Posted on 12/03/2004 3:03:59 PM PST by kupia_kummi
Muslims in Norway were organizing a torchlit parade through downtown Oslo this weekend, to decry violence and terrorism and distance themselves from Islamic fundamentalism. Top Norwegian political leaders, including the prime minister, were joining in.
March organizers were hoping for a big turnout, and welcomed the participation of non-Muslims as well. The leaders of Norway's major political parties and top government leaders said they would join the march and several were invited to speak during Saturday's event.
The march was to begin at the square in front of Oslo's central train station at 4:30pm, and proceed up Karl Johans Gate to the Parliament. Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was among those scheduled to speak to the crowd, along with Justice Minister Odd Einar Dørum, Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) journalist Norman Mubashir and Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenberg.
A key group of local Muslim religious leaders said Friday they were encouraging all Muslims to participate. The more liberal among them already have protested violence, terror and killings in the name of religion.
The march, initiated by NRK's Mubashir, comes largely in response to the recent killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. Van Gogh's murder struck a chord all over Europe, and led to a TV debate in Norway in which the spokesman for Norway's Islamic Council raised doubts about how many Muslims opposed the killing. Another Muslim leader, Awais Mushtaq, later said he understood why an Islamic fundamentalist carried it out.
(Excerpt) Read more at aftenposten.no ...
What bin Laden is trying to do, IMHO, is to establish that central organization, in the case of Islam, a Caliphate.
How would someone like Usama bin Laden do that?
Well, he could instigate a world-wide conflict between the west and Muslims in general to make it appear as if the west was at war with Islam, which would compel the adherents to defend their religion.
Sound familiar?
The most effective way to combat Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is to separate it from the religion, and marginalize it.
You are wrong. THEY are using the same weapon that communist left has used for a long time. It is called media manipulation.
Concrete actions will speak louder than words. If they turn in their terrorist co-religionists, actively support the WOT and assimilate into Norwegian society it will be the proof in the pudding instead of mouthing the right words for the parade and TV cameras.
Personally, I'm not holding my breath. There is little to support such a contrary view in 14 centuries of bloody Muslim history. But, it is perhaps a small start. Small.
Well, I'm not psychologist, but I'm inclined to believe that the kind of religious zealotry that we've witnessed from Islamic extremists has a whole lot more to do with the environment, than with their parental relationships.
Here's a quote from John Lewis Gaddis that I found quite enlightening:
"The final innovation in the Bush strategy deals with the longer-term issue of removing the causes of terrorism and tyranny. Here, again, the president's thinking parallels an emerging consensus within the academic community. For it's becoming clear now that poverty wasn't what caused a group of middle-class and reasonably well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes into buildings and another into the ground. It was, rather, resentments growing out of the absence of representative institutions in their own societies, so that the only outlet for political dissidence was religious fanaticism." -- A Grand Strategy of Transformation
Take a look at this: http://egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=2478
Yeah, all twenty of them showed up.
These moslems are protesting their own koranic scriptures.
I wouldn't believe the sincerety of their grandstanding for an instant!
I will be satisfied when 99% of them march to protest violence.
Will you hold the pro-life community to the same standard?
They will have zero credibility until 99% of them hit the streets?
Or better yet, why don't we just disqualify the entire movement?
While they call abortion murder and a holocaust, they allow it to happen one million times a year right under their collective noses, without doing anything about it.
Your game is easy to play; just set unattainable standards, then discredit everyone...specially the ones who actually tried.
Personally, I think the real cure is a Middle East Wide free trade zone.
Don't blame you for being skeptical, but I'm encouraged by this - I feel in my gut that the way this conflict is going to end is by shining so much light on the atrocities and the medieval stands of radical islam that they will be so marginalized by their own that they will eventually fade into the dustbin of history - ala KKK.
bttt
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