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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Hirsi Ali in both NY Times and WaPo today |
| 2007-02-04 |
| here is the portion of the NYT article highlighted by Jihadwatch Q. Have you seen any ideology coming from within Islam that gives young Muslims a sense of purpose without the overlay of militancy? A. They have no alternative message. There is no active missionary work among the youth telling them, do not become jihadis. They do not use media means as much as the jihadis. They simply — they’re reactive and they don’t seem to be able to compete with the jihadis. And every time there is a debate between a real jihadi and, say, what we have decided to call moderate Muslims, the jihadis win. Because they come with the Koran and quotes from the Koran. The come with quotes from the Hadith and the Sunnah, and the traditions of the prophet. And every assertion they make, whether it is that women should be veiled, or Jews should be killed, or Americans are our enemies, or any of that, they win. Because what they have to say is so consistent with what is written in the Koran and the Hadith. And what the moderates fail to do is to say, listen, that’s all in there, but that wasn’t meant for this context. And we have moved on. We can change the Koran, we can change the Hadith. That’s what’s missing. -------------------- and here is my favorite part of the WaPo story -------------- She also describes how horrified she felt as an adult after Sept. 11, 2001, reaching for the Koran to find out whether some of Osama bin Laden's more blood-curdling statements -- "when you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck" -- were direct quotations. "I hated to do it," she wrote, "because I knew that I would find bin Laden's quotations in there." And there were consequences: "The little shutter at the back of my mind, where I pushed all my dissonant thoughts, snapped open after the 9/11 attacks, and it refused to close again. I found myself thinking that the Quran is not a holy document. It is a historical record, written by humans. . . . And it is a very tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war." That moment led Hirsi Ali to her most profound conclusion: that the mistreatment of women is not an incidental problem in the Muslim world, a side issue that can be dealt with once the more important political problems are out of the way. Rather, she believes that the enslavement of women lies at the heart of all of the most fanatical interpretations of Islam, creating "a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation." |
| Posted by:mhw |
| #1 I caught this statement on CNN's in-between Superbowl commercials, or words to its effect > " MUSLIMS > "TO BE BENEVOLENT IS NOT TO KILL THE JEW, THE PAGAN, ETC. INFIDEL, BUT TO OBEY GOD IS TO HATE, AND BY HATRED TO KILL"??? Muslims are taught from childhood to obey God = Islam as Word of God but to do so is to hate non-Muslims. * Anybody else catch the exact statement!? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-02-04 23:19 |