posted
(CNN) -- Although there has not been much cause for celebration for our global village over the past decade, the world was able to breathe a sigh of relief at the announcement by President Barack Obama of the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special operations forces at a mansion on the outskirts of Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In addition to the vast majority of Americans who are relieved by his death, there are more than 1 billion Muslims around the world who salute the fact that bin Laden's ungodly terrorist mischief has finally come to an end. Simply put, there has been no single person in nearly a millennium and a half of Muslim history who has ever hijacked our beloved religion of Islam more than bin Laden.
"We must also reaffirm that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam," Obama said during his historic address Sunday. "I have made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity."
Muslims have been the greatest numerical casualties of al Qaeda and bin Laden. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a stunning report that said Muslims have accounted for the vast majority of the total number of casualties from al Qaeda attacks between 2004 and 2008 throughout the world. Obama: Osama bin Laden killed Inside the place bin Laden was killed 'My brother can finally rest in peace' From 2006 to 2008, 98 percent of al Qaeda's victims were from Muslim-majority countries.
During his famous June 2009 speech at Cairo University, Obama highlighted the common themes of humanity found within the three major Abrahamic religions. He said that "The holy Quran tells us, 'O mankind! We have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.' ...The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' " Finally, he said, "The holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.' ... The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth."
The death of bin Laden will not be the end of extremism around the world, but no reasonable observer could deny the fact that this mission represented the cutting off of the al Qaeda snake's head.
Although there are certainly low-level franchisees who will try to continue to create havoc throughout the world, the importance of the killing of al Qaeda's godfather on Obama's watch cannot be emphasized enough.
The president was right: Bin Laden was not a leader of Muslims. Myself included, there were many among the 1 billion Muslims worldwide who uttered three simple words when we heard about the official confirmation of bin Laden's death.
quote:Originally posted by ourluxor: I hope and pray that this sentiment is repeated throughout the world of Islam.
Unfortunately you and your ilk focus on the desolate, the poor muslims in war ravaged nations, the ones terrorized by drones, etc
Right? Or are we to deny your ilk christian fundamentalist behavior? Take your BS elsewhere - not appreciated in my threads!
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Study after study has shown that jihadists are wealthier and better educated than their peers.
"Exploding misconceptions"
"EXTREMELY poor societies...provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism and conflict." So said Barack Obama, arguing in favour of more development aid to poor countries. Mr Obama is not alone in regarding economic development as a weapon against terrorism.
..Yet the ranks of high-profile terrorism suspects boast plenty of middle-class, well-educated people. The would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shehzad, boasts an MBA and is the son of a senior Pakistani air-force officer. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who stands accused of lighting a makeshift bomb on a transatlantic flight in the so-called "underwear plot", had a degree from University College, London, and is the son of a rich Nigerian banker. The suspected suicide-bomber in this week's attacks in Stockholm had a degree from a British university.
Social scientists have collected a large amount of data on the socioeconomic background of terrorists. According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is poor or badly schooled. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation compared the characteristics of suicide-bombers recruited by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and Gaza with those of the general adult male Palestinian population. Nearly 60% of suicide-bombers had more than a high-school education, compared with less than 15% of the general population. They were less than half as likely to come from an impoverished family as an average adult man from the general population. Mr Krueger carried out a similar exercise in Lebanon by collecting biographical information for Hizbullah militants. They too proved to be better educated and less likely to be from poor families than the general population of the Shia-dominated southern areas of Lebanon from which most came.
There is also no evidence that sympathy for terrorism is greater among deprived people. In a series of surveys carried out as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2004, adults in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey were asked whether they believed that suicide-bombing aimed at American or other Western targets in Iraq was justified. Their answers could be broken down by the respondents' level of education. Although the proportions varied greatly between countries (with support lowest in Turkey), more schooling usually correlated with more agreement.
Some argue that poverty could be at the root of terror even if terrorists are not themselves poor. Anger about poverty in the countries they are from could cause richer citizens of poor countries to join terrorist organisations. This idea can be tested by looking across countries to see if there is a link between a country's GDP per head and its propensity to produce terrorists. Mr Krueger did precisely this by looking at data on 956 terrorist events between 1997 and 2003. He found that the poorest countries, those with low literacy, or those whose economies were relatively stagnant did not produce more terrorists. When the analysis was restricted to suicide-attacks, there was a statistically significant pattern--but in the opposite direction. Citizens of the poorest countries were the least likely to commit a suicide-attack. The nationalities of all foreign insurgents captured in Iraq between April and October 2005 also produced no evidence that poorer countries produced more insurgents. If anything, there was weak evidence the other way....
"Terrorism," it should be obvious, is a tactic or stratagem used to advance a goal; it is the goal of Islamic terrorism that we must come to understand, and this logically requires an understanding of Islam.
As we have seen, contrary to the widespread insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term "Islamo-fascism" is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.
It is important to realize that we have been talking about Islam -- not Islamic "fundamentalism," "extremism," "fanaticism," "Islamo-fascism," or "Islamism," but Islam proper, Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present. The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are due largely to the geostrategic changes following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options available to terrorists.
With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe. In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against the non-Muslim world is because they can.
It is paramount to note, however, that, even if no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would simply mean a change in Islam's tactics -- perhaps indicating a longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round of violence. It cannot be overemphasized that Muslim terrorism is a symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while Islam proper remains permanently hostile.
Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his "Future of the Islamic Movement" (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.
Our own Prophet ... was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist and a first-class manager all in one. ... In the Qur'an's historic vision Allah's support and the revolutionary struggle of the people must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. ... But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his mi'raj {"nocturnal voyages to the 'court' of Allah"}. ... It is Allah who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted. It must be emphasized that all of the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources themselves and is not the product of critical Western scholarship. (Indeed, most modern Western scholarship of Islam is hardly "critical" in any meaningful sense.) It is Islam's self-interpretation that necessitates and glorifies violence, not any foreign interpretation of it.
Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?
Islamic apologists often point out that Islam is not a monolith and that there are differences of opinion among the different Islamic schools of thought. That is true, but, while there are differences, there are also common elements. Just as Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians differ on many aspects of Christianity, still they accept important common elements. So it is with Islam. One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law. The four Sunni Madhhabs (schools of fiqh [Islamic religious jurisprudence]) -- Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali -- all agree that there is a collective obligation on Muslims to make war on the rest of the world. Furthermore, even the schools of thought outside Sunni orthodoxy, including Sufism and the Jafari (Shia) school, agree on the necessity of jihad. When it comes to matters of jihad, the different schools disagree on such questions as whether infidels must first be asked to convert to Islam before hostilities may begin (Osama bin Laden asked America to convert before Al-Qaeda's attacks); how plunder should be distributed among victorious jihadists; whether a long-term Fabian strategy against dar al-harb is preferable to an all-out frontal attack; etc.
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You sent me a PM. I tried to reply, but I'm on an ignore list "Sorry, you are on this member's ignore list. You cannot send a private message to this person." Well here it is! You should be patient, I sometimes check my PM once or twice a month! ______________________________________________________________________ Sorry about that, I still had in my mind the" poor vw." Honestly I thought your prayers were mere show and you were like VW conditioned to hate Islam and Muslims. VW posts show Islam in a very extreme light, spreading "fear and hate" as another Christian put it (D_Oro). Is that honest, and shouldn't any person who spreads fear and hate be reprimanded? Do excuse me for being confused by the intentions of your post.
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"VW posts show Islam in a very extreme light, spreading "fear and hate""
It is the Quran and Muhammad that show Islam in a very extreme light, spreading "fear and hate"
It is the Quran that commands the believers to strike fear into the hearts of Infidels, so as to force them to remove any obstacles to the spread of Islam.
Quiz: which famous terrorist said “I have been made victorious with terror"
Which one do you think said this?
1. Osama Bin Laden 2. Ayman al-Zawahiri 3. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi 4. Mohammad
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sounds like it is the thought of how strong they are as in how Gideon tricked his enemies maybe?
Posts: 314 | From: australia | Registered: Jul 2010
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