My focus for this blog is really just on Islam in the world, my experiences etc. I’m not going to post recipes or talk about my vegetable garden or anything else here. I don’t have, at this time, any plans to even expand this into a more general atheist type of blog, although who knows what will happen as my interest in Islam-stuff starts to wane. That said, this story of religious idiocy and bigotry from Israel was so outrageous I wanted to share it. Sometimes it’s important to remember that Muslims do not have a lock on this sort of ridiculous hateful behavior.
Maher Marwani, 47, from Ras al-Amud next to Jerusalem and a bus driver in the haredi town Beitar Illit, saw death standing in front of him as he was beaten for many long minutes by three haredi passengers. After they got off the bus, he said passengers hurled large rocks at him. Ever since, Maher is afraid to return to the town. “I’m afraid they’ll kill me,” he said.
Maher isn’t alone. In recent weeks, a large group of Beit Illit residents has organized with the support of local rabbis in an effort to expel Arab workers from the town. “They are harmful to the daughters of Israel and create serious spiritual problems in the town,” said the residents.
The residents have placed a temporary solution on the table: Inspectors from the town will be stationed to supervise the Arab workers and will expel anyone suspected of damaging “the spirit of the town.”
One could really make a whole blog highlighting the beauty and comfort Islam gives to women and girls. Oh wait, there was.
This Christian girl in Sudan was whipped because her knee-length skirt was too short for the Islamist supremacists fanatics of Khartoum.
Kashif, whose family comes from the south Sudanese town of Yambio, was arrested while walking to the market near her home in the Khartoum suburb of Kalatla last week, her mother Jenty Doro told Reuters.
“She is just a young girl but the policeman pulled her along in the market like she was a criminal. It was wrong,” said Doro.
Doro said Khashif was taken to Kalatla court where she was convicted and punished by a female police officer in front of the judge.
“I only heard about it after she was lashed. Later we all sat and cried … People have different religions and that should be taken into account,” she said.
Also, the Taliban have bombed another girls’ school in Pakistan. People may not like it – and I think many there probably don’t – but the Taliban will continue to get support from inside and outside of Pakistan, until it’s like Kabul 1998 there unless people stand up to them on ‘little things’ like bombings, banning movies and TV, enforcing burqa, instead of capitulating and letting them ‘introduce the shariah’.
Former Muslim convert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has two columns about imam Luqman Abdullah who was killed in Detroit during a shootout with the FBI.
The first, written with Madeline Gruen, gives readers a little bit of background into the al-Ummah movement and Abdullah’s teachings. Even within the non black Muslim community, not much is known about the Dar, al-Ummah, and other groups that have mainly black Muslim members.
Some of this criminality involved crimes of violence by Abdullah and his followers. One FBI source testified that he saw Muhammad Abdul Salaam, who is believed to be Masjid Al-Haqq’s First Emir, murder a person whom he thought had killed his brother. Abdullah loved to boast about murdering people. In May 2009 he visited another al-Ummah mosque in Montgomery, Alabama, and prior to a study session that he was to lead he told the attendees about his experiences shooting other people. Abdullah, quite animated, illustrated how their bodies reacted when shot. At another al-Ummah mosque in Gainesville, Georgia, Abdullah sat with the imam’s children, who were between ages 9 and 11, and “told them stories about his shooting people with a 9mm gun.” Surveillance also revealed that he had handguns on him, even though this was illegal because he was a convicted felon.
In addition to possessing and training with firearms, Abdullah also expressed an interest in creating TNT-based explosive material, which he believed one of the FBI informants could make for him. Abdullah later expressed an interest in C4 or another type of explosive that could help him do “what he needed to do.”
Abdullah helped arrange for a new VIN for a truck that he believed to be stolen. He even justified this on religious grounds, arguing it was a form of jihad “because the kuffar would harm them if they were to get caught.” Likewise, Abdullah provided religious sanction for an arson orchestrated by Ummah member Mohammad Abdul Bassir: in order to collect insurance money, Bassir hired his neighbor’s nephew to burn down his house while he was working as a DJ at a cabaret (and thus had an alibi).
Another column by the two looks at the life of Jamil al-Amin (a.k.a. H. Rap Brown) and his teachings. It’s essential for people outside of the Dar / Ummah / MOA to begin to understand what these movements were, what they grew out of and what they teach, even though they’re sort of numerically insignificant. Muslims, including leadership, will blindly defend members of these groups even when murders and attacks in mosques have been carried out. Laura Grossman gives readers a quick background into the Dar movement’s history.
As Gartenstein-Ross says, it’s not even so much about terrorism or connections to people overseas, if any meaningful ones exist. It’s about criminal behavior being carried out under the guise of piety and Islam and with the sanction of mosques and Islamic associations that appear, even to other Muslims, to be authentic. And the truth is that when black Muslims are involved, other Muslims aren’t going to care long enough to look at it long enough, even as other Muslims fall victim to the violence.
Required reading!
The Somali-American community or the Muslim community in Minnesota really needs to step up their game on this one. Eight more men from the Minneapolis community were charged with providing support to terrorist group al Shabaab.
While the rest of the Muslim Icommunity is whining about Nidal Malik Hasan and how they’re being victimized because people think he’s a crazy mass murdering Muslim, this kind of stuff has been going on in the Somali community in Minneapolis for years. Some of the recruitment went on right here in America.
It’s time for these so called community leaders and organizations to stop whining and being irrelevant and step up. Put up or shut up is what I say. Time for these Muslim leaders to say “What the hell is going on in Minneapolis, and how can we put an end to it?” Disenfranchisement, confusion, poverty, hormones, and a lot of propaganda have turned at least 20 of Minneapolis’ Somali sons into fighters for al Shabaab. Do they want to stop extremism HERE, not over there, but HERE? Then do it and stop saying “It’s not our fault there’s extremism in the community!” every time a Muslim decides to blow something up or shoot someone or plot with other Muslims to do the same.
Here in Glitnir has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll button in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. I’m hoping that other ex-Muslim atheists, agnostics find this or that people can learn a little about different points of view from reading this. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.
I spent some time living in the Mideast, as my old time readers will remember. My point being that these stupid little shows where some guy with a long beard and a hijab on his head sits at a desk and talks at the audience are, for some reason, popular. They ramble on and on. Sometimes there will be other people there with him. Once in a while – a great while – the show will feature a woman, instead of a man. Judging from what people translated for me and what I understand, all of these shows are from salafi or Muslim brotherhood ideology. A lot of stuff about jihad, Jews, hijab, and how the west is responsible for every fucking thing Muslims do. I understand enough to know that what he’s saying in Arabic is what is translated at the bottom of the screen, so don’t fall for the whole “It’s not true! The Jews translate this!” routine that most people fall into when this stuff is brought to light.
So shows like this are the norm. And you can see in this video, he is advocating for people to lie about Islam in order to get the dirty kafirs to enter into it. And if you have to threaten them with death, so be it. And isn’t that a bee-yoo-tee-full story about faith? Ha ha ha, smile. What a fucking idiot. And this is how people do dawah. This is how they “formulate” the methods of modern dawah that are exported to Canada or the US or whatever, and then used on you.
They lie and tell you you can still have music, you can still wear regular clothes, you can still enjoy tv or movies, you don’t have to quit your job at the bank, and so on and then once they’ve got you – once you’ve said the shahada and the penalty for your leaving is death – then comes the true message of Islam. That Islam with music isn’t the true Islam. True Islam is no music, abayas, long beards, a long list of places you can now not work (including human rights work, according to some shaykhs, because human rights lawyers help people “escape the shariah”), no TV on and on. Some people stop with a few harams, and some people suffocate you with it. Some converts say “Fuck that” and walk out and no one ever remembers them, and some, for the sake of the god they love, their creator, their personal god, keep on going, trying to please him and make him love them, until the day they realize it can’t be done with Islam (or better, the day they realize he’s non-existent).
Aafia Siddiqui is one of the live-martyrs of the Islamist armchair jihobbyists. Yvonne Ridley, everyone’s favorite shrill hardcore convert, dubbed her the ‘grey lady of Bagram’ and insists, with a large chorus of fans, that Siddiqui was held at Bagram for four years, tortured and raped daily by those mean awful kafir Americans. It is no different than the fairy tales that are made up – or those stories which turn out to be somewhat true – about the treatment of any accused Islamist terrorist, except that she is a woman. And nothing offends the jihobbyist and Muslim masses more than when someone who isn’t a Muslim man is said to be mistreating a Muslim woman.
But at the Texas medical centre where the tests took place, Siddiqui refused to co-operate. “I can’t hear you. I’m not listening,” she told one doctor, sitting on the floor with her fingers in her ears. Others reported that she refused to speak with Jews, that she manipulated health workers and perceived herself to “be a martyr rather than a prisoner”. Last July three of four experts determined she was malingering – faking a psychiatric illness to avoid an undesirable outcome. “She is an intelligent and at times manipulative woman who showed goal-directed and rational thinking,” reported Dr Sally Johnson.
One US official has come right out and said the US did not have her in custody until last year, when she allegedly attempted to kill at least one American soldier. The more I have read about Siddiqui over the last year, the more I have come to think that she is probably exactly what the US government says she is: someone who provided material support and comfort to terrorists. The lady of al Qaida.
Siddiqui is no doubt a product of what many of us were subjected to in the late 80s and all through the 90s. Islam was intermingled with politics. Politics are religion, religion is politics. Being a woman, even in the segregated quarters, didn’t mean that this talk was kept from you. It was everywhere. Having the ‘right’ position on Kashmir is a religious obligation. Supporting the ‘right’ party in Palestine is wajib. Frequent discussions on who can and can’t be killed during jihad, on what you can and can’t burn down, on what you do with the slaves that you take. That sort of thing. And all through this time, in the masjids, on tapes, and the Islamic bookstores was jihad. Books, lectures, idle talk. Jihad, jihad. It’s still going on today. Sometimes it’s blatant, but mostly it’s gone quieter since 9/11, and since some of those who used to run their mouths got caught and put in jail for what the government rightly saw, I think, as providing support to terrorists or engaging in the planning stages of terrorism.
Muslims want it both ways, of course. To talk about jihad – and not the so-called ‘greater’ jihad of spiritual struggle, but the jihad of going after kafirs and winning glory for allah – and not be punished or held accountable for it. Jihad fisbilillah. To kill and die in his way. I know that Steve Emerson is basically a tool, but one of his earlier documentaries contains video footage of these traveling ’shaykhs’ in the US from the 1990s, visiting American masjids and in their own words, with their own voices, exhorting the Muslims to jihad. Tool though he is, that isn’t Emerson’s doing. That is the responsibility of the men who said it and the men who brought them here to indoctrinate people.
And women who engaged in jihad were glorified, even if Uncle Osama doesn’t think it’s right. Nusaybah binti Kab is one who remains in my mind. If only our hand could be chopped like hers was, on the battlefield in the service of the prophet. I remember being at a lecture hall once when one of the premiere ‘peaceful, moderate’ imams was speaking on this woman and he was crying at her greatness, and how fierce she was and more of a man than the men in the room that day. We can say that she fought in defense of her religion and her prophet, but it is still the glorification of taking up the sword and fighting for allah and suffering for allah. And it, in this case, it was certainly a goading of the men in the room. It was saying ‘That woman got up and took up the sword for allah while you sit here with soft, full bellies in your comfortable lives and don’t bother to take up the fight.’
Aafia Siddiqui came of age in these times, when Islamic charities were running around unchecked sending money to who knows where to support who knows what, and she was a part of it. Yet the same people who will go on about jihad fisibillah and its nobility and who are reluctant to condemn suicide bombings suddenly want all these people – Aafia, KSM, OBL – to be innocent. They’re all framed. They’re all set up. Someone’s doing all these crimes, but it isn’t Muslims, right? When a Muslim is arrested, every time it is a set up, a frame job. Evidence is demanded and when pre-trial evidence is disclosed, it’s not good enough for the armchair lawyers. Without proof of anything, state and federal agencies are accused of framing Muslims, hating Muslims, waging… jihad on Muslims. Every Muslim accused is innocent, every person affiliated with the government or the armed forces is guilty. And that is how some American Muslims excuse the massacre at Fort Hood and everything else that has happened in the name of allah against Americans. No evidence is offered that Aafia Siddiqui is the grey lady of Bagram – it is enough for Ridley to say it and for everyone else to run with it, the claims about this mysterious lady growing ever more hysterical and melodramatic. It reminds me of how a prominent Egyptian Islamist group – you know the one – took pornographic photographs of a woman and two men dressed like soldiers in some interesting positions and spread them around the Islamic internet as photographs of ‘American soldiers raping an Iraqi Muslim lady.’ The ’soldiers’ weren’t even wearing the right type of camo for Iraq; the woman was clearly enjoying herself and the photos typical of pornography. No evidence, and while the photos have been debunked, there are still Muslims today passing these pornographic, haram photos around and telling others “Look what the Americans are doing to our Muslim sisters.”
Is it a coincidence that some of the charities Siddiqui worked so passionately for ended up being on the list of designated terrorist organizations, affiliated with al Qaida? Maybe. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that she’s married to accused terrorist Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of the 9/11 mastermind KSM. What about all that paramilitary gear she and her first husband purchased before fleeing to Pakistan? Or the mailbox she opened for a suspected operative? Who knows. Maybe we’ll never know. But I know that I wouldn’t want Siddiqui living next door. Or worse, turned loose in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
From the New Humanism:
I call out, then, to artists, musicians, poets, dancers, playwrights and their fellows to begin to articulate a world free from religion, but anchored in considered, compassionate human values. Why not a secular songbook and “parables” in which doubt is honoured rather than vilified? Certainly, we do not wish to establish a “religion of unbelief,” but we can establish a community of nonbelievers, allied to certain central Humanist values and to the idea that we can face our problems together, free from Divine Intervention.
The twofold project of Humanism I have outlined here is important because the challenges we face as a species are great, and it seems uncertain that we will overcome them. Christopher Hitchens is fond of calling religion “the oldest enemy of our species”. It is a beautiful turn of phrase, and it is wrong. The oldest enemies of our species are far more mundane: pestilence, war, famine and death—the real “four horsemen.” All these require more than rejection of the supernatural if they are to be defeated; anyone following the genocide in Darfur, or who has been spooked by our recent close call with the H1N1 virus, knows that they are far from vanquished.
Humanists must begin to espouse, more convincingly than hitherto, a positive non-religious worldview. And we must do so in print, on stage, through music and on canvas. For while it is abundantly clear that organized religion has proved unable to meet these challenges, it is also clear that the Humanist movement cannot thrive on denial of God alone. We need to say what we stand for, as well as what we struggle against. We must do so in ways that go beyond political manoeuvring—ways that speak to the human need for the inspirational, the meaningful, and the beautiful. We must, in short, become storytellers.
So says Fethullah Gulen, that Turkish dude that is portrayed as moderate, tolerant, western-friendly, etc.
Fethullah Gülen, a very prominent Turkish religious leader, writes, in the first paragraph of his chapter, that “In Islam, killing a human is an act that is equal in gravity to unbelief.” Which presumably also means that unbelief is equal in gravity to murder. Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding, his last paragraph states that
Ibn Abbas said that a murderer will stay in Hell for all eternity. This is the same punishment that is assigned to unbelievers. This means that a murderer is subjected to the same punishment as an unbeliever. In short, in Islam, in terms of the punishment to be dealt on the Day of Judgment, a murderer will be considered to be as low as someone who has rejected God and the Prophet (an atheist in other words).
He says these things in a book that is geared towards Muslims, to convince them that killing people in terror acts is wrong. In other words, if you kill someone, you will be as bad as an ATHEIST.
Again, a man promoted by many Muslims as moderate, tolerant, educated, progressive, and western friendly is equating people who engage in acts of terror and murder innocent civilians to people who don’t believe in god. What’s funny is the way it’s worded – he knows that his audience has already been taught that atheists are evil. Now he has to convince them that murder is bad too. It’s the evil of murder they need to be convinced of, in Gulen’s mind. Inspiring, isn’t it?
I know that in sunni fiqh, taqiya is not really practised. It isn’t talked about so much and it’s discouraged unless someone’s about to kill you or something which is, in my understanding, how it’s supposed to be done with shia as well. But the more and more you see the difference between what Muslims say to non-Muslim audiences and what they say to Muslim ones, or the difference between what they tell you Islam is and what they do, it’s no wonder that all the hardcore haters claim that taqiya is a central tenet of dawah and social relationships.
An interesting article about people in England who defend Anwar Awlaki or claim he is something that he’s not (ie, someone who isn’t pro-jihadi).
In this interview with a representative of the WaPo, Awlaki claims he was a confidante of Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood mass murderer.
There is also t his interesting post that’s mainly as a response to Scottish MP candidate and blogger Osama Saeed and his defense of Awlaki that gives some interesting insights into Awlaki and Yusuf Qaradawi.
People might start ditching their support for Awlaki now – at least publicly – but Qaradawi is still considered by many English speaking Muslims, particularly the Arabs and those over whom they have influence, to be moderate and many honestly can’t figure why on earth the US and the UK try to keep him from entering their countries.
