Don't Dare To Diss The Hamas Flag

Via Down Under On The Right Side:

2/12/09
An anonymous source from inside the Palestinian Club and the Socialist club at SFSU has provided the College Republicans with the following information:

In response to the College Republican's anti-Hamas event (video below) held on Wednesday the "offended parties" have banded together to push the school to punish the College Republicans for throwing shoes at the Hamas Flag. Over the next few days the coalition will release a statement making the following demands:

-Authorities must drop all charges pending against Muhammad Abdullah and Jeremy Stern, the two protestors that assaulted the College Republicans and stole their property.

-The school must sanction/punish the College Republicans for throwing shoes at the Hamas flag.

-The groups must organize a forum to "educate" students about what forms of speech are not acceptable according to the offended parties, specifically the always ambiguous "hate speech."

So far we've confirmed that the General Union of Palestinian Students and Muslim Student Association are the main players in the push to ban/punish forms of speech that could potentially offend students. By characterizing "offensive" speech as hate speech they will demand that the school implement new rules to "keep this from happening again."

source - San Francisco State College Republicans

MK says in his commentary:

You know how leftist trash merrily burn American flags and deface them as a sign of their undying patriotism and love of the western world. Well, apparently over in a San Francisco university, some Republican college students got together and did the nasty on a Hamas flag. Someone stepped on it, some may even have thrown their shoes at the ‘precious’ flag, etc.

Not surprisingly [because we all know how much leftists love terrorists], the university leftists are most upset over this horrendous travesty. Heavens above, they desecrated a Hamas flag, a Hamas flag!

The insanity and pandering to terrorists just gets worse and worse. Musn't offend Moslems, not matter what. When will the West say, "Enough, already!"

Promoting Salafism At The Ivy Leagues

Via this posting at Weasel Zippers, we note that Princeton University has a professor shilling for fundamental Islam:

Bernard Haykel [Princeton Professor of Near Eastern Studies], an expert on Islam, told Sheela Bhatt in the first part of an exclusive interview that the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 26, 2008, will be the basis for similar strikes in the future.

In this, the second part of his interview, Haykel, who among other things is defending the legal and human rights of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the prime accused in the 9/11 attacks, talks about Al Qaeda's appeal among Muslims, and how it can be contained.

....Some of Al Qaeda's claims are correct. They have appropriated many of the arguments of Marxists, of the anti-colonial and Third World movement, like social justice, transparency and better government and less brutalisation. At one level their arguments are quite appealing, like their argument on anti-globalisation and environment. Some of Al Qaeda's arguments are legitimate....

Princeton has surely departed from the intent of its founders:

The history of Princeton goes back to its establishment by "New Light" Presbyterians; Princeton was originally intended to train Presbyterian ministers. It opened at Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the presidency of Jonathan Dickinson as the College of New Jersey. Its second president was Aaron Burr, Sr.; the third was Jonathan Edwards.

Theologian Jonathan Edwards is most famous for his role in the Great Awakening and his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

(Crossposted to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS)

Promoting Islam At Georgetown University

From The Avid Editor's Insights, on March 10, 2008:

Check out this amazingly illuminating post by konservo

“Researchers” From Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and Georgetown University Publish a “Study”: ”

Georgetown University has been hard at work producing a new ‘study’ to show us infidels how it is really our fault that Islam has been given a bad name.

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

Academic Field or Preventive Political Tool to Balance Injustice?

From Roncesvalles:

While I am writing this, the spat between the German political scientist Matthias Küntzel and Andrew Bostom has acquired some notoriety. Pamela Geller offers at Atlas Shrugs an excellent overview.

In his book "Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East," Küntzel argues that contemporary Islamic antisemitism is largely due to the infamous Hitler-Mufti connection (I have posted about it, for example, here, here and here) and its ongoing influence in today' Islamic world. Bostom accuses him to fail to examine easily accessible sources which show that Islamic antisemitism, with Koranic and entirely non-Western motifs, was rampant throughout the 19th century in Egypt.

Reactions to Küntzel's failure to acknowledge those sources and Bostom's reasoning are ranging from "one scatches one's head" to "he (Küntzel) must be a masochist".

I have posted some of the thoughts below at the comment sections of several blogs, so I thought why not put it up here as well.

I am amazed at the fact that Küntzel’s reaction (or the lack thereof) causes so much amazement. If one takes his political affiliation into consideration, it's not all that amazing anymore.

Küntzel is a member of the “Anti-German” political left. The Anti-Germans appeared as a distinct political group in the early Nineties as a response to the racist attacks on foreigners and general chauvinism following German reunification. The basic creed of the Anti-Germans includes solidarity with Israel and American foreign policy and a critique of mainstream left anti-capitalist views, specifically the anti-globalisation movement, which are (rightfully) considered structurally antisemitic.

All Anti-German efforts are exclusively focused on fighting antisemitism. I don't have much of a head for political theory but let me try to explain it like that: Anti-Germans think that capital and labour have overcome their antagonism and are focusing their mutual efforts now on destroying the group historically identified with the “greedy side of capitalism” (”raffender Kapitalismus”) — i.e. the Jews. By destroying the Jews, capital and labour allow capitalism to survive. This implies that the working classes can’t be trusted anymore and the Anti-Germans close that gap by a bit of early Marxist theory, whereby first more capitalism is needed until the state of communism can be reached, specifically in underdeveloped (Arab-, Islamic-, fascist-) regimes. This, lo and behold, resolves the problem of “Western imperialism” as well: More of it is needed because antisemitism emerges primarily under conditions of stunted capitalist development and Western capitalism (i.e. the USA and their allies in their “war against terrorism”) thus deserves support.

My own take on that is, that, while a lot of the historical analysis of the Anti-Germans has merit, for example that antisemitism is an integral part of German (and European) culture, their conclusions are weird and speak of a self-hatred I find disturbing.

Understandably in a way, “Anti-Germanism” is an ideology with a lot of allure for those Germans who are decent enough to see antisemitism for the evil it is, yet who can not face giving up their leftist positions. However, it should not be overlooked that here we have a totally fixed world-view, almost bordering, I think, on the cult-like, and if Küntzel blames, in that spirit, the age-old Arab antisemitism on the Germans because achnowledging an equal share in the historic guilt would -- to him -- mean relativizing the German guilt (and gets acclaim for it), historians have a credibility problem.

The fact that Hitler and the Muslims were quite adequate in their genocidal Jew hatred, that maybe even the Mufti might have influenced Hitler more than vice versa, is quite well documented. This blog entry contains a lot of information and leads to further serious sources, which must have been, if this little blogger got it, available to Küntzel as well. But if one considers such facts as something that might be used to relativize the German guilt (and it might indeed), one might easily, consciously or subconsciously, overlook it and then historiography has lost any credibility as an academic field and can consider itself a preventive political tool to balance injustice.

Saudi Bucks At Universities

An accounting of the Saudi bucks infused into various universities all around the world has not been forthcoming as to the specificity of the usage of those funds. Isn't it important to reveal just what impact those billions have had on curriculum and material presented to the next generation of our nation's leaders?

Read this December 10, 2007 article in the Washington Times. Those Saudi bucks get spread around in more places than you've heard of!

The interfaithing street seems to run one way, in Wahhabism's direction. So much for promoting understanding among various religions on university campuses around the world. Courtesy of the Saudis, of course.

Islamic Saudi Academy Again Under Scrutiny

It remains to be seen whether or not anything will come of the recommendation of a federal panel. From this source, October 18, 2007:

McLEAN, Va. (AP) - A private Islamic school supported by the Saudi government should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam, a federal panel recommends.

In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools.

Particular criticism is leveled at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school serving nearly 1,000 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in northern Virginia's Fairfax County....

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

Madrassa Madness

Check THIS out!



Excerpt from the above link:

Yes, those t-shirts for young girls say “Intifada NYC.” These were sold at the Arab Fair in Prospect Park on July 8.

Is this the kind of “middle eastern cultural enrichment” that Dhabah Almontaser, principal for Khalil Gibran International Academy, will bring to her students and teachers?...

[...]

If these t-shirts were designed, approved, manufactured, received, stored, brought to the Arab Fair and sold by an organization associated with the Yemeni American Association, and she [school principal Dhabah Almontaser] knew nothing of the matter (or did not disavow it if she did), then she is negligent in the extreme and should be fired, and Chancellor Klein should shut down the KGIA project.

No third choice exists.

You must read the entire article: "KGIA principal Almontaser linked directly to “Intifada NYC” t-shirts"!

Visit the site Stop the Madrassah: Protecting Our Public Schools from Islamist Curricula for additional information in other articles.

Attention, Bloggers! "Muslims Speak Out" (July 22-29)

Follow up to this posting...

To access the On Faith forum in order to post comments or questions, CLICK HERE, then on the name of the person to whom you wish to address the question or comment.

To the credit of the Washington Post, the following article was published in "Outlook," July 22, 2007

Losing My Jihadism

By Mansour al-Nogaidan
Sunday, July 22, 2007; B01

BURAIDAH, Saudi Arabia Islam needs a Reformation. It needs someone with the courage of Martin Luther.

This is the belief I've arrived at after a long and painful spiritual journey. It's not a popular conviction -- it has attracted angry criticism, including death threats, from many sides. But it was reinforced by Sept. 11, 2001, and in the years since, I've only become more convinced that it is critical to Islam's future.

Muslims are too rigid in our adherence to old, literal interpretations of the Koran. It's time for many verses -- especially those having to do with relations between Islam and other religions -- to be reinterpreted in favor of a more modern Islam. It's time to accept that God loves the faithful of all religions. It's time for Muslims to question our leaders and their strict teachings, to reach our own understanding of the prophet's words and to call for a bold renewal of our faith as a faith of goodwill, of peace and of light.

I didn't always think this way. Once, I was one of the extremists who clung to literal interpretations of Islam and tried to force them on others. I was a jihadist.

I grew up in Saudi Arabia. When I was 16, I found myself assailed by doubts about the existence of God. I prayed to God to give me the strength to overcome them. I made a deal with Him: I would give up everything, devote myself to Him and live the way the prophet Muhammad and his companions had lived 1,400 years ago if He would rid me of my doubts.

I joined a hard-line Salafi group. I abandoned modern life and lived in a mud hut, apart from my family. Viewing modern education as corrupt and immoral, I joined a circle of scholars who taught the Islamic sciences in the classical way, just as they had been taught 1,200 years ago. My involvement with this group led me to violence, and landed me in prison. In 1991, I took part in firebombing video stores in Riyadh and a women's center in my home town of Buraidah, seeing them as symbols of sin in a society that was marching rapidly toward modernization.

Yet all the while, my doubts remained. Was the Koran really the word of God? Had it really been revealed to Muhammad, or did he create it himself? But I never shared these doubts with anyone, because doubting Islam or the prophet is not tolerated in the Muslim society of my country.

By the time I turned 26, much of the turmoil in me had abated, and I made my peace with God. At the same time, my eyes were opened to the hypocrisy of so many who held themselves out as Muslim role models. I saw Islamic judges ignoring the marks of torture borne by my prison comrades. I learned of Islamic teachers who molested their students. I heard devout Muslims who never missed the five daily prayers lying with ease to people who did not share their extremist beliefs.

In 1999, when I was working as an imam at a Riyadh mosque, I happened upon two books that had a profound influence on me. One, written by a Palestinian scholar, was about the struggle between those who deal pragmatically with the Koran and those who take it and the hadith literally. The other was a book by a Moroccan philosopher about the formation of the Arab Muslim way of thinking.

The books inspired me to write an article for a Saudi newspaper arguing that Muslims have the right to question and criticize our religious leaders and not to take everything they tell us for granted. We owe it to ourselves, I wrote, to think pragmatically if our religion is to survive and thrive.

That article landed me in the center of a storm. Some men in my mosque refused to greet me. Others would no longer pray behind me. Under this pressure, I left the mosque.

I moved to the southern city of Abha, where I took a job as a writer and editor with a newly established newspaper. I went back to leading prayers at the paper's small mosque and to writing about my evolving philosophy. After I wrote articles stressing our right as Muslims to question our Saudi clerics and their interpretations and to come up with our own, officials from the kingdom's powerful religious establishment complained, and I was banned from writing.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave new life to what I had been saying. I went back to criticizing the rote manner in which we Muslims are fed our religion. I criticized al-Qaeda's school of thought, which considers everyone who isn't a Salafi Muslim the enemy. I pointed to examples from Islamic history that stressed the need to get along with other religions. I tried to give a new interpretation to the verses that call for enmity between Muslims and Christians and Jews. I wrote that they do not apply to us today and that Islam calls for friendship among all faiths.

I lost a lot of friends after that. My old companions from the jihad felt obliged to declare themselves either with me or against me. Some preferred to cut their links to me silently, but others fought me publicly, issuing statements filled with curses and lies. Once again, the paper came under great pressure to ban my writing. And I became a favorite target on the Internet, where my writings were lambasted and labeled blasphemous.

Eventually I was fired. But by then, I had started to develop a different relationship with God. I felt that He was moving me toward another kind of belief, where all that matters is that we pray to God from the heart. I continued to pray, but I started to avoid the verses that contain violence or enmity and only used the ones that speak of God's mercy and grace and greatness. I remembered an incident in the Koran when the prophet told a Bedouin who did not know how to pray to let go of the verses and get closer to God by repeating, "God is good, God is great." Don't sweat the details, the prophet said.

I felt at peace, and no longer doubted His existence.

In December 2002, in a Web site interview, I criticized al-Qaeda and declared that some of the Friday sermons were loathsome because of their attacks against non-Muslims. Within days, a fatwa was posted online, calling me an infidel and saying that I should be killed. Once again, I felt despair at the ways of the Muslim world. Two years later, I told al-Arabiya television that I thought God loves all faithful people of different religions. That earned me a fatwa from the mufti of Saudi Arabia declaring my infidelity.

But one evening not long after that, I heard a radio broadcast of the verse of light. Even though I had memorized the Koran at 15, I felt as though I was hearing this verse for the first time. God is light, it says, the universe is illuminated by His light. I felt the verse was speaking directly to me, sending me a message. This God of light, I thought, how could He be against any human? The God of light would not be happy to see people suffer, even if they had sinned and made mistakes along the way.

I had found my Islam. And I believe that others can find it, too. But first we need a Reformation similar to the Protestant Reformation that Martin Luther led against the Roman Catholic Church.

In the late 14th century, Islam had its own sort of Martin Luther. Ibn Taymiyya was an Islamic scholar from a hard-line Salafi sect who went through a spiritual crisis and came to believe that in time, God would close the gates of hell and grant all humans, regardless of their religion, entry to his everlasting paradise. Unlike Luther, however, Ibn Taymiyya never openly declared this revolutionary belief; he shared it only with a small, trusted circle of students.

Nevertheless, I find myself inspired by Luther's courageous uprising. I see what Islam needs -- a strong, charismatic personality who will lead us toward reform, and scholars who can convince Islamic communities of the need for a bold new interpretation of Islamic texts, to reconcile us with the wider world.

Mansour al-Nogaidan writes for the Bahraini newspaper Al-Waqt.

CLICK HERE to view the schedule for and to access the On Faith Forum "Muslims Speak Out." Here's our chance to ask pointed questions and to make appropriate comments. I've test-posted a comment there, and it went up onto the site.

As far as I can tell, Mansour al-Nogaidan, the author of the above article is not a part of the forum. Comments can be directed to Mansour al-Nogaidan at the Washington Post web site, but you might have to register first. You can address comments to all of the authors in the "Outlook" section HERE.

Attention, Counter-Propagandists!

From this source:

Bloggers, clear your calendars Sunday, July 22, through Friday, July 27. Some real propaganda bombshells are bound to be dropped, and you’ll want to be there when “several leading Muslim clerics and thinkers from around the globe will participate in an unprecedented online dialogue about their religion, terrorism and human rights.”

The “dialogue,” sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek Interactive and presented in conjunction with Georgetown University, has been dubbed “Muslims Speak Out” and will take place at On Faith, a blog operated as a joint effort of the Post and Newsweek.

More at this link.