Islamic truths

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ijaz18feb18,0,6492979.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

February 18, 2006 Islamic truths

By Mansoor Ijaz, MANSOOR IJAZ is an American Muslim of Pakistani ancestry.


ANOTHER WEEK, another Muslim country burns in rage over months-old Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in an unflattering light. On Friday it was Libya, and earlier in the week it was my father's homeland, Pakistan, where violent protests were scattered across the nation. Some Muslims have decided that burning cities in defense of a prophet's teachings, which none of them seem willing to practice, is preferable to participating in rational debate about the myths and realities of a religion whose worst enemies are increasingly its own adherents.

This week's events should compel those of us who claim Islam as our system of philosophical guidance to ask hard questions of ourselves in order to revive the religion's essential foundation: justice, peaceful and tolerant coexistence, compassion, the search for knowledge and unwavering faith in the unity of God.



I am an American by birth and a Muslim by faith. For many of my American friends, I am a voice of reason in a sea of Islamist darkness, while many Muslims have called me an "Uncle Tom" for ingratiating myself with the vested interests they seek to destroy through their violence. Mostly, though, I try not to ignore the harsh realities the followers of my religion are often unwilling to face.

The first truth is that most Muslim ideologues are hypocrites. What has Osama bin Laden done for the victims of the 2004 tsunami or the shattered families who lost everything in the Pakistani earthquake last year? He did not build one school, offer one loaf of bread or pay for one vaccination. And yet he, not the devout Muslim doctors from California and Iowa who repair broken limbs and lives in the snowy peaks of Kashmir, speaks the loudest for what Muslims allegedly stand for. He has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam's poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank.
snip

started the "Sudan offered to turn Bin Laden over to Clinton, but Clinton refused" rumor?

On edit: Yeah, it's him! I knew I recognized the name.


From Fair.org

Ijaz came into heavy rotation as a Fox guest after charging in the Los Angeles Times (12/5/01) that President Bill Clinton blew a chance to capture Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. Ijaz claims to have brokered a deal in which Sudan would have produced Osama bin Laden in exchange for the lifting of sanctions on the African country—a deal Ijaz says Clinton failed to act on.

It was a questionable claim—in fact, the September 11 Commission later found no "reliable evidence" to support it (Hearing 8, 3/23/04)—and other news outlets noted that the Clinton administration flatly denied the allegations. Salon.com reported (8/16/02) that "the Clinton administration says there was no deal and that Ijaz never had a role in diplomatic discussions," and quoted Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger calling Ijaz’s claims "ludicrous and irresponsible." Even Clinton critic Richard Miniter, in his book Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror, saw fit to include a Clinton official's assessment of Ijaz as "a Walter Mitty living out a personal fantasy." But when Ijaz repeated his Clinton-let-Bin-Laden-get-away story on Special Report (11/6/03), Hume simply ended the segment, "Got you. Mansoor Ijaz, great to have you. Thanks very much."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1187

or if the other writer is a relative or this can be a common name? In any case, as to the other article you linked, I think this writer in this article I posted is still valid here for his comments, his point of view, etc. (that is an interesting story, though, on Sudan/bin Laden)

but the name rang a bell with me. :-)

I recall only vaguely on that Sudan story.

A right wing paper stirs up shit with the cartoon, and now a right wing PR shill criticize Muslims for being stirred up.

This is likely part of the build up to the three minute hate so people will thank Bush when he bombs Iran.

for Mansoor Ijaz, and others like him, to go to their fathers' homeland and speak to the masses!

willing to hear what he has to say now.

It is not God we need to fear, it is our interpretation of God's will that is scary.
We create our own cesspool. If we choose to swim in it, that is on us.

By Mansoor Ijaz, MANSOOR IJAZ is an American Muslim of Pakistani ancestry.

ANOTHER WEEK, another Muslim country burns in rage over months-old Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in an unflattering light. On Friday it was Libya, and earlier in the week it was my father's homeland, Pakistan, where violent protests were scattered across the nation. Some Muslims have decided that burning cities in defense of a prophet's teachings, which none of them seem willing to practice, is preferable to participating in rational debate about the myths and realities of a religion whose worst enemies are increasingly its own adherents.

This week's events should compel those of us who claim Islam as our system of philosophical guidance to ask hard questions of ourselves in order to revive the religion's essential foundation: justice, peaceful and tolerant coexistence, compassion, the search for knowledge and unwavering faith in the unity of God.

I am an American by birth and a Muslim by faith. For many of my American friends, I am a voice of reason in a sea of Islamist darkness, while many Muslims have called me an "Uncle Tom" for ingratiating myself with the vested interests they seek to destroy through their violence. Mostly, though, I try not to ignore the harsh realities the followers of my religion are often unwilling to face.

The first truth is that most Muslim ideologues are hypocrites. What has Osama bin Laden done for the victims of the 2004 tsunami or the shattered families who lost everything in the Pakistani earthquake last year? He did not build one school, offer one loaf of bread or pay for one vaccination. And yet he, not the devout Muslim doctors from California and Iowa who repair broken limbs and lives in the snowy peaks of Kashmir, speaks the loudest for what Muslims allegedly stand for. He has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam's poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank.

The hypocrisy only starts there. Muslims and Arabs have done pitifully little to help improve the capacity of the Palestinian people to be good neighbors to their Israeli brethren. Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. Yet rather than educate and feed Palestinian and Muslim children so they may learn to settle differences through dialogue and debate, instead of by throwing rocks and wearing bombs, the Muslim "haves" put on a few telethons to raise paltry sums for the "have nots" to alleviate the guilt over their palatial gilded cages.

The second truth — one that the West needs to come to grips with — is that there is no such human persona as a "moderate Muslim." You either believe in the oneness of God or you don't. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don't. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn't live there.

snip

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ijaz18feb18,0,6492979.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Excellent article.

Something that is rarely mentioned in this debate is how "the enemy" is not just the west, but frequently from within the ranks. Case in point, "Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. This perfectly illustrates how the powerful within Muslim societies seek to keep the masses focused on the "harms" done to them by western "blasphemers" when the real day to day issues of having enough food to eat, having roofs over their heads and access to healthcare and education go by the wayside in favor of keeping the masses roiled against western democratic societies.

think the same way.:bounce:

kicked and recommended

doesn't have a monopoly on hypocrisy.

Now if only the Christian fundies could think like this.

hungry for information, education and friendship. I cant say that for the Arabs in that particular area..which was essentially a tribal area, they were not overtly intolerant, other than some groups of them flipping out if you contaminated their soul by sharing 3 or 4 inside walls with them. they refused to sit on western furniture and only sat on animal skins..

i was terrified and manic for weeks when i heard that our Wet Brain Alcoholic Brain Damaged Drug Addict Sociopath pResident was going to invade an Islamic country.. for the first time i agreed with my Fundie brother that this was the end times.

i feared that the purposefully uneducated masses would be whipped into a mob mentality by the religious leaders and surprised that this hasn't happened sooner to a greater degree. i figured the oil would be cut off by every arab country within a week of the invasion...

what i perceived in north west africa was a system of Mosques that controlled the area by providing necessities and controlling the economy, and limiting the education to islamic school, if anyone crossed the will of the leaders they could be banished, maybe their families sold into slavery.. they stoled the Moorish children and sold them in open slave markets right on the street.. 6 and 8 year old boys and girls for $35 dollars. banishment could be fatal when neighborhoods were tribal. i also see the different fundamental Christian groups here as tribal groups, and that it is only the institution of ass rape in the prison system that keeps them in check.

i try to keep an open mind, but my experience of wading through dead bodies of those that starved during the night and the gut wrenching poverty, lepers who were a festering anatomy lessons... and the social elite in contrast...

it forever changed me.. i have not faith that islam will ever reform itself. there are too many back doors to hell written into the Koran. the 'Moderates' referred to, see the justifications for killing infidels and the Jihad intolerance for what it is.. but in the greater picture of the established control of teaching and education.. i dont see how the moderates can survive.. or in times of crisis have a voice

please understand that i still suffer from PTSD from my experiences there,.. the lack of the use of reason, and that scared me ALOT. i didn't feel my life was worth wiping their but with, it was only because i represented a source of money and my demise would reap the wrath of the leaders that profited from the wealth of the organization i worked for.

once i got lost in chicago and wandered into a Black Muslim neighborhood.. i didn't have any problems but i knew i was followed by hundreds of people phoning ahead to keep track of me.. i asked for help but no one replied to me.. just stony emotionless faces... i was really impress how clean the neighborhood was.

i am sorry if i appear so cynical.., it is not that i have lost my faith in mankind, i am just surprised things are not very much worse than they are now. and our leadership is determined to drive us into a new dark age

if i am wrong i will be happy about that.. but i definately see a great potential for a mob mentally even if some of the mob dont want to be there.. they wont have a choice

oil workers have been taken hostage; apparently attacks on oil facilities are becoming common.

And, in the wake of the cartoon riots, the Christian community has now retaliated.

Mob mentality was at least partially responsible, I think, for the worst excesses of the Nazis. I think, as you say, it's terribly dangerous regardless of who is doing it.

The potential for damage is enormous. I just wish I had a clue how to help fix things.

Per DU rules, please limit your article to 4 paragraphs

Thank you
terrya
DU Moderator

where the Beloved Prophet (pbuh) said that the threat to Islam would come from within its ranks. My husband, who is more into reading hadiths, says that it also alludes to the part of Saudi Arabia where Wahhabism started as the place from where the trouble would come.

One of the five pillars of Islam is to be charitable to those less fortunate. My brother makes a very valid point that the oil wealth has not been used to help these. And Saudi money has gone to fund schools that spread their brand of Islam, which to my mind resembles Islam about as much as Pat Robertson's brand of Christianity resembles that faith.

As to an American Muslim going to Pakistan to change things-even if his father is Pakistani, this fellow is not, and I think he would make about as much headway with the militants as any American would, and possibly less, as the fundamentalists may regard him as an infidel.

The point about the Muslim doctors leaving their American practices to help in Kashmir was covered on PBS once. I know that they were there more than a day; I daresay they are still there. But good works like this aren't "news" in MSM, which is trying to carefully shape our view of the world.

something I remember reading. A quote of the Prophet along the lines of "there will be a curse on my people and that curse will be wealth".

Wealth indeed is a great responsibility, and if not handled correctly, it is indeed a curse.

left many in the Middle East, practically destitute.

Syria, for example, has a per capita income of something more than $4K/year. I don't know what would happen to Egypt without US support.

Beyond that, I know from personal experience, it has embittered many people.

I'm a Middle Eastern dancer, getting long in the tooth now:) But back in the day when I was performing for a living, my troupe and I had a club date in a neighboring state, for a group of Kuwaitis.

My musicians took one look at the obviously well-to-do audience and refused to play (they were Jordanian and Palestinian). They complained that the Kuwaitis were rich as kings and yet, shared none of the their wealth with others who were poor and without resources. Finally, the oud player and I managed to get everybody on stage by promising to give up our own fees and share them, so at least we could put on the show.

Sadly I don't think a great deal has changed since then and that was in the early 1980's. In fact, if anything the problems have become much more acute and are now expressing themselves in some radical and dangerous forms.

IMO, a great deal of the political problems in Africa and the Middle East, stem from poverty and lack of opportunity. Of course that's a problem here in the States as well. We could all learn from this crisis.

I can't help but feel that the path forward lies in our simple humanity, if only we could extend a helping hand and stop trying to hang on to all our stuff.

Isn't life itself more important?

that's the punchline isn't it, just like the punchline to 9/11 was we need to kill a lot of Iraqis to teach them not to be terrorists (even though they didn't attack us in the first place)?