Posted on 06/04/2006 4:57:00 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
slam not violent, Toronto Muslims say Last Updated Sun, 04 Jun 2006 19:13:53 EDT CBC News
Muslim leaders and police took pains Sunday to distinguish between the religion of Islam and the 17 people accused of plotting bomb attacks in Ontario. 'This is not the action of the Muslim community,' Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said during a press conference held Sunday. (CBC)
"Canadian Muslims absolutely condemn an act of violence or threat of violence," Muhammad Alam, president of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, told a crowded hall where many Muslims expressed concern about the arrests.
"This is not about religion or faith," but about political and social situations around the world, he said.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair agreed, saying the accused were motivated by an ideology based on politics and violence, not by faith. "This is not the action of the Muslim community."
The Muslim leaders thanked Blair for his assurances that the police would try to protect Muslims from angry responses to the arrests. Vandals who damaged a Toronto mosque overnight may have been motivated by hatred after the arrests earlier in the weekend, Blair said.
Sheik Hussein Patel, representing the Canadian Council of Muslim Theologians, a group of more than 100 scholars, thanked the police for making the arrests.
"Any threat to Canada poses a threat to Muslims in Canada as well," he said, adding that the group is concerned that the accused were resorting to "anti-Islamic behaviour."
On its website, the group posted a statement saying if the allegations are true, "then this is a wake-up call, especially for Muslim leaders and parents, that more must be done to ensure that our children do not get involved in activities that are contrary to the teachings of Islam."
But in The End of Faith , Sam Harris shares the results (and implications) of one scientific poll that was done in the minority of Arab/Islamic states that allowed polling— "Over 38,000 people recently participated in a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The results constitute the first publication of its Global Attitudes Project entitled ‘What the World Thinks in 2002.’ The survey included the following questions, posed only to Muslims:
Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?
Before we look at the results of this study, we should appreciate the significance of the juxtaposed phrases ‘suicide bombing’ and ‘civilian targets.’ We now live in a world in which Muslims have been scientifically polled (with margins of error ranging from 2 to 4 percent) as to whether they support (‘often,’ ‘sometimes,’ rarely,’ or ‘never’) the deliberate murder and maiming of noncombatant men, women, and children in defense of Islam. Here are some of the results of the Pew study (not all percentages sum to 100):
SUICIDE BOMBING IN DEFENSE OF ISLAM Justifiable?
| Yes | No | DK/Refused | |
| Lebanon |
73
|
21
|
6
|
| Ivory Coast |
56
|
44
|
0
|
| Nigeria |
47
|
45
|
8
|
| Bangladesh |
44
|
37
|
19
|
| Jordan |
43
|
48
|
8
|
| Pakistan |
33
|
43
|
23
|
| Mali |
32
|
57
|
11
|
| Ghana |
30
|
57
|
12
|
| Uganda |
29
|
63
|
8
|
| Senegal |
28
|
69
|
3
|
| Indonesia | 27 | 70 | 3 |
| Turkey |
13
|
73
|
14
|
"If you do not find these numbers sufficiently disturbing, consider that places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories were not included in the survey. Had they been, it is safe to say, the Lebanese would have lost their place at the top of the list several times over. Suicide bombing also entails suicide , of course, which most Muslims believe is expressly forbidden by God. Consequently, had the question been ‘Is it ever justified to target civilians in defense of Islam,’ we could expect even greater Muslim support for terrorism.
"But the Pew results are actually bleaker than the above table indicates. A closer look at the data reveals that the pollsters skewed their results by binning the responses ‘rarely justified’ and ‘never justified’ together, thus giving a false sense of Muslim pacifism. Take another look at the data from Jordan: 43 percent of Jordanians apparently favor terrorism, while 48 percent do not. The problem, however, is that 22 percent of Jordanians actually responded ‘rarely justified,’ and this accounts for nearly half of their ‘No’ responses. ‘Rarely justified’ still means that under certain circumstances, these respondents would sanction the indiscriminate murder of noncombatants (plus suicide), not as an accidental by-product of a military operation, but as its intended outcome. A more accurate picture of Muslim tolerance for terrorism emerges when we focus on the percentage of respondents who could not find it in their hearts to say ‘never justified’ (leaving aside the many people who still lurk in the shadows of ‘Don’t Know/Refused’). If we divide the data in this way, the sun of modernity sets even further over the Muslim world:
SUICIDE BOMBING IN DEFENSE OF ISLAM Is It Ever Justifiable?
| Yes | No | DK/Refused | |
| Lebanon |
82
|
12
|
6
|
| Ivory Coast |
73
|
27
|
0
|
| Nigeria |
66
|
26
|
8
|
| Bangladesh |
58
|
23
|
19
|
| Jordan |
65
|
26
|
8
|
| Pakistan |
38
|
38
|
23
|
| Mali |
54
|
35
|
11
|
| Ghana |
44
|
43
|
12
|
| Uganda |
40
|
52
|
8
|
| Senegal |
47
|
50
|
3
|
| Indonesia | 43 | 54 | 3 |
| Turkey |
20
|
64
|
14
|
Trouble is, at least here, Bush is being blamed and vilified for the things Jimmah and clintoone set in motion, either directly or by default
So just ask them, "Do you condemn those Muslims?"
They will never answer that. They are not allowed to.
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