Posted on 05/12/2008 1:22:30 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
You are a infidel if you:
Toward the end an elderly gentlemen is arguing for Freedom of Though and says Democracy is a good thing...according to the translation....
Please view the entire video,...very interesting at the end....
Well, that’s what I always thought. /s
Sorry, I thought this was an FLDS video.
Too bad there aren’t more people in the Muslim world like Mr. Gamal Al-Bana. He appears to have the right idea. Saddening that only a quarter of the audience of young people agreed with him, instead siding with the idiot who advocated death for apostates and infidels, and beheading for the mentally insane (failing to realize that by those very words, he himself falls into that same category).
Well, I gotta say I am impressed that two of the three guys with microphones seem to be advocates of real liberty.
Wish I were as impressed with the little fascists who comprise 76% of the studio audience, and the other guy on stage who thinks that infidels should be killed.
"You might be a in-fi-del if....
--one mother-in-law's two...too many!
etc
Yes, one must view the entire video. The one speaker is rigid and extreme, the other moderate and (by our way of thinking) reasonable, and gives good support for his position. He is also brave enough to speak up.
24% believed in the freedom of belief. Perhaps that is more than some might have expected, but it still is a small minority. It means that Muslim youth are in the main probably more militant than their parents, and constitute a dangerous force in the world.
I cannot see any excuse for letting numbers of these people into a free country.
Yes,....Something is going on....A Real Debate...of Course Mr. Gamal Al-Bana would be in Danger from the Turban Wrapped Scholar ,,,of being declared an Apostate...
“Freedom of religion”, or for that matter, freedom of any kind, seems to be an alien concept to large numbers of Muslims.
That old Egyptian philosopher seemed to believe in the ABSOLUTE freedom to accept or reject Islam, as personal conscience saw fit. Belief is a personal thing, so long as it does not impinge on anybody else’s set of beliefs. This is largely enshrined in Western thinking (after a number of centuries of bloodying each other’s noses over the differences!), but it is an idea that has not spread far among the Muslims.
The one young man that stood up and said that since he was BORN into a Muslim family, he could not leave the religion (become an apostate) or he may face the pain of death. This was essentially the Imam’s point of view, as anyone who does NOT accept Islam as the most enlightened, reasonable and logical religion, is obviously insane, and the cure for insanity is to remove the head, so as not to infect all the other “sane” people in his presence.
The irony of the situation completely escapes the Imam. Religion, even one that claims not to be a tyranny, compelled by threat of death becomes a tyranny all of its own.
What’s the over/under on whether or not Gamal Al-Bana is still alive?
Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana: Social and Religious Moderation vs. Political Extremism
*************************************EXCERPT************************
Introduction
Egyptian Islamist thinker, author, and journalist Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana is a controversial figure in the Arab world. For the most part, his critics are devout extremist Muslims who oppose his unusual views on Islamic matters; however, following an article he wrote praising 9/11, he came under scathing criticism from liberal Muslims – who had until then seen him as “their” sheikh and imam.(1)
Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana (b. 1920) is the younger brother of Sheikh Hassan Al-Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. His other brothers, and his father, were also Islamist intellectuals. From an early age, Gamal Al-Bana had socialist tendencies along with Islamist tendencies, and in 1981 he founded the International Islamic Labor Union.(2)
Al-Bana is one of a group of Muslim intellectuals known for their moderate and liberal stances on social and religious issues – such as separation of religion and state, the status of women, democracy, secularism, and the status of Muslims who have left the fold of Islam – but who at the same time are harshly critical of the Arab regimes, of the foreign policy of Western countries – particularly the U.S. and Israel – and, for the most part, also of globalization. Other prominent figures in this group include Egyptian feminist Dr. Nawal Al-Sa’adawi and Egyptian Islamic leftist intellectual Dr. Hassan Hanafi.
Al-Bana also belongs to the school of Muslim intellectuals that maintains that there are two types of Islam: the “pure Islam” of the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, and the “adulterated Islam” of the clerics. According to Al-Bana and those who believe only in the Koran and who do not recognize most of the Sunna as a basis for jurisprudence, the Koran is the only authentic and valid source, and the science of Islamic religious law that developed in the first centuries of Islam is not compatible with the modern era.(3)
Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana seeks to adapt the Islamic lifestyle to the modern era. He says that the practice of ijtihad – the use of independent judgment in matters of religious law – should be brought back. Freedom of thought is inherent in Islam, he says, and therefore a Muslim must interpret the Koran and the hadith (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) personally and intellectually, without reliance on ancient or modern Koran commentators and clerics. In accordance with this approach, he believes, for example, that Islam does not contradict democracy; the Islamic punishment of death for Muslims who leave the fold of Islam [murtadd] should not be implemented; and customs such as the veil, female circumcision, and the male monopoly on leading prayers have no basis whatsoever in Islam. Sheikh Al-Bana also maintains that additions can be made to shari’a law, and that elements can also be removed from it, based on the principle of justice, which is the guiding principle in the Koran.
According to Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana, freedom is the key to progress and to change in the situation of Muslims worldwide: freedom of thought, freedom of belief, and freedom of political activity.
Sheikh Al-Bana’s harsh political stance against the U.S. and the West is all the more striking in light of his moderation on social and religious issues. In September 2001, Al-Bana signed a communiqué by Egyptian Islamic and nationalist figures blaming U.S. policy for 9/11. The communiqué stated “It is the criminal and racist American foreign policy against the repressed peoples of the world, and primarily against the Arab and Islamic peoples, that is to blame for the events of New York and Washington – whatever the perpetrator’s national identity may be…”(4)
To mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Sheikh Al-Bana published an article praising the attacks, which he called “extremely courageous.” The article, which enraged Muslim liberals, stated that such attacks, and such acts of “martyrdom” as Palestinian suicide bombings, will in the future be the lot of the U.S. and Europe, and will be carried out by residents of Europe and the U.S., as long as “barbaric capitalism and the enslavement of the peoples” continues. In the article, Sheikh Al-Bana presented the attacks as “dreadful and splendid” and “a new way of settling old accounts.”(5)
In another, more recent article, Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana expressed his support for Iran’s nuclear program, and called on Egypt to sign a joint defense agreement with Iran, under which the latter would provide nuclear aid to Egypt in the event of war with Israel. He wrote that Israel was the real enemy of Egypt, and Egypt should be prepared for confrontation with it.
This document presents some of the liberal stances of Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana in religious and social matters, and also his critical stance towards the West.
TO READ THE FULL DOCUMENT VISIT: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=IA33407 .
Endnotes:
(1) Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian liberal now living in the U.S., called Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana’s praise for the perpetrators of 9/11 “heresy” against all his previous stances. In an article, Al-Nabulsi depicted Al-Bana’s words as ridda – a term denoting leaving the fold of Islam, which is punishable by death. In another article, written after it became clear to him that Al-Bana had no intention of recanting or apologizing for his statements, Al-Nabulsi gave a possible reason for what he called the reversal in Al-Bana’s views. Basing his claims on Al-Azhar alumnus Sheikh Ahmad Subhi Mansour, who knows Al-Bana “very well,” Al-Nabulsi determined that Al-Bana had an “emotional complex” due to the fact that his father was a respected Islamic scholar, and his brother Hassan Al-Bana was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. According to Al-Nabulsi, Al-Bana aspired to be renowned like them, and therefore decided to say what the public wanted to hear. In explaining Al-Bana’s moderate positions on social and religious issues, Al-Nabulsi said that Al-Bana understood that the easiest way to publicize these views was to express views that were the opposite of those of his famous brother.
A few weeks later, Al-Bana responded to Al-Nabulsi’s statements, saying that he had not changed but that Al-Nabulsi himself had changed – from supporting him to hating him. He dismissed Al-Nabusi’s psychological analysis of him, and pointed out that in his writings he had consistently been against past and present imperialism, arrogance, and policy that seeks to impose its sovereignty and hegemony on the world by force of arms.
See: http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/ElaphWriter/2006/9/176985.htm, September 15, 2006; http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/ElaphWriter/2006/10/181105.htm, October 3, 2006; http://www.metransparent.com/texts/gamalbanna/gamalalbannareplyonnabulsi.htm , October 27, 2006.
(2) For more on Sheikh Gamal Al-Bana, see http://www.islamonline.net/arabic/famous/2003/01/article01.shtml .
(3) See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 208, “Accusing Muslim Intellectuals of Apostasy,” February 18, 2005, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA20805 .
(4) http://www.alarabnews.com/alshaab/GIF/21-09-2001/bayan.htm, September 21, 2001.
(5) http://www.alarabnews.com/alshaab/GIF/21-09-2001/bayan.htm, September 21, 2001.
**********************
In September 2001, Al-Bana signed a communiqué by Egyptian Islamic and nationalist figures blaming U.S. policy for 9/11.
****************************EXCERPTS*************************
May 12, 2006 No. 1163
In an article posted on the reformist websites www.metatransparent.com and www.elaph.com, reformist author Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi predicts a victory by the Arab reformists over the Islamists. Al-Nabulsi argues that the recent attacks by the "fundamentalist terrorist movements" on the reformists reveal that the Islamists are in distress and that their defeat is imminent, and presents several examples to support this assessment. [1]
The following are highlights from his article:
"[These Death Threats] Reveal the Bankruptcy of Terrorist Religious Fundamentalism"
On the death threats received by reformists, Al-Nablusi says: "[These threats] reveal the bankruptcy of terrorist religious fundamentalism, [which cannot] counter arguments with arguments [...], and a word with a [different] word, but instead deals with words by means of the sword [...], and with life through death."
Al-Nabulsi discusses the audio tapes recently published by four prominent Al-Qaeda members: Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Al-Qahtani, and Osama bin Laden. About Al-Zarqawi's tape, he says: "Yesterday, Al-Zarqawi emerged from his hiding place like an 'American Rambo' [...] making death threats against the (rafidite) Shi'ites, the (secular) Kurds and the (apostate) Sunnis [...] This reveals that the fragments of the terrorist fundamentalist religious army [are suffering from] bankruptcy, and that their defeat is near. Would Al-Zarqawi need to show his strong muscles on the satellite channels, like some highway robber, if victory were on his side? [...] Where has he been for the last three years? [...]"
"The Forces of Oppression and Darkness Draw Back Every Day, While the Forces of Light and Enlightenment Advance"
Ayman Al-Zawahiri's statements predicting the imminent collapse of the new Iraqi government are, according to Al-Nabulsi, "Al-Zawahiri's last dying gasps and moans, as he sees his defeat approaching on the horizon like the burning August sun [...]
"Muhammad Al-Qahtani [2] calls on veteran terrorists (the 'terrorist reserves') to join the regular terrorist forces in order to drive the Americans out of Afghanistan." Al-Nabulsi asks: "When do countries call in the reserves [...], if not when they feel the approach of a possible defeat?"
Bin Laden's explicit threat, in his recent audio tape, to murder freethinkers and secularists in the Arab world is further proof that "the forces of oppression and darkness are drawing back every day, while the forces of light and enlightenment are advancing every day, albeit slowly."
[1] http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/ElaphWriter/2006/5/145292.htm
http://www.metransparent.com/texts/shaker_nabulsi/shaker_nabulsi_great_totem.htm, May 1, 2006.
[2] Muhammad Al-Qahtani, also known as Abu Nasser Al-Qahtani, escaped from an Iraqi prison in Afghanistan in July 2005.
There are free thinkers in the Muslim world. Over time as western nations’ influences creep into the Muslim nations and the Russian/Marxist system is refused, more free thinkers shall gain the minds of those that do have the ability to re-educate the millions of people that have for so long been keeped in ignorance.
Thanks Ernest.
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