Sick of ignorance on Mylot- Islam and terrorism.

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First off, what´s wrong with you guys. Muslims taking old testament and gospel of Judas to poke at Christians, Christians taking off-context Qranic quotes and hate sites to poke fun at Muslims. Really guys. Relax. Sites like Evilbible, Prophetofdoom, Positiveatheism, SatanicIslam, are NOT trusted sites. If the first thing you do when you read something in a site that already declaers itself to be against some faith is to repost it here, without checking if its true, seriously, something is worng with you. Now on terrorism and Islam, here in Mylot there is a strong and enduring perception, guided by voices such as diverse as Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden, that dearly wishes to portray Islam as an inherently violent, imperialist religion. There's just one very large problem with that. For the vast majority of worldwide Muslims, its simply not true, as studies continue to show. Not only is it not true for most everyday Muslims, its not true for Muslim leaders either: Worldwide Muslims condemn Al-Qaeda http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php Muslim teachers, leaders, and scholars condemning terrorism http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/terror.htm Perhaps the best Islamic analysis on Sept. 11th was written by Abdulaziz Sachedina. http://www.uga.edu/islam/sachedina.html Never heard of him? Of course not. He is quite possibly the leading Islamic Studies scholar- http://books.google.com/books?id=AH9k4VIznQwC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=sachedina+divine+justice&source=web&ots=RbBVqAHMrc&sig=HI-t1CnonRGOVfYlahOokW-R29o#PPP1,M1 Who is researching the theological frameworks and Sharia of Shia Islam, not to mention Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism http://books.google.com/books?id=Yq8NXzQZkdAC&dq=islamic+roots+of+democratic+pluralism&psp=1 As well as Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Virginia, he is more than readily available as a U.S. media source. But have you ever heard him or read him quoted? He is just one example of how specific Muslim voices are jettisoned in favor of pictures of anonymous crowds, veiled faces, and shrill rhetoric from a fraction of the Islamic world. In the eyes of many Americans, Islam is somehow the face of terrorism. For this, both Islamic extremists and anti-Islamic extremists, sadly, are to blame, and weak stupid hate websites that I see all the time on Mylot. But in fact, many members of different religions commit terrorism. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/roy1 http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/Kosovo/Kosovo-Current_News233.htm The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is well aware of this. http://www.wwrn.org/sparse.php?idd=13468 Shortly after 9/11, 3,000 peaceful Muslim pilgrims were slaughtered in the Gujarat province of India by Hindu fundamentalists. http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?132749 But you didn't hear about it in the U.S. media,nor in Mylot, as the Bible and Koran thumpers are too busy screaming out at each other, and very few people think of Hinduism as an inherently violent religion, even though their holy texts have as much violence as any those of any other major religion. The point is not to pick on Christianity in Serbia or Hinduism in India, Like these religions, there are about a billion Muslims in the world. They aren't going away. You will have to get along with them. In just looking at the U.S alone--- American Muslims have been speaking out for years: The Fiqh Council of North America has issued a fatwa (legal judgment) against terrorism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiqh_Council_of_North_America Which can be read here. A PDF is available as well. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4775588 PDF http://www.cair.com/FatwaJuly2005.pdf Likewise, the Islamic Society of North America has also continued to support this position. http://www.isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=765 Those thinking that Islam necessarily denigrates women might be interested to know that the ISNA is headed by Dr. Ingrid Mattson. http://www.isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=769 Dr. Mattson is also a prominent scholar of Islamic theology and law at Hartford Seminary. http://macdonald.hartsem.edu/mattson.htm Other prominent women in American Islam include Dr. Yvonne Y. Haddad at Georgetown University and others as well. http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/haddady/ Moreover, women have been both religiously and politically prominent in Islam over the years. http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Muslim_Leaders.htm In areas of the world where Islam is a minority tradition, Muslims have at times overwhelmingly voted for women candidates running for national office, such as during the 2007 Presidential elections in France. http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.408044558&par=0 In the United States, where Muslims account for between 3%-5% of the population, women have risen to prominence as well, not just as the President of the ISNA, but also as senior advisors in the U.S. State Department. http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Religion&loid=8.0.416713332&par=0 TV and radio ads in a multitude of languages have gone out from just one organization alone, much less others http://www.cair.com/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1675&theType=NR When people complain about not hearing Muslims on the subject of violence, its because they HAVENT BEEN LISTENING at all. These blind hateful beings choose to close their ears, and listen to their bigoted firends and sites. http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html Amazing how the media ignores 20,000 in one rally alone in Germany. http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=8533&sec=33&con=49 Anywhere from 100,000 to almost a quarter-million rallied against extremist violence in Jordan alone, when al-Zarqawi's extremist organization conducted terrorist operations there. http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2005/11/thousands_rally.html And tens of thousands of people rallied in Karachi, Pakistan against reactionary extremists there. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6558501.stm The evidence is overwhelming. But radical extremists, ESPECIALLY THE ANTI-MUSLIMS, don't listen and don't want to listen to them. Perhaps that suggests they have more in common than they think with the terrorists. More to the point, if Islamophobes think Muslims haven't been speaking out, its because they haven't been listening to how 1 billion people on the planet actually live their lives. Rather, those who define ANY particular religion as hateful love to point to Islamic texts, when other texts and historic episodes of other major religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity) also contain horrific violence. In fact, the entire sacred narrative of the Hindu sacred poem the Bhagavad Gita is set in the midst of a civil war. Yet the vast majority of religious practitioners of major faiths are not violent. Why are religious people sometimes violent? Because humans are sometimes violent. And whatever else religion may be, it always has at least one foot in the human world, because humans practice it. We don't hear about peaceful and charitable people in the news precisely because peace and genuine sacrifice doesn't make the news. http://www.thezakat.org/About-Us.aspx And it is increasingly popular to blame Islam because one fears legitimate criticism of U.S. policy. Studies have demonstrated that in the United States, African-American Muslim leaders, such as those in the American Society of Muslims http://www.ar-razzaq.org/MosqueCares/asm.htm http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:pfY7-_3HQe0J:www.migration-boell.de/downloads/diversity/PeterSkerry_AmericasOtherMuslims.pdf+HSAAM&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=firefox-a have consistently been harsher and more critical of their government and country than immigrant-American Muslims. http://www.cair-net.org/mosquereport/index.html If you really want to understand the connections between religion and violence, there is probably no better place to start than closely examining suicide bombing by Iraq's insurgency. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9966084 What you will find is that there are important cross-cultural (and non-religious) connections between major episodes of suicide attacks, from ancient zealots to Japanese kamikaze to contemporary Islam-influenced insurgents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win:_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Suicide_Terrorism Now, I´m not absolving what many in the middle east do. What they do is WRONG and IHUMANE. But if one cannot tell apart between a religion and things done in anme of a religion, and needs to live off posting articles from hate sites, oh well, so much for humanity´s ability to evolve. I´m taking a break from Mylot, just tired of hearing stuff bigots from the Muslim side saying that "we must kill person for insulting a prophet" or "Mulsims are evil because some Palestinians throw acid on wives". Take care, apologies for the rash tone. ----------------------- -JCM-