Hitchens Decodes Rauf
It's just too easy for the likes of Rauf to put one over on an American public that's enormously ignorant of what actual Islam actually entails -- and that goes for many American Muslims as well. Hitchens translates Rauf on Slate:
From the beginning, though, I pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy. I mentioned his sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for the assault on the World Trade Center and his refusal to take a position on the racist Hamas dictatorship in Gaza. The more one reads through his statements, the more alarming it gets. For example, here is Rauf's editorial on the upheaval that followed the brutal hijacking of the Iranian elections in 2009. Regarding President Obama, he advised that:He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution--to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faquih, that establishes the rule of law.Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for "outreach" purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs. Under this dispensation, "the will of the people" is a meaningless expression, because "the people" are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results. It is extremely controversial within Shiite Islam. (Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, for example, does not endorse it.) As for those numerous Iranians who are not Shiites, it reminds them yet again that they are not considered to be real citizens of the Islamic Republic.
I do not find myself reassured by the fact that Imam Rauf publicly endorses the most extreme and repressive version of Muslim theocracy. The letterhead of the statement, incidentally, describes him as the Cordoba Initiative's "Founder and Visionary." Why does that not delight me, either?
Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter ...
As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims--to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.
Comments
Islamic women and islamic men want to have all the wealth and privileges that they extorted or stolen from the free world and at the same time claimed that they were victim of socalled islamphobia whenever they failed to gain anything or any support.
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 1:45 AM
The middleeasterners, iranians, asiatics all tried to confuse us, nonbelievers with their various factions of islam or tried to imply that their faction is more "moderate" than the other when in reality they are just all the same nastypeople.
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 2:48 AM
Amy, Thanks for posting this.
I found this article one of the more nuanced accounts of the Ground Zero Mosque issue. Many people don't know what the actual beliefs that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf are. C. Hitchens explains it in language that most can understand.
Posted by: Janet C at August 24, 2010 8:00 AM
Thanks so much, Janet C. I'm trying to post stuff that reflects the nuances that most people don't get. Hitchens is so wonderful at cutting through the crap and decoding what few can.
Posted by: Amy Alkon 
at August 24, 2010 8:19 AM
Directly related to this story: Who is Daisy Khan?
Posted by: Robert W. (Vancouver) at August 24, 2010 11:12 AM
I read the NY Times and Le Figaro regliously (no pun intended). The difference in the comments concerning the mosque by the Americans and the French are as night and day. The vast majority of the French commenters in a recent article (http://tinyurl.com/37v9pxr) are adamantly opposed to the mosque and have difficulty understanding why there is even a debate about it.
One of the more interesting leitmotifs in the comments points out that France's Muslim population is 10% and America's 1%. This is proposed as a reason why Americans are being so tolerant...because they just don't know any better.
As Hitchen's recommends, people in the US should really look to Europe to see what happens when there is a sizable Muslim minority. Most of these leftists that look down on America and adore Europe have no clue. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Posted by: liz at August 24, 2010 11:49 AM
Very sorry for all the typos....pimf.
Posted by: liz at August 24, 2010 11:51 AM
"They merely hint that, if there demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a tiny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter..."
It's more than a hint. Here, for instance, is self-proclaimed liberal, progressive, secularized American Muslim Reza Aslan venting his fury at all who dare oppose the Ground Zero mosque:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129381552
Note the last 2 sentences in particular:
"I can't imagine how the next generation of American Muslim youth will react to such provocations. I pray that we never find out."
This is from an author & editor, a guy who writes for a living. So I assume he put some thought into it. But he didn't pause for a moment to ponder what his infidel readers would make of such a bald threat of riots & murder if Muslims don't get their way.
Posted by: Martin at August 24, 2010 2:37 PM
The esteemed Satoshi Kanazawa (see link on this page) says President Obama is in fact a Muslim, that it is in his genes.
Sheesh, that New Yorker cover was right on. We are in deep doo-doo.
I even saw a Muslim driving a car on the San Diego Freeway once. Like he owned the whole highway.
Posted by: BOTU at August 24, 2010 4:37 PM
So, what about those japanese named companies that labelled their food halal or collaborated so much with predoominantly islamic countries?
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 5:40 PM
THat is what the culturally insensitive and brutal islamic world is trying to do, pretending to be friends with some friend of friend of infidel and then threatened us nonbelievers, whenever we opposed their horrible islamic culture or opposed their noisy and horrible islamic mosque.
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 5:45 PM
Here's Satoshi's post.
Like other world religions, Islam not only is a religion but also comprises largely endogamous ethnic groups. When a group of individuals remain largely or entirely endogamous (marry only other members of the group and not outsiders), forming what geneticists call a deme, they become genetically distinct over time. A long history of endogamy, usually but not always necessitated by geographic or social isolation, is how genetically distinct racial and ethnic groups emerge. Muslims, both in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, are a largely endogamous ethnic group, just as Catholics and Jews are throughout most of the world. It’s not only about who you worship; it’s also about who you marry. One’s genome is entirely determined at the moment of conception, and absolutely nothing that individuals do during their lifetimes can alter the composition of their genes. For most of his adult life, Michael Jackson (apparently) believed he was white and (obviously) wanted to be white. He thus underwent numerous plastic surgeries to look white, and mostly looked and acted white. But his genes were still the same genes that he inherited from his black parents at the moment he was conceived, and no amount of plastic surgery could alter his genes. No matter how white his skin was, underneath he was still just as black as the day he was born.Similarly, the fact that Barack Obama’s father was a Muslim Kenyan, descended from a long line of Muslims, will remain true until the day he dies, and nothing he ever does in his life can change half of his genes that he inherited from his father. His genes are for keeps. The fact that he has attended Christian church for the past 20 years is not going to change that. Michael Jackson looked white much longer than Barack Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church. Obama is still as (half) Muslim as the day he was born.
Posted by: Amy Alkon at August 24, 2010 6:01 PM
Even in Asia, in contries such as malaysia, singapore and indonesia, there are large groups of a distinct ethnics or subraces who are nastily arrogant abusive moslems or heavily influenced by abusive islamic culture.
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 6:46 PM
Another unresolved problems lies with those aggressively cruel moslems who tried to make their socalled religion into a terrifyingly racist agenda that they mixed it with their equally terrifying disgusting islamic agenda.
It is even more strange when they tried to cover up their islamic cruelty by calling themselves "british", "liberal", "moderate", and so on, which are all obviously a big lie.
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 7:43 PM
It is just another one of their typical and nasty islamic habit to threaten nonbelievers for any imagine slight against their socalled islamic authority. The greedy islamic world want to manipulate and force the free world to support their endless greed, their endless internal conflict in their asiatic and middleastern world and their various useless mega projects. Enough is enough.
Posted by: WLIL at August 24, 2010 8:35 PM
Amy,
By merely reposting Satoshi's screed without commentary, you are implicitly endorsing his racist, unscientific, and inflammatory hogwash.
Or are you one of the 18% of Americans who now think Obama is Muslim, thanks to our "liberal" media?
Posted by: franko at August 25, 2010 10:03 AM
Amy, By merely reposting Satoshi's screed without commentary, you are implicitly endorsing his racist, unscientific, and inflammatory hogwash. Or are you one of the 18% of Americans who now think Obama is Muslim, thanks to our "liberal" media?
Franko, discuss what you take issue with in Satoshi's remarks, don't tell me what I am and am not endorsing.
While I believe people have the freedom to choose their religion, Muslim thinking isn't on board with this. If you are born a Muslim and leave the faith, you're an apostate, marked for death. Nice!
Posted by: Amy Alkon
at August 25, 2010 10:18 AM
Franko, your comments always lead to some sucking waste of time on my part, but here:
http://translating-jihad.blogspot.com/2010/02/is-obama-muslim-or-apostate.html
Islamic law stipulates that if a child is born with either one or both of his parents being Muslim, then the child's religion will also be Muslim. This applies if the father is Muslim and the mother is non-Muslim, such as in President Obama's case. Al-Hassan, Shurayh, Ibrahim, and Qatada said: "If one of (the parents) has submitted (to Islam), then the child is with the Muslim," for Islam dominates, but is not (itself) dominated (comment: This is a famous phrase from either the Qur'an or the hadith, but I'm not sure exactly how it's worded in English; it basically means Islam is superior to everything, and submits to nothing). And also according to the word of the prophet of God (PBUH): "No child is born except on nature (i.e. Islam), and then his parents make him Jewish, Christian, or Magian (Zoroastrian), as an animal produces a perfect young animal: do you see any part of its body amputated?" (Sahih al-Bukhari, V 2, Bk 23, No 441). Although Islamic law does not oblige those who have not reached puberty to practice Islam, the father of such a child is required to pay zakat and pray the funeral prayer if the child dies before reaching puberty. This shows that the child is Muslim from birth. Through these Islamic judgments, in comparison with the autobiography of President Barack Hussein Obama, we find that this president is either a Muslim or an apostate from Islam according to the strongest viewpoints of Islamic jurisprudence.
Posted by: Amy Alkon
at August 25, 2010 10:21 AM
Amy - you need to ignore franko. He's an ineducable progressive cunt.
anyone who believes that the media has a right-wing bias is clearly too far left to be taken seriously.
go away franko, the adults are talking.
Posted by: brian at August 26, 2010 2:34 PM
