Gunmen Kill Member of Sunni Clerics' Group

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen on Monday assassinated a member of an influential Sunni clerics' group that has called for a boycott of national elections, just a day after Iraqi officials announced the balloting would be held Jan. 30 in spite of rising violence in Iraq (news - web sites).

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces recovered 12 bodies, including five decapitated ones, from an area south of Baghdad, police said Monday. One was identified as a member of the Iraqi National Guard. The bodies were found during a raid Sunday in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Lt. Adnan Abdullah.

Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, was shot by gunmen at his home in northern Mosul — a sign of the continuing violence that wracks the country.

The slaying could further alienate Iraq's Sunni Arab minority ahead of the Jan. 30 election. The association is already calling for a boycott of the vote, and if many Sunni heed its call, the legitimacy of the election could be deeply undermined.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said his government was determined to hold the election as scheduled. He described those calling for a boycott as "the eventual losers" and "a small minority."

"The forces of darkness and terrorism will not benefit from this democratic experience and will fight it," Allawi said. "But we are determined that this experiment succeeds."

The vote for the 275-member National Assembly will be Iraq's first election since Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s fall and is seen as a major step toward building democracy.

But the ongoing violence, which escalated this month with the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah, has also raised concerns that balloting could be nearly a practical impossibility in insurgency-torn regions. Iraqi authorities insist ballots will be cast even in volatile areas — including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the Sunni Triangle.

Twenty nations, including Iraq's neighbors and Western and Arab countries, gathered in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheik for a conference aimed at showing support for Iraq.

The delegates intended to call on Allawi's government to reach out to its opponents to encourage broad participation in the election. According to a draft of the conference's final statement, they were also to underline their condemnation of "terrorism" in Iraq — a boost to Allawi's and the U.S. military's crackdown on insurgents.

In a gesture to Sunnis, Allawi on Monday ordered an inquiry into a raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces on Baghdad's Abu Hanifa mosque, one of the holiest Sunni shrines in Iraq. The raid just after Friday prayers left three people dead and enraged many Sunnis.

It also brought a condemnation from Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, conferred Sunday with Sunni officials on several issues, including the Abu Hanifa raid. Allawi told them that "although there had been reports of terrorist activity around the mosque, mistakes appeared to have been made and that he had ordered a full investigation," a statement by Allawi's office said.

Allawi's government has warned that Sunni clerics who incite violence will be considered as "participating in terrorism." Some already have been arrested.

Elsewhere Monday, a U.S. patrol that came under attack returned fire, killing two attackers in Hawija, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, according to witnesses. The U.S. military had no immediate confirmation.

The military said Monday a U.S. soldier died after he was wounded in an attack the night before in Baghdad. At least 1,222 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count.

The former police chief of the northern city of Mosul was arrested after allegations that his force allowed insurgents to take over police stations during this month's uprising, Deputy Gov. Khasro Gouran said Monday.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi was arrested Sunday by Kurdish militia in northern Irbil, where he fled after he was fired in the wake of the uprising

A rocket slammed into a residential district in the center of Baghdad on Monday, injuring five people including a child, witnesses said. The blast sent a giant cloud of black smoke rising over the eastern side of the Tigris River.

U.S. and Iraqi troops have been clearing the last of the resistance from Fallujah, the main rebel bastion stormed Nov. 8 in hopes of breaking the back of the insurgency before the election.

"We went to Fallujah and we broke their back," he told AP. "We found enough weapons there to destroy an entire country."

In Fallujah, Marine Maj. Jim West said Sunday that U.S. troops have found nearly 20 "atrocity sites" where insurgents imprisoned, tortured and murdered hostages. West said troops found rooms containing knives and black hoods, "many of them blood-covered."

The storming of Fallujah has heightened tensions throughout Sunni Arab areas, triggering a surge of clashes in Mosul, Beiji, Samarra, Ramadi and elsewhere.

The government's announcement Sunday that elections were set for Jan. 30 reflected Iraqi and U.S. determination to hold the vote despite the persistent violence.

Iraq's Shiites, believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's nearly 26 million people, have been clamoring for an election, and voting is expected to go smoothly in northern areas ruled by the Kurds. But Sunni Arabs, estimated at about 20 percent of the population, fear domination by the Shiites.

During the January election, Iraqis will choose a National Assembly to draft a new constitution. If it's ratified, another election will be held in December 2005. Voters will also select 18 provincial councils and in Kurdish-ruled areas a regional assembly.

An eastern Indian's perspective -

link at islamreview.org

Anwar Shaikh reviews P. N. Oak's book:

Islamic Havoc in India

This book, containing 387 pages deals with the atrocities of the Muslim rule in India, right from the first invaders to the last perpetrators, who could have qualified as Indians had they shown an iota of respect to the land where they were born, grew up and died. They inflicted disgrace, death and devastation on India in return for the glory, grandeur and greatness that she had bestowed upon them. This ingratitude of the Muslim rulers has ruffled Purushottam Nagesh Oak, the author, whose patriotic instincts have responded to the foreign tyranny without any regard to the repercussions that the bold narrative of this book may have upon him.

P.N. Oak was born on March 2, 1917,. He is a scion of the Maharashtrian Brahmin family. Not only a scholar in the Brahmanical tradition, but he is also endowed with the Kshatriya spirit for having played an active role in the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army). so keen is his passion for history that he has set up the Institution For Re-Writing World History. He is its Founder-President. Mr. Oak is known for his plain speaking, which earned him wrath of the authorities. He was tried on the charge of using "harsh" language when he called the Muslim raiders as the "Muslim Monsters" but was honorably acquitted.

Having dealt with the Muslim atrocities, Mr. Oak in the Post Script, has asked the fellow-patriots to expose the tyrannical conduct of the Muslim rulers.

While I am not averse to this suggestion, I think that such an exposure will be more fruitful if its scope is extended. Therefore, I may divide the discussion into three headings:

1. Why did the Muslim suzerains make plunder and rape the guiding principle of their rule?

2. Why did the Muslim rulers succeed in displaying their atrocious conduct with such a baffling impunity?

3. What is the legacy of the Muslim rule to the Indian subcontinent i.e. Bharat, Pakistan and Bangladesh?

1. Islam, in fact, is an expression of Muhammadanism, which
a. seeks to glorify the person of Mohammed, whose stature towers over God (Allah) Himself, and

b. which represents the Prophet's patriotism as the Arab National Movement.

In several articles, I have explained the fact: "a" by quoting chapter and verse from the Koran as well as the relevant hadiths. Is it not strange that in every religion, it is man, who supplicates God but in Islam, it is Allah and His angels, who pray salutations to Mohammed? Is it not baffling to note that on the Day of Judgment, Mohammed will occupy the right hand side of the Throne of Justice with Allah, and it is his word which will decide whether a person will go to heaven or hell? Again, is it not stunning that a person cannot become a Muslim just by having faith in Allah, but remains a Kafir (infidel) until he also confesses to believe in Mohammed. Obviously, Islam has less to do with Allah, and more with Mohammed. This is what makes Islam Muhammadanism, removing its religious veneer.

Having written a book: Islam, The Arab National Movement to illustrate the "b," I hardly need go into details here but may add briefly that the Prophet Mohammed adopted Moses as the Model, and raised Arabia over the rest of the world in Divine esteem and honor. He realized that only a strong Arab nation could fight for his name and enforce his holiness in the globe. This is why he founded the Arab Empire.

The Spiritual yoke of Muhammadanism needed the strength of a secular Empire, which required a highly efficient fighting force, but people do not kill their fellow-men without a compelling inducement, especially when they have done them no wrong. For this purpose, the Prophet Mohammed coined the concept of Jihad which states that "Allah has bought the lives of Muslims in return for the reward of paradise, because "they kill and get killed for Him." Just look at the inducement: if a Muslim is killed while fighting for Allah (Jihad), he goes to paradise, the highest place for sexual merriment and economic affluence. If he survives, he becomes entitled to plunder, which includes, not only the wealth and property of the vanquished, but also their women, and he can legitimately seduce them at will. As this is an unusual statement, I may provide some quotations from the Koran to satisfy the skeptics:

"Eat of what you have taken as booty; this is lawful and good " (The Spoils VIII: 70)
One must realize that Islam is the only religion, which holds that murdering innocent people, plundering their property, enslaving their children and seducing their women is legitimate and good. This gives evil the status of good, and the lure of such a philosophy provides a tremendous incitement especially when the fighter fares better if he gets killed because doors of paradise are opened for him eagerly
For hoisting Muhammadanism over the head of humanity, the lure, lust and lactation of Jihad (fighting for Allah), has been made endless:

"Fight such people as practice not the religion of truth until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled." (Repentance: IX: 25)
Here, Islam has been portrayed as "the religion of truth," thus declaring all other faiths, false, fallacious and facinorous; their followers have been subjected to a perpetual Shad seeking their subjugation and payment of tribute as a symbol of inferiority unless they accept Islam to adore Mohammed like Allah and His angels.
From these introductory explanations, one can see why the foreign predators played havoc with the Indian society. It is simply an article of faith for a Muslim to molest the non-Muslim. However, this conviction, as the wheel of time rolled on, lost its luster and was imbued with the gloss, glow and glitter of manipulation, alien to the purpose of Islam, and became representative of personal ambitions. The reason for this attitude is also astonishing.

Shedding blood of a Muslim by a fellow Muslim is a heinous crime in Islam. After passage of several centuries, many of the wealthy countries had come to be ruled by the Muslim princes, and therefore, the more ambitious Muslim rulers could not multiply their wealth and prestige without invading the fellow-Muslims. Therefore, they concocted excuses to treat their intended victims as Kafirs i.e. non-Muslims, so that they could march against them as the Holy Crusaders. Take for example, Amir Timur, considered as the saintly ruler of Islam by the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. He started raiding the Muslim rulers on the pretext that they were quasi-Muslims for lacking the true Koranic spirit. At sixty-two, he invaded India in 1398. This Barlas Turk was a sincere Muslim, and the lust of booty, which has been the major cause of motivation to the followers of Islam right from its early days, had the same effect on him what steam has on a locomotive engine. He had set up a Booty Department at Samarqand, his capital, which he strived to keep full by plundering the rulers of his time. who was who did not worry him, nor was he bothered by the consequences of his actions on history as long as his raids secured him sufficient booty.

At that time, India was governed by the Tughluq dynasty, which was in disarray owing to the succession-dispute. Both the Muslims and the Hindus (Rajputs) united to fight this formidable conqueror of history but were deciminated by him at Bhatnagar. He reached Delhi in mid-December; he defeated the army of Sultan Mahmud and sacked the city with professional thoroughness. Before the battle began, he slaughtered the 100,000 prisoners, both Hindu and Muslim that he had captured before reaching the city. On his return, he took with him thousands of horses laden with the Indian gold, diamonds, rubies and precious merchandise. Among these carriers of plunder were eight hundred elephants, which carried green marble to build Jamia Masjid at Samarqand. One wonders what kind of God approves of His worship-house built with stolen goods! Among the plunder were several thousand screaming Indian virgins, physicians and artists of various kinds.

Timur dealt a severe blow to the Muslim ruling dynasty of India but there were no Hindus to make the most of this opportunity to reinstate their lost glory. On the contrary, when he defeated the Ottoman sultan Bayezid at Angora in 1402, the Ottoman Turks rose from their ashes like a phoenix and rebuilt their empire in the Eastern Europe.

Why is it that the Hindus failed to retrieve their honorable past but the Turks rose again to build a stupendous future for themselves? The straight answer lies in their respective beliefs. The Turks believed in Jihad, the will to fight, but the Hindus believed in Ahimsa, the will to flight. The truth is that survival depends upon both fight and flight. The animal that seeks flight as the only way of staying alive becomes what a sheep is to a wolf or a sparrow is to a hawk. This world is full of wolves and hawks and they seem to have the divine license to molest, mortify and mutilate the sheep and sparrows. This is what brings us to discuss the second point of this review i.e. why did the Muslim rulers succeed in displaying their atrocious conduct with such a baffling impunity?

2. Hawk is the Vedic bird, which must have formed part of the national Indian flag in the ancient Vedic times. The people, who label themselves as Hindus, have relinquished their hawkish way of life as dictated by the Vedas and have adopted the demeanor of a sparrow. This being the truth, they do not deserve the social majesty that is the prerogative of a hawk, due to his heroic manners.

Instead of acknowledging the truth that they have flouted the Vedic doctrine of heroic life, which expects of its devotees to resist torture, torment and tyranny to uphold the cause of joy, justice and joviality, they blame Buddhism for preaching the doctrine of Ahimsa. Quite openly, the Indian history declares that Hinduism drove Buddhism out of India. With it, should have gone out Ahimsa i.e. non violence, but it did not. The truth is that the Emperor Asoka held the largest empire of the day; it extended over Afghanistan and almost entire India. His rule was dignified and philanthropic. Since nobody ever dared attack his dominions, and he died as a highly successful ruler, he certainly did not believe in the type of Ahimsa as the Hindus do. His principle of Ahimsa meant non-aggression against peaceful neighboring countries and an honorable individual conduct free from the pollution of pusillanimity, culminating in Dharma, which meant a practical life of piety, purity and probity. Asoka's Ahimsa represented non- aggression and not cowardice, which has become the Hindu way of life. This is what this great Indian Emperor called Dharma - piety in personal life, justice in public life and fairness in secular affairs. Frankly speaking, I ought to add that the modern Hindus use the word: Dharma to fool fellow-Hindus for personal gains through a conduct of cowardice and hypocrisy peculiar to themselves.

The nations that have accepted Buddhism, are one of the bravest today, to maintain their martial spirit, the Japanese developed ju-jitsue, a system of bare-handed fighting and the Koreans developed high karate kicks, whereas the Hindus invented feet- touching, and incorporated their Vedic martial postures in dancing!

The truth is that it is the Hindus who first perfected civilization and then spread it in the east and west. The ethos of their culture was essentially martial Not only the Vedic gods and warriors but the Vedic goddesses are also eager fighters. Even Agni, the Vedic priest, "the Son of Strength, " is a keen combatant. The major feature of the Vedic deities is that they themselves take part in the major battles and their devotees solicit their help to fight their enemies. No matter, what the situation, whenever, the forces of vice, virulence and viciousness threatened the good, great and godly, out came the Vedic sword to crush and cremate the wrong doers. It is a law of nature that what goes up, must come down. This is what has happened to the Hindu nation. Affluence and ease mellowed their character; we see in the battle of Kurukshetra that Lord Krishna, the God-incarnate, does not fight himself but acts as a coachman and persuades someone else (Arjuna) to lead the fight. Krishna performs here the priestly role of giving the sermon but does not take part in the battle like the Vedic gods! It demonstrates a marked fall in the Hindu military fervor. As the wheel of history rolls on into the 20th century, there emerges another "god" known as Mahatma Gandhi, who exhibits the total collapse of the Hindus, who refuse to fight even for the honor and integrity of their Motherland and agree to the Partition!

It is this Ahimsa, the total addiction to cowardice that the Hindus enjoy under the shameful cover of Dharma that enables the foreign predators to display their atrocious conduct with complete impunity. Should not the Hindus share a part of this disgrace? It is natural for the robber to rob but the person who gives in without defending his possessions, in fact, is guilty of aiding and abetting the robber.

3. Finally, we come to discuss the legacy of the Muslim rule in India.

Frankly speaking, I ought to say that the legacy is the complete realization of the Arabic national dream which seeks to impose the Arab Cultural Imperialism on other nations through a subtle stratagem of divide and rule in the guise of religion. By splitting humanity into Momins (the Muslims) and Kafirs (the non- Muslims), Islam has set father against son and brother against brother, so that they should forget the significance of blood ties, human values and moral standards, and kill one another to enjoy the hallucinations of paradise. This is not an emotional mumbo-jumbo. Look, how Islam has created the most dreadful hatred among the Indian brethren who zealously murdered one another in 1947 to partition their own Motherland for the glory of the Arabian culture. Those who have embraced Islam, believe that the fellow Indians are totally alien to them; India is not their Motherland but a battlefield, which justifies mischief, malevolence and misbehavior. These people are Indian through and through, and this fact is vouched for by their blood, language, culture, land of birth, customs, traditions, color and even temperament. Instead, they believe that they share nationality with the Arabs, Egyptians, Iranians, and so on! This is certainly the height of brainwashing; only the most seductive concept of Islam, which offers unlimited sexual merriment in paradise, could perform this miracle.

The destructive influence of Islam has become the social bane of Bharat, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In India, the Muslims are deadly opposed to a unified Civil Code; in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Muslims demand the introduction of the Islamic Law, which is totally impracticable in modern age. The result is social unrest, slowly leading to anarchy.

The truth is that owing to their unsocial and divisive tendencies, the Muslims all over the world, have lost the ability to live peacefully, not only with the non-Muslims, but also among themselves as a result of the sectarian hatred. The Sunni-Shia divide testifies to this fact.

India was once a peaceful, prosperous and powerful country, but with the arrival of Islam it has been sinking lower and deeper everyday. As things are, nationalism - a healthy nationalism as opposed to racism, seems to be the only remedy which can save countries of the Indian subcontinent by resuscitating the feeling of brotherhood. Another essential step for the Hindus is to discard the most disgraceful garb of Ahimsa and return to their ancestral military values as dictated by the Vedas.

Mr. Oak has rendered a considerable service by reminding the country of the depression, degradation and destruction that she has suffered at the hands of the Muslim rulers, who could have enjoyed a place of honor in the Indian history by associating themselves with India, its culture and traditions.

Islamic Havoc in India
by P. N. Oak is published by
A. Ghosh Publisher,
5740 W. Little York,
Houston, Texas 77091

Yes, but following the Van Gogh example you must admit that it is as least possible that mental illness does not automatically preclude artistic genius or divine inspiration.

At the Phoenix Zoo, there was an elephant named Ruby. Actually, she may still be there, but I think she's passed on, so I'll speak of her in the past tense. Ruby was considered a very special and gifted elephant. Ruby could do something the other elephants couldn't do. Ruby could paint. Her paintings had a distinctive style, were aesthetically pleasing, and fetched a high price.

Vincent Van Gogh made a distinctive contribution to art with his impressionistic style. Aside, it is interesting to note that a particular brain disfunction affects vision in such a way that everything looks sort of like a Van Gogh painting, so it is possible that he was just painting what he saw... apologies that I don't have details on this, I read of it many years ago in an exhibit of his work and found it fascinating.

For some reason, the art world often seems to favor the work of the mentally disturbed. Perhaps because, like Van Gogh's impressionism in a classical era, it is different and difficult to understand. Perhaps the mere mental exercise of trying to understand the disturbed artist's state of mind through his work is appealing, or at least memorable.

I really don't think the same standard can be said to apply to philosophy or "divine inspiration." Granted, there is at least a common-sense appeal to the notion that some folks in the past were misunderstood or misdiagnosed when perhaps they were brilliant and light years ahead of their time in some way. But that doesn't seem to be what these other fellows are talking about.

I'd like to hear the other side of this discussion, if there is another side to be presented. Apes, Fred, and David have posted some serious content here, which I plan to read more closely. I haven't seen the same level of discourse from your side, mostly just some "personal zots" and some wishes you've expressed for "moderate Muslims" to step up and speak out. You say here that you will make your own evaluation based on your own research. Will you share that research here? I've seen many specific, compelling statements and arguments against Islam, but not much that is specific for Islam.

The "kill 'em all" approach obviously is not appropriate, any more than genocide against Jews was appropriate during WWII or is appropriate now in Israel. Glancing back over this thread, though, I'm not sure I see anyone seriously discussing that as a serious option. Mostly I see messages from you accusing the other posters of wanting to kill all Muslims because they were pleased that this particular extremist cleric had been killed and they hoped that similar fates awaited others who've been inciting violence against Coalition forces and Iraqi civilians. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. Setting aside this line of argument against them, do you have any sources to counter their arguments against Islam?

The Muslims I've encountered in the workplace certainly didn't seem like homicidal wack-jobs to me, but that does seem to be the dominant faction in the Middle East at this time. When we read that Muslim clerics are condoning the brutal murder of innocents and the use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians, and there is little to no moderation from other factions of Islam worldwide, how do we not draw the conclusion that abhorrent violence is in fact the heart and soul of Islam?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.