Despicable!

[Rohirrim]

This is the most despicable thing I've ever heard in my life. Al Queda strapped bombs to two women who suffered from Down's Syndrome to carry out a terrorist attack in Baghdad.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22945797/

If I don't hear immediate condemnations from every Muslim leader on Earth, I will presume that Islam agrees with this tactic.

[alkemical]

eugenics-warfare - interesting

[Spider]

Worthless ****s , I guess they dont believe enough in their own cause .....

[Hotrod]

I really truely wish I could be surprised in the least with this news.

[alkemical]

I wish i could take credit for this, but it was left in my rep:

"suicide bombings are retarded. **** it, I'm going to hell"

[cutthemdown]

These radicals will stop at nothing. It's a lot like the ghetto in America though where many are afriad to speak out because they don't want their kids and spouses murdered. I can understand Muslim leaders being wary of talking too hard against this sort of stuff. What they end up doing is saying this is outrageous and agianst the tenents of Islam......But with all the oppression and poverty they suffer, and the fact America is evil, we can understand why they do it, but we don't codone it. That's just enough to not get put on the radicals hit list.

[Bronco Bob]

These radicals will stop at nothing. It's a lot like the ghetto in America though where many are afriad to speak out because they don't want their kids and spouses murdered. I can understand Muslim leaders being wary of talking too hard against this sort of stuff. What they end up doing is saying this is outrageous and agianst the tenents of Islam......But with all the oppression and poverty they suffer, and the fact America is evil, we can understand why they do it, but we don't codone it. That's just enough to not get put on the radicals hit list.

That's a good point. Bhutto got killed for speaking out against the terrorists.
So that sort of answers why Muslim leaders don't speak out against the
terrorists.

Militarily in Iraq the surge is working. I think in Iraq the terrorists are getting
desperate because a lot of the men that would have carried out these suicide
bombings have been killed or driven off. And those that are still there
are being watched more carefully. And so that's why they are using
mentally disabled women. It's a sign of desperation.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

So that sort of answers why Muslim leaders don't speak out against the
terrorists.


Saturday, July 09, 2005

Friedman Wrong About Muslims Again

And the Amman Statement on Ecumenism

Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot about Islam. Why, then, does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his latest column, "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden."

A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim jurisconsult. Such opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say that is easy, since Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are the leaders of 120 million Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that is one. Tracking these things down is time-consuming, but this should do:

Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden.

So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden?

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. And:

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden.

What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics who are fans of Bin Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But the allegation Friedman is making is that no major cleric has condemned him.

Try this: Prominent Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda!

See also: Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda.

There are also substantial Muslim communities in Europe with leaderships that have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.:

Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden.

There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain.

High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden.

The Russian Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15 percent of Russia's 143 million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in a century Russia may be 50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing here.

A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up by al-Muhajabah.

See also Charles Kurzman's page.

Friedman also does refer to a major conference of Muslim clerics, thinkers and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a powerful statement about religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin Laden stands for. But he seems oddly unaware of the significance of having Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and many other great Muslim authorities sign off on this epochal statement of Muslim ecumenism.

The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another "not a Muslim" if the believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites of Sunnism and Shiism. The whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims." The statement also demands that engineers should please stop pretending to issue fatwas, which should be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para. is also a slam at Bin Laden.

PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong that this is only a Muslim problem. In the global age all problems are everybody's. That's part of flat world, too, Tom.

posted by Juan Cole @ 7/09/2005 06:15:00 AM

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html

[cutthemdown]

I haven't read Friedman in a long time but I did like his book From Beirut to Jeresalum. Everyone should read that one.