posted August 19, 2006 10:59 AM              

The problem is that most of the people sitting outside the Muslims world do not have access to the real information about Muslims countries either in the Middle East or outside it. They do not have access to marginalised or some times almost non-existent media outlets of the Muslim world. They, for instance, do not understand the language at Al-Jazeera and they cannot have access to Pakistani or Saudi newspapers. As a result, they know only what they are told by CNN, BBC or the Washington Post and the New York Times.

People living in western countries form their opinion based on biased news reports and analysis of the so-called mainstream media. Few have access to people who tells the fact, such as Noam Chomsky. Following are a few articles which may give us a glimpse of what a common man in the streets of a Muslim world goes through on daily basis and what he feels and thinks of what is happening around him. This may also give us an idea if the so-called war on terrorism is actually targeting the terrorist or reducing violence or the objective goes beyond the stated objectives

posted August 19, 2006 11:01 AM              

By James Carroll | June 7, 2005

AMONG THE factors leading to the French and Dutch rejections of the European constitution last week, none looms more ominously than the nightmare of antagonism between ''the West" and Islam. Many Europeans fear a rising tide of green, both within the continent and from outside it. Where once communists threatened, now Muslims do. A new wall is being built.

Muslims, meanwhile, see a flood of contempt in pressures on immigrant communities in European cities, in restrictions on Islamic expression, and in openly expressed reservations about Turkey's admission to the EU precisely because of its Islamic character. Given escalations of the war in Iraq together with widely reported instances of Koran-denigration by US interrogators, such trends in Europe make the global war on terror seem expressly a war against Islam. The ''clash of civilizations" seems closer at hand than ever.

To make sense of this dangerous condition, it can help to recall some of the forgotten or misremembered history that prepared for it, from the remote origins of the conflict to its manifestations in the not so distant past. As the story is usually told in Europe and America, the problem began when a jihad-driven army of ''infidel" Saracens, having brutalized Christians in the ''Holy Land," threatened ''Christendom" itself with conquests right into the heart of present-day France. Charles Martel is the hero of primal European romances because he defeated the Muslim army near Tours in 733. But for Martel, Edward Gibbon wrote, ''the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford."

Across subsequent centuries, in the European memory, Islam posed the great threat to the emerging Christian order. But was that so? Lombards, Normans, Vikings, forces from the Slavic east, and violent contests among Christians themselves all wreaked havoc in Europe, even in Martel's time. As I learned from the historian Tomaz Mastnak, the threat from the Saracens was one among many. It was defined as transcendent only with the later Crusades, when Latin Christian armies set out to rescue that ''Holy Land" and roll back Islamic conquests. The crusading impulse presumed a demonizing of Saracens that was justified neither by the threat they actually posed nor by their treatment of Christians in Palestine. Indeed, chronicles of the earlier period take little or no notice of the religion of Saracens. Religious co-existence, famous in Iberia, was a mark of other lands conquered by Arabs. Europe's initiating ''holy war" with Islam, that is, was based on flawed intelligence, propaganda, and threat exaggeration.

The poison flower of the Crusades, with their denigrations of distant cultures, was colonialism. The dark result of European imperial adventuring in the Muslim world was twofold: first, the usual exploitation of native peoples and resources, with attendant destruction of culture, and, second, the powerful reaction among Muslims and Arab populations against colonialism, a reaction that included an internal corrupting of Islamic traditions. The accidental wealth of oil in the Middle East made both external exploitation and internal corruption absolutely ruinous. The political fanaticism that has lately seized the Arab Islamic religious imagination (exemplified in Osama bin Laden) is rooted more in a defensive fending off of assault from ''the West" than in anything intrinsic to Islam. The American war on terror, striking the worst notes of the old imperial insult, only exacerbates this reactionary fanaticism (generating, for example, legions of suicide bombers).

Having forgotten the deeper history, nervous Europeans seem also to have forgotten how large numbers of Muslims settled in the continent's cities in the first place. In the 1960s and 1970s, Turks, Arabs, and North Africans were welcomed as ''guest workers," taking up menial labor with the implicit understanding that they could never hope to be received as citizens of the nations that exploited them. The rank injustice of a system depending on a permanent underclass was bound to issue in political resistance, and now it has, but with a religious edge.

The point is that this conflict has its origins more in ''the West" than in the House of Islam. The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking to bolster their own purposes, a habit of politicized paranoia that is masterfully continued by freaked-out leaders of post-9/11 America. They, too, like prelates, crusaders, conquistadors, and colonizers, have turned fear of Islam into a source of power. This history teaches that such self-serving projection can indeed result in the creation of an enemy ready and willing to make the nightmare real.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

posted August 19, 2006 11:06 AM              

By JOSH HUMPHRIES Daily Courier Staff Writer May 24, 2005

This sign posted in front of Danieltown Baptist Church has sparked debate in Rutherford County about religious tolerance. (Josh Humphries/Daily Courier)

FOREST CITY -- A sign in front of a Baptist church on one of the most traveled highways in the county stirred controversy over religious tolerance and first-amendment rights this weekend.

A sign in front of Danieltown Baptist Church, located at 2361 U.S. 221 south reads "The Koran needs to be flushed," and the Rev. Creighton Lovelace, pastor of the church, is not apologizing for the display.

"I believe that it is a statement supporting the word of God and that it (the Bible) is above all and that any other religious book that does not teach Christ as savior and lord as the 66 books of the Bible teaches it, is wrong," said Lovelace. "I knew that whenever we decided to put that sign up that there would be people who wouldn't agree with it, and there would be some that would, and so we just have to stand up for what's right."

posted August 19, 2006 11:07 AM              

POSTED: 11:44 am EDT September 17, 2004
UPDATED: 12:04 pm EDT September 17, 2004

WHITNEY, Pa. -- A Westmoreland County church has put up a controversial sign, blaming the Islam religion for the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
"To really remember 9/11, you must remember Islam is the enemy," says a sign outside the non-denominational Living Hope Church in Whitney.

Pastor Keith Tucci will keep the sign up for about one more week, then replace it with another one.

The church has a congregation of 200 people.

Copyright 2004 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

posted August 19, 2006 11:10 AM              

By Jim Lobe | March 2, 2005

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Daniel Pipes, the founder of the Middle East Forum and an anti-Islamist activist, is working to organize a new policy institute, which will be called the Anti-Islamist Institute (AII). According to Pipes, “In the long term ... the legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even a greater set of challenges than the illegal ones.” His new institute will expose legal “political activities” of “Islamists,” such as “prohibiting families from sending pork or pork by-products to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq,” according to the draft of a grant proposal by Pipes' Middle East Forum (MEF).

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posted August 19, 2006 11:13 AM              

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After 11 September Bush declared the war [against terrorism] to be a Crusade. There are other voices in America today that say it is a religious war. And since the war started it has been directed exclusively against Muslims: against Muslims in Afghanistan; against Muslims in Iraq; against Muslims in Palestine. There are many resistance movements in the world, like the IRA for instance. But it is only Islamic resistance movements that are put on the terrorist list. This is what I am saying.

Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder and spiritual leader in an interview to

Graham Usher of Al-Ahram, Issue 663, 6-12 Nov, 2003.

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posted August 19, 2006 11:14 AM              

By William M. Arkin
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for The Times.

October 16, 2003 Read more

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Pentagon (news - web sites) leaders on Thursday spoke up in support of a top general who has told church audiences that the war on terrorism is a battle with Satan and that Muslims worship idols.

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posted August 19, 2006 11:17 AM            

It immediately becomes obvious the Minister is not reflecting ALL Christian Faiths.

Don`t you hate it when everyone is lumped togather according to a lable?

Even the most casual Bible student knows that there are more books in the Catholic Bible than in the one used by Protestants. (He quotes 66 period)

Most objective Christians would see his agenda and denounce him.

IMHO to him.

------------------
~
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted August 19, 2006 11:27 AM              

quote:

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It immediately becomes obvious the Minister is not reflecting ALL Christian Faiths.

Don`t you hate it when everyone is lumped togather according to a lable?

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Yes I do.

quote:

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Most objective Christians would see his agenda and denounce him.

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I believe that too.

posted August 19, 2006 11:35 AM              

Tuesday November 6th 2001

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, broadcast on Arabic satellite television yesterday telling Muslims in the Middle East that the military action in Afghanistan was not a war between Christianity and Islam. His speech, he told viewers, was part of a bid to "deepen the dialogue" between the two faiths, after he gave his backing to the British and US campaign two days ago.

Dr Carey's message, shown on the Arabic station al-Jazeera from the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, told viewers he thought many Christians across the world were feeling vulnerable following the strikes against the Taliban, but that it was "sadly ... a necessary conflict".

In the broadcast, which was aslo on Radio 4's Today programme, about his plea for people of both religions to maintain good relations, Dr Carey said: "The effects of September 11 have made Christians in some parts of the world more vulnerable.

"Pakistan is an obvious example ... I must hasten to add here that in the Middle East, in Bahrain and Qatar ... Christians are welcomed, but certainly Christians are feeling that minorities in dominant Muslim lands, especially where there's been a history, do feel very, very unsafe indeed.

"Part of my message is that we must deepen the dialogue, care for one another. I talked about reciprocity, and the fact that we actually have good news from the United Kingdom.

"I have been involved in dialogue there for many years and there is very good news from the 1,500 mosques and the relationships are particularly good, and maybe this is something we can say to the rest of the world that Christians and Muslims can get on well together."

Dr Carey was keen to emphasise to Muslims both in Britain and abroad that the war against terrorism was not a conflict between two world faiths. He said he understood many young Muslims would have fears that could persuade them to think of joining the Taliban.

"Again I need to say here in the Middle East that is not being picked up in quite the same way," he said, citing a meeting with the Amir of Qatar, who is the present President of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, as a cause for optimism. "He is very fierce in saying that Christians and Muslims can get on together. I think the Muslims in Britain must address that question, and the leaders must listen to the young, and the young must listen to the leaders.

"We want young Muslims to feel at home in our country, to be part of our nation and to make their contribution to it."

He added: "The message we must give, communicate to young Muslims throughout the world is that we are not attacking Islam. This is not a conflict between two faiths."

By Anna Whitney
London Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk

posted August 19, 2006 11:37 AM              

Speech by the Revd Patrick Comerford at the Anti-War march

Enclosed is the speech of the Revd Patrick Comerford at the Dublin anti-war march on Saturday, 22 March, 2003. Mr Comerford, who is Southern Regional Co-ordinator of the Church Missionary Society Ireland, was representing Archbishop Neill at the march. Up to last year he was Foreign Desk Editor at the Irish Times.

I want to start off this afternoon by saying how ashamed I was, how shocked I was, how horrified I was, to hear George Bush talking about this war and using terms like 'Crusade'.

I was ashamed, and I was shocked, and I was horrified to see George Bush make his war speeches in front of a life-size neon cross. Ashamed that he did it on, of all days, Martin Luther King Day.

This is an ugly war, and there is a real danger that some people in Washington want to see this war as the war that Samuel Huntingdon described as a clash of civilizations. But Baghdad has always been a civilised city: when Christians in Europe were using the Inquisition and persecution against Christians, Jews and Muslims, the Muslims of Baghdad were respecting and tolerating Jews and Christians. We have so much to learn from them about civilisation and civilised behaviour.

There are people who want to use this war to pit Christians against Muslims. But that cannot happen. That must not happen.

If this happens, two minorities are facing real dangers, real fears, today. Iraq has long tolerated its Christian minority. It is a pluralist society, and whatever the wrongs of Saddam Hussein and his regime -- and they are many -- Iraq has as a lot to teach us in Ireland about pluralism and tolerance.

And the second minority that must be feeling unsure, uneasy, unsafe, today, is the minority of millions of Muslims living in Europe.

Let us stop and think of how the threat and talk of Crusade, how loose language like that must make many Muslims feel unsure and insecure today. There are 20,000 Muslims in Ireland today. They are a peaceful and beautiful community. To those Muslims who are here today, I want to assure you today that you are my brothers and sisters. We are all Children of Abraham. I am proud of you as Irish citizens and your contribution to the life of this country. As a Christian, I am confident of your place beside me as sisters and brothers. And in your own words, I want to greet you: Salaam Alekum: May peace be with you.

The word Islam and the word salaam have the very ideal of peace at their heart. If only those who call themselves Christians and who decided to wage this war could also have peace in their hearts, could, in Christ's words, "love one another as I have loved you."

posted August 19, 2006 11:42 AM              

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/

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Islamophobia: A Definition
Runnymede Trust:
The Runnymede Trust has identified eight components that they say define Islamophobia.
This definition, from the 1997 document 'Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All' is widely accepted, including by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.
The eight components are:

1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2) Islam is seen as separate and 'other'. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a 'clash of civilisations'.
5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

For a summary of the 1997 report, see here

For the follow-up report from 2004, 'Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges, and Action', see here

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posted August 19, 2006 11:47 AM              

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Wikipedia
Islamophobia is the fear and/or hatred of Islam, Muslims or Islamic culture. Islamophobia can be characterised by the belief that all or most Muslims are religious fanatics, have violent tendencies towards non-Muslims, and reject as directly opposed to Islam such concepts as equality, tolerance, and democracy.

It is viewed as a new form of racism whereby Muslims, an ethno-religious group, not a race, are nevertheless constructed as a race.

A set of negative assumptions are made of the entire group to the detriment of members of that group.

During the 1990's many sociologists and cultural analysts observed a shift in forms of prejudice from ones based on skin colour to ones based on notions of cultural superiority and otherness.

Entry in Wikipedia

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quote:

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Salaam website:
An excellent definition also appears on the Salaam website written by "al-Maktabi":

"the term 'Islamophobia' does not adequately express the full range and depth of antipathy towards Islam and Muslims in the West today. It is an inadequate term."

"A more accurate expression would be 'anti-Islamic racism' for it combines the elements of dislike of a religion and active discrimination against the people belonging to that religion."

Read the full article

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quote:

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Imam Dr Abduljalil Sajid:
One of the members of the Runnymede Trust's Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia which published the famous 1997 report argues that:

"Hostility towards Islam and Muslims has been a feature of European societies since the eighth century of the Common Era. It has taken different forms, however, at different times and has fulfilled a variety of functions. For example, the hostility in Spain in the fifteenth century was not the same as the hostility that had been expressed and mobilised in the Crusades. Nor was the hostility during the time of the Ottoman Empire or that which was prevalent throughout the age of empires and colonialism. It may be more apt to speak of 'Islamophobias' rather than of a single phenomenon. Each version of Islamophobia has its own features as well as similarities with, and borrowings from, other versions."

Read the full article

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posted August 19, 2006 11:59 AM              

quote:

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The New Cold War With Islam

by Mowahid H. Shah

Date: July 30, 1990
The Christian Science Monitor

The Bush-Gorbachev summit in Washington featured talk of a "long era of confrontation giving way to an era of enduring cooperation." But in the Muslim world fingers are being kept crossed. There are fears that the end of the cold war between the superpowers will encourage the emergence of a new cold war with the Muslim world.

Increasingly, Islam is presented as a force inherently hostile to the West.

A case in point is the 1990 Thomas Jefferson lecture delivered at the Smithsonian in May by Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus of Princeton University. The lecturer attempted to probe the reasons behind Muslim anger at the West.

What baffles a Muslim observer is the lecture's conclusion: that Muslim anger is not tied to recent political events, but is the culmination of a 1,400-year struggle with the West and a reaction against modernity, things the West can't change.

His 26-page address was remarkable for the absence of the word "Israel." Nor was any mention made of United States support of the Zionist state, which inflames Muslim passions worldwide. Any US diplomat who has served in a Muslim country or take even a cursory glance at Muslim media can verify this feeling.

It is simplistic to suggest that modernity itself is resented. More accurately, the benefits modernity brings and the hope it promises for a better world remain in Muslim societies mostly a privilege for the few rather than an expectation for all. In fact, it is the Muslim elites who have the most to fear (and the most to lose) from resurgent Islamic activism with its appeals to egalitarian reform, austere living, and an all-out assault on corruption.

Westerners, however; are told differently. This is no less than a clash of civilizations, said Lewis, a reaction against the Judeo-Christian heritage, the secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.

The frequent usage of the term "Judeo Christian heritage" is not bereft of political import. It assumes that, historically, Muslims were more hostile than were Christians toward the Jews. Even a critical piece on Islam, in the January 1990 issue of History Today, concedes that "Ironically, the Jewish people received their most tolerant treatment at the hands of Muslims in the Mahgreb, the Middle East, and Moorish Spain."

In further explaining Muslim anger, Lewis claims that Muslim authority was undermined by the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women. Lewis contends that Westerners were "first to break the consensus of acceptance of slavery." Lewis' assertion seems odd considering that, in America, only in 1964 was racial discrimination specifically outlawed by the Civil Rights Act. Until recently Western nations had difficulty disguising their empathy for South African apartheid -- arguably a de facto enslavement of the black majority by its white minority.

About the emancipation of women, the elevation of Benazir Bhutto to prime minister of Pakistan through a popular vote seems to have evaded Lewis' attention, as did the absence of a woman as a serious presidential contender in the 200-year constitutional history of the US.

Professor Lewis did not discuss the theory that the causes of Muslim anger against the West derive less from historical aud cultural differences than from specific acts and policies of Western nations which leave the perception that justice and fairness do not matter when the lives of Westerners are not at stake

For example, in 1989 the US government awarded the Legion of Merit to the captain and weapons officer of the cruiser USS Vincennes, which shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 civilians. More recently, the Presidential Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism examining the crash of Pan Am 103 (whose perpetrators' identities remain unclear) recommended preemptive or retaliatory strikes against nations supporting terrorism. The implications for certain Muslim states was unmistakable.

If the pattern remains one of condemnation nation rather than comprehension, then the 21st century may see the Christian West stumbling into a catastrophic show-down with the Muslim East.

Lewis predicts a "hard struggle" ahead about which the "West can do nothing." This means giving up. But the future is not without hope, at least for American Muslims, who number over 6 million, according to the 1990 World Almanac. When Jews and Christians can live with each other after a 2,000-year history of persecution, pogroms, and the holocaust, surely it is not entirely quixotic to envision the Christian West and the Muslim East finding their common humanity in the quest for a better tomorrow.

[Mowahid H. Shah is a member of the District of Columbia bar, former law partner of Sen. Abourezk, a writer on international affairs, and the editor of Eastern Times of Washington, D.C.]

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posted August 22, 2006 07:38 PM            

DayDreamer
Knowflake
Posts: 1908
From:
Registered: Jul 2003
posted April 22, 2006 05:10 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't make out from your opinions just how the masses are being fooled.
Can you at least outline a few ways in which the masses are being fooled. How do you expect to make people understand how they are being fooled if you're not giving clear examples!?!
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/001862.html

Are you tailoring facts to fit your myth?

Maybe we can spend some time posting the words from Radical Islamic speakers that support terrorism.. I have read alot of that on the net as well.