California now, who is next?

The thing is, clerics in more secure areas (such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Spain, The US, etc.) DO denounce terrorism, and do their best to educate people about the evils of those who support it. There have been multiple fatwas against it. The problem is that in the less secure areas, you have clerics that do not want their congregations blown to smithereens, so they do not publicly speak out against it.

 

Your last statement about congregations being blown to smithereens is correct. But are you intentially giving out misinformation about everything else.


Europe moves against radical imams
By Nathalie Malinarich
BBC News Online


Not for the first time, France's relationship with its Muslim community has hit the headlines - this time due to government attempts to expel radical clerics.
But such a crackdown on radical Muslims is not exclusive to France.
Several western European countries - among them Spain, Italy and the UK - have recently stepped up efforts to curb the preachers who they say provide the ideological justification for terrorism.
Such moves have faced legal obstacles, raised concerns about freedom of speech and divided opinion among so-called mainstream or moderate Muslims.
'Government ignorance'
The latest European country to propose curbs to the activities of radical preachers is Spain.
There the recently elected socialist government is looking for new ways to combat militant Islamic extremism in the wake of the deadly 11 March train attacks.
Part of that effort, the interior minister told a newspaper on Sunday, should include more controls on the imams preaching in small mosques and checks on the content of Friday sermons.
While the proposal was welcomed by the leader of Madrid's main mosque, it was broadly rejected by most of the country's Muslim leaders, Catholic bishops and the opposition.
"It stems from absolute ignorance of the thinking and practices of Islam and of the Muslim community," Mansur Escudero, head of the Muslim community's main interlocutor in Spain, the Islamic Council, told BBC News Online.
"It's not constitutional and it contravenes fundamental rights. Bad influences can come from all sorts of places. Mosques do not provide refuge to terrorists and the government should not demonise a whole community."
And what if an imam breaks the law?
"Then he should face the consequences," says Mr Escudero.
Ideological framework
In France, the government already deports foreign imams seen to be advocating violence - the most publicised case being that of a preacher who last month condoned the beating and stoning of wives in an interview.
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin ordered his deportation on the grounds that he used his mosque to advocate violence.
The order was suspended temporarily by a court which expressed "serious doubt" about its legality. But that has not stopped Mr De Villepin from trying to expel other imams.
On Saturday, the Turkish leader of a Paris mosque accused of leading an extremist movement was placed under house arrest pending review of a deportation order against him.

 

I was not posting misinformation, and your article does not suggest it, either. The countries I've listed do have clerics and imams who denounce terrorism. There are many Muslims (I don't know if clerics did this or not) who do not consider bin Laden to be a Muslim - they say he renounced God when he first killed civilians.

I especially am proud of the American muslim community for curbing terrorist influence among their ranks. The clerics here in the US take huge steps in letting the young members of the US Muslim community know that terrorism is against Islam.

 

I think the FBI being in the mosques is doing that.
Lord I love the Patriot act.
and there is more than one way to get in by the way.

 

Understandable logic, but aren't their "congregations" being blown to smithereens anyway? Kinda makes it "damned if you do, damned if you don't". And if that's the case, I'd rather die trying to change things for the better, than die trying to buy food, or gas, or walking down the street, or praying, or visiting a friend, or riding the bus, or.........

 

OK....so what are these "many Muslims" doing about it? Bin Laden is claiming to do what he does in the name of Islam. Why with such a high price onhis head (last I knew it was $25 mil US) hasn't he been bound up and turned in to face and pay for his crimes? In the realm of puplic/popular image, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the barrel.

I have no answer to these questions only guesses. Could be muslims are trying to cut out the cancer and the US media just doesn't report on it. Either way, I haven't hear anything on ANY effort being made from within to eliminate the violence of bin laden and his followers.

 

Putting Andy's and LawDog's comments aside for a moment, if we view your comment as the truth for a moment (not saying it isn't anyway, but for purposes of debate), you've said that clerics in MORE SECURE AREAS do denounce terrorism. That's all well and good, but what we really want is for clerics in NOT-SO-SECURE AREAS like Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Jordan, Israel, the State of Palestine (unrecognized by US), Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, the 'Stans, etc. to denounce terrorism, which, for an extremely large part, they have not done.

~AJ

 

true enough - but lets not forget an important fact:

Islam may have trained him to be religious, but it was the United States that trained him to be militant. So who bears more responsibility for the bad apple?

 

We didn't train him to be militant, but you right about the mistake that was made in the 1980's to arm and train muslims to fight the russians. The State Department pushed for it but the military and outside intelligence agencies were against it. But the State Department has always had, since the Dulles brothers, a taint of arab money on it's fingers and they not only got their way but gave away air to surface missles that were later used out in Long Island to down an Air France jet some years ago. An Israeli Commercial airliner jet was bounced back on the take off line to allow the French jet to take its flight path which made it a mistaken target. Some of you might remember the story of the jet that blew up for unknown reasons after liftoff from Kennedy.

Thanks for pointing out the Bin Laden military training.

 

This is true - we do need them to denounce terrorism. (Haven't Iraq & Indonesian clerics made statements denouncing terrorism? I seem to remember something to that effect, but I'm not 100% sure) The problem is how do we convince them that it is the best possible thing to do, regardless of threats?

 

A couple have, but not many, and certainly not a majority.

How do we convince them? I don't think we can convince them of our position without backing up our statements that we will step in if they don't do something. And the only way to do that is to actually step in and do something.

 

not to say 'yeah-huh!' but, we did.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1#BODY

 

Yeah, sorry, Andy, but we did specifically train Muslims, and one of them did happen to be Osama bin Laden.

 

Did you guys read what I wrote. I wrote that we did not train him to be militant but we did train and arm him to fight the russians. Read it again and you will see that is what I stated. I actually thanked Rick for pointing out the military training for like back then to many people did not realize that Islam is a militant religion to begin with and made the mistake of trust.

 

Just like a pole-cat, all you need to do is aim him in the right direction and help him lift his tail.
No matter which one your talking about, Osama bin Laden or the skunk, they both stink!

 

For those who are not aware of it but the United States trained and armed thousands of muslims to fight the then Soviet Union in Afghaistan during the cold war. Afghaistan had a soviet puppet government that needed the soviet army to keep it in power. The reason why the soviets invested so much man power into Afghaistan was to stop the spread of Islam into their asian soviet states that at one time were muslim but then had their faith subdue under soviet styled communism. The Soviet army bled and bled with the war and the will of the army disappeared which laid way for the eastern soviet states to break away without the fear of the red army pouring in.

The down end was that the state department which used CIA, Rangers, mercs to train the muslims failed to realize that Islam itself is a miltiant religion and it hated the "Christian United States" as much as it hated the "godless soviet union".
So we may have armed Bin Laden to fight the russians but his hatred for us is rooted in his following of the Koran. People failed to see that then just as they are failing to see it now. Funny yet sad thing is if they ever took the time to read the entire koran then they would know better. Islam is the enemy not the republicans not the democrats and not muslim people as humans but the religion of hate that has infected them and poisoned their minds and taken away for the most part their ability of free will. Read the koran and imagine growing up with only that being preached to you all day long, day in and day out, year in and year out with no alternative view points, then what I say may seem clearer.

 

In college I had Saudi friends and they were good people (they were Islamic), but some of those Pakistanis were real "I hate all Americans" types. I have blonde hair and blue eyes and I am American, a real "blue eyed devil" to the "I hate all Americans" types. In my experience it is the Pakistanis we need to watch not the Saudis.

 

I hope those Saudi friends were real and if they were born in this country and raised in a non-religious home I am sure they were but if you haven't heard, Saudi Arabia has a sword in its flag for Jihad, Bin Landen is very popular in Saudi Arabia and came from the ruling elite there, most of the 911 terrrorist were from Saudi Arabia. I could go on but I hope you will look into it yourself. I have the feeling that you are basically a nice guy who is being sold a bad bill of goods on the college campus and from the media which if you look into it is not as American as you think.

 

I love how you conveniently exclude the fact that Osama & his followers were exiled from Saudi Arabia, and that the Saudi ruling family is on Osama's hit list.

 

He still gets money from Saudi Arabia and if you haven't noticed the terrorism inside of Saudi Arabia is not against the Saudi ruling family but against non-Islamic workers. It is the segerated Western Compounds being bombed not the palaces. Never mind any kidnapping or beheadings. Everything else is just bizarre mideast posturing. It is like being in one of those fun houses with mirrors. One thing is never listen to the words just look at the actions and reactions or lack of.

By the way Cyclonus I have a red stain on my white sheet. Do you know what I could use to get it out before the next meeting?

Your line of thought for defending your position is improving but you should stay away from low brow attacks. It takes away from any sincere base that you might have.