Aaron of VBS TV

viking thrust!

Philosoraptor!

sent by JMD

I know where my stimulus package is going!

Aretha!

I like this version!

Thoughts on Radical Islam

I have seen many videos in the past few days of "pro-palestinian" rallies in america and canada, and they frighten me so much because of the strong showing of Radical Islamists there (I should be studying, I know). The virulent hatred, screamed, chanting, burning effigies. And the ones doing this are almost entirely young, teenagers and early twenties. students all of them. that is where radical islam's base in the west is, not in mogadishu, not in riyadh, in universities. They take advantage of our right to free speech and freedom of religion, and use that to gain a foothold at the university, a base of operations, and then to recruit moderate, rational, normal young muslims into a politicized and violent form of islam. They manipulate the koran and shari'ah, take it out of context. They appropriate "Taqfir" to include whoever is against their mission. They create a sham justification for murdering anyone, including muslims (i.e. the Al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood bombing of the embassy in Nairobi, which killed 0 westerns and only muslims; the justification: the bombing was friday morning, all muslims should have been at the mosque, therefore they are taqfir. ridiculous). their leaders are unscholarly and misinformed in their approach to the religion, which often breaks with hundreds of years of Islamic Scholarship (i.e. al-Nabhani). they discount the Sufi teachings, and have created this strange and deadly meld of literalist (and I feel foolish) Wahabism with a strongly Caliphate-centered Sunnism. They rewrite history, claiming that they want to reinstate a world-wide islamic state, a continuation of the caliphate which ruled all muslims and eastern world (in fact, the caliphate did NOT unanimously rule all muslims, i.e. the persian empire's long-standing war with the ummayads, or the abashid rebellion itself...of course radicals seem to forget about that little tidbit). This false nostalgia for a ruling state gone-by is so reminiscent of what Hitler propagated that it makes me sick. And if you listen to the speeches given by Nasrallah, by Mashaal, the anger in which they stir up, the emotional catharses they elicit, and the blindness with which radical and once-moderate muslims follow them, it reaks of pure fascism. More and more western muslim students, brought up with all the benefits of a free and open society, are forgetting what a miserable disaster was the closest thing to a caliphate/sharia-based rule in modern day: the taliban in afghanistan. Granted, they are Pashtu, not arab. But they are literalist Sunnis, and their theology parallels the western radical islamist ideology in many ways. From a religious standpoint, these men were hypocrits: they would violate 10 laws to uphold one. Ironically, talib means student, yet these people dealt in corruption, hatred, oppression, and abuse. And their scholarship (in islam and in other aspects) was laughable. They destroyed the beautiful, ancient, gigantic Buddhas of Bamiyan, and essentially erased what was thousands of years of scholarly and artistic tradition in Afghanistan. On a political level, the taliban was no caliphate. They ruled the country not with an exuberant and ready following, but under an iron fist.
What solace do I get through all of this terrible news? Well, I don't know how they intend to accomplish their goals. They have all the fervor and ideology, yet no way of actually conquering western countries, at this point. Let's say, God Forbid, that radical islamists start committing domestic terror on the scale of what Israel experienced at the hands of Hamas, the PFLP, and their ilk: the public would be scared, security would be ramped up, no doubt some vigilantism, but then what? They will certainly not march into the white house. It would likely lead to Muslims being persecuted en masse in this country. Yasser Arafat was very succesful politically: he was able to turn palestinians into victims (perhaps to some extent they were), and then when members of his Fatah party started domestic terror in Israel, with Hamas following suit with a much more dangerous ideology, the world was primed to forgive the palestinians, for in their eyes they were all victims. Some are victims, some are terrorists. But can one believe that they treat their populace with a significantly greater deal of respect than did the taliban? Hamas can burn effigies, stomp on american flags, purport the very ideology that led to 7/7 and 9/11, and whatever is yet to come, and the world seems to still sympathize with them. Don't forget, that radicals in Gaza burnt american flags and danced in the streets on 9/11.

The world has lost its mind. They have forgotten that Hamas are terrorists, not "freedom fighters." They, and MANY MANY like them in the UK, Canada, Brooklyn, want to do away with our free and open society, and establish a theocratic Islamic State, with the rest of the world at their subjugation. These are the ideals propagated OPENLY by Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda. They may differ on fine points, but they are in congruence about the end they wish to achieve. To be clear, I feel that Islam is a beautiful religion, and so similar to my own that I feel a kinship to Muslims. Radical Islam is not Islam: it is politics! They are hijacking this religion and using it to grab power. Muslims must not tolerate this. The world must not tolerate this. Israel is not always right in its actions, but they are a western-style government, and have a relatively open democracy (especially compared to its neighbors). Israel does not want to push the Palestinians into the sea; as a nation, its political leaders do not scream for the death to all Palestinians. Israel is a legitimate entity, chartered by the United Nations, and handed over to them directly by the British Mandate. The Hamas leadership, on the other hand, openly, in its charter as well as in its very well-iterated ideology, calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews in Israel, as well as the establishment of an Islamic State with aims of world domination. This is not islam! This is insanity! (here's some choice quotes from the Hamas Charter: "Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that." and "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."). The media is right, this war is, indeed, one-sided.