars, and is the 13th richest man in the world according to Forbes. Readers can do more research on this guy, there is plenty of information available on the net (I will probably do a more extensive write up on this "Prince" later on..

For now, suffice to say that he is also a major funder ($20 million) of an "Islamic Studies Program" at Harvard, where Farid Esack was a "(Saudi) Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies." during the '07-'08 term.

And:

In 2002, Al-Walid donated $500,000 to the George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, established by the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, to honor former President George H. W. Bush.

He has also taken a notable pro-American stance, backed up by his $10 million financing of American study programmes at the American University in Cairo.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal holds a 5.7% voting stake in News Corp (This is the Murdoch umbrella group that owns, amongst other things, the notorious anti-Muslim FOX News) and is the second largest individual shareholder in News Corp (through his Kingdom Holdings business). He has long been a fan of Rupert Murdoch’s methodology.

Prince Al Waleed commented: "We- as Rotana Group- feel that we could not have chosen a better partner than this global media group towards our first step to bring western entertainment through our channels...this partnership is based not only on my long and personal relationship with Mr. Rupert Murdoch, but it is also based on the similarities and synergies between our two media companies."

Esack is known amongst left-liberal circles as someone who supposedly opposes imperialism, and is supposedly a critic of consumerism, and likes to talk about what he calls being "Prophetic." Infact, he is quoted to have said:

"“The progressive Islamist project, if it is to be truly progressive, has to be Prophetic by nature. What I mean by that is that we need to follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad (s), and all the other Prophets such as Jesus who located themselves at the margins of society. They spoke for the poor and the downtrodden of society. "

Wow - does'nt all that sound great? Imagine that - Islamic scholars would locate themselves on the margins of society, with the poor and downtrodden.

And what does Farid Esack do? The guy located himself not just at any 'ol university, he located himself in the most exclusive, elitist, and empire supporting university inside of the US. And if that is not enough, he qualified his name and profession with that of a super duper double multi billionaire - a so-called (Saudi) "Prince" no less:

"Farid Esack is a (Saudi) Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies."

For sometime now, Esack has been only a bare shadow of what he once was - a tireless outspoken Muslim who actually did live somewhat on the margins - but those days are now long gone.

I am not surprised at the trajectory of Esack, after all just about all the proggies (there are some exceptions) have gone the same way. I just wish some of the more aware activist Muslims would, instead of inviting him to speak at conferences, would challenge not only him - but seriously question and examine at a public level, how people like Farid Esack, and others of his type are contributing to the perpetuation of US imperialism. Because, it is just not possible that such individuals would get these types of "visiting professorships" unless they were serving a purpose.

Unfortunately, they will either remain quiet, or come up with some sort of acrobatic rationalizations...

war on Islam - Australia

2008-04-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

Less than 12 months after the opening of the so-called ‘National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies’, this Centre has already utterly exposed itself as a Centre of Kufr. Its Directors call for secularism (the doctrine that the Laws of Almighty Allah have no relevance to daily life) with increased frequency, and several of the Centre’s leading figures are not even Muslims.

Read a full report/expose on this "center of excellence" here (pdf)

The UK govt. "Islam"

2008-04-19T10:38:00.001-07:00

from the comments:

Just recently the UK version of "pro-regressive Moslem" phenomenon will launch with 2 organizations both bought and paid for by UK govt. funds:

the Quilliam Foundation, exposed here:

http://www.quilliamexposed.blogspot.com/

and the British Muslims for a Secular Democracy:

http://www.bmsd.org.uk/

they are thinking of having Tarek Fatah and Magdi Alah as speakers!

See also "radical wrong way" - another UK govt. funded "moderate" group, that has (unfortunately) attract a number of traditionalists.

See also this Ummahpulse.com article on Ed Husain (a rabid proggie) sharing the podium with traditionalist Tim Winters (Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad - a regular at "radical middle way" conferences).

"Ed Husain has also come under criticism for his support of the Iraq war and Tony Blair, coupled with his connections to the right wing of the Labour party. It is known that Ed associates with pro-war Blairites and pro-zionist factions within the party. His political affiliations, has led to criticisms, usually centering around his inaccurate relay of information when citing what he terms 'Islamists'. It has been claimed this is also due to his prior connections and interests, with Islamophobic think-tanks, such as the Centre for Social Cohesion."

Thank You Pope!

2008-03-23T00:54:00.001-07:00

A heartfelt THANK YOU! to the Pope for taking this Zionist Moslem --- he's all yours now!

Magdi Allam, a Zionist Moslem dude who is writing a book called "Viva Israel" converted to the catholic religion on Easter.

Dear Pope,

You can have 'em all of the Zionist Moslems. Now, if you find your religion getting all screwy with this influx --- well, too bad... this guy is your problem now.

Also check out Dr. Maxtor's take on this ummm... "conversion" ..

Oh, and "prominent Moslem" ? Eh...? OK, I guess after Heretic Moslems and Proggie Moslems, there is this category of "prominent Moslems" --- if you are a neo-con proggie type --- you get the title "prominent Moslem" kinda like Sir Rushdie.

The Heretics Confer!

2008-03-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

First there were the progressives, then came the pro-regressives (proggies) then came the Randists, and now the friends of empire give us: "The Heretic Muslims!"

Yes, The Heretic Muslims will be holding their very own conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA (check out their web site).

Lets take a look at the "activists" listed on their web site --- these are familiar names to those of you who are regular readers of this blog. However, some of them have claimed to be "mainstream Muslims" such as the notorious ali eteraz and the supposed good doctor, hesham a. hassaballa (both of these belong to Shahed Amanullah's proggie lite (and not so lite) Alt Muslim group).

These so-called "mainstream" types have teamed up with the obviously out there types like asra nomani and irshad manji.

Infact, what this collection shows is that these proggies hiding in mainstream muslim clothings are no better or different than their obviously out there comrades.

abdullahi an-na’im
afshin ellian
ahmad kassim
ahmed mansour
aidid safar
alan godlas
ali eteraz
arnold yasin mol
asma hasan
asra nomani
bassam tibi
dr hesham a. hassaballa
edip yuksel
http://en.fgulen.com/
irshad manji
laleh bakhtiar
mehdi mozaffari
mohamed sifaoui
mustafa akyol
reza aslan
saleemah abdul-ghafur
soheib bencheikh
tarek heggy
thomas haidon

The blog roll in this "celebration of heresy" is even more revealing --- and again, many of these sites are known to regular readers of this blog - they are obviously listed as comrades in heresy. Well, enjoy ;-)

1001inventions
altmuslim
american islamic fellowship
american islamic forum for democracy
apostasy and islam
canadian council of muslim women
center for study of islam and democracy
common ground news
crescentlife
csid
free minds
free muslims coalition
international centre for islam and pluralism
international forum of islamic dialogue
islam reform
liberal islam
liberal islam a source book
liberal islam network
minaret of freedom institute
muslim wakeup
muslims for peace
muslims for progressive values
muslims united against terrorism
naseeb
noor
ourbeacon
progressive islam
progressive muslim union
progressive muslims
quran: a reformist translation
tanseem project
the american muslim
threshold society
truth booth online

The Kite Runner

2008-01-19T00:49:00.000-08:00

While The Kite Runner movie is now captivating audiences throughout the country—much as the book did four years ago—with its enthralling tale of “family, forgiveness, and friendship” and the promise that indeed “there is a way to be good again,” very little has been written critiquing this work and its prominent role in the New Orientalist narrative of the Islamic Middle East.

Iranian literature specialist Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz (Washington University in St. Louis) has classified this book as one of the recent works that she argues constitute a "New Orientalist" narrative in her book Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran. Dr. Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University also has written about New Orientalism and expatriates who serve as “native informers” or “comprador intellectuals” in respect to the Middle East.

Keshavarz broadly characterizes the New Orientalist works thusly:

Thematically, they stay focused on the public phobia [of Islam and the Islamic world]: blind faith and cruelty, political underdevelopment, and women's social and sexual repression. They provide a mix of fear and intrigue—the basis for a blank check for the use of force in the region and Western self-affirmation. Perhaps not all the authors intend to sound the trumpet of war. But the divided, black-and-white world they hold before the reader leaves little room for anything other than surrender to the inevitability of conflict between the West and the Middle East.

While The Kite Runner is perhaps less obvious in its demonization of the Muslim world and glorification of the Western world—what Keshavarz terms the "Islamization of Evil" and the "Westernization of Goodness"—than books like Reading Lolita in Tehran, these themes nevertheless clearly permeate the entire novel. While seemingly just a captivating story of Amir and his redemption through the heroic rescue of his childhood friend Hassan’s son, Sohrab, the entire plot is imbued with noxious stereotypes about Islam and the Islamic world. This story, read in isolation, may indeed just be inspiring and heart-warming, but the significance of its underlying message in the current geopolitical context cannot be ignored.

more here

fall of a corrupt puppet

2007-12-28T00:27:00.001-08:00

"I had the chance to meet her (Benazir Bhutto) on several occasions, in which she expressed interest in Israel and said that she hoped to visit upon returning to power." -Shimon Peres (President of "Israel", pictured above with Benazir Bhutto at a "socialist international" (sic) conference) read more here

Muslim women and the discursive machine of hegemony

2007-12-26T23:06:00.000-08:00

Soumaya Ghannoushi writes:

It seems that Muslim women - particularly those living in western capitals- are destined to remain besieged by two debilitating discourses, which though different in appearance, are one in essence.

The first of these is conservative and exclusionist, sentencing Muslim women to a life of childbearing and rearing, lived out in the narrow confines of their homes at the mercy of fathers, brothers, and husbands. Revolving around notions of sexual purity and family honour, it appeals to religion for justification and legitimisation.

The other is a "liberation" discourse that vows to break Muslim woman's bondage and free her of the oppressive yoke of an aggressive, patriarchical, and backward society. She is a mass of powerlessness and enslavement; the embodiment of seclusion, silence, and invisibility. Her only hope of deliverance from the cave of veiling and isolation lies in the benevolent intervention of this force of emancipation. It will save her from her hellishly miserable and bleak existence, to the promised heaven of enlightenment and progress.

The truth is that just as there is a military machine of hegemony, there is a discursive machine of hegemony. When armies move on the ground to conquer and subjugate, they need moral and ideological cover. It is this that gives the dominant narrative of the "Muslim woman" its raison d'etre.

Who is Akbar Ganji?

2007-12-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

Akbar Ganji is one of a whole slew of self-styled Iranian dissidents who spend their time in the US on a speakers circuit - where they pose their liberal credentials - while in effect calling for regime change in Iran.

Ganji, like some other Iranian liberals, position themselves as being against military attacks on Iran, but nevertheless use the American establishment to pressure for regime change. Ganji does this by taking a neo-conist type negative attitude towards the present government, and political system of Iran. Because Ganji does not call for direct US government intervention or military action against Iran, he is viewed by the, often Islamophobic, liberal-left of the US as a "dissident." Ganji, however, like other such faux "dissidents" want to overthrow the present system, and install what he calls "democracy." (The fact that Iran, during elections, has the highest turn out in the region, if not the world, seems to escape his notice).

It should be noted that while Ganji does not particularly favor Bush, he would never make a public call for an overthrow of the US constitution - he would be deported, or shipped off to Guantanemo immediately if he made such a call. But, if we are to measure the amount of human rights violations, invasions, and the amount of killings that the US has engaged in just the past six or so years - whatever Iran's faults maybe - they are practically non existent when compared to the US human rights violation. So, then why does Ganji insist on the overthrow of the Iranian government, and of the Islamic Republic itself (to be replaced with "democracy") - but does not call for the same for the US during his tours?

An even larger question to examine is why the US liberal-left should call for the internal overthrow of the Iranian government ("regime change" ) while not calling for the same for the US, if indeed "human rights" is the only criteria being used? Remember that the liberal-left and Ganji are not merely suggesting that Iranian people vote for another candidate for president, the "regime change" in the context means overthrow of the present political-economic system itself. The same liberal-left would never ever call for a similar overthrow of the constitution of the US.

The reason, I think, should be obvious - and the name of this blog provides an explanation. This brand of so-called "progressives" and "liberals" are, in reality, imperialists themselves, and they feel that they have a moral superiority - and can make all kinds of calls that they think are "non-violent" and for "democratic change" but infact, these kinds of calls are nothing more than liberal imperialism of another kind.

And so it is no wonder that Ganji has been presented awards by neo-con types sympathizers who recognize him as one of their own, irrespective of his appeal to the liberal imperialists (with whom they only have a difference of tactics, not goals).

Akbar Ganji was recently given an award from the Right and Democracy (or International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development). This is a Canadian version of the US imperialist project of the National Endowment for Democracy, that has been involved in destabilization campaigns wherever and whenever any country or people exert their right of independence from US colonial and neo-colonialism

The award was given to him by Saad Eddin Ebrahim one of the most avid supporters of the now-defunct Neo-conservative plans to spread democracy in the Middle East, who has also been the director of Rights and Democracy and now sits on its board of directors. (Ibrahim was previously the director of the (neo-con friendly) American Islamic Congress and is still on its board, is on the advisory committee of the Journal of Democracy, published by the National Endowment for Democracy.

Ganji was also heaped praise by George Bush for his anti-Iranian government's activities in 2005, and said in a White House statement: "Mr. Ganji, please know that as you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you," While Bush is often dismissed by liberal-leftists as "stupid" etc. --- he does know who it is that serves his imperial project. Indeed Ganji himself only opposes Bush's intervention because he knows just how angry the people of Iran would be towards any such move - and probably it would mean he would not get the kind of support he does now from the anti-Bush liberal imperialist crowd.

moderate quote of the month

2007-11-26T16:34:00.000-08:00

Benazir Bhutto - the wannabe moderate-proggie puppet in waiting of Pakistan - said an alliance of moderate parties was also being pushed by the United States. “In the past the United States would support dictatorships but now it is supporting democratic forces, which is a sign of encouragement for all the democracy-loving people,” she added. source (pdf)

Progressive Opportunism

2007-10-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

Riffat Hassan has written a letter to the puppet Musharraf complaining about his no longer being very supportive of the proggie-reactionary institute she founded in Pakistan to bring about an "Islamic Renaissance." Readers of this blog may remember that Riffat Hassan, in a fit of progressive hypocrisy, had defended puppet Musharraf when he had stated that women in Pakistan were bringing charges of rape to get a green card.

This particular letter by Riffat Hassan is revealing in many ways, because she talks about how she viewed Musharraf, and more importantly, why she had a positive view of this puppet: apparently this all had to do with the puppet's support for her bleak vision of Islam. A lot of what she describes has little to do with the Muslim umma, and more to do with her personally - i.e. when the puppet supported her personally, and her project, she was happy do be a puppet's puppet. Read the letter here..

Those who still hold out on the notions of Progressive Islam and Progressive Muslims (now mainly confined to the super elites of Muslim countries, and Ivy League Imperial Universities such as Harvard) really need to get a grip: As the name of this blog clarifies, Progressive Muslims are nothing more or less than friends of imperialism and neo-colonialism - their affiliation with puppets and with Imperialists have completely discredited them.

Yes, they still have some credibility amongst liberal-leftists, who can identify with the often Islamophobic, and stereotypical image of Muslims societies that these proggies love to perpetuate.

Pakistan's next enlightened moderate puppet

2007-08-29T23:17:00.001-07:00

Benazir Bhutto is expected to become the next liberal-moderate-proggie puppet of Pakistan. Benazir is seen here praying to her masters: ya condoli , ya bush.

Who is Raquel Evita Saraswati?

2007-08-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm sure about 99.9% of readers of this blog have never heard about this individual who is the Human Rights Coordinator of something called "Muslims for Progressive Values." This group is basically a rehash of the Progressive Muslim Union North America - minus Tarek Fatah - who was giving the proggies a bad enough publicity that they had to dump him (or, maybe Fatah dumped them... or each other).

Here are the names of the executive board of this proggie organization - I'll say one thing for 'em they're good in coming up with self-appointed titles for themselves.

Pamela Taylor (Chair, former PMU co-chair, and chair),

Kareem Elbayar (Vice Chair),

Zuriani "Ani" Zonneveld (President, former PMU executive director), Noreen Dabbish (Secretary),
Vanessa Karam (Interfaith Coordinator),

Raquel Evita Saraswati (Human Rights Coordinator),

and Sabahat Ashraf (New Media Coordinator, former PMU techie or something).

So, now lets take a look at Raquel ---- well, turns out that she is an Irshad Manjist... remember how initially the proggies tried to distance themselves from Manji? Omid Safi, the then chair of PMU, even claimed that she was not a proggie.

Well, this group is not carrying on that charade anymore --- Raquel is Vice-President of Manji's pro-zionist, "Muslim Refuseniks"/"Project Ijtihad." And her website links directly to Manji's website (warning: the front page has a soft-porn photograph of Raquel).

There's more - but I think readers get the idea 'bout what this new (old) proggie group is all about, and what kind of "human rights" they gonna be promoting (google her name if you really wanna know more).

The absurdity of "Muslims for Obama"

2007-08-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

The race for the "leader" of the so-called "free world" has begun. The race is, of-course, all about who can be the most jingoistic and play to the worst fears of the "free world" extremists.

So, Obama says he gonna take the war on Muslims, now, to Pakistan. The country has already been under the rule of a puppet who has slaughtered his own people. But Obama takes it up not just a notch, but to a whole new level. The dude wants to basically complete the job that Bush started: destroy one Muslim majority nation after another.

Oh, yeah - he don't want to nuke Pakistan. But Hillary - she's gonna prove herself to be a real man - she has no qualms 'bout nuking anyone anywhere --- no ruling out nukes for her - none of that fuzzy warm smart bombs, if nukes are what it takes, then nukes it will be.

Here is what the "Muslims for Obama" group says (created by Shahed Amanullah, the guy who recently had a chit chat with the extremist Homeland Security dude: Chertoff):

He's not just a change from George W. Bush, he's a change from the emerging crop of Democratic presidential nominees, all of whom are still equivocating on the war in Iraq. Obama is the only candidate who was on the correct side from the beginning, and unlike most politicians, understands our concerns because of his unique background.

Through this group, we hope to work Muslim Democrats to ensure Obama gets the party nomination, and then work hard to get out the vote in key districts throughout America.

OK - so let's see - they wanna get this maniac Obama into office with Muslim vote, and then Obama will go bomb Muslims --- good plan.

shame on the moderate extremists

2007-07-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

a protest against the Lal Masjid massacre in Pakistan - the massacre was ordered by

Mr. "enlightened moderate" himself.

Zionist "Sufism"

2007-07-03T01:28:00.000-07:00

Well, we know about neo-con "Sufis" ... but now we got Zionist "sufis" !

This so-called "conference" is being sponsored by "Israel" :

Islamic Fundamentalism and Sufism: Continuities and Confrontations through Modernity and Globalization Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation

Have fun looking through the list of participants.

A Progressive "expert" speaketh

2007-06-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

via ummahpulse.com The "expert" is one Dr Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford --- their proggie dodgy website is worth a look.

Who is Reza Aslan?

2007-06-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Aslan counts himself as one of the “reform Islam scholars” - who believe, as do the neo-cons, that Islam must be reformed - for the religion to “co-exist” with the American empire (or, as they call it, “civilization” “west” and “democracy”). In this respect, Aslan serves the insidious role of corrupting Islam - re-defining, and providing an interpertational framework that would re-fashion Islam into an empire friendly religion.

Aslan, like his collegue, Vali Nar is a member of the notorious neo-con Council on Foreign Relations.

Aslan got his so-called “education” from Harvard University. Harvard has been at the forefront of advocating “reform Islam” -and has supported some of the more notorious pro-empire Muslim groups such as the (now defunct) Progressive Muslim Union North America.

Aslan is also one of four original participants in meetings with Homeland Security's chief extremist Michael Chertoff, ostensibly to counter "homegrown radicalism." (Extremist Chertoff's mission, is, of-course, to silence Muslim dissent (and really all dissent) to the US's imperial project.)

A few comments by Aslan reveals his ideological leanings:

“Despite the apartheid state that has resulted from over half a century of bloody territorial conflicts with its neighboring Palestinian territories, few would deny that the state of Israel is a democracy.” (Perhaps this is one reason why most Muslims now find the word “democracy” to be just another name for hypocrisy).

“And it’s up to us as Muslims in the US to give voice to that (reform-Islam) for our brothers and sisters who don’t have the voice or the same ability to speak out as we do”

Well, yes, so long as you are speaking for an empire friendly Islam, from Harvard, and from the Council of Foreign Relations, yeah you can speak. Try seriously speaking out, and acting against imperialism outside of such institutions, and see how quickly you are first placed under surveillance, with Homeland knocking on your door next.

Aslan has contributed an essay called ‘The Struggle for Islam’s Soul’, in With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, Will Marshall, ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.

If one takes a look at how these terms are defined - we will find that “jihadism” is resistance to imperialism, and “liberty” is American style “democracy promotion.”

infact the cover of the book says it all:

Dance puppets dance!

2007-06-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

Dance, dear puppets, dance - dance with the extremists!

ummahpulse.com

icssa.org

The Rand Report In Action

2007-06-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

Muslim Matters has a very good post on the collaborative meetings between self styled saviours of Muslims and Islam, and the imperial Homeland Security's secretary Michael Chertoff.

While I agree with most of the post, I don't agree with the post-script, where he suggests that the DHS should be talking with other "mainstream Muslims."

Muslims should not be engaging with these types (period). The problem is not "extremism" in the Muslim community - the problem is with the extremists who are in the White House, and who have orchestrated a never ending "war" based on lies upon lies. A war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Muslims being killed in just the past four or five years. That is the kind of extremism that is the real problem.

To understand the context of this collaborative meeting - a bit of a background on the extremist Chertoff:

Chertoff is credited with authoring the Patriot Act, the 300-plus page blueprint for the modern National Security State; patterned to great extent on the successes of the KGB in the Soviet system. He's admired among his Bush cadres for making sure that government surveillance operates at maximum efficiency. Under his stewardship at the Dept of Justice, the 4th amendment has withered like summer grass. The long-held belief that citizens, have a right to a "reasonable expectation of privacy" has buckled under the demands of "Big Brother" and the new "intrusive" security paradigm.

And now the post from Muslim Matters:

It hasn’t been too long since the release of the RAND report part II, and it seems that the government is already following suit. San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), otherwise responsible for spying on, harasing or setting up Muslims (watch out for the friendly neighborhood informant as he joins the government to make big $$ or arrange for his past-crimes to be forgiven) is now actually working with Muslims to “rebut radicals”. I am sure DHS has good intentions, but they have to produce something to show for all the $$ they are spending… it’s all part of the job.

1) Shahed Amanullah: He is from Austin, Texas. He will be DHS’s friend in the blog world. That of course holds special meaning to us, because we too reside in the blogosphere. Mr. Amanullah runs the notorious (for normal Muslims) website altMuslim.com. He wants to push forward an ‘alternate’ Muslim opinion, which is just a proxy, softer terminology for progressivism.

Well, let’s get it it clear: AltMuslim is nothing but a Muslimwakeup, PMUNA, eteraz, or other ‘we know better than the Sunnah’ websites in disguise. In fact, the folks there are not too shy about espousing the ‘opportunity’ to follow RAND’s guidance.

Also, browse the list of guest-writers. Don’t miss out Muqtedar Khan, the owner of the website called ‘ijtihad.com’… a personal favorite since he resides in the local community, in which he is mostly shunned because his views are so progressive that not even the nutty ones in the community can stand him. Ali Eteraz, the writer of classics such as ‘how to denude the niqabis’, and other sick perversions, is also a star writer. These pro-regressive (shout-out to Dr. M) websites usually generate a lot of hits, because normal, mainstream, average Muslims like us, usually go there to check out what the newest wacko opinion is. It provides for a good laugh and some stomach muscle movement, which can only help burn some calories for the stagnant web-surfers (ahem abu ameerah )

read more here

Imperial "academics" and "scholars"

2007-05-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

The notion that academics and scholars are honest intellectuals who strive for objective research, and are independent of government (and other) influences is nice sounding, but is nothing more than a myth.

This is especially the case post 9/11/01: The US led War on Islam and Muslims, has resulted in an increased demand for "scholars" and "academics" of Muslim and/or mid-east backgrounds who would willingly act as "researchers" and "policy writers." These "scholars" then produce, and/or facilitate the production of articles, books, and magazines that attempt to justify American Imperialism to what, in their racist assumption, is an ignorant, and unwitting Arab and Muslim population.

click here to read more

around the world of blogs

2007-05-02T23:56:00.000-07:00

Jinzaman has a good article on RAND, "Reform" and Revolution

Regarding the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa controversy in Pakistan, and the liberal elite's reactionary attitudes read Lal Masjid What Do They Want?.

Dr. Maxtor has a couple of good recent entries on his blog: Turkey's secular fascists and a brief note on Eteraz -the proggie hiding in mainstream Muslim clothing (my heading not Dr. Maxtor's :-)) read the comments on that one. (Why do proggies get all bent outta shape when someone happens to just write a few sentences critiquing 'em, but they think they can slam/damn every other Muslim that crosses their path? - I don't get it...)

school for puppet "Imams" in Jordan

2007-04-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

The British (neo-colonial) Ambassador looks on approvingly as the Jordanian ministry opens a school for "Muslim preachers."

Apparently, this "school" to create puppet "imams" has the approval of the British Blair regime.

(Actually, the Jordanians were probably required to get the British approval before starting this "school." )

Welcome US Department of State

2007-04-02T01:26:00.000-07:00

As you can see, your little puppet "Imam" did not do all that well in that little tour you had going for him... was he at least worth the cost of his flight to India?

clayton.state.gov (U.s. Department Of State) 169.252.4.21

District Of Columbia, Washington, United States, 0 returning visits

Date Time WebPage

2nd April 2007 01:23:19 No referring link

(visited) http://pmunadebate.blogspot.com/2007/03/us-state-department-moslem-imam-yahya.htm

A Declaration of Cold War: Rand Report.

2007-03-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

A brand new Rand Report is out on the stands - that is nothing more (or less) than a formal declaration of Cold War on Islam.

The specifics outlined in this report has already taken shape in Britain with the so-called Radical Middle Way group that presents itself as a "moderate Muslim" outfit, but, in reality, is funded by the extremist government of Blair and his Home office. For more on how the moderates are, in reality, extremists - click here.

The Rand Report points out that the USA support and financing of the "moderate" (i.e. extremists) groups should be covert, and not too "obvious." It is thus, the responsibility of Muslims to investigate the source of funding and support of Muslims groups in North America, Europe, Australia, and also in the Muslim majority areas. Those groups and/or individuals who are being funded and/or otherwise supported by the extremist US and/or British governments and/or their affiliated extremist "think tanks" should be boycotted, and questioned publicly as to why they are collaborating in this extremist anti-Islam project?!

Partners in this network-building effort should be those who share key dimensions of democratic culture, the study says. The report recommends targeting five groups as potential building blocks for networks: liberal and secular Muslim academics and intellectuals; young moderate religious scholars; community activists; women's groups engaged in gender equality campaigns; and moderate journalists and scholars.

As America learned during the Cold War, moderate groups can lose credibility – and therefore, effectiveness – if U.S. support is too obvious. Effective tactics that worked during the Cold War include having the groups led by credible individuals and having the United States maintain some distance from the organisations it supports.

“This was done by not micro-managing the groups, but by giving them enough autonomy,” Rabasa said. “As long as certain guidelines were met, they were free to pursue their own activities.”

To help start this initiative, the report recommends working toward an international conference modeled in the Cold War-era Congress of Cultural Freedom, and then developing a standing organisation to combat radical Islamism.

more here

Liberalizing the Qur'an: The Case of Laleh Bakhtiar

2007-03-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

I have to say I am dissapointed in Laleh Bakhtiar that she is allowing herself to be used in this way - to make it appear as if she is some ground breaking woman of Islam --- same as some of the progressivist Moslems claimed in their drive towards "reform Islam." I am dissapointed because I have a number of Laleh Bakhtiar's translations of Islamic books (Farsi to English translation) and have found them very useful, and carefully translated.

But, in the case of this "new translation" of the Qur'an by Bakhtiar, there are way too many problems, not the least the kind of coverage she is getting from the American corporate media.

Why is it that when A’isha Bewley, who actually speaks Arabic, and is a known and respected translator of classical texts, published a translation of the Qur’an the NYT didn’t profile her? Heck, most Muslims didn’t even know she’d done this, and you have some people today talking about “the first translation by a woman” wrt Bakhtiar (and prior to Bewley’s, there was at least one other version that was done by an Egyptian woman). Is it because Bewley doesn’t fit the image of what Cheryl Benard and Rand told us “friendly” Muslims look like? Scoff all you like. I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but more and more coverage of Islam and Muslims seems to take a page from the infamous Rand report. And we go along with it.

Or is it because Bewley didn’t set out with the mindset that she was going to change what the Qur’an meant to English readers or not do it?

“I decided it either has to have a different meaning, or I can’t keep translating.”

What Bakhtiar is doing, then, is a grave, grave disservice to those people who pick up her version. She is doing what liberal Muslims accuse the ‘ulema of having done for 1400 years. It’s not a translation if she decides what the meaning is based on what she wants. It’s wishful thinking. Alhamdulillah, it doesn’t change the meaning of the Qur’an… but saying that English speakers are alienated by Arabic names, deciding yourself to do tafsir, even though you don’t really know Arabic and you admit to having no classical or scholarly training is changing how people who pick up your book will perceive the capital-T Truth, and this can lead one into spiritual territory where one would not want to be caught on the Day That Counts.

more here

US State Department Moslem: "Imam" Yahya Hendi

2007-03-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

The article below is from ultra-neo-con friendly Washinton Times, so they are trying to put a good face on this absurdity, but the readers of this blog are savvy enough to read between the lines, I am sure!

The chaplain, Imam Yahya Hendi, was in India for three days late last week to debunk myths about the status and treatment of Muslims in America, much as he has done in State Department-sponsored trips to the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

The visit, arranged by Karen Hughes' two-year-old public diplomacy office at the State Department, did produce successes.

At our mosque the imam wanted to lead a mass prayer and interact with the people," said Hyder Ali, a spokesman for the Baitul Aman Mosque, the largest in West Bengal. "But we turned down the request ... because he was acting on behalf of a government which for long years has been responsible for killings and sufferings of innocent Muslims in many countries including Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. We did not want to betray our brothers and sisters in those countries by extending him hospitality in our mosque."

Nur-ur Rahman Barkati, the chief of another prominent Calcutta mosque, said he would be pleased to allow Imam Hendi to conduct a prayer at his mosque had the American been on a "purely religious mission, with no connection with America's foreign diplomacy."

"He is a Muslim -- he is our brother. But we could not take him in our arms because he was here as a representative of the American government and George Bush -- the enemies of Islam and the world's Muslims," he said.

"We took part in this ... prayer only because we knew an American imam would conduct it. Had we known that he was sent by the American government we would have never dreamed of standing behind him on this prayer," said Rifat Hossain, a 21-year-old student. A dozen of his friends nodded in agreement.

click here to read more

Who Is Vali Nasr?

2007-03-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

Vali Nasr has become the US media's new favorite Muslim expert - especially on Shi'a Islam, Iran, and sectarianism. He has also become a favorite of some liberals, who like to quote him authoritatively from a couple of his books, again, especially when discussing Shi'as.

For these liberals, quoting a Shi'a Muslim scholar (i.e. an Ayatullah) on Shi'a Islam, would be anathema, because they are all considered to be "fundamentalists", and "backwards." And also because many liberals have adopted the neo-con hatred and Islamophobia for scholars of Islam, so they now have a supposed "liberal" American educated dude, who they can quote safely as a supposed representative of Shi'as.

So, now lets take a closer look at this guy. Who exactly is he? Who is he speaking for, and what are are his affiliations?

A glance at Vali Nasr’s career shows where he is coming from — and whom he is serving. In January 2006, Nasr was named the Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, the main Neocon Think Tank, focusing on foreign policy. He is currently Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). He joined NPS in 1993. The Naval Postgraduate School's Department of National Security Affairs (NSA) specialises in the study of International Relations, security policy, and regional studies. The NSA, according to its Web site, ‘brings together … faculty, students from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, National Guard and various civilian agencies, and scores of international officers from dozens of countries for the sole purpose of preparing tomorrow's military and civilian leaders for emerging security challenges’.

The Wikipedia entry on Vali Nasr offers some interesting insights that are worth examining:

First, Nasr, in January, 2006, was named the Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Now, I've talked about the awful liberal Brooking Institute.. But, if that is not bad enough, the CFR is like plain rotten - amongst its members are the following:

Dick Cheney
Condoleezza Rice
Paul Wolfowitz
Robert M. Gates
John D. Negroponte
Richard Perle
Leslie Gelb
Colin Powell
Alice Rivlin
Madeleine Albright
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Henry Kissinger

Nasr is often quoted as an expert on Shi'as of Middle East - so, what does he have to say about Iraq? Well here is an interesting bit:

By liberating and empowering Iraq's Shiite majority, the Bush administration helped launch a broad Shiite revival

and again:

Iraq's liberation has also generated new cultural, economic, and political ties among Shiite communities across the Middle East.

So, now we understand why Nasr was chosen to be a senior fellow at the CFR - he, like his neo-con buddies, regard the invasion and destruction of Iraq a "liberation" ! (heee hawww).

Now, it also turns out that Nasr "briefed" Bush on sectarianism in August 2006. It is quite possible that this guy is totally naive, that he thinks that the neo-cons are just ignorant, and are not doing anything deliberately to fan the flames of sectarianism to their advantage. It is possible that is what Nasr was thinking when he sat down for his chat with Bush.

But it is rather strange that Nasr was not familiar with the Rand Report that explicitly called for using sectarianism to divide Muslims and that he was not aware of other articles that also called for using Shi'a Sunni divisions to create a civil war situation amongst Muslims.

What exactly did Bush learn from Nasr, one wonders?

Nasr, is unfortunately just one in a whole slew of Muslims who have allied themselves with the neo-cons, and like other liberal imperialists, are not so much as opposed to the invasion ("liberation") of Iraq - but rather, how it was done, and that it could be done better. So, he is not opposed to the supremacy of the United States, just that it could exert its supremacy more efficiently.

In this respect, Nasr fits into what Saba Mahmood describes as one of those with whom

the U.S. strategists have struck a common chord with self-identified secular liberal Muslim reformers who have been trying to refashion Islam along the lines of the Protestant Reformation.

There is a fair bit of material available on this guy on the web, and I'll be updating this entry...

the intelligence (not) summit

2007-03-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

I really do not have much to say about the "secular islam summit" --- other than check out their absurd program and this little bit:

Mediterranean Reception---sponsored by the Secular Islam Summit in conjunction with The Intelligence Summit

Irshad Manji, Amir Taheri, Ibn Warraq

***(cash bar)***

another article on the death of "progressive islam"

2007-02-17T00:12:00.000-08:00

This article on the "death" of "progressive islam", I am much more inclined to agree with - especially with regards to how this so-called "movement" manifested itself. A much more accurate name of this form of "islam" might be "US empire friendly islam."

According to Hannah Arendt, the two key characteristics of colonialism are racism and bureacracy. The professional elites were clearly created to support the colonial bureacracy, and is also not surprising that they adopted, in essence, the same disdain for their fellow Muslims (especially the 'Ulema) which more likely than not, was due to absorbing British racism. The professional elites often adopted the same purported "reformism" that was used to justify imperialism in the first place. Just like the "White man" had reached the pinnacle of human evolution and it was his duty to uplift the lesser races from their anthropological shortcomings, so did the professional elites view themselves as the pinnacle of Islamic history and had achieved material success and, thus, it was their duty to uplift the Muslim masses from their decadent superstitious faults.

Read the entire article here

Announcing the death of Progressive Islam

2007-02-13T21:26:00.000-08:00

An article that announces the death of Progressive Islam can be found here

Unfortunately, in the view of publicdebate, the neo-con type native informant/good Moslem role that pro-regressives took on as their mantle is not quite dead.

At this time only the lables have changed. The same proggie types have, in some ways, become even more insidious. Stay tuned...

"secular islam summit"

2007-02-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

Here they are, and they are going to have a summit: click here to view the speaker list.

***Disclaimer: This blog is not responsible for any emotional and/or physical health issues that may arise due to viewing the above web site. View at your own risk. -The Management of PMUNA DEBATE.

Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire:

2007-01-14T15:04:00.001-08:00

The Politics of Islamic Reformation by Saba Mahmood

"Taking the U.S. government’s current project to reshape and reform Islam on a global scale as my focus, I want to think about the place of the secular in relation to the current strategies of domination pursued by the United States. As I will show, over the last two years, in addition to its military “war against terror,” the United States has embarked upon an ambitious theological campaign aimed at shaping the sensibilities of ordinary Muslims whom the State Department deems to be too dangerously inclined toward fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.

As such, it is the ideological arm of an otherwise military campaign to subdue and discipline the vast population of Muslims who, in their religious beliefs and lifestyles, are judged to be the recruiting ground for more extremist and fundamentalist forms of Islamic opposition to U.S. strategic interests and what are now loosely termed “Western values.” In this elaborate undertaking, the U.S. government has found an indigenous ally in the form of moderate or liberal Muslims who, in the opinion of State Department planners, are most open to a “Western vision of civilization, political order, and society.”

The core problem from the perspective of U.S. analysts is not militancy itself but interpretation, insomuch as the interpretive act is regarded as the foundation of any religious subjectivity and therefore the key to its emancipation or secularization. In this understanding, the U.S. strategists have struck a common chord with self-identified secular liberal Muslim reformers who have been trying to refashion Islam along the lines of the Protestant Reformation.

Aware of these recent setbacks, the White House National Security Council (NSC) formally established a new program named Muslim World Outreach in 2003, with as much as $1.3 billion at its disposal (and with more allocations to come). This is a project aimed at “transforming Islam from within”:

Among the reformers the Rand Corporation mentions are Khaled Abou El Fadl, Serif Mardin, Abdulaziz Sachedina (United States), Bassam Tibi (Germany), and Muhammad Shahrur (Syria). They are upheld as “good Muslims,” distinct from their “bad” counterparts.

more here (pdf document)

the problem with CAIR

2007-01-04T01:37:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know CAIR sometimes does good work. Yes, I know the Sacramento activist Basim Elkarra is a good guy - and has done decent advocacy work in the area. And yeah, I know proggies love to pick on CAIR. OK - now that you know that I've said all that...

See, CAIR has this problem of insisting on inviting FBI and Homeland Security dudes to their conferences - so that they can be seen as one of the good guys. But then who are the bad guys? Those who have some awareness of COINTELPRO? Those who know how these agencies have actively played the divide and conquer game to destroy the activism of African Americans, Latino, Native Americans - you name it... ?

So, now CAIR is all shook up - 'cause guess what? Even with all these invitations and cozying up with the FBI - Boxer, the liberal senator from California, decided to rescind an award that she gave to CAIR. Now, I understand that there is Islamophobia at play here... But you know, at the same time - CAIR had it coming to them. Did they really expect that their FBI contacts was going to save them? Did they really? Do they really expect, that if/when the time comes, that their FBI/Homeland security contacts are going to save the day for Muslims in America? It is time to seriously wake up and smell some real strong coffee dudes and bros. That is not the way the US system works.

check malangbaba's blog for more on this sordid affair.

and Angry Arab offers a word or two on this affair also...

Dr Maxtor's top 10 proggie list...

2007-01-01T21:27:00.000-08:00

click here to view - enjoy (but read at your own risk :-))

the hair splits again

2006-12-23T18:02:00.000-08:00

The Progressive Muslim Union North America's chair (Pamela Taylor) and Executive Director (Ani Zonneveld) resign...

Since our resignations, Tarek Fatah, owner and moderator of the PMUNetwork, has placed the entire list on moderation and seems to have no intention of allowing any discussion, Pamela and I have set up a list where former PMUNetwork members (and anyone else interested in joining us) can continue our conversation and information sharing. The name is Muslims for Progressive Values, and you can join at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MuslimPV/ . While I understand that there are concerns about the situation that precipitated our resignation, we do not intend for that to be a subject of discussion. Let us not get distracted but let's carry on in our task of providing an alternative Muslim voice. Onwards and upwards!

Pamela Taylor
Ani Zonneveld
----------------------------------------------------------------

And then there were four left at the PMUNA.

Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur
Mona Eltahawy
Tarek Fatah
Ahmed Nassef, Chair

An open letter to PMUNA board member

2006-12-20T00:12:00.000-08:00

Following is an open letter from Seven Oaks Magazine (Canada) to the right wing board member of the right wing Progressive Muslim Union North America: Tarek Fatah

The following letter was sent to Tarek Fatah some ten days ago. The response was so flailing and off topic that we felt it was worthwhile to post the original note to him as an open letter, though we have no illusions of generating a coherent response or a change of course. Mr. Fatah’s slide to the Right – in his case from the NDP to the Liberals, and from opposing Israeli apartheid to collaborating with authorities and some of the most repellant columnists the corporate media has on offer – is hardly unique, but disturbing nonetheless.

click here to read more

the racist brooking institution

2006-12-16T22:26:00.000-08:00

I have covered the liberal imperialists at the Brooking Institution on this blog here and here. A few days back they invited over the racist anti-Arab "Israeli" Avigdor Lieberman, and of-course, as can be expected he was warmly met with the likes of Hillary Clinton.

As often is the case these days, most Muslim groups chose to stay silent about this bigot's visit. Lets see who gets the invitation to go to the next year's Brooking conference in Doha - maybe that will throw some light on the reasons behind this silence.

So, who is Lieberman, well amongst his statements include:

In 2002, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted with dismay one of Lieberman's many disgusting proposals. If the Palestinians did not comply with Israeli dictates, he suggested, the occupying forces should "bomb all the commercial centers... gas stations... [and] banks."

Lieberman's ghastly plan for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel was to drown them in the Dead Sea. He offered to provide the buses to transport them.

In May, 2004, he said that 90 percent of Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens would "have to find a new Arab entity" beyond Israel's borders. Lieberman, an immigrant from Russia, claimed the Palestinian citizens of Israel "have no place here." Russians do, of course. This newcomer has the nerve to tell Palestinians with ancient lineage to "take their bundles and get lost."

Despite the vitriol of this hatemonger, the Brookings Institution is proudly hosting the former nightclub bouncer on his upcoming trip to Washington. Officials at the Institution said they were "honored" to host Lieberman's first address abroad since joining the government.

more here

Unfortunately, it is not only the proggies who have cozied up with the neo-cons, and have acted on their recommendations. There are also other Muslim groups who, while not obviously distorting and insulting Islam like the proggies, are nevertheless involved in an opportunistic game of attempting to gain a seat next to the empire. To reflect this reality, to provide coverage, a historical record and an archive of such actions, the name of this blog will be changed in the near future.

Some names I am considering include sitting with the emperor, imperialist muslims, sellers of the deen, the court jesters, court muslims, muslim sellouts, muslim collaborators ----

stay tuned...

The Blair British Program For Muslims

2006-12-10T00:51:00.000-08:00

The recently issued thinly veiled threat to Muslims by the Blair regime can be stated in a single sentence: "conform to what we tell you to do or leave Britain," readers of this blog know that this is not an idle threat.

Both the Bush and Blair regimes have instituted a war on Islam. This is not only a hot one attacking and killing Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, but also a "cold war" that is focused on changing the face of Islam to make the tradition empire friendly.

To this end, the British government has favored (and funded) the neo-con Sufis, and "traditionalists" associated with the Radical Middle Way group.

Crescent International has an article by Fahad Ansari of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in their December issue that further discusses this trend (excerpts) :

Although it (the radical middle way) is being presented as a grassroots Muslim initiative, the website and the entire project are in fact funded by the Foreign Office, through the Home Office, with the objective of fighting “extremism”. The hidden aim is to pacify Muslims into accepting an ‘Islam’ that is submissive to the agendas of the West. This project is not to be understood in isolation but as part of a larger effort at social engineering of the Muslim community. This effort has been going on since September 2001
We should not be surprised by such intricate plots by the enemies of Islam; they have been taking place in vain for over 1,400 years. The sheep should not look to the wolf for protection. What is more worrying is the change in attitude of the shepherds of the Ummah, those entrusted with its guidance and protection, its own leaders and imams. It seems that the events of 11 September 2001 in the US and 7 July 2005 in London have paralysed these people, and forced them to implement the RAND and Operation Contest recommendations in record time. The very groups and individuals named in the latter document are those we see today at the forefront of this attempt to ‘reform’ Islam.
As the Sunday Telegraph has stated, Operation Contest has been implemented primarily through the Radical Middle Way Project. One of the schemes of this Project was a national roadshow of Muslim scholars flown in from all over the world to preach a more pacific message to British Muslims. Perhaps we should not question the intention of the scholars themselves, and certainly many of those associated with the project are sincere and well-meaning, but it does seem that they have allowed themselves to become pawns of the government, letting themselves be manipulated by it to complete its agenda. The roadshow has become a platform from which to bash so-called Wahhabi groups in the most cynical manner, as Muslims begin to divide themselves even more along lines drawn for them by the West. In doing so, these speakers take on the very characteristics they so vehemently attack.
In all this darkness, there is one light. History shows us that one of Islam’s wonderful characteristics is that the more it is pushed down, the higher it rises.
Slowly but steadily, more and more Muslims are realising that it is not terrorism or extremism or the niqab that is being targeted, but Islam itself. The enemies of Islam will continue to attempt to divide Muslims and to ‘reform’ Islam as they have done throughout the centuries. At such times, it is vital for Muslims to educate themselves about these plots but to always bear in mind Allah’s words that “they plot, but Allah also plots; and Allah is the best of plotters” (Q. 8: 30).

Read complete article here

the veil and the Orientalist/Islamophobe elite

2006-12-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

Hot Coals, an online zine that usually publishes insightful articles regarding Muslim issues, unfortunately, ended up publishing an article on the niqab that is orientalism at its worst.

The author, Yasmin Amin, has, in the past, written critically about the proggies, including this critique of Asra Nomani. However, this article can only be described as an expression of borderline hate of the type that the Progressive Muslim Union North America (PMU) and their supporters, engages on a regular basis.

I would like to encourage readers of this blog to read that article, and respond on the Hot Coals comments section. However, here are some points that will give folks an idea what the article is all about:

Amin, writing in an extreme orientalist manner, does not even allowing the sister wearing the niqab, the courtesy of being a human individual - for her, this person is a "something":

Before the sentence was complete, something entered the room.

Note also the emphasis, and indeed, what appears to be a fear of the color black, in the excerpt below. The orientalist Islamophobe is often not just fearful of the religion, but also of the colors of those who follow Islam, and who are often of a darker shade. So, they fear not just the beard, but specifically a "black beard." Those who have internalized this form of racism/orientalism also express themselves in very similar words.

It was a bit of a shock to me to see this mass of black! A black niqab, where even the two tiny holes where the eyes would be were covered in black gauze, entered the room. Thick black gloves sticking out of two wristbands attached to the shapeless black garb, tightly fastened, allowing only the black gloved hands up to the wrists to escape the dark cloud were placed the right hand on top of the left one on the chest, as if in a silent prayer.

Further down the article, Amin again refers to the individual person as a "black creature" - and again as "that black being, now dangerously armed" and yet again " black niqab then turned to the next victim" and once more "a faceless black creature."

Such Muslim orientalist-racists get a significant amount of attention these days because of the continuing war on Islam and Muslims - and this article appears to have gotten wide circulation on the various blogs and websites - including this Hindu right wing web site.

And finally, this "desi" web site included the following racist/orientalist image along with the article:

Muqtedar Khan and the Saban Center

2006-11-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

Khan sahib is well known to readers of this blog, he first joined the Progressive Muslim Union North America's advisory board, only to be later driven out by Tarek Fatah and his crew. Khan's subsequent resignation letter is however to be credited. We are familiar with Khan's weird politics , dreams of becoming the first "Muslim" Henry Kissinger - and his attacks on Shi'a Muslim scholars.

Mutqedar Khan has been part of the liberal imperialsts crew for some time at the Brooking Institute.

That affiliation is bad enough - but amongst his credentials he now also lists Senior Nonresident Fellow with the Saban Center at Brookings Institution. So what is this "Saban Center?"

The name might give us a clue or two, it is named after Haim Saban :

born in Alexandria, Egypt and moved to Israel as a child. He is a financial donor and founder of the Saban Institute for the Study of the American Political System at the University of Tel Aviv.
Saban is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Brookings Institution. In a NYT interview (Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Schlepping to Moguldom", September 5, 2004) he stated: "In 2002, he pledged $13 million to start a research organization at the Brookings Institution called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy."
The same interview lists this quote: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel".

Khan's affiliation should not come as any surprise to many of us. What is unfortunate is that he been given credibility by some Muslims, such as Shahed Amanullah, who publishes him on his website altmuslim.

Here are a couple more quotes from the founder of the institute where Muqtedar Khan is a "senior fellow"

"On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk," he said."I'm a Democrat for the reinforcement of the Patriot Act. It's not strong enough. The A.C.L.U. can eat their heart out, but they are living in the 1970's. We should all have ID's. You betcha. What do you have to hide? Some friends of mine on the left side think I'm crazy."

Why is he so supportive of Israel? "I hate quoting Tom DeLay, I really do,"Mr. Saban said. "If you're going to quote me quoting Tom DeLay, say I hate quoting him." He continued, apparently quoting Mr. DeLay, the House Republican leader: "He said: 'It is the right thing for us to do to be supportive of Israel. The reasons go back to the beginning of time.' "

Muqtedar used to also have a regular column on Muslim Wake Up -- but since his falling out with PMUNA, he has found himself a new home at Amanullah's altmuslim.

the "veil" again

2006-11-16T02:19:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the proggies, who are always harping about how there is too much attention being paid to how Muslim women dress, now the ones who come out with statements about the niqaab? Well, we all know why -they will use any and all opportunity to attack those Muslims who do not fit their ultra-secularist mold.

check out Mere Islam's post on The Face Veil...

This is not the first time that the proggies have attacked Muslim women for the way some choose to dress. Previously, Pamela Taylor (the chairperson of PMUNA) had talked about how she "positively hates" the "burqa" (i.e. the niqaab). Why such strong language? What is it that evokes such "hate" amongst the proggies?

I think some of this has to do with how they have become close in their ideology to extremist right wingers and the neo-cons, who are, often, no better than racist hate groups.

a radical wrong way

2006-10-31T21:46:00.000-08:00

Some friendly advise to my "traditional" sisters and brothers --- and I do mean friendly, 'cause I do think the "traditionalists" have a lot of good going (unlike the proggies, for whom I have little or no love at all) .

But lets be clear, taking money from a government that is the #1 friend of the #1 enemy of Muslims (the neo-cons) is not going to cut it... The radical middle way is a group that holds events that presents a primarily "traditional" Islamic point of view. This is all well and good, but this group gets most of its funding from the British home office:

The hardline approach is being pushed alongside a new covert weapon to win the propaganda war over the internet, Scotland on Sunday understands. A 'front' website (referring to the "radical middle way") designed to transmit a more moderate Islamic message to young Muslims has been set up.

Although the site is run to resemble a "grassroots initiative by Muslim organisations", a government document reveals that "most of its financial backing [is] from the Foreign Office and Home Office". Editors of the website have been encouraged to use podcasts to spread messages from 'Muslim roadshows'- government-funded national tours by moderate Islamic scholars.

The site also uses videos and other new technology to transmit its 'alternative message' to young Muslims - without indicating that it is effectively an arm of the British government.

Now, amongst UK Muslims, this news is not new - all of this is well known. And because the funding source is so well known, large segments of alienated British Muslims will not have anything to do with this group.

A UK govt. sponsored group is not going to win these folks a lot of friends. And if anything, such tactics will lead to even further alienation of young British Muslims - who will rightly point out that this kind of US/UK funded versions of Islam is just another strategy in the ongoing war on Islam.

I hope, strongly encourage and recommend that the organizations affiliated with radical middle way disown any and all fundings by the British govt. and/or dis-affiliate themselves from this group. Otherwise they are, quite frankly, headed down a radically wrong way.

Yes, I know this blog entry does not have anything to do with the proggies --- But remember the problem with them was not only how they viewed Islam, but also their affiliation and cozying up to the neo-cons. It would be very unfortunate if some of our respected, and otherwise well intentioned Islamic scholars also ended up going the same way.

the progressive neo-cons

2006-10-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

Lets take a look at what some former progressive muslim union north america’s board members are upto these days. Folks may remember the infamous Ziad Asali and his portege Hussein Ibish of the American Palestine Task Force. Well, truns out that these folks are having a little party – did you get an invitation? No? Well – Condi Rice did, and she’s gonna be the keynote speaker.

Oh it gets better, guess who else is coming for dinner? "His Royal Highness Prince" Turki al-Faisal, The “Saudi” Arabian ambassador himself!

Folks might remember how Hussein Ibish, and other progressive Moslems get all bent out of shape about “fundamentalism” and “wahabism” and so on. They even accused mainstream Muslim groups of being “wahabbi” – and yours truly was accused of being a “neo-salafi.” So, now all that has changed . Why?

Well, because “Saudi” Arabia is now considered a “moderate” – and Turki, the guy who actually encouraged the Taleban links with the CIA/United States – is a “respectable” statesperson:

Turki has been controversially associated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda As head of Saudi intelligence, he met with Osama bin Laden several times during the 1980s hoping to convince him to lead an army in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

Saudi intelligence joined Pakistan's intelligence service and the CIA in funding the mujahideen. Turki's relationship with bin Laden and al-Qaeda after bin Laden became an official enemy of Saudi Arabia and lost his Saudi citizenship is unclear. A continued connection to bin Laden was claimed in an article by Paris Match magazine. In 2002, Turki was named in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit by the families of September 11 victims, alleging that he and other Saudi princes, banks, and charities may have funded the terrorists involved in the attack. His involvement was also strongly implied in the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 911. A reporter for the Baltimore Chronicle claimed he was flown out of the United States shortly after the terrorist attacks, but the claim disappeared from later versions of the article.

Does anyone still have any doubts about what this Progressive/Moderate Islam/Moslem “movement” is all about? It is an extremist right wing movement that is opportunistic to its core.

Lets take a brief look at another "reformer" Moslem - the noble prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Here is a quote from a recent article:

There was a time when relations between the United States and the Iranian government were mutually beneficial. That honeymoon period began in 1953 when Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, was in power. A good friend of the United States, the shah purchased U.S. weapons and signed important oil contracts with American companies. He also became a close ally of Israel in the Middle East.

"Mutually beneficial"?!!! Well, I suppose if you were one of the Shah's goons - this relationship must've been "mutually beneficial"!

Like the proggies, the "reformers" are in bed with some of the worst criminals and dictators.

Ebadi does not want Iran to be bombed, that is good - but she is all in favor of the United States being recognized as the ultimate power in the world:

And the Iranian government must also accept the fact that after the downfall of the Soviet Union, the United States is the one and only superpower — a reality that should preclude pejorative political remarks. Only through recognition of these facts can a solution for resolving the conflicts be reached

I suppose she did not like President Chavez's remarks? Well, this is what we can expect from people who call the criminal regime of the "shah" of Iran - a "honeymoon!"

Right Wing Proggies Unite!

2006-10-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

Pictured above are Irshad Manji, Mona Eltahawy, and Naser Khader at a "moderate Moslems" conference in Denmark.

Mona Eltahawy is on the Board of Directors of the Progressive Muslim Union North America (PMUNA).

The above photograph says it all - PMUNA, and their Progressive Moslem types are nothing more (or less) than right wing extremists.

Thanx to Dr. Maxtor for his post on the above "event."

the extremist-moderates

2006-09-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

...the moderates function well as political rodents; they are policy carriers for the likes of Bush and Blair. However, unlike rodents they are unable to infect the masses, because the masses have already been inoculated against such types of vermin. They recognise the moderates as simply echoing the voice of Blair, justifying his murderous foreign policy that is composed of state-terrorism and mass murder of Muslims. They see the voice of the moderates only gets amplified when it coincides with Blair’s policy.

These extremist-moderates attempt to uphold their Islamic credentials by giving a liberal ‘interpretation’ (misinterpretation) of Islamic texts in order to justify their alliance with those who hate Islam and are busy murdering Muslims. Hence, their position is not dictated by their understanding of Islam rather it is the opposite; they mould Islam to justify their political position which they have adopted in the first place. So call them traitors, Zionist-Muslims, neo-con Muslims, neo-Coolies, they all point to the same trait of treachery

click here to read entire article

The liberal imperialists: The Brooking Institute

2006-08-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

A couple of recent article discuss the liberal imperialists: The Brookings Institute.

This institute is notorious for inviting well meaning, and not so well meaning (including Progressive type) Muslims to Qatar for an annual conference that is ostensibly to create "dialogue."

But given what Brookings is about, these conferences are more about getting naive and/or opportunistic Muslims on their side - and less about anything else.

Alexander Cockburn writes:

Open up the Washington Post and the strategic vision on display was an utterly mad piece co-written by one of the big boosters for war on Iraq, Kenneth Pollack, a hack thinker at the Brookings Institution, now an integral part of Israeli territory with its "Saban Center for Middle East Policy" named for the fanatic Zionist billionaire Haim Saban, majority owner of Paramount Pictures, a man who handed the Democratic Party a total of $12.3 million in 2002, a $7 million component of which was the biggest single contribution ever recorded up to that time.

Proggies do the resignation dance (again)

2006-08-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing the pro-regressivists are good at, it is in writing grandiose public resignation letters. Last year Tarek Fatah's PMUNAists did their bit (see here and here) - and now it is Tarek Fatah's Muslim Canadian Congress's turn to do the dance.

Here are a couple of newspaper articles on the splintering: 1 and 2

Meanwhile, Ingrid Mattson, who had been maligned by the proggies, has been elected as the first woman president of ISNA.

A large number of MCC's executive board did a public resignation, and announced the formation of a brand new splinter group. Here is the complete text of the letter:

August 22, 2006: For immediate release!

This statement is the resignation of the following Board members from the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC):

* Niaz Salimi, President;
* Rizwana Jafri, Vice President;
* El-Farouk Khaki, Secretary General;
* Arif Raza, Legal Advisor;
* Abbas Syed, Chief Financial Officer;
* Gary Dale, Director & webmaster;
* Atique Azad, Director;
* Jehad Aliweiwi, Director;
* Suhail Alsameed, Director.

It is also signed by the following people who have recently resigned from
the MCC Board and who share our concerns:

* Nadia al-Khatib;
* Hanadi Loubani.

The MCC was intended to be a voice of "Muslims not represented by other organizations, organizations that are sectarian or ethnocentric, largely authoritarian, and influenced by a fear of modernity and an aversion to joy." Over the years the MCC has made significant strides in offering a voice to many.

Recently, however, the public face of the MCC has deviated from its stated priorities. The message that MCC has been giving out is "not addressed to Muslims, it is aimed at making Muslim haters feel secure in their thinking".

As a result, many in the Muslim community have been alienated from the MCC as a viable voice for the community. Sadly many progressive Muslims and others perceive the MCC as being holier-than-thou, arrogant and enclosed in an ivory tower.

This was never our intention. The signatories to this statement believe that to combat the grips of fundamentalism and social isolation, we must engage and involve the Muslim community, and in particular the progressive and liberal voices within it.

For these reasons, we have chosen to leave the MCC, an organization which we have devoted ourselves to for several years.

We have decided to establish the Canadian Muslim Union (CMU), an organization which while advocating a separation of religion and state, will also work with and within the Muslim community.

The CMU will seek to engage the larger Muslim community in issues of human rights, human dignity, social justice and alternate progressive and inclusive visions of Islam. In so doing, we aim to instill joy in the celebration of our identities as Muslims and as Canadians with social consciences and a commitment to social justice and human dignity.

Contact: Arif Raza, 416 558-4777

Neo-Con "Sufis"

2006-08-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

The Rand Report (see side bar) did not only focus on "modernist" vs. "fundamentalists" - they also encouraged using divide and rule tactics including shi'a vs. sunni, and sufi vs. non-sufi.

This blog has focused on the "pro-regressive" native informants led by the "progressive muslim union north america" (pmuna)... or, what the Rand Report calls "modernists."

However, we also need to be aware of the fake "sufi" types as well - who are doing the bidding of the neo-con empire builders. This should in no way shape or form be taken to be a slam on those who follow the teachings of Tasawwuf or Irfan.

Rather, this is about those who make common cause with the empire builders, and end up causing serious harm to the Muslim communities through their alliances and affiliations. "Shaykh" Kabbani is no stranger to controversy, but his group's latest activities are of very serious concerns. A new -must read blog- has done an excellent job of investigating the links between Kabbani's group, the Washington neo-cons, and the Blair regime of Britain.

Click here to read the blog.

Tarek Fatah resigns

2006-08-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

This blog is not about Tarek Fatah - repeat this blog is not about Tarek Fatah.

The problem is that he acts like a spoilt little brat who wants to hog (no pun intended) all the attention. And if you don't give him the attention he gets worse and worse.

So, OK - here is a little bone to the brat:

Dr. M on Fatah's resignation

Meanwhile, Fatah's other group, the Progressive Muslim Union North America (this blog *is* about the PMUNA - and other native informants) - has been eerily silent about the Zionist assault on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. Why?

These guys have a virtual statement mill, and can churn out statement after statement on just 'bout everything - so why the silence?

Well, the PMUNA is pretty much dead - I think they took the group off life support - so maybe that is one reason.

But the real reason is probably best expressed by Fatah in a recent e-mail (excerpts) - you see, for Fatah - the problem is the Muslim community - not the Zionists.

Does this sound familiar? It should - this is a neo-con/zionist Christopher Hitchens/Daniel Pipes type of thinking.

This infatuation with misery while Hizbollah gains the admiration fo the Arabs reminds me of the young shia boys in Karachi who beat and flagellate themselves bloody to outdo each other on Ashuar (10 Muharram) to posture as adults and impress the hijabi/niqabi chicks.

How blind can this ummah be. Dumber and dumbest, that is what we all are. Creating our own Karbalas to feel good about our victimisation.

Tarek

Pro-regressives masquerading as "progressives"

2006-06-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

Tarek Fatah's recent article characterized mainstream Muslims as "fundamentalist Muslim groups draped themselves in 'moderate' garb." (Fatah is a member of the dwindled PMU NA board of directors.)

Lets take a look at where the pro-regressives get published these days:

The Fatah article was published in the Canadian "news"paper The National Post. This happens to be the same paper that recently published neo-con Amir Taheri's lies about Iran. And this is the same newspaper that has earned the dubious distinction of being a repeat Âworst offenderÂ in its characterization of Muslims and Islam.

With its frequent use of phrases such as Islamic terrorist, Muslim militants, Islamic fundamentalists, and similar wordings, the Post was found during the study period to contain more than 230% as many negative references as the average of other media examples, even when the same stories were covered by other newspapers.

And

From the beginning the Post has had a strongly conservative editorial stance, and has an editorial page featuring the writings of many prominent neo-conservatives and libertarians from the United States and Canada, including Diane Francis, Andrew Coyne, Mark Steyn and David Frum. This stance is typically mocked by those who refer to the paper as the "Fascist Post" or the "Zionist Post". A number of newspaper stands in Toronto holding the National Post for sale have been vandalized with these statements.

Given the kind of regressive politics the Progressive Muslim Union North America advocates, it is not at all surprising that they have taken the neo-cons as their not so strange bedfellows...

The Fatah article, along with the usual nonsense against mainstream Muslim organizations, is a rant against multiculturalism. Amongst other things, he says:

That is not all. If we do not reform multiculturalism to promote integration and civic secular society, we risk creating a fragmented nation, divided into 21st century religious and racial tribes, suspicious of the other and longing for the home we left behind.

It is interesting to note that this is exactly the kind of paranoid slippery slope thinking that characterizes the extreme right - that if there is not a single uniform value system, we're all doomed to becoming divided into racial tribes.

But the Pro-Regressives do not stop at this - Pamela Taylor, chair of the Progressive Muslim Union, in a gushing tribute to Fatah also expressed how the family members of the 17 accused in Canada "were wearing burqas which Tarek (like many of us) positively hates." Taylor claims that Fatah was helping the family... that maybe true... But it is a strange form of help, given his anti-Muslim rants elsewhere. And it is stranger choice of words: "positively hate" regarding the clothing that the family members were wearing.

This is the so-called "Progressive Muslim Union North America" --- their extreme rightward shift, and the use of words such as "hate" should not come as a surprise to any of us who have been following the trajectory of these individuals. But it does look like the neo-cons have found their native informants.

see also a Sunni Sister blog entry titled: Isn't It Funny:

The difference is that the racist conservative is a little more open about his / her views. The racist liberal talks a lot of talk about lifting everyone up, but its an equality and uplifting as defined by him / her / the dominant culture. Why are so many liberals, here and in Europe, wringing their hands over multiculturalism, and some now talking as though it can be reversed? Because they dont realize that our country (the US) is by default and always has been multicultural. Even many European countries have had a variety of ethnic, if not racial, groups living in them for centuries.

So when liberals and others start blabbering about rethinking multiculturalism, what theyre really doing is betraying their discomfort with the teeming masses saying, Yes I am! and with the minorities challenging the way things have always been done, the way historys always been told, and the way the rest of the world is and has been explained to Joe and Jane America.

tarek fatah at it again...

2006-06-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

via drmaxtor

Canadian Muslima blasts Tarek Fatah

Fatah champions his own views

Jun. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM

Editorial, June 7.Let me get this straight. Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress complains when the media make gross generalizations about Muslims, but has no problems making even bigger ones himself. Has Fatah visited every single mosque in Canada, enough to make the sweeping claim that no mosque allows freedom to debate? Imagine if someone had made similar comments about Canada's Jewish or Hindu communities, stating that their temples and synagogues were being overrun by "a fascist cult" of supremacy? It would border on hate. So why should his accusations about the Muslim community be accepted as legitimate discourse?Fatah's words bear the mark of hypocrisy. He regularly uses his weekly television show and position within the community to spread his own political views. He wants Muslims to discuss politics, just not in the one place that he and his fellow secular Muslims have no influence — the mosque. The double standard is laughable. Rather than promoting himself as a champion of the Muslim cause, Fatah and the à-la-carte critics like him, should admit that by trying to project their narrow-minded views on the community, they're no better than the "fascist" imams they claim to detest.

Samrina Wadhera, Toronto

more on fatah here

Native Informers and the making of the American Empire

2006-06-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

A review of "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

A particularly powerful case of such selective memories is now fully evident in an increasing body of mémoire by people from an Islamic background that has over the last half a decade, ever since the commencement of its "War on Terrorism," flooded the US market. This body of literature, perhaps best represented by Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), ordinarily points to legitimate concerns about the plight of Muslim women in the Islamic world and yet put that predicament squarely at the service of the US ideological psy-op, militarily stipulated in the US global warmongering. As President Bush has repeatedly indicated, the US is now engaged in a prolonged and open-ended war with terrorism. This terrorism has an ostensibly "Islamic" disposition and provenance. "Islam" in this particular reading is vile, violent, and above all abusive of women--and thus fighting against Islamic terrorism, ipso facto, is also to save Muslim women from the evil of their men. "White men saving brown women from brown men," as the distinguished postcolonial feminist Gayatri Spivak puts it in her seminal essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"
The publication of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran coincided with the most belligerent period in the recent US history, the global flexing of its military muscles, and as such the text has assumed a proverbial significance in the manner in which native informers turned comprador intellectuals serve a crucial function in facilitating public consent to imperial hubris. With one strike, Azar Nafisi has achieved three simultaneous objectives: (1) systematically and unfailingly denigrating an entire culture of revolutionary resistance to a history of savage colonialism; (2) doing so by blatantly advancing the presumed cultural foregrounding of a predatory empire; and (3) while at the very same time catering to the most retrograde and reactionary forces within the United States, waging an all out war against a pride of place by various immigrant communities and racialised minorities seeking curricular recognition on university campuses and in the American society at large.
ON THE SURFACE, Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran has a very simple plot. A female professor of English literature at an Iranian university, having been born to a privileged family and thus educated in Europe and the United States, is finally fed up with the atrocious limitations of an Islamic republic, resigns her post, goes home, collects seven of her brightest female students and they get together and read some of the masterpieces of "Western literature," while connecting the characters and incidents of the novels they thus read to their daily predicaments in an ungodly Islamic republic. The plot, factual or manufactured or a combination of both, provides an occasion for the narrator to give a sweeping condemnation of not just the Islamic revolution but with it in fact the entire nation, the poor and the disenfranchised, that has given rise to it--for which she has absolutely nothing but visceral contempt. To connect this simple plot and its extended services to the US imperial operations at home and abroad, we need a larger theoretical frame of reference in comparative literary studies.

The entire review is a must read - click here to read it!

Muqtedar Khan and Shi'a Muslims

2006-06-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Muqtedar Khan is a former advisory board member of the Progressive Muslim Union North America, to his credit, Khan resigned from the PMU NA after raising the issue of "athiest Muslims" and "alcohol consumption." Read his resignation letter here.

Khan has recently earned the ire of Shi'a Muslims after he was invited to speak at a conference of the controversial Shi'a Muslim group called UMAA. The leadership of this group has, in the past, allowed the likes of Wolfowitz to speak at their conference, and there was also some discussion about inviting Daniel Pipes to this year's conference. Stephen Schwartz the strange "leftist" turned neo-con, turned "sufi" had also, in the past, endorsed UMAA's conferences. Each of UMAA's conferences has resulted in sharp controversy in the Shia Muslim community. And this year was no exception.

The source of this year's controversy was Muqtedar Khan's February 13th, 2005 article in which he compared Ayatullah Sistani with Saddam Hussein, and stated that:

"The US-led invasion of Iraq may have replaced an overt and brutal dictatorship by Saddam Hussein with a covert and subtle dictatorship buy the Marja-e-Taqleed, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani—the highest-ranking Shiite authority on the planet."

Many Shia Muslim did not appreciate this grave insult of their scholar, especially the comparison that Khan drew with the tyrant Saddam Hussein. Khan was confronted at the conference, and on on-line Shia forums. Click here for a blog entry for a summary of the concerns raised.

While the issues raised specific to Ayatullah Sistani are important, Muqtedar Khan's politics has been very inconsistent - at times calling for American Muslims to support United States imperialist military actions because of some kind of a "divine commitment" towards the United States:

“Once the war is declared, make no mistake Mr. Saddam Hussain and Mr. Bin Laden, We are with America. We will fight with America and we will fight for America. We have a covenant with this nation, we see it as a divine commitment and we will not disobey the Quran (9:4).”

Click here to read a wide ranging critique of Muqtedar Khan's strange politics and statements.

Native Orientalists

2006-05-09T23:10:00.000-07:00

The Muslims America Loves

By M. SHAHID ALAM

In the heyday of the old colonialism, the white man did not need any help from the natives in putting down their religion and culture. Indeed, he preferred to do it himself. Then, the opinion of the natives carried little weight with the whites anyway. So why bother to recruit them to denounce their own people. As a result, Orientalists wrote countless tomes denigrating the cultures of the lesser breeds.

Today the West needs help in putting down the uppity natives--especially the Muslims. One reason for this is that with the death of the old colonialism, some natives have begun to talk for themselves. A few are even talking back at the Orientalists raising all sorts of uncomfortable questions. This hasn't been good: and something had to be done about it. In the 1970s the West began to patronize 'natives' who were deft at putting down their own people. Was the West losing its confidence?

The demand for 'native' Orientalists was strong. The pay for such turncoats was good too. Soon a whole crop of native Orientalists arrived on the scene. Perhaps, the most distinguished members of this coterie include Nirad Chaudhuri, V. S. Naipaul, Fouad Ajami and Salman Rushdi. They are some of the best loved natives in the West.

Then there came the 'war against global terrorism' creating an instant boom in the market for Orientalists of Muslim vintage. The West now demanded Muslims who would diagnose their own problems as the West wanted to see them--as the unavoidable failings of their religion and culture. The West now demanded Muslims who would range themselves against their own people--who would denounce the just struggles of their own people as moral aberrations, as symptoms of a sick society.

more here