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aziz
Republicans have been whining about not getting a seat at the table and being excluded from giving their ideas on health care reform. So, the President has invited the Republicans to join him at a health care summit on Feb 25th, which will be televised, so that they can offer their ideas to the American people and work with Democrats to publicly discuss the reform issues.
What’s the GOP response? “It’s a TRAP!“
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johnpi
Hijaabified Beauty takes on child abuse in the Muslim community:
A while ago, I wrote a very personal post which was deleted very soon after I published it. You see, I have a dark secret that I have kept to myself for much of my life. A secret that I wish I had the courage to share with someone close to me. One that has, in my mind robbed me of the innocence of childhood. I was a victim of sexual abuse.
I am not writing this post to gain some sort of pity, or to be encouraged by my readers to tell someone I know, or even to confront my abusers. I am writing this post to alert parents. Most instances of child molestation are committed by individuals that are close to the child or family. The offender is often a family member…someone who has easy access to the child, and someone who the child is relatively comfortable around. Unfortunately, this was true in my case.
It pains me to say this, but parents need to stop being so trusting of their relatives. It is important that if you leave your child home with a relative that you ask your child what they did with their uncle (for example). Children are innocent, they will tell you. I wish till this day that my mother would have forsaken all political correctness and politeness and that she had explained to me what a good touch and bad touch was so that I might have been able to salvage my childhood.
….And don’t for a second think that we are free from such a fitna because we are Muslim. Child molestation is big problem in our communities…it just doesn’t get talked about. I want to change that. Start talking…to your child, your neighbor, a family member, your shaykh or community member. Make the community aware of this horrible problem.
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johnpi
Love in Jordan: ‘Dress Western act Oriental.’
In the corridors of the University of Jordan, young women sway their hips in tight jeans, embracing the latest fashion trend the West has to offer. Their male counterparts seem no less committed to showing off their looks, nor to a deeply rooted urge to catch the attention of flashy girls.
This is one of the few places where young people can mix in a country built on strict gender segregation. Despite the superficially Western influenced culture, many young people express exasperation with the traditional mentality governing most people.
But girls and boys, like in many oriental societies, often break the taboo and engage in a romantic relation. But the fate of most romantic adventures is in the end determined by family more than the lovers themselves.
“This romantic relationship is veiled with secrecy, fear and deception,” admits Ehsan, a fourth year engineering student at the university of Jordan who says he must keep his family in the dark over this relationship if he wants to one day marry the girl.
“My family does not know I have a girlfriend. Her family might kill her if they know,” he said.
….“Some of the young people refuse old tradition and want to make their own choices,” he said. “But this culture needs time to grow.”
In Jordan, the majority of the 5.6 million population is made up of young people, with a ratio of two females to every male.
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johnpi
Taliban confirm Hakeemullah’s death.
The Taliban based in Orakzai Agency confirmed on Tuesday that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakeemullah Mehsud is dead.
However, Alam Tariq the offiicial Taliban spokesman has not yet made a statement.
Sources said that Maulvi Noor Jamal has been nominated as Mehsud’s succesor.
….Maulvi Noor Jamal is a native of the Orakzai Agency and rose to power as the leader of the Taliban in the Kurram tribal area.
He was also given responsibilities for Orakzai when the military began the Waziristan offensive in October.
Jamal is in his late thirties and was a maulana at a local madrassah before he was made the leader of the Taliban in Kurram.
He had a close relationship with Mehsud and is known for his brutality. One resident who left Khurram for fear of being wanted by him said Jamal “…kills humans like one will kill chickens.” Jamal is also the man who is allegedly overseeing the flogging of two men and a teenage boy in a recently broadcast video.
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johnpi
There aren’t enough good targets in Somalia…
A senior leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia has declared jihad against neighboring Kenya for supporting the weak Somali Transitional Federal Government.
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johnpi
Could US drone strikes push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge type genocide?
A more provocative — and perhaps more ominous — analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”
Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk — until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.
The Taliban sure hope so…
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cbarwa
No fackin chance, there are so many differences; the Khmer Rouge were a party based organisation that could expand quite rapidly and the Pakistani army is far more of a force that the Royal Cambodian army ever was. Taliban in Pakistan have pretty much zero chance of overrunning Pakistan; they would get decimated in a real civil war.
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johnpi
An experienced military trainer who taught US Army soldiers about his Muslim faith has been suspended from working on military bases pending a continuing criminal inquiry, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.
The [Louay] Safi affair reveals the deep divisions within the U.S. government over how to combat terrorism and over what constitutes moderate Islam.
Some believe insight into Islamist thinking can be gained only by engaging a wide range of people in North America’s close-knit Muslim community, where leaders may well have ties to extremists – ties that do not necessarily signal alliances or support. Others argue that engagement should be limited or shunned to avoid legitimizing radicals or embarrassing the government.
Safi is a senior official of the Islamic Society of North America, the country’s largest Muslim organization. ISNA has been consulted for years by Washington and is described as a partner in the fight against terrorism. In addition to serving as ISNA’s communications director, Safi runs its program certifying Muslim chaplains for work in the U.S. military and prison system. He publicly denounces terrorism and advocates peace.
….“You have a schizophrenic government and a schizophrenic institution,” Zelikow said, referring to ISNA. “The schizophrenia cuts right into how the government views the whole Fort Hood affair. We don’t know whether to treat him [Hasan] as part of an international conspiracy or as a lone wolf who happened to have gotten solace from a radical imam.”
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Dawud Israel
alienate him and just further the hatred of the West…
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abunoor
After a meeting Thursday evening, the board declared in the resolution it “will continue to strive for the objective scrutiny and resolution to the fatal shooting of Cleric Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, not presuming guilt or innocence.”
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johnpi
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johnpi
Sectarian strife makes love difficult in Iraq.
The problem of inter-communal marriages is largely new in Iraq, where the community one belonged to was previously of little importance in the quest for a spouse. Executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime comprised a Sunni Arab elite but was largely secular.
“The situation deteriorated after the fall of the former regime and the sectarian violence that followed.”
Sociologist Suha al-Shamaa, who also works in the women’s section at the human rights ministry, said: “Before the U.S. occupation of 2003, the question of which community a woman belonged to was not asked. Today it’s essential.”
….As many as 41.5 percent of Iraqi men and women over 12 years old are single, the WFP says, and 4.2 percent are widowed.
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thabet
A killer above the law?
Nor is it surprising that the Ministry of Defence responds to the news with bland assurances that every effort is made to ensure that drones are used in compliance with the laws of war. There are “no reports” of civilian casualties, the ministry adds. If taken at face value, these are heartening assurances. But they also illustrate the heart of the problem: the use of killer drones is shrouded in secrecy, and the accountability mechanisms that apply to regular warfare are simply absent.
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johnpi
Toronto college creates Muslim studies program to teach imams how to create a ‘Canadian Islam.’
According to the 2001 census – the last one for which data are available – there were 579,640 Muslims in Canada, almost half of those in Toronto.
Canada’s fastest growing religion, Islam is now firmly rooted in the country. And whileRoshan Jamal is glad to see her faith become established here, she laments that size has also allowed Muslims to remain isolated within their own communities if they choose.
“It’s a natural instinct,” says Jamal, president of the Canadian Dawn Foundation, set up a year ago to help Muslim leaders learn what it means to be a person of faith in this country.
But Jamal says Islam thrives best in a new country when its followers find ways to adapt the faith to their new home, as it did in the Middle Ages as the faith moved out of the Arab world and into Asia, Africa and Europe.
That’s why her group is putting $70,000 over two years behind a new Canadian Certificate in Muslim Studies program that was launched Saturday at the University of Toronto’s Emmanuel College.
Targeted at imams and other Muslim leaders – but open to anyone – the goal is to help develop a Canadian form of Islam, says college principal Mark Toulouse, a driving force behind the program.
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Shams al-Nahar
Here is some discussion of why the Obama adminstration is not doing what Sister Wllow elected him for.
I crafted a thought experiment/plausible scenario for the Potemkin Village at TAS to explain how one simple error by the Camp No cleanup crew….failing to remove the rags from the throats pre-autopsy, will possibly result in the eventual collapse of the house of cards Bush built. -
johnpi
A 5,000 student Muslim girls school planned for a small town in northeast England that was huge and out of scale to the surrounding communities has not only been halted by the Charity Commission but the local MP will attempt to compel legal action against the charity that proposed the project.
The prospect of a boarding school for 5,000 Muslim girls being set up in Pendle has been shattered by the Charity Commission. The charity watchdog has ruled Birmingham-based charity Islamic Help was operating outside its charitable objects in raising money for a school at Brierfield Mills.
In a hard-hitting decision, the commission has ordered donations to be returned to those who responded to the appeal for funds.
….Pendle MP Gordon Prentice called in the commission, insisting Islamic Help was breaking charity law in asking for money for a purpose outside its charitable objects.
“I shall be raising this issue in Parliament. I want to see a full audit of the finances of Islamic Help. And I want the Charity Commission to maintain an oversight and supervisory role.
“I am also left wondering what kind of assurances were given by the charity to Lloyds TSB (57% privately owned) to secure the £650,000 loan.”
You can’t just say, “Inshallah!” and come blazing in without regard for the local political response, which is nearly always cautious at best or alarmist at worst whenever new religious institutions come to a community.
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johnpi
Muslim man wins handshake case in Sweden.
Sweden’s unemployment agency has been found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman.
A Stockholm court Monday ordered the Public Employment Service to pay 50,000 kronor ($6,700) in damages to an immigrant from Bosnia who lost his jobless benefits when he was kicked out of the program.
Citing his faith, the man had refused to shake hands with a woman when he was interviewing for an internship. The agency said his behavior was part of the reason he didn’t get the position, and decided to exclude him from the program. -
johnpi
Rift develops within Amnesty International over partnering with Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners.
Amnesty International has been accused of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terrorists above those of their victims, following the charity’s affiliation with a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, who has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers.
Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.
….Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.
“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30.
Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners have been on the outs around here for some time.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Ms. Saghal was suspended by Amnesty International after the story ran.
And Mr. Begg is not “on the outs” with me.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Nor is Cageprisoners.
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Sameer
This is the response by Moazzem Beg and Cageprisoners. I agree with Abu Noor, more right wing
propaganda with little or no basis. A simple reading of Begg’s biography would suffice to end this nonsense. On p. 91 of his book ‘Enemy Combatant’ he tells of a Taliban group who saved some children from becoming sex slaves of a local warlord. But on p 95 he says ‘”I soon got quite disillusioned with the Taliban’” His only attempt at jihad, according to his book, was to try unsuccessfully to join the Chechen struggle against the Russians.Further, if one believes the allegations of Saghal then using the same logic one can make an allegation that Amnesty International by way of its support of Majid Nawaz is in support of neo-conservatism, since the British govt. funded Quilliam Foundation includes people such as:
Michael Gove (“Iraq War is the Triumph of Freedom over Evil)
Martin Bright (Neo-Conservatism: Why We Need It)
Ed Husain (“the Joy of American soldiers invading Iraq“)
Do only loose words and associations count when it comes to Muslims and not warmongering Neo-Cons?
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thabet
Douglas Murray, not Martin Bright, is the author of NeoConservatism: Why We Need It.
Also, AI supported Nawaaz as a prisoner of conscience when he was locked up in Egypt due to his being a member of HT. There is no link, afaik, between AI and Quilliam.
The question here is about Awlaki’s purported views and Cageprisoners ‘relationship’ with him. I believe they had this response too in the wake of the ‘underpants bomb plot’.
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Sameer
My apologies about the mix-up of Douglas Murray. However the full list of neo-con advisors of Quilliam was taken down from Quilliam’s site after it got out. Bright made statements did make statements in support of it.
No link? What about this then:
Maajid Nawaz speaks at Amnesty Student Conference
Ed Husain Speaks at Amnesty International
further the post by someone at Amnesty in support of Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation over at Huffington Post
Again I am simply asking that the same criteria used to convict Begg for his ideas and associations be applied to Quilliam and Amnesty as well.
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thabet
I don’t like Martin Bright, but he isn’t a neocon.
I guess the point is this:
Fred Husain and chums (at least on the face of it) claim to support HR, the very theory/practice/idea/whatever AI campaign for.Do Cageprisoners’ and their associates? I think people can make up their own minds by reading various statements released for/against Cageprisoners.
Here’s a statement by Sahgal (from Bright’s Spectator blog as it happens).
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Sameer
Just because one is a neo-con does not necessarily mean that one is a racist. Many simply subscribe to neo-conservatism for opportunist reasons or because they have fantasies of empire building (as opposed to nation building). Similarly if one is not a neo-con per se that does not mean they don’t harbor sentiments and advocate policies, ideas, and actions that are explicitly anti-Muslim in nature.
Martin Bright, is first and foremost a supporter of Israel. His antipathy and hatred of all things Islam and Muslim doesn’t necessarily have to do with Muslims but with Islam itself. Like Wilders his hatred is not necessarily with Muslims but with Islam itself. He claims that the Quran is a forged lie, a con-trick , according to Islamophobia Watch he is a self-confessed Islamophobe (“There is a LOT in Islam to be afraid of”) he has won praise from the BNP and other right wing racists for his documentaries on Muslims/Islam in Britian, he has also advocated that govt. aid to Muslim groups and schools be conditioned on their support for the state of Israel. In short, what the BNP, EDL cannot say publicly he can and does to win praise.
All the more interesting that he is one of the cheerleaders of Gita Sahgal in this affair.
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Shams al-Nahar
One more time, I would like to point out that the conservative/republican/right affiliation in America seemingly has either become colonized by or devolved to majority WECs, white evangelical christians.
If someone has access to the Rasmussen crosstabs my hypothesis could easily be either verified or disproven.
However, I am a poor student and can’t afford 20$ a month for house bias.I think the one thing that really did surprise me was the high level of explicitly Christian social conservatism on display here. One of the “breakout sessions” featured a speech from Pastor Rick Scarborough — who is most famous for trying to get America’s preachers more politicized. (“I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I’m a Christocrat.”)
After his speech, a middle-aged female delegate with a twang stood up and said, during the Q&A, “All the media types are asking us why we’re here. Here’s what I say. We’re all here for a little R&R — revival and revolt. If you’re not a Christian, and a person of faith, you just can’t understand what we’re doing!!” She got a standing ovation. -
cbarwa
Bit late to this story, about a US outpost being overrun by the Taliban, which is a little alarming
Combat Outpost Keating in the Kamdesh District of Nuristan Province, was attacked by insurgent forces on Oct. 3. Because the outpost was located in a deep bowl surrounded by high ground, the attackers were able to pin down defenders and prevent them from using mortars to repel the initial attack. In addition, air support was at least 45 minutes away.
The insurgents quickly overran the base, entering the perimeter through a latrine area, setting fires that burned down most of the barracks, and managing to kill the 8 soldiers and wound 22
As a colleague of mine pointed out, this was something the muhajedin never managed to do, during the anti-Soviet jihad. Though admittedly the outpost was a relatively small one. What really boggles the mind is the in the executive summary of the report on the incident, the US army claims this as a “severe tactical defeat” for the Taliban. If this is what a tactical defeat looks like, I sure would hate to see what a decisive tactical victory looks like.
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johnpi
After reading Umar’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Salafi Dawah‘ I came away with a poor impression of the ‘Troid’ group as one of the more problematical ones, but this lecture seems very responsible (assuming this is the same group, which it may not be).
It may be that 9/11 and everything that has happened after has caused very unbalanced, immoderate groups to address distortions of extremism that were coming to dominate in the 1990s.
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thabet
Far-left party reveals ‘veiled’ female candidate:
All the more so because the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party), led by Trotskyist postman Olivier Besancenot, is a party that generates headlines for its extreme left wing position on issues including militant secularism.
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thabet
A German orthodontist refused to serve a teenager named ‘Jihad’:
The doctor in Donaueschingen told local daily Schwarzwälder Bote on Friday that she believed his name was a declaration of war against all non-Muslims and refused to treat him.
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Dan
Wow what a phaggot. Does this mean Muslim orthodontists can ban people named “Christian” now?
The doctor is clearly an idiot and had he done that in America he would have had his practice revoked and sued by the ACLU for being a bigoted retard.
Nice to see Germany reverting itself to its fascist past. I guess history tends to repeat itself.
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Pretty Pink Unicorns
You discount someone as bigoted using a slur against gay men. I find that disturbing.
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Dan
Lighten up and stop being so politically correct.
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Pretty Pink Unicorns
As a homosexual, I don’t appreciate you using a term that denigrates me as a slur.
And as for “retard”, mocking people with mental disabilities?
What are you, Cartman?
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skevin
Muslim orthodontists can refuse people named “Crusader”.
PS, Pink. He also used the term “retard”.
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Pretty Pink Unicorns
My apologies, I didn’t even read anything past the first sentence. If I had, I would have been equally as angry.
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johnpi
Al Shabab launches new effort to drive girls out of schools in areas it controls.
The Al-Shabab movement in Somalia has issued directives in schools located in areas under its control, in an effort to instill Islamist ideology in the younger generation.
Islamist authorities in Merca, located some 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, have ordered that boys and girls learn in separate classrooms and that the Somali national flag be replaced with the movement’s flag in schools, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.
Observers and human rights activists are concerned that the new directives will help the Islamists spread a radical ideology among impressionable schoolchildren.
….Analysts suspect the directives are a sign the movement is trying to push girls out of the school system in moves reminiscent of the Taliban’s attacks against girls’ schools in Pakistan, since imposing separate schooling for boys and girls is logistically and financially impossible.
“Al-Shabab has already demonstrated its clear need to subjugate women, and the expulsion of girls from schools fits into this,” Roque said, “in the same way that the Taliban separated men and women, their roles, their rights, and their role in the public and private spheres.”
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Naeem
Not clear how their directive to separate boys and girls is equated to pushing girls out of the school system? Seems like the so-called analysts are stretching to construct a narrative that all Islamists are against female education.
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Dan
Not all Islamists; just those that are allied to al-Qaeda and get their inspiration from the Taliban, which are mostly Sunni to begin with.
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johnpi
I think that the issue is that Somali communities don’t have the money to duplicate existing facilities and personnel to create a second school or school system for girls, so the default will be to keep the girls home and turn the schools into single-gender institutions.
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johnpi
Government must target militants in Karachi: MQM.
The MQM demanded on Saturday that the government must conduct an operation against militants holed up in different areas of Karachi.
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, MQM’s Deputy Convenor Farooq Sattar said that Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah has also admitted that militants are heading to Karachi to escape the military operations in Swat and Waziristan.
….He said that some religious parties and other political leaders are still defending the heinous crimes of the Taliban. He appealed the public to socially boycott such parties.
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johnpi
Thousands pack funerals for Pakistan bomb victims.
Beating their chests with hands, thousands of minority Shiite Muslims attended a mass funeral Saturday for those killed in a pair of bombings in Pakistan’s largest city.
At least 33 people died and 170 others were wounded in Karachi on Friday when suspected Sunni militants targeted a bus carrying Shiite worshippers and then attacked a major hospital treating victims of the first bomb, said government spokesman Jamil Soomro.
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johnpi
Several days ago I posted a photo from Internet vigilante Charlie Flowers’ Facebook page that i contended showed he had an English Defence League connnection. Richard Bartholomew looked at the same photo and thought I had made an ‘imaginative leap.’
Flowers’ or one of his ‘Cheerleader’ associates has resolved the issue themselves by posting new photos to Facebook of Flowers meeting with EDL youth division leader Joel Titus, an activist with a history of violence who was recently arrested for assaulting a photojournalist, and Matthew Kaplan, who Bartholomew reports is the paid EDL publications coordinator responsible for leaflets and press releases.
In comments to Bartholomew’s earlier post, Flowers’ or one of his supporters seems to have been most animated by the accusation that Flowers may be affiliated with or have affinity for racists or white supremacists. This latest photo seems a calculated response meant to subvert that conclusion. An anti-Fascist publication describes the mixed-race Titus as the figure the EDL “parades to the media as proof of their non-racist agenda.” Kaplan is a Jewish American student from Seattle, which supposedly rebuts the EDL’s reputation for Nazi affinities. Kaplan has appeared at several EDL demonstrations waving the Israeli flag. However the presence of minorities and Jews is hardly a defense. Racism and religious persecution are as much about who you exclude as who you let in.
Flowers and his Internet vigilante friends the ‘Cheerleaders’ claim to be opposed to Islamic extremism, but they are actually against Islam and target Muslims indiscriminately, just as their fellow travelers in the EDL do, and there is no better evidence of that than the intimidation tactics they engaged in here at Talk Islam, publishing several front page contributors’ home addresses and sending mail to one blogger’s home. They have also repeatedly threatened me.
None of those targeted – Hussein Rashid, Aziz Poonawalla or myself – could be described as anything other than moderate or progressive Muslims who have wrtten against extremism and religious violence.
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johnpi
Karachi bombings: Ulema rally Pakistanis to call for restraint.
Ulema from different schools of thought have condemned the two blasts on Friday, appealed to the people to exercise restraint and pointed out that terrorists are trying to distort the image of Islam and the country.
The Islamic scholars said the perpetrators of the incidents of terrorism were neither Muslims nor Pakistanis, adding that they were trying to divide the people of the same faith.
….Maulana Hassan Zafar Naqvi ruled out any sectarian aspect of the tragedy, recalling that Shias and Sunnis lived together and would not allow any such conspiracy to succeed in future. However, the series of attacks on mourners was a bad omen, he said, adding that conspiracies were being hatched to distort the image of Islam across the world.
He said the terrorists were enemies of Islam, Muslims and Pakistan, but, the government could not be absolved from its responsibility. “The government should tell people how many of the criminals arrested in the past had been sentenced to death,” he said.
Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, the chief of the Central Ruet Hilal Committee, had the same views to share. He said those behind the tragedy were bringing a bad name to Islam, Muslims and Pakistan. He asked the people to keep their sentiments under control, as violence would only strengthen those who were trying to destablise the country.
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johnpi
CBS News is reporting that Abdulmutallab has said that Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attempted suicide bombing against a US airliner.
The suspect in a failed Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt told federal investigators that radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the attack, CBS News has learned.
….The source said Abdulmutallab told investigators he was guided by al-Awalki to detonate the bomb over U.S. soil, unlike the failed British bomber plot in 2006 when the bombers were instructed to detonate bombs on airliners over the ocean on the way to the U.S. so that there would be no evidence left behind.
There’s also a discussion of the legality of the US government targeting al Awlaki:
CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports that al-Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship – he was born in New Mexico – will have little bearing on American military and intelligence efforts to locate and kill him.
U.S. officials, both current and former, tell Logan that if an individual is deemed to be part of a terrorist network that is a threat to American security in any way, they can be targeted legitimately.
Al Awlaki denied in another report giving Abdulmutallab permission or issuing a fatwa approving the attack.
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arif
-excerpts:
..this is not a discussion of Dr Aafia’s guilt or innocence or the morality or justice of her detention. Instead, it is a dissection of the belief held by many Pakistanis and other Muslims that being a Jewish American automatically leads to bias against Muslims in general and Muslim Americans in particular.
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even as Dr Aafia casts aspersions on the Jewish Americans that may have been present in her jury, it is Jewish Americans who are working at the request of her own brother to monitor the fairness of her trial and the condition of her mental state.Undoubtedly, many questions can be raised about the flawed mechanisms through which Dr Aafia and many others accused of terrorism have been treated by the US authorities.
But this has little to do with being Jewish American. It is a myth that all Jewish Americans are against the two-state solution and to feel strongly against the community obscures Jewish American efforts to stand up for the rights of those detained in Guantanamo and Bagram.
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arif
Another summary.
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aziz
Being white, muslim, and American – a great debate a couple of years ago between bin Gregory and Umar Lee. Abu Noor makes an appearance in comment threads.
I sometimes feel like there’s an ocean of amazing debate out there in the Islamsphere that we are all too willing to forget about, and thus we often reinvent the wheel.
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aziz
FWIW my take on the debate is that Umar made a key observation that “whiteness” is defined as who you aren’t more than who you are. In thta sense, “white” is no longer just a racial term, just like “African American” is no longer just a racial term (related debate: is Barack Obama an African American?). Race is just a lazy designation for tribe nowadays. It’s not such a far leap to discus Avatar from here…
And I think I have to agree that “being muslim” is definitely non-white, even if you are. That’s not to say that white privilege is erased upon conversion, but it may be probationary … see our own highly relevant debate about white privilege here at Talk Islam, which spun off into a guest post by Willow at COB.
(I wonder what the view of all this from across the Pond is. thabet, do we Americans seem more or less obsessed with race to you than Britishers?)
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thabet
I think you just talk about it more.
We pretend that isn’t an issue any more.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
I think it is a real issue but I also think a large amount of the discussion about race in America is inane and almost always focused on the least important aspects of the issue, which really bothers me.
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willow
Yup.
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bingregory
Thanks for the link. I’m on vacation with the parents at the moment – just checking in. That post is in the top five most frequently visited pages on my site, fwiw, so I hope it’s of some benefit to somebody.
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johnpi
Contrasting the difference between how homosexuality is viewed in Europe and America versus the Muslim world.
Luongo — who details his adventures in Afghanistan, where he attends a “gay party” — agrees with Sharma, saying that while in Europe and America “homosexual desire and acts become the very definition of a person,” in the Muslim world, “homosexual desire and acts are simply one aspect amongst others, something people do but not something that defines a person above all things.” Thus many of the Muslim men the writers encounter do not identify themselves as gay, and ask the latter why they don’t have wives, causing deep confusion, and in the case of Richard Ammon, offence.
Via Kawdess tweets.
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plimfix
To my knowledge, this analysis concurs with what the research literature says about Islam and homosexuality in some parts of the Muslim world and for some Muslims, but sexuality within the Muslim world does sometimes parallel Western identity models. Cf: Boellstorff, T. (2005) The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press) ; Massad, J. (2007) Desiring Arabs (University Of Chicago Press) ; Murray, S, and Roscoe, W. (1997) Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature (New York: New York University Press) .
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willow 9:57 am on February 9, 2010 Permalink |
A brave voice that deserves our support.