Posted on 04/21/2008 4:55:59 AM PDT by kellynla
A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.
Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.
"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."
An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.
Steve Schmidt, a former Bush White House aide who is now a McCain media strategist, told The Times that the use of the word is appropriate and that the candidate will continue to define the enemy that way.
"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully," Mr. Schmidt said. "But the reality is, the hateful ideology which underpins bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is."
Mr. McCain often uses the term "Islamic" to describe terrorist enemies. The two remaining Democrats in the presidential field, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, generally shun such word usage.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Our ancestors didn't risk life & limb to emigrate to this country just so a bunch of camel jockeys could come here, terrorize our women & children and make hamburger out of our families.
“A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective “Islamic” to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.”
What should we call it? Amish? Buddhist?
Who are the Muslims to call the shots? Leave Sen. McCain alone!
Did they suggest an alternative? I know “islamic” is the least offensive of what I would use.
I have never seen a group of folks so hyper-sensitive such as these folks.
The irony is simply delicious. Wonder how Mr. Free-speech for-me-but-not-for-Thee will respond.
If all the people waging a terror war against us were Baptists, they wouldn’t have a problem calling them “Baptist terrorists” would they?
Yep, that will be a good question indeed. Also last week at the Catholic Prayer Breakfeast event in which President Bush came to speak good things of Pope Benedict XVI and while I was watching highlights, the camera took a quick view of Sen. McCain, who also attended. Maybe he went because he will need the support if elected of the Pope.
Two words for ISNA......Pound sand!
Mr. Schmidt, you’ve got the hammer and the nail lined up perfectly. Go for it!
Mr. Fareed, a rose is a rose is a rose...
“A coalition of American Muslim groups”-————— need deporting!
Political jihad from another anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-life Muslim POS who holds a title from a lesser collective whose sole purpose is to promote the greater collective.
Did anyone see the Muslim students, in the group of students at the Univ. of PA on CNN last night, proudly supporting Hussein Obama?
I was shocked; totally shocked!!! /s/
This fellow does a disservice to his cause by refusing to acknowledge that al Qaeda represents a literalist strain of Islam hewing to both the letter and spirit of the text as handed down by centuries of scholarship, not a "perverted" one.
**** the adjective “Islamic” to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.****
If the shoe fits, wear it. And it is on your foot.
Nope, not in airports since the Islamics invented shoe bombs.
Another gift from the religion of pieces.
One more terrorist attack in America and it won’t make any difference who is POTUS...all hell is gonna break loose and every muzzie swingin’ dick will have to pack up and go back to whatever hellhole they originated from!
I suggest the term “Islamic tyranny”. I oppose the establishment of Islamic law codes in the West. I oppose the 2 tier system of Islamic justice that discriminates between a muslim and a kufir/non-muslim (who has fewer rights and protections under Islamic law).
I oppose the violation of freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia and other muslim run nations. Freedom is only found when muslims are permitted to convert away from the faith too.
I oppose the establish of Mosque and State in the West by the Saudi Government funding of expansion of mosques. They are cowards who bought off the Wahabi terrorists by funding the expansion of Islam abroad.
I oppose Islamic tyranny whether it comes bearing bombs or not.
This strategy as many FReepers already know is part of an extensive and expensive PR plan by muslims groups to disassociate terroism with Islam. Its been fully implimented in Britain with ads, including ads on the sides of buses. Watch Europe if you want to know what may be coming here and beware of the new Islam-Lite!
Brilliant commentary from Hugh Fitzgerald at jihadwatch...here...
“My own take on this is that we tried and failed to stylize this particular onslaught against the United States as one that has religious connotations and regional connotations,” said Mr. Fareed, a former associate professor of Islamic studies at Wayne State University.
“I think this is just criminality, fair and square. We should just call them criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine,” he said. “But adding the word ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ certainly doesn’t help our cause as Americans. It’s counterproductive. It paints an entire community of believers, 1.2 billion in total, in a very negative way. And certainly that’s not something that we want to do.”...
— from the article above
Criminality is the work of individuals, who break the law because they feel like it; it is prompted not by ideology, but rather by what has prompted criminal activity since the beginning of time.
Terrorism by Muslims is quite different. It is the act either of a collective, of Muslim, acting in concert, and supported financially and morally by other Muslims who may prefer to participate in violent Jihad indirectly (the better, for example, to participate in other, non-violent, just as dangerous and possibly more effective methods of Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and dominance, of Islam). Where an individual Muslim may be acting, he is doing so not on his own behalf, not to enrich himself, but to further what he has learned — and learned fro the texts, not mistranslated and not misunderstood, of Islam itself: Quran, Hadith, and Sira.
Furthermore, it is important that Infidels understand that they are having war made upon them, and that the war is not limited to what non-Muslims correctly identify as “terrorism” but that many, or most Muslims, are easily persuaded is not terrorism at all but rather a form of qitaal, or combat, simply updated to meet modern conditions, where the Infidels have military superiority — so unfair! — and bombs in restaurants and on busses and planes smashed into buildings is merely a form of “equalizing,” of levelling the grimmest of playing-fields.
It is important to use the phrase “Muslim terrorism” if the only alternative is “terrorism.” But it would be most helpful to speak and write of Jihad, to explain what Jihad means — means and has meant, to Muslims, over the past 1350 years (and to quickly get over the ludicrous business of those who pretend the word’s main meaning is something about an interior struggle to maintain a virtuous life, or somesuch variant).
Why is it important to use the word “Jihad”? Because emphasis, exaggerated emphasis, on “terrorism” makes people pay no attention to much more effective and dangerous instruments of Jihad — the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa aimed at the psychically and economically marginal, and demographic conquest. The latter is especially worrisome. Consider the Netherlands, where there were 1,500 Muslims in 1960, 15,000 in 1970, 800,000 in 2004, and over a million today.
It is unfortunate that none of the political leaders in the West, and few in the press, radio, television, feel they have a responsibility to learn the contents of Islam, or to learn something of the history of Islamic conquest, and subjugation of non-Muslims, over the past 1350 years. A great deal could be learned. It requires some effort and some time, and nowadays how many, in the class of people whose responsiblity it is to protect and instruct us, would take that time, and make that effort?
The answer is: very few.
And we will all pay, we have already in the countries of Western Europe — in Great Britain and France, in Germany and Spain, in Belgium and Italy and the Netherlands and Denmark and Norway and Sweden — all paid and will be grimly paying, for the fact that the political and media elites were so criminally negligent, over the past 35 years, as Muslim immigrants, by the millions, were allowed in, and given every conceivable benefit, and allowed to build mosques and madrasas, to settle in, without anyone questioning what this meant, what Islam was all about, whether or not the “problems” — as they are demurely called — with Muslim migrants were merely, as some continue to pretend, the same problems that all immigrants experience or present, or whether there was something about that “problem” that had to do with the nature of Islam, as a Total Belief-System, inculcated with a brainwashing, and reinforced at every level, in states, societies, communities, even families suffused with Islam, that explains why, in every Infidel land, no matter what its makeup or what its politics or what the attitude of its citizens, the same problems are posed by one particular group of immigrants and by no other group — not by Chinese, Hindus, Vietnamese Buddhists, not by Caribeean blacks, nor by non-Muslim blacks from sub-Saharan Africa, not by Mexicans, not by Central Americans, not by Andean Indians, not by any group at all — but posed by Muslims, to the extent that they take their Islam seriously, wherever they come from.
And that is the fix that Western Europe, and therefore the historic West, is now in. It was a problem that, had the handful of cassandras — see for example the writings of Jacques Ellul — been heeded, could have been avoided. Entirely manageable once, manageable — with great difficulty-—today, but only if Muslmig mirgation is halted, funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands — through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them somoething worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
Posted by: Hugh at April 21, 2008 7:25 PM
from this thread at jihadwatch...here...
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020747.php#comments
Many thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald and the outstanding posters at jihadwatch.
Typical Leftist Fascism...he who controls the language controls the debate.
Thank you for your post and thank you senater McCain for calling an ace an ace. It is about time we called them what they are Islamic Extremists and their goal is to dominate America. We are in a religious war Christianity vs Islam. And it doesnt matter if you think you are Christian if you live in America then you live under a Constitution based on Christian values and bought with Christian patriots. If this offends you then maybe you should move somewhere else. We are a Christian Nation. One nation under the living God Jehovah. not Allah. and dont be deceived take a look at one of Barack’s biggest supporters muslimsforobama08.com. If you love America please register to vote and vote your voice for McCain
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