ISLAM IN AMERICA - THE ISLAMIC SUPREME COUNCIL OF AMERICA LIVE ON RADIO FR THIS WEEK!

Radio FreeRepublic and the Free Republic Network ^ | 1/14/03 | Luis Gonzalez

[TLBSHOW]

Radio FR sounds great and the show should be a good one I hope. Tune in you won't be disapointed in the sound!

[FourtySeven]

Alright, I'll give it a try..........should definitely stir things up, at least on FR.....hehe

[FourtySeven]

Ditto to that! I just hope the curse that seems to follow me doesn't once again!

[Bella_Bru]

Please make sure to make your questions as irrational as possible. Just take some of the suggestions posted here.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Are you the spokesman for all Christians now Todd?

[Luis Gonzalez]

BTW, it must not be all that offensive. It took you a day and a half to be insulted by it.

[Luis Gonzalez]

BTW, I got the picture from one of the pages of the US Province of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary's website.

I'll let them know that TLBSHOW says that Christians find them offensive.

[William Terrell]

What are you afraid of? That other people may have an opinion of their own and different from yours?

Wouldn't do me a bit of good to be afraid of people with contrary opinions, would it? It does do me a bit of good to keep pressure on these Islamists that claim to speak for the peacefulness of Islam to us, when they ought to be pursuing and turning in those that cause Islam to be percieved as it is.

This does not have a spring fresh odor, I'm bound to say.

[Howlin]

ROFLMAO!

[Luis Gonzalez]

Dollars to doughnuts that you haven't read a single word they have posted on their website, and that all your conclusions are based on your preconceived ideas of anyone who is a Muslim.

prej·u·dice
(click to hear the word) (prj-ds)
n.

1. 1. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
   2. A preconceived preference or idea.
2. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions. See Synonyms at predilection.
3. Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion.
4. Detriment or injury caused to a person by the preconceived, unfavorable conviction of another or others.

[TLBSHOW]

Thanks, please do that because it is not right!

[Luis Gonzalez]

You're not right.

[William Terrell]

Dollars to doughnuts that you haven't read a single word they have posted on their website, and that all your conclusions are based on your preconceived ideas of anyone who is a Muslim.

You're right, I haven't. But obviously you have, so you tell me, for the sake of time, do these people call for the identifying of subversive elements of their own faith in order to submit these names to our forces fighting terrorism? Have they declared a jihad against those subversive elements? Have they declared a fatwah against Bin Laden or any well known terrorist perp, whom they say are perverting their faith?

I'm betting they haven't. How say you?

Or are they only interested in telling us how peaceful they are. Well, maybe they really are peaceful, but they are in a unique position to fight the terrorist faction from within. What have they done about it?

Maybe if I see an Islamist actually face inward to effect a healing instead of outward to propagandize, I'll have less

prej·u·dice
(click to hear the word) (prj-ds)
n.

1. 1. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
   2. A preconceived preference or idea.
2. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions. See Synonyms at predilection.
3. Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion.
4. Detriment or injury caused to a person by the preconceived, unfavorable conviction of another or others.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Have they declared a jihad against those subversive elements?"

Nice bit of circular logic here.

In order for these people to prove themselves different from the extremists causing all the grief in the world, they have to behave in a similar fashion?

"Well, maybe they really are peaceful, but they are in a unique position to fight the terrorist faction from within."

They are first and foremost Americans, and support the president's actions in combating terrorism, here and beyond our shores.

"What have they done about it?"

What have YOU done about it?

Do you expect them to behave like Americans first, or would you prefer them to act like Muslims first?

[Angelus Errare]

The following sections of the website may well prove useful to a number of Freepers currently engaged in counter-terrorism as well as convince others that the ISCA and its members (no small number, BTW) are hardly pawns or apologists of al-Qaeda.

The Extremism section might be most helpful, but let me break this stuff down for those not willing to skim through it:

Islamic Extremism in America

Patterns of Discrimination in the United States explains how the Wahhabis in the US censor and threaten anyone who dares to disagree with their view of Islam.

The threat of American Islamic extremism in the US from 1999, when Kabbani tried to warn the State Department of the domestic threat of Islamic terrorism.

A second warning of the threat of US Muslims launching terrorist attacks, this one singling out bin Laden and his ilk by name.

Condemnation of the Islamic (Wahhabi) violence in the Caucasus, Central, and South Asia, including the Chechen jihad.

A profile of bin Laden from 1998, which is hardly the demigod praise his sycophants regularly heap upon him.

Wahhabism and the spread of Islamic violence worldwide.

A discussion and condemnation of Salafism, the political philosophy that calls the installation of the Sha'riah worldwide.

Sheikh Kabbani at Ground Zero from Fox News.

Just so as to have some understanding as to where these people stand on the issues. Or you could just flip out a copy of Emerson ("American Jihad," p. 160-165) or Pipes ("Militant Islam Reaches America," p. 123, 207) and see what they have to say about the organization. Both men certainly don't shrink from pulling punches when it comes to dealing with other Muslim leaders. Yet they both have a great deal of respect for Sheikh Kabbani, which should make everybody calling the ISCA a terrorist organization stop and think for a moment.

There are enemies and there are allies. This guy and his organization is the latter.

[snippy_about_it]

Some reading material and links to Sheik Kabbani, his father-in-law Sheik Nazim, their Michigan retreat and information on the Sufi way.


Muslim Leader Who Was Once Labeled an Alarmist Is Suddenly a Sage

Two years ago, an obscure Muslim spiritual leader named Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani stepped to the microphone at the State Department and issued a chilling admonition to Americans to beware the Muslims in their midst.

He warned that Islamic extremists had infiltrated the vast majority of American Muslim mosques and student and community groups, and that they had bought more than 20 nuclear warheads and were paying former Soviet scientists to break them into chips that could be carried in suitcases.

"We want to tell people to be careful, that something major might hit quickly," he told a forum on Islam convened by the State Department.

Now the sheik, who was denounced as a charlatan by nine major American Muslim organizations, is back in the spotlight as never before. He has appeared on CNN, "Today," MSNBC, NPR and more since the terrorist attacks, cast as the Muslim who dared to blow the whistle on his brethren. Two weeks ago, he briefed the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Uzbekistan, a country that has supported the United States in its war on Afghanistan and whose president has offered Sheik Kabbani a warm welcome.

Sheik Kabbani's profile and motivations, in reality, are a complex intertwining of religious and political rivalries. Even experts and policy makers who admire him say he has undermined his message with hyperbolic claims about the influence of Islamic extremism in the United States.

"He's a good guy and he does mean well," said Robert Seiple, ambassador at large for religious liberty in the Clinton administration and now president of the Institute for Global Engagement, in St. David's, Pa. "But his comments about 80 percent of the leadership of Islam in America being extremists are irresponsible and terribly unfortunate," Mr. Seiple said. "It just plays into the hands of those who would demonize and create division, and those knee- jerk types who see Islam as a monolith."

Probably more than any other figure, Sheik Kabbani helped shape the view circulating among some American commentators and intellectuals that the problem within Islam can be attributed entirely to Wahhabism, the austere, fundamentalist brand of the faith practiced in Saudi Arabia.

"Where he makes the mistake," said Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African and Islamic studies at Howard University, who serves on an advisory board for the sheik, "is he tries to lump together the Wahhabis with all the other Islamist groups. Not all of them are Wahhabis."

Sheik Kabbani grew up in Lebanon, exposed to visiting Islamic luminaries in the home of his uncle, the grand mufti of Lebanon. As a boy, he traveled the Islamic world with a Sufi master, Sheik Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Haqqani, the namesake of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order of Sufism, and married his daughter.

Sufism is the mystical stream within Islam, and scholars say there are 40 to 60 major orders and 1,000 branches. The whirling dervishes from Turkey are Sufis.

Sheik Kabbani's Sufi order emphasizes participation in politics and social issues, adherence to Islamic law and a strain of apocalypticism that, combined with his political analysis, stoked his dire predictions, said David Damrel, an expert in Islamic mysticism at Arizona State University.

While well accepted and integrated in many parts of the Muslim world, Sufism has in some places been suppressed by the more legalistic, puritanical Islamic movements like Wahhabism, which has made inroads in the United States by building mosques and training teachers. They disapprove of Sufi practices like venerating holy men and making pilgrimages to the graves of saints. Uzbekistan is important to Sheik Kabbani's Sufi order because the founder of its parent Naqshbandi branch is buried there.

Escaping the civil war in Lebanon in 1991, Sheik Kabbani was sent to the United States to spread the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order, already well established in places like Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and parts of South Asia. He has homes in Michigan and California and claims about 8,000 regular contributors and participants, 60,000 occasional students and 13 Islamic centers. He relates to his disciples like a guru.

In an interview last week in New York, 17 students congregated in the room to hear him. A male student brought coffee; when Sheik Kabbani went to the restroom, another held his turban and another his cloak.

Sheik Kabbani said that he stood by his claim in his State Department speech that 80 percent of American mosques had been taken over by extremists, because of the 114 mosques he first visited in the United States, "Ninety of them were mostly exposed, and I say exposed, to extreme or radical ideology," based on their speeches, books and board members. He said that a telltale sign of an extremist mosque was a focus on the Palestinian struggle.

Sheik Kabbani said that American Muslim groups were dominated by Sufi-hating Wahhabis, and that when he tried to distribute pamphlets at the annual conference of the Islamic Society of North America, organizers called the police. They say he disrupted the conference by grabbing the microphone from a speaker.

In 1998 he set up an office in Washington and named his organization the Islamic Supreme Council of America, whose grandiose title further inflamed other Muslim leaders.

"He wanted to have a voice among the Muslim leaders," said Dr. Nyang, "so when American government talked to Muslims, the Sufis would have a voice, and he, Kabbani, will be the voice of the Sufis."

His State Department speech was attended by Muslim leaders he branded extremists, and ended in shouting. His address had combined fact, like Osama bin Laden's merging with other terrorist groups, and broad suspicion, like, "If the nuclear atomic warheads reach these universities, you don't know what these students are going to do."

Nine Muslim groups, including the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim Students Association, signed a letter demanding "with heavy heart" a retraction and an apology. Death threats flew in both directions. Sheik Kabbani received F.B.I. protection.

"With one talk he made every Muslim student in America suspect," said Hassan Hathout of the American Muslim Political Coordinating Council.

After that, Sheik Kabbani received only a wary welcome in Washington until Sept. 11. But last week in New York, he represented Muslims alongside a rabbi from Israel, a Hindu from India and several Christian ministers at the closing news conference for the World Conference on Religion and Peace, a United Nations nongovernmental organization.

"The Kabbani affair is the introduction into America of Middle Eastern sectarianism, and the hyperbolic rhetoric and interfratricidal struggles that go with that competition for attention from American leadership," said Dr. Nyang, whose grandfather was a famous Sufi. "America is a big magnifying mirror, and they compete for access to it, because it projects you internationally and makes you look big."


Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company


More info;

http://www.sunnah.org/about/shaykh_muhammad_hisham_kabbani.htm

http://www.kamilat.org/Articles/converts.htm#Jamal%20al-Din%20Hoffman

http://www.isim.nl/newsletter/4/isim/1.html

http://www.naqshbandi.org/events/us2000/mich_day1/default.htm

[William Terrell]

Nice bit of circular logic here. In order for these people to prove themselves different from the extremists causing all the grief in the world, they have to behave in a similar fashion?

Koran is their book. It prescribes jihads. They say Islam is peaceful and extreme elements are misrepresenting their faith. Let them use their authorized measures to deal with it. They should deal with it, not anybody else.

If a Christian sect behaved as these Muslims do, and if I could ID them, I would. That goes for any Christian church I can think of, too. And certainly any Jewish synagogue.

Sorry to say I don't understand what you mean by "circular logic" in this context.

They are first and foremost Americans, and support the president's actions in combating terrorism, here and beyond our shores.

Do we have them in the military, willing to participate in an attack on a Muslim country?

What have YOU done about it?

I keep my eye on any middle easterners between the ages of 15 and 50. I keep pressure, in whatever way I can, on any governed group of Islamists to prove their benovelent natures by tracking down and ostracising dangerous elements, including those that celebrate when those elements kill and destroy.

Those that do, I embrace in brotherly love. Those that don't, especially those that celebrate, I regard as a potential perp or facilitator. Why? Because I can't tell the difference between silences when Islam's holy book condones deceit for anti-infidel purposes.

Do you expect them to behave like Americans first, or would you prefer them to act like Muslims first?

I expect them to clearly acknowledge that their faith and their allegence to the people in their nation don't conflict if that nation has to war with others of their faith, following the same book.

I consider it to be more dangerious to assume they do, then discover they don't than to assume they don't and let them prove they do.

[Ben Bolt]

I guess you have a marketing situation here . Make the show Luis but get your shit together at the same time .

I'll write you after the show .

[Bob J]

Management is such a burden...heheh. Between the talent and the passionately inspired on FR, you've got me going in 4 directions.

[Luis Gonzalez]

You don't see the circular logic because you have no wish to see the circular logic.

Here's a perfect example:

You want them to prove that Islam is peaceful by using the most non-peaceful extreme measure that can be taken by a Muslim, a jihad.

Yes, circular logic at work.

"Do we have them in the military, willing to participate in an attack on a Muslim country?"

What's most amazing to me about people such as yourself, is the incredibly lack of knowledge that you posses about Muslims, and the willingness shown to paint them all with a broad brush with little, or no information to go on.

How can you ask something so incredibly shallow?

Better yet, how can you openly display your complete ignorance on a subject that you are so convinced you know everything about?

"More than 4,000 Muslims serve in the U.S. Armed Forces, according to Defense Department estimates. While this year's event marked the fifth annual Iftar observed at the Defense Department, the organizers considered canceling it after a hijacked plane hit the building on September 11. Qaseem Uqdah, Executive Director of American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, explained that popular sentiment overruled that option."

"Initially we weren't going to have it because of September 11, but our Christian and Muslim brothers and sisters said, no, if there is anytime we're going to have this event, we will have it this time. It's just indicative of the unity of the members of the armed forces and how we come together as a family," said Uqdah."--- Source.

"I keep my eye on any middle easterners between the ages of 15 and 50."

Then you would have completely missed the shoe bomber, and Padilla. There's also the fact that India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh actually have the largest Muslim populations.

"I expect them to clearly acknowledge that their faith and their allegence to the people in their nation don't conflict if that nation has to war with others of their faith, following the same book."

But you have no such expectation for Christians?