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Islam, culture, fundamentalism & bigotry
- Thread starter Art Vandelay
- Start date
The major weakness in the arguments on the "pro-tolerance" side is that they won't even consider the possibility that a large majority of a ideas-based group may be backward in beliefs or dangerous. Why is religion the only ideology exempt from group judgement? People judge Democrats, Republicans, Nazis, hippies-- Why not Catholics and Muslims?
It is important to note that every example I gave is an ideas-based affiliation-- comparing a racial group, like black people (as Affleck does), to Muslims or Catholics is illogical because religion is an idea-based affiliation and race, as we know it, is not. (Of course, race is a man-made construction so race itself is an idea but specific races are not in any way ideologies.)
"If 90% of Brazilians thought death was an appropriate response to leaving the Catholic religion, you would think it was a bigger deal." That's a very legitimate criticism.
Washington Post:
64 percent of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan support the death penalty for leaving Islam
May 1, 2013
The Pew Research Center's vast new study on the views and attitudes of global Muslim populations was bound to create controversy. Like the U.S. public knowledge polls that find that one-third of Americans can't name the vice president, Pew's report includes some less-than-flattering pieces of data. And while it's important not to generalize about entire populations or demographic groups based on one study, some of these numbers are difficult to ignore.
One of the questions, which Pew asked of Muslims in 38 countries from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, was whether or not they support making sharia the official law in the country. In many countries, the answer was overwhelmingly yes, although Pew notes that many respondents said sharia should apply only to Muslims and, just as importantly, that "Muslims differ widely in how they interpret certain aspects of sharia, including whether divorce and family planning are morally acceptable." Many respondents reject the stricter laws and punishments for which sharia is often, fairly or unfairly, known in the West. In other words, just because some people say they support sharia law does not mean they want to make their neighbors live in a 9th-century-style caliphate.
Still, amid an otherwise innocuous or even reassuring report, Pew's study found some disturbing details. One that jumped out for me was the alarmingly high share of Muslims in some Middle Eastern and South Asian countries who say they support the death penalty for any Muslim who leaves the faith or converts to another.
According to Pew's data, 78 percent of Afghan Muslims say they support laws condemning to death anyone who gives up Islam. In both Egypt and Pakistan, 64 percent report holding this view. This is also the majority view among Muslims in Malaysia, Jordan and the Palestinian territories.
It's important to note, though, that this view is not widely held in all Muslim countries or even among Muslims in these regions. In Bangladesh, another majority Muslim South Asian state that has a shared heritage with Pakistan, it is about half as prevalent, with 36 percent saying they support it. Fewer than one in six Tunisian Muslims hold the view, as do fewer than one in seven Muslims in Lebanon, which has a strong Christian minority.
The view is especially rare among Central Asian and European Muslims. Only 6 percent of Russian Muslims agree that converts from Islam should face death, as do 1 percent of Albanian Muslims and, at the bottom of the chart, 0.5 percent of Kazakhs.
Leaving the faith is a particularly sensitive issue in Islam, which was initially founded in part as a sort of community. Abandoning Islam is traditionally considered not just apostasy, as it is in other religions, but a specific transgression called "ridda." In the first days of Islam, the religion was also a physical community under siege from outside forces and facing the possibility of fracturing within. To leave the faith was also to abandon the larger community, a crime considered akin to treason in the way we understand it in the West.
Of course, times have changed significantly over the past 13 or 14 centuries, and a lone Muslim deciding to adopt a different faith or give it up altogether is no longer a practical threat to his or her community in the way that he or she might have been back then. But the religious pronouncements commanding punishment for ridda are still right there in the scripture, which may explain in part why this view persists.
It's also important to note that majorities of Muslims in the countries surveyed, sometimes vast majorities, said they support religious freedom. That includes, for example, more than 75 percent of Egyptians and more than 95 percent of Pakistanis. It might seem like a glaring contradiction. And it is a contradiction, but it might make a little more sense that so many people could hold seemingly mutually exclusive views -- religious freedom is good, but anyone who leaves Islam should be executed -- if one understands the particular history of apostasy in Islam.
It is important to note that every example I gave is an ideas-based affiliation-- comparing a racial group, like black people (as Affleck does), to Muslims or Catholics is illogical because religion is an idea-based affiliation and race, as we know it, is not. (Of course, race is a man-made construction so race itself is an idea but specific races are not in any way ideologies.)
"If 90% of Brazilians thought death was an appropriate response to leaving the Catholic religion, you would think it was a bigger deal." That's a very legitimate criticism.
Washington Post:
64 percent of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan support the death penalty for leaving Islam
May 1, 2013
The Pew Research Center's vast new study on the views and attitudes of global Muslim populations was bound to create controversy. Like the U.S. public knowledge polls that find that one-third of Americans can't name the vice president, Pew's report includes some less-than-flattering pieces of data. And while it's important not to generalize about entire populations or demographic groups based on one study, some of these numbers are difficult to ignore.
One of the questions, which Pew asked of Muslims in 38 countries from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, was whether or not they support making sharia the official law in the country. In many countries, the answer was overwhelmingly yes, although Pew notes that many respondents said sharia should apply only to Muslims and, just as importantly, that "Muslims differ widely in how they interpret certain aspects of sharia, including whether divorce and family planning are morally acceptable." Many respondents reject the stricter laws and punishments for which sharia is often, fairly or unfairly, known in the West. In other words, just because some people say they support sharia law does not mean they want to make their neighbors live in a 9th-century-style caliphate.
Still, amid an otherwise innocuous or even reassuring report, Pew's study found some disturbing details. One that jumped out for me was the alarmingly high share of Muslims in some Middle Eastern and South Asian countries who say they support the death penalty for any Muslim who leaves the faith or converts to another.
According to Pew's data, 78 percent of Afghan Muslims say they support laws condemning to death anyone who gives up Islam. In both Egypt and Pakistan, 64 percent report holding this view. This is also the majority view among Muslims in Malaysia, Jordan and the Palestinian territories.
It's important to note, though, that this view is not widely held in all Muslim countries or even among Muslims in these regions. In Bangladesh, another majority Muslim South Asian state that has a shared heritage with Pakistan, it is about half as prevalent, with 36 percent saying they support it. Fewer than one in six Tunisian Muslims hold the view, as do fewer than one in seven Muslims in Lebanon, which has a strong Christian minority.
The view is especially rare among Central Asian and European Muslims. Only 6 percent of Russian Muslims agree that converts from Islam should face death, as do 1 percent of Albanian Muslims and, at the bottom of the chart, 0.5 percent of Kazakhs.
Leaving the faith is a particularly sensitive issue in Islam, which was initially founded in part as a sort of community. Abandoning Islam is traditionally considered not just apostasy, as it is in other religions, but a specific transgression called "ridda." In the first days of Islam, the religion was also a physical community under siege from outside forces and facing the possibility of fracturing within. To leave the faith was also to abandon the larger community, a crime considered akin to treason in the way we understand it in the West.
Of course, times have changed significantly over the past 13 or 14 centuries, and a lone Muslim deciding to adopt a different faith or give it up altogether is no longer a practical threat to his or her community in the way that he or she might have been back then. But the religious pronouncements commanding punishment for ridda are still right there in the scripture, which may explain in part why this view persists.
It's also important to note that majorities of Muslims in the countries surveyed, sometimes vast majorities, said they support religious freedom. That includes, for example, more than 75 percent of Egyptians and more than 95 percent of Pakistanis. It might seem like a glaring contradiction. And it is a contradiction, but it might make a little more sense that so many people could hold seemingly mutually exclusive views -- religious freedom is good, but anyone who leaves Islam should be executed -- if one understands the particular history of apostasy in Islam.
Can Liberalism Be Saved From Itself?
by Sam Harris
So what happened there?
I admit that I was a little thrown by Affleck’s animosity. I don’t know where it came from, because we hadn’t met before I joined the panel. And it was clear from our conversation after the show that he is totally unfamiliar with my work. I suspect that among his handlers there is a fan of Glenn Greenwald who prepared him for his appearance by simply telling him that I am a racist and a warmonger.
Whatever the reason, if you watch the full video of our exchange (which actually begins before the above clip), you will see that Affleck was gunning for me from the start. What many viewers probably don’t realize is that the mid-show interview is supposed be a protected five-to-seven-minute conversation between Maher and the new guest—and all the panelists know this. To ignore this structure and encroach on this space is a little rude; to jump in with criticism, as Affleck did, is pretty hostile. He tried to land his first blow a mere 90 seconds after I took my seat, before the topic of Islam even came up.
Although I was aware that I wasn’t getting much love from Affleck, I didn’t realize how unfriendly he had been on the show until I watched it on television the next day. This was by no means a normal encounter between strangers. For instance: I said that liberalism was failing us on the topic of Islamic theocracy, and Affleck snidely remarked, “Thank God you’re here!” (This was his second interruption of my interview.) I then said, “We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people,” and Affleck jumped in for the third time, more or less declaring the mid-show interview over: “Now hold on—are you the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam? You’re the interpreter of that?”
As many have since pointed out, Affleck and Nicholas Kristof then promptly demonstrated my thesis by mistaking everything Maher and I said about Islam for bigotry toward Muslims. Our statements were “gross,” “racist,” “ugly,” “like saying you’re a shifty Jew” (Affleck), and a “caricature” that has “the tinge (a little bit) of how white racists talk about African Americans” (Kristof).
The most controversial thing I said was: “We have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam is the Mother lode of bad ideas.” This statement has been met with countless charges of “bigotry” and “racism” online and in the media. But imagine that the year is 1970, and I said: “Communism is the Mother lode of bad ideas.” How reasonable would it be to attack me as a “racist” or as someone who harbors an irrational hatred of Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, etc.? This is precisely the situation I am in. My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences—but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people.
And the tension on the panel only grew. At one point Affleck sought to cut me off by saying, “Okay, let him [Kristof] talk for a second.” As I finished my sentence, he made a gesture of impatience with his hand, suggesting that I had been droning on for ages. Watching this exchange on television (his body language and tone are less clear online), I find Affleck’s contempt for me fairly amazing.
I want to make one thing clear, however. I did not take Affleck’s hostility personally. This is the kind of thing I now regularly encounter from people who believe the lies about my work that have been sedulously manufactured by Reza Aslan, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, and many others. If I were seated across the table from someone I “knew” to be a racist and a warmonger, how would I behave? I don’t honestly know.
Kristof made the point that there are brave Muslims who are risking their lives to condemn “extremism” in the Muslim community. Of course there are, and I celebrate these people too. But he seemed completely unaware that he was making my point for me—the point being, of course, that these people are now risking their lives by advocating for basic human rights in the Muslim world.
When I told Affleck that he didn’t understand my argument, he said, “I don’t understand it? Your argument is ‘You know, black people, we know they shoot each other, they’re blacks!” What did he expect me to say to this—“I stand corrected”?
Although I clearly stated that I wasn’t claiming that all Muslims adhere to the dogmas I was criticizing; distinguished between jihadists, Islamists, conservatives, and the rest of the Muslim community; and explicitly exempted hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t take the doctrines about blasphemy, apostasy, jihad, and martyrdom seriously, Affleck and Kristof both insisted that I was disparaging all Muslims as a group. Unfortunately, I misspoke slightly at this point, saying that hundreds of millions of Muslims don’t take their “faith” seriously. This led many people to think that I was referring to Muslim atheists (who surely don’t exist in those numbers) and suggesting that the only people who could reform the faith are those who have lost it. I don’t know how many times one must deny that one is referring to an entire group, or cite specific poll results to justify the percentages one is talking about, but no amount of clarification appears sufficient to forestall charges of bigotry and lack of “nuance.”
One of the most depressing things in the aftermath of this exchange is the way Affleck is now being lauded for having exposed my and Maher’s “racism,” “bigotry,” and “hatred of Muslims.” This is yet another sign that simply accusing someone of these sins, however illogically, is sufficient to establish them as facts in the minds of many viewers. It certainly does not help that unscrupulous people like Reza Aslan and Glenn Greenwald have been spinning the conversation this way.
Of course, Affleck is also being widely reviled as an imbecile. But much of this criticism, too, is unfair. Those who describe him as a mere “actor” who was out of his depth are no better than those who dismiss me as a “neuroscientist” who cannot, therefore, know anything about religion. And Affleck isn’t merely an actor: He’s a director, a producer, a screenwriter, a philanthropist, and may one day be a politician. Even if he were nothing more than an actor, there would be no reason to assume that he’s not smart. In fact, I think he probably is quite smart, and that makes our encounter all the more disheartening.
The important point is that a person’s CV is immaterial as long as he or she is making sense. Unfortunately, Affleck wasn’t—but neither was Kristof, who really is an expert in this area, particularly where the plight of women in the developing world is concerned. His failure to recognize and celebrate the heroism of my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali remains a journalistic embarrassment and a moral scandal (and I told him so backstage).
After the show, a few things became clear about Affleck’s and Kristof’s views. Rather than trust poll results and the testimony of jihadists and Islamists, they trust the feeling that they get from the dozens of Muslims they have known personally. As a method of gauging Muslim opinion worldwide, this preference is obviously crazy. It is nevertheless understandable. On the basis of their life experiences, they believe that the success of a group like ISIS, despite its ability to recruit people by the thousands from free societies, says nothing about the role that Islamic doctrines play in inspiring global jihad. Rather, they imagine that ISIS is functioning like a bug light for psychopaths—attracting “disaffected young men” who would do terrible things to someone, somewhere, in any case. For some strange reason these disturbed individuals can’t resist an invitation to travel to a foreign desert for the privilege of decapitating journalists and aid workers. I await an entry in the DSM-VI that describes this troubling condition.
Contrary to what many liberals believe, those bad boys who are getting off the bus in Syria at this moment to join ISIS are not all psychopaths, nor are they simply depressed people who have gone to the desert to die. Most of them are profoundly motivated by their beliefs. Many surely feel like spiritual James Bonds, fighting a cosmic war against evil. After all, they are spreading the one true faith to the ends of the earth—or they will die trying, and be martyred, and then spend eternity in Paradise. Secular liberals seem unable to grasp how psychologically rewarding this worldview must be.
Many positive states of mind, such as ecstasy, are ethically neutral, which is to say that it really matters what you think the feeling of ecstasy means. If you think it means that the Creator of the Universe is rewarding you for having purged your village of Christians, you are ISIS material. Other bearded young men go to Burning Man, find themselves surrounded by naked women in Day-Glo body paint, and experience a similar state of mind.
After the show, Kristof, Affleck, Maher, and I continued our discussion. At one point, Kristof reiterated the claim that Maher and I had failed to acknowledge the existence of all the good Muslims who condemn ISIS, citing the popular hashtag #NotInOurName. In response, I said: “Yes, I agree that all condemnation of ISIS is good. But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight’s show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.” I don’t think I’m being uncharitable when I say that neither Affleck nor Kristof had an intelligent response to this. Nor did they pretend to doubt the truth of what I said.
I genuinely believe that both Affleck and Kristof mean well. They are very worried about American xenophobia and the prospects of future military adventures. But they are confused about Islam. Like many secular liberals, they refuse to accept the abundant evidence that vast numbers of Muslims believe dangerous things about infidels, apostasy, blasphemy, jihad, and martyrdom. And they do not realize that these doctrines are about as controversial under Islam as the resurrection of Jesus is under Christianity.
However, others in this debate are not so innocent. Our conversation on Real Time was provoked by an interview that Reza Aslan gave on CNN, in which he castigated Maher for the remarks he had made about Islam on the previous show.
I have always considered Aslan a comical figure. His thoughts about religion in general are a jumble of pretentious nonsense—yet he speaks with an air of self-importance that would have been embarrassing in Genghis Khan at the height of his power. On the topic of Islam, however, Aslan has begun to seem more sinister. He cannot possibly believe what he says, because nearly everything he says is a lie or a half-truth calibrated to mislead a liberal audience. If he claims something isn’t in the Koran, it probably is. I don’t know what his agenda is, beyond riding a jet stream of white guilt from interview to interview, but he is manipulating liberal biases for the purpose of shutting down conversation on important topics. Given what he surely knows about the contents of the Koran and the hadith, the state of public opinion in the Muslim world, the suffering of women and other disempowered groups, and the real-world effects of deeply held religious beliefs, I find his deception on these issues unconscionable.
As I tried to make clear on Maher’s show, what we need is honest talk about the link between belief and behavior. And no one is suffering the consequences of what Muslim “extremists” believe more than other Muslims are. The civil war between Sunni and Shia, the murder of apostates, the oppression of women—these evils have nothing to do with U.S. bombs or Israeli settlements. Yes, the war in Iraq was a catastrophe—just as Affleck and Kristof suggest. But take a moment to appreciate how bleak it is to admit that the world would be better off if we had left Saddam Hussein in power. Here was one of the most evil men who ever lived, holding an entire country hostage. And yet his tyranny was also preventing a religious war between Shia and Sunni, the massacre of Christians, and other sectarian horrors. To say that we should have left Saddam Hussein alone says some very depressing things about the Muslim world.
Whatever the prospects are for moving Islam out of the Middle Ages, hope lies not with obscurantists like Reza Aslan but with reformers like Maajid Nawaz. The litmus test for intellectual honesty on this point—which so many liberals fail—is to admit that one can draw a straight line from specific doctrines in Islam to the intolerance and violence we see in the Muslim world. Nawaz admits this. I don’t want to give the impression that he and I view Islam exactly the same. In fact, we are now having a written exchange that we will publish as an ebook in the coming months—and I am learning a lot from it. But Nawaz admits that the extent of radicalization in the Muslim community is an enormous problem. Unlike Aslan, he insists that his fellow Muslims must find some way to reinterpret and reform the faith. He believes that Islam has the intellectual resources to do this. I certainly hope he’s right. One thing is clear, however: Muslims must be obliged to do the work of reinterpretation—and for this we need honest conversation.
by Sam Harris
So what happened there?
I admit that I was a little thrown by Affleck’s animosity. I don’t know where it came from, because we hadn’t met before I joined the panel. And it was clear from our conversation after the show that he is totally unfamiliar with my work. I suspect that among his handlers there is a fan of Glenn Greenwald who prepared him for his appearance by simply telling him that I am a racist and a warmonger.
Whatever the reason, if you watch the full video of our exchange (which actually begins before the above clip), you will see that Affleck was gunning for me from the start. What many viewers probably don’t realize is that the mid-show interview is supposed be a protected five-to-seven-minute conversation between Maher and the new guest—and all the panelists know this. To ignore this structure and encroach on this space is a little rude; to jump in with criticism, as Affleck did, is pretty hostile. He tried to land his first blow a mere 90 seconds after I took my seat, before the topic of Islam even came up.
Although I was aware that I wasn’t getting much love from Affleck, I didn’t realize how unfriendly he had been on the show until I watched it on television the next day. This was by no means a normal encounter between strangers. For instance: I said that liberalism was failing us on the topic of Islamic theocracy, and Affleck snidely remarked, “Thank God you’re here!” (This was his second interruption of my interview.) I then said, “We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people,” and Affleck jumped in for the third time, more or less declaring the mid-show interview over: “Now hold on—are you the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam? You’re the interpreter of that?”
As many have since pointed out, Affleck and Nicholas Kristof then promptly demonstrated my thesis by mistaking everything Maher and I said about Islam for bigotry toward Muslims. Our statements were “gross,” “racist,” “ugly,” “like saying you’re a shifty Jew” (Affleck), and a “caricature” that has “the tinge (a little bit) of how white racists talk about African Americans” (Kristof).
The most controversial thing I said was: “We have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam is the Mother lode of bad ideas.” This statement has been met with countless charges of “bigotry” and “racism” online and in the media. But imagine that the year is 1970, and I said: “Communism is the Mother lode of bad ideas.” How reasonable would it be to attack me as a “racist” or as someone who harbors an irrational hatred of Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, etc.? This is precisely the situation I am in. My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences—but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people.
And the tension on the panel only grew. At one point Affleck sought to cut me off by saying, “Okay, let him [Kristof] talk for a second.” As I finished my sentence, he made a gesture of impatience with his hand, suggesting that I had been droning on for ages. Watching this exchange on television (his body language and tone are less clear online), I find Affleck’s contempt for me fairly amazing.
I want to make one thing clear, however. I did not take Affleck’s hostility personally. This is the kind of thing I now regularly encounter from people who believe the lies about my work that have been sedulously manufactured by Reza Aslan, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, and many others. If I were seated across the table from someone I “knew” to be a racist and a warmonger, how would I behave? I don’t honestly know.
Kristof made the point that there are brave Muslims who are risking their lives to condemn “extremism” in the Muslim community. Of course there are, and I celebrate these people too. But he seemed completely unaware that he was making my point for me—the point being, of course, that these people are now risking their lives by advocating for basic human rights in the Muslim world.
When I told Affleck that he didn’t understand my argument, he said, “I don’t understand it? Your argument is ‘You know, black people, we know they shoot each other, they’re blacks!” What did he expect me to say to this—“I stand corrected”?
Although I clearly stated that I wasn’t claiming that all Muslims adhere to the dogmas I was criticizing; distinguished between jihadists, Islamists, conservatives, and the rest of the Muslim community; and explicitly exempted hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t take the doctrines about blasphemy, apostasy, jihad, and martyrdom seriously, Affleck and Kristof both insisted that I was disparaging all Muslims as a group. Unfortunately, I misspoke slightly at this point, saying that hundreds of millions of Muslims don’t take their “faith” seriously. This led many people to think that I was referring to Muslim atheists (who surely don’t exist in those numbers) and suggesting that the only people who could reform the faith are those who have lost it. I don’t know how many times one must deny that one is referring to an entire group, or cite specific poll results to justify the percentages one is talking about, but no amount of clarification appears sufficient to forestall charges of bigotry and lack of “nuance.”
One of the most depressing things in the aftermath of this exchange is the way Affleck is now being lauded for having exposed my and Maher’s “racism,” “bigotry,” and “hatred of Muslims.” This is yet another sign that simply accusing someone of these sins, however illogically, is sufficient to establish them as facts in the minds of many viewers. It certainly does not help that unscrupulous people like Reza Aslan and Glenn Greenwald have been spinning the conversation this way.
Of course, Affleck is also being widely reviled as an imbecile. But much of this criticism, too, is unfair. Those who describe him as a mere “actor” who was out of his depth are no better than those who dismiss me as a “neuroscientist” who cannot, therefore, know anything about religion. And Affleck isn’t merely an actor: He’s a director, a producer, a screenwriter, a philanthropist, and may one day be a politician. Even if he were nothing more than an actor, there would be no reason to assume that he’s not smart. In fact, I think he probably is quite smart, and that makes our encounter all the more disheartening.
The important point is that a person’s CV is immaterial as long as he or she is making sense. Unfortunately, Affleck wasn’t—but neither was Kristof, who really is an expert in this area, particularly where the plight of women in the developing world is concerned. His failure to recognize and celebrate the heroism of my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali remains a journalistic embarrassment and a moral scandal (and I told him so backstage).
After the show, a few things became clear about Affleck’s and Kristof’s views. Rather than trust poll results and the testimony of jihadists and Islamists, they trust the feeling that they get from the dozens of Muslims they have known personally. As a method of gauging Muslim opinion worldwide, this preference is obviously crazy. It is nevertheless understandable. On the basis of their life experiences, they believe that the success of a group like ISIS, despite its ability to recruit people by the thousands from free societies, says nothing about the role that Islamic doctrines play in inspiring global jihad. Rather, they imagine that ISIS is functioning like a bug light for psychopaths—attracting “disaffected young men” who would do terrible things to someone, somewhere, in any case. For some strange reason these disturbed individuals can’t resist an invitation to travel to a foreign desert for the privilege of decapitating journalists and aid workers. I await an entry in the DSM-VI that describes this troubling condition.
Contrary to what many liberals believe, those bad boys who are getting off the bus in Syria at this moment to join ISIS are not all psychopaths, nor are they simply depressed people who have gone to the desert to die. Most of them are profoundly motivated by their beliefs. Many surely feel like spiritual James Bonds, fighting a cosmic war against evil. After all, they are spreading the one true faith to the ends of the earth—or they will die trying, and be martyred, and then spend eternity in Paradise. Secular liberals seem unable to grasp how psychologically rewarding this worldview must be.
Many positive states of mind, such as ecstasy, are ethically neutral, which is to say that it really matters what you think the feeling of ecstasy means. If you think it means that the Creator of the Universe is rewarding you for having purged your village of Christians, you are ISIS material. Other bearded young men go to Burning Man, find themselves surrounded by naked women in Day-Glo body paint, and experience a similar state of mind.
After the show, Kristof, Affleck, Maher, and I continued our discussion. At one point, Kristof reiterated the claim that Maher and I had failed to acknowledge the existence of all the good Muslims who condemn ISIS, citing the popular hashtag #NotInOurName. In response, I said: “Yes, I agree that all condemnation of ISIS is good. But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight’s show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.” I don’t think I’m being uncharitable when I say that neither Affleck nor Kristof had an intelligent response to this. Nor did they pretend to doubt the truth of what I said.
I genuinely believe that both Affleck and Kristof mean well. They are very worried about American xenophobia and the prospects of future military adventures. But they are confused about Islam. Like many secular liberals, they refuse to accept the abundant evidence that vast numbers of Muslims believe dangerous things about infidels, apostasy, blasphemy, jihad, and martyrdom. And they do not realize that these doctrines are about as controversial under Islam as the resurrection of Jesus is under Christianity.
However, others in this debate are not so innocent. Our conversation on Real Time was provoked by an interview that Reza Aslan gave on CNN, in which he castigated Maher for the remarks he had made about Islam on the previous show.
I have always considered Aslan a comical figure. His thoughts about religion in general are a jumble of pretentious nonsense—yet he speaks with an air of self-importance that would have been embarrassing in Genghis Khan at the height of his power. On the topic of Islam, however, Aslan has begun to seem more sinister. He cannot possibly believe what he says, because nearly everything he says is a lie or a half-truth calibrated to mislead a liberal audience. If he claims something isn’t in the Koran, it probably is. I don’t know what his agenda is, beyond riding a jet stream of white guilt from interview to interview, but he is manipulating liberal biases for the purpose of shutting down conversation on important topics. Given what he surely knows about the contents of the Koran and the hadith, the state of public opinion in the Muslim world, the suffering of women and other disempowered groups, and the real-world effects of deeply held religious beliefs, I find his deception on these issues unconscionable.
As I tried to make clear on Maher’s show, what we need is honest talk about the link between belief and behavior. And no one is suffering the consequences of what Muslim “extremists” believe more than other Muslims are. The civil war between Sunni and Shia, the murder of apostates, the oppression of women—these evils have nothing to do with U.S. bombs or Israeli settlements. Yes, the war in Iraq was a catastrophe—just as Affleck and Kristof suggest. But take a moment to appreciate how bleak it is to admit that the world would be better off if we had left Saddam Hussein in power. Here was one of the most evil men who ever lived, holding an entire country hostage. And yet his tyranny was also preventing a religious war between Shia and Sunni, the massacre of Christians, and other sectarian horrors. To say that we should have left Saddam Hussein alone says some very depressing things about the Muslim world.
Whatever the prospects are for moving Islam out of the Middle Ages, hope lies not with obscurantists like Reza Aslan but with reformers like Maajid Nawaz. The litmus test for intellectual honesty on this point—which so many liberals fail—is to admit that one can draw a straight line from specific doctrines in Islam to the intolerance and violence we see in the Muslim world. Nawaz admits this. I don’t want to give the impression that he and I view Islam exactly the same. In fact, we are now having a written exchange that we will publish as an ebook in the coming months—and I am learning a lot from it. But Nawaz admits that the extent of radicalization in the Muslim community is an enormous problem. Unlike Aslan, he insists that his fellow Muslims must find some way to reinterpret and reform the faith. He believes that Islam has the intellectual resources to do this. I certainly hope he’s right. One thing is clear, however: Muslims must be obliged to do the work of reinterpretation—and for this we need honest conversation.
Sam is on point.
All the Abrahamic religions are quilt/fear based, dogmatic, doctrinaire, progress stifling, cults; who view any non-believers as hell bound "sinners" who should be killed.
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All the 'ABRAHAMIC' religions have insane cultism
Religious fundamentalism is the problem, Zionist, Muslims, Christians, the Sunni/Shia split, etc. You have semi-literate men indoctrinated into these cults, following the orders of an authority figure (Pope, Imam, Ayatollah, Priest, Rabbi, Reverend) going out & murdering people who choose not to follow their way of living and join their cult.
In Egypt the secular military is literally wiping out the "Muslim Brotherhood" who wants to literally take the nation back to the year 1000 A.D. Why don't these idiots realize that they can have their 72 virgins right here right now on this planet earth, not wait for it in the "after life".
<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tMijjqDhJOw/TauxHpWBtyI/AAAAAAAAEFA/Z6n0Mk0xkbk/s1600/kinneret2.jpg" width="800">
<img src="http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/International/gty_anti_islam_protest_ss3_jt_120915_ssh.jpg" width="300"><img src="http://english.ahram.org.eg/Media/News/2012/9/29/2012-634845235828603266-860.jpg" width="300"><img src="http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.960464!/httpImage/image.jpeg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpeg" width="300">
<img src="http://andreasmoser.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/muslim-protest-3.jpg" width="250"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xfny9aEhrEo/Tx6l7NG5ZpI/AAAAAAAAcgA/aeWGAzIeqxU/s320/muslim+women+www.motivationalpostersonline.blogspot.com+demotivational+posters+motivational+poster+funny.jpg" width="300"><img src="http://www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/wp-content/uploads/Israel-Gaza-damage.jpg" width="400">
This
source: Washington Post
Gunmen storm satirical newspaper in Paris, killing at least 12
PARIS — France’s deadliest terrorist attack in modern memory unfolded with chilling precision here Wednesday as gunmen speaking fluent French burst into a satirical newspaper’s weekly staff meeting and raked the room with bullets, leaving behind what one witness described as “absolute carnage.”
The assault claimed a dozen lives, including the provocative paper’s well-known editor and two police officers, while traumatizing a nation that had long feared such an assault but was nonetheless shocked by the ferocity and military-style professionalism with which it was carried out.
After shooting dead their final victim, the exultant killers calmly fled the scene, sparking a manhunt that extended across this capital city and deep into its suburbs. Police named three suspects, and one of them was reported Thursday to have surrendered.
Authorities also said Thursday that “several arrests” had been made since the attack.
France raised its security alarm to the highest level and mobilized teams on foot, by air and in vehicles seeking the three masked assailants, who carried out the assault shouting the Arabic call of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” amid the gunfire, according to video posted by France’s state-run broadcaster.
<iframe scrolling="no" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/97d306f0-96b7-11e4-8385-866293322c2f" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="290" width="480"></iframe>
Editor's note: This video contains graphic content. Videos shot near the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo captured two gunmen fleeing the area. One shows the gunmen shooting a police officer. (The Washington Post)
By early Thursday, police had surrounded an apartment building in the city of Reims, about a two-hour drive from Paris, with media reporting that a swarm of heavily armed officers was preparing to raid the site. But they pulled back around 2 a.m., apparently without making any arrests.
According to police and other officials, two of the suspects are French brothers in their early 30s, Said and Cherif Kouachi. Both are from the Paris region. The third is 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad from Reims. There were conflicting reports on whether the teenager was also a French national.
Later Thursday morning, news outlets citing French judicial officials reported that Mourad had turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mezieres, about 140 miles northeast of Paris near the Belgium border.
Wednesday’s mass killing added Paris to a list of European capitals, including London and Madrid, that have experienced major terrorist attacks since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The assault came at a time of heightened anxiety across Europe about the threat of radical Islamist groups as thousands of young men and women from across the continent have poured into Syria to join the fight there. Many have come home radicalized by the experience.
There was no indication Wednesday that any of the assailants had battlefield experience. But experts said the men were well prepared for their mission, and there were widespread reports that one of the alleged suspects, Cherif Kouachi, had been convicted of recruiting fighters to battle American forces in Iraq.
Wednesday’s raid was “a terrorist attack, without a doubt,” said French President François Hollande, who later declared Thursday as a national day of mourning.
“Journalists and police officers have been assassinated in cowardly fashion,” Hollande said after visiting the scene. “France is in a state of shock.”
The attack coincided with a staff meeting at the weekly Charlie Hebdo newspaper and left its well-known editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, and other prominent cartoonists among the dead.
Edouard Perrin, a former writer for the newspaper who was in the office across the hall at the time of the attack, said he took cover when the shooting started and was among the first to enter after the killers fled.
“When we got inside, it was an absolute carnage, in the proper sense of the word,” he said.
In addition to the dead, he said, “there were survivors. We carried out CPR on them. I touched one person lying on the ground. The body had no pulse.”
Later, at the sealed offices and on nearby streets, forensic experts looked for DNA or other possible clues to aid in the rapidly expanding hunt. Others pored over security-camera video and cellphone images posted online.
Across Paris, meanwhile, security patrols were stepped up at media outlets, transportation hubs and other key sites.
The attack is likely to raise calls for tougher crackdowns on suspected extremists in a country that has faced decades of internal tensions over its Muslim population, which at 5 million is the largest in Europe.
In recent years, France has thrust itself to center stage in the war against Islamist extremism. In 2013, French forces joined those loyal to Mali’s government to push back an onslaught by Islamist militants. France was also the first nation to join the U.S.-led effort against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, conducting bombing raids.
In just the past several weeks, France has been particularly on edge. Before Christmas, a man yelling “God is great” in Arabic was shot after stabbing three police officers in a suburb of Tours in central France.
Also, 23 people were injured in Nantes and Dijon after men, in two separate incidents, drove vehicles into crowds. French officials deployed between 200 and 300 more military personnel on the streets last week, in addition to 780 already on the ground.
But the mood in Paris on Wednesday was less angry and fearful than mournful and resolved.
As dusk fell, a somber crowd of thousands of Parisians converged on the Place de la Republique to show solidarity with the attack’s victims. Many bore handmade signs with the words “Je suis Charlie” — “I am Charlie” — and mourners spelled out the words in votive candles. The crowd periodically broke out in rhythmic chants of “Charlie!” — but was otherwise largely silent.
“Charlie is exactly what France needs. They make us laugh and they make us think,” said Dominique Ragu, a cartographer who came to the rally with her daughter and father. “This was an attack on freedom of expression. It was an attack on humor.”
At the nearby offices of the leftist newspaper Liberation, the entrance was being guarded by police wielding assault rifles. Inside, staff members were mourning for lost friends but were also defiant.
“We need to be like Charlie. We need to be strong. We need to be irreverent. We need to be impactful,” said Johan Hufnagel, the paper’s deputy editor. “If we change because of these guys, it will mean they will have won.”
The attack targeted the newspaper’s most prominent figures.
One of its designers, Corinne Rey, said two hooded gunmen, speaking perfect French, forced her to type her passcode at the door. It was shortly before 11:30 a.m. Paris time — the time of the newspaper’s editorial meeting attended by key members of the staff.
“I had gone to pick up my daughter at day care,” Rey told the French newspaper L’Humanite. “Two hooded gunmen arrived at the door of the building and brutally threatened us.”
Amateur footage broadcast on France 24 showed panicked employees of Charlie Hebdo scrambling onto the roof at the offices in the densely populated 11th arrondissement of Paris. Another video clip showed black-clad gunmen firing on a police officer on the sidewalk before escaping in a black car.
The assailants, according to French media accounts, later commandeered a vehicle at Porte de Pantin on the northeastern outskirts of Paris before fleeing to the suburbs.
“We heard a ‘boom boom,’ ” said a waiter at the nearby restaurant Le Poulailler who asked to remain anonymous. He described seeing at least two gunmen firing weapons. “We went outside in the alley and saw them shooting at the cops,” he said. “At first we thought it was a movie.”
Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman, said the dead include 10 members of the newspaper staff, among them the 47-year-old Charbonnier, who was widely known by the pen name Charb.
Other noted staff members killed included economic-affairs columnist Bernard Maris, 68, and renowned cartoonist Jean Cabut, 76, widely known as Cabu.
Two police officers also were killed, including one assigned as the editor’s bodyguard. The other, who encountered the gunmen as they fled, was shot in the head as he writhed wounded on the ground, Crepin said.
At least 20 other people were injured, including four listed in critical condition, police said.
“We killed Charlie Hebdo,” one of the assailants shouted, according to a video made from a nearby building and later broadcast on French television.
“The murderers dared proclaim Charlie Hebdo is dead,” U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in Washington. “But make no mistake, they are wrong. Today and tomorrow in Paris, in France and across the world, the freedom of expression this magazine represented is not able to be killed by this kind of act of terror.”
In Washington, President Obama denounced the “horrific” shooting and said U.S. officials were ready to provide any assistance to help “bring these terrorists to justice.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron called the attack “sickening,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced it as “vile.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack, but messages of praise appeared on Web sites and other online forums linked to Islamist militants, said the Washington-based Site monitoring group, which tracks extremist posts.
Charlie Hebdo’s iconoclastic style frequently pushed the envelope. The newspaper was already under regular police guard after being targeted in the past. In November 2011, its offices were firebombed a day after it published a caricature of the prophet Muhammad and ironically named him as its “editor in chief” for an upcoming issue.
The attack, however, did little to curb its appetite for Islamic satire. In 2012, the newspaper ignored calls for caution from high-ranking members of the French government and published more images of Muhammad. In one caricature, he was shown being pushed in a wheelchair by an Orthodox Jew in a reference to a hit French movie.
Images of Muhammad have sparked deadly violence and protests in the past. In 2005, a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet, touching off months of unrest across the Islamic world.
“It’s a horrible thing that has happened today, and my fear is that this might promote self-
censorship,” said Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who penned the most incendiary of the 2005 caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. “These were good people, people who have been critical of anyone in power.”
Only hours before the attack, Charlie Hebdo’s Twitter account carried a cartoon titled “Still No Attacks in France” showing Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi giving a new year’s greeting.
“Just wait,” a fighter says in the drawing. “We have until the end of January to present our New Year’s wishes.”
Gunmen storm satirical newspaper in Paris, killing at least 12
PARIS — France’s deadliest terrorist attack in modern memory unfolded with chilling precision here Wednesday as gunmen speaking fluent French burst into a satirical newspaper’s weekly staff meeting and raked the room with bullets, leaving behind what one witness described as “absolute carnage.”
The assault claimed a dozen lives, including the provocative paper’s well-known editor and two police officers, while traumatizing a nation that had long feared such an assault but was nonetheless shocked by the ferocity and military-style professionalism with which it was carried out.
After shooting dead their final victim, the exultant killers calmly fled the scene, sparking a manhunt that extended across this capital city and deep into its suburbs. Police named three suspects, and one of them was reported Thursday to have surrendered.
Authorities also said Thursday that “several arrests” had been made since the attack.
France raised its security alarm to the highest level and mobilized teams on foot, by air and in vehicles seeking the three masked assailants, who carried out the assault shouting the Arabic call of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” amid the gunfire, according to video posted by France’s state-run broadcaster.
<iframe scrolling="no" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/97d306f0-96b7-11e4-8385-866293322c2f" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="290" width="480"></iframe>
Editor's note: This video contains graphic content. Videos shot near the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo captured two gunmen fleeing the area. One shows the gunmen shooting a police officer. (The Washington Post)
By early Thursday, police had surrounded an apartment building in the city of Reims, about a two-hour drive from Paris, with media reporting that a swarm of heavily armed officers was preparing to raid the site. But they pulled back around 2 a.m., apparently without making any arrests.
According to police and other officials, two of the suspects are French brothers in their early 30s, Said and Cherif Kouachi. Both are from the Paris region. The third is 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad from Reims. There were conflicting reports on whether the teenager was also a French national.
Later Thursday morning, news outlets citing French judicial officials reported that Mourad had turned himself in at a police station in Charleville-Mezieres, about 140 miles northeast of Paris near the Belgium border.
Wednesday’s mass killing added Paris to a list of European capitals, including London and Madrid, that have experienced major terrorist attacks since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The assault came at a time of heightened anxiety across Europe about the threat of radical Islamist groups as thousands of young men and women from across the continent have poured into Syria to join the fight there. Many have come home radicalized by the experience.
There was no indication Wednesday that any of the assailants had battlefield experience. But experts said the men were well prepared for their mission, and there were widespread reports that one of the alleged suspects, Cherif Kouachi, had been convicted of recruiting fighters to battle American forces in Iraq.
Wednesday’s raid was “a terrorist attack, without a doubt,” said French President François Hollande, who later declared Thursday as a national day of mourning.
“Journalists and police officers have been assassinated in cowardly fashion,” Hollande said after visiting the scene. “France is in a state of shock.”
The attack coincided with a staff meeting at the weekly Charlie Hebdo newspaper and left its well-known editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, and other prominent cartoonists among the dead.
Edouard Perrin, a former writer for the newspaper who was in the office across the hall at the time of the attack, said he took cover when the shooting started and was among the first to enter after the killers fled.
“When we got inside, it was an absolute carnage, in the proper sense of the word,” he said.
In addition to the dead, he said, “there were survivors. We carried out CPR on them. I touched one person lying on the ground. The body had no pulse.”
Later, at the sealed offices and on nearby streets, forensic experts looked for DNA or other possible clues to aid in the rapidly expanding hunt. Others pored over security-camera video and cellphone images posted online.
Across Paris, meanwhile, security patrols were stepped up at media outlets, transportation hubs and other key sites.
The attack is likely to raise calls for tougher crackdowns on suspected extremists in a country that has faced decades of internal tensions over its Muslim population, which at 5 million is the largest in Europe.
In recent years, France has thrust itself to center stage in the war against Islamist extremism. In 2013, French forces joined those loyal to Mali’s government to push back an onslaught by Islamist militants. France was also the first nation to join the U.S.-led effort against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, conducting bombing raids.
In just the past several weeks, France has been particularly on edge. Before Christmas, a man yelling “God is great” in Arabic was shot after stabbing three police officers in a suburb of Tours in central France.
Also, 23 people were injured in Nantes and Dijon after men, in two separate incidents, drove vehicles into crowds. French officials deployed between 200 and 300 more military personnel on the streets last week, in addition to 780 already on the ground.
But the mood in Paris on Wednesday was less angry and fearful than mournful and resolved.
As dusk fell, a somber crowd of thousands of Parisians converged on the Place de la Republique to show solidarity with the attack’s victims. Many bore handmade signs with the words “Je suis Charlie” — “I am Charlie” — and mourners spelled out the words in votive candles. The crowd periodically broke out in rhythmic chants of “Charlie!” — but was otherwise largely silent.
“Charlie is exactly what France needs. They make us laugh and they make us think,” said Dominique Ragu, a cartographer who came to the rally with her daughter and father. “This was an attack on freedom of expression. It was an attack on humor.”
At the nearby offices of the leftist newspaper Liberation, the entrance was being guarded by police wielding assault rifles. Inside, staff members were mourning for lost friends but were also defiant.
“We need to be like Charlie. We need to be strong. We need to be irreverent. We need to be impactful,” said Johan Hufnagel, the paper’s deputy editor. “If we change because of these guys, it will mean they will have won.”
The attack targeted the newspaper’s most prominent figures.
One of its designers, Corinne Rey, said two hooded gunmen, speaking perfect French, forced her to type her passcode at the door. It was shortly before 11:30 a.m. Paris time — the time of the newspaper’s editorial meeting attended by key members of the staff.
“I had gone to pick up my daughter at day care,” Rey told the French newspaper L’Humanite. “Two hooded gunmen arrived at the door of the building and brutally threatened us.”
Amateur footage broadcast on France 24 showed panicked employees of Charlie Hebdo scrambling onto the roof at the offices in the densely populated 11th arrondissement of Paris. Another video clip showed black-clad gunmen firing on a police officer on the sidewalk before escaping in a black car.
The assailants, according to French media accounts, later commandeered a vehicle at Porte de Pantin on the northeastern outskirts of Paris before fleeing to the suburbs.
“We heard a ‘boom boom,’ ” said a waiter at the nearby restaurant Le Poulailler who asked to remain anonymous. He described seeing at least two gunmen firing weapons. “We went outside in the alley and saw them shooting at the cops,” he said. “At first we thought it was a movie.”
Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman, said the dead include 10 members of the newspaper staff, among them the 47-year-old Charbonnier, who was widely known by the pen name Charb.
Other noted staff members killed included economic-affairs columnist Bernard Maris, 68, and renowned cartoonist Jean Cabut, 76, widely known as Cabu.
Two police officers also were killed, including one assigned as the editor’s bodyguard. The other, who encountered the gunmen as they fled, was shot in the head as he writhed wounded on the ground, Crepin said.
At least 20 other people were injured, including four listed in critical condition, police said.
“We killed Charlie Hebdo,” one of the assailants shouted, according to a video made from a nearby building and later broadcast on French television.
“The murderers dared proclaim Charlie Hebdo is dead,” U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in Washington. “But make no mistake, they are wrong. Today and tomorrow in Paris, in France and across the world, the freedom of expression this magazine represented is not able to be killed by this kind of act of terror.”
In Washington, President Obama denounced the “horrific” shooting and said U.S. officials were ready to provide any assistance to help “bring these terrorists to justice.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron called the attack “sickening,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel denounced it as “vile.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack, but messages of praise appeared on Web sites and other online forums linked to Islamist militants, said the Washington-based Site monitoring group, which tracks extremist posts.
Charlie Hebdo’s iconoclastic style frequently pushed the envelope. The newspaper was already under regular police guard after being targeted in the past. In November 2011, its offices were firebombed a day after it published a caricature of the prophet Muhammad and ironically named him as its “editor in chief” for an upcoming issue.
The attack, however, did little to curb its appetite for Islamic satire. In 2012, the newspaper ignored calls for caution from high-ranking members of the French government and published more images of Muhammad. In one caricature, he was shown being pushed in a wheelchair by an Orthodox Jew in a reference to a hit French movie.
Images of Muhammad have sparked deadly violence and protests in the past. In 2005, a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet, touching off months of unrest across the Islamic world.
“It’s a horrible thing that has happened today, and my fear is that this might promote self-
censorship,” said Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who penned the most incendiary of the 2005 caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. “These were good people, people who have been critical of anyone in power.”
Only hours before the attack, Charlie Hebdo’s Twitter account carried a cartoon titled “Still No Attacks in France” showing Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi giving a new year’s greeting.
“Just wait,” a fighter says in the drawing. “We have until the end of January to present our New Year’s wishes.”
Saudi rights advocate flogged
on charge of insulting Islam
Raif Badawi today faced 50 of 1,000 public lashes he has been sentenced to. The punishment is
divided into four sessions, with hospital visits in-between to treat the wounds. (Amnesty International Canada)
Rejecting international appeals for clemency, Saudi Arabia on Friday publicly flogged a rights advocate and blogger who was convicted of insulting Islam, news accounts said.
Rights activists citing eyewitness reports said Raif Badawi, who had previously run a reformist website, was lashed outside a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, following Friday prayers. The flogging was the first of 20 such sessions mandated by Badawi’s sentence -- a total of 1,000 lashes, 50 lashes at a time.
The American-allied Saudi government, which is part of the U.S.-led military coalition confronting the Sunni militants of the Islamic State, brushed aside eleventh-hour urgings from the Obama administration against carrying out what State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki termed a “brutal punishment.”
Word that the initial lashing had taken place reignited the outcry over the case, drawing condemnations from Western governments and major international rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Supporters took to social media to express outrage and fears for Badawi’s health.
Like other hereditary monarchies in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia has scant tolerance for political dissent, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings that shook the region four years ago. The kingdom employs harsh criminal penalties based on Islamic law, or sharia, including beheadings and amputations.
Saudi Arabia has also defied challenges to its deeply conservative social mores. Two women who violated the Saudi ban on driving were recently referred to an anti-terrorism court.
Badawi, who has been held since mid-2012, was initially sentenced in 2013 to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for alleged cybercrimes and religious insult. When he appealed, he was handed an even more severe sentence: an additional three years in jail and 400 more lashes.
Prior to Friday’s flogging, the State Department called for a review of Badawi’s case and sentencing, asserting that he had exercised his “rights to freedom of expression and religion.” His online debate forum, Free Saudi Liberals, has been shuttered.
Badawi, whose wife and children are living in Canada, was reported to have informed relatives on Thursday that the first session of flogging would take place the following day. Agence France-Presse, quoting witnesses, reported that he was brought to the scene in a police car and whipped as a crowd looked on. He did not cry out during it, the agency said.
Rights advocates say flogging, which can result in complications including nerve damage and infections, amounts to torture.
Rights activists citing eyewitness reports said Raif Badawi, who had previously run a reformist website, was lashed outside a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, following Friday prayers. The flogging was the first of 20 such sessions mandated by Badawi’s sentence -- a total of 1,000 lashes, 50 lashes at a time.
The American-allied Saudi government, which is part of the U.S.-led military coalition confronting the Sunni militants of the Islamic State, brushed aside eleventh-hour urgings from the Obama administration against carrying out what State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki termed a “brutal punishment.”
Word that the initial lashing had taken place reignited the outcry over the case, drawing condemnations from Western governments and major international rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Supporters took to social media to express outrage and fears for Badawi’s health.
Like other hereditary monarchies in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia has scant tolerance for political dissent, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings that shook the region four years ago. The kingdom employs harsh criminal penalties based on Islamic law, or sharia, including beheadings and amputations.
Saudi Arabia has also defied challenges to its deeply conservative social mores. Two women who violated the Saudi ban on driving were recently referred to an anti-terrorism court.
Badawi, who has been held since mid-2012, was initially sentenced in 2013 to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for alleged cybercrimes and religious insult. When he appealed, he was handed an even more severe sentence: an additional three years in jail and 400 more lashes.
Prior to Friday’s flogging, the State Department called for a review of Badawi’s case and sentencing, asserting that he had exercised his “rights to freedom of expression and religion.” His online debate forum, Free Saudi Liberals, has been shuttered.
Badawi, whose wife and children are living in Canada, was reported to have informed relatives on Thursday that the first session of flogging would take place the following day. Agence France-Presse, quoting witnesses, reported that he was brought to the scene in a police car and whipped as a crowd looked on. He did not cry out during it, the agency said.
Rights advocates say flogging, which can result in complications including nerve damage and infections, amounts to torture.
http://www.latimes.com/world/middle...ashes-for-insulting-islam-20150109-story.html
ISIS Undermining Muslim Faith As More Muslims Convert To Christianity
http://www.christiantoday.com/artic...ore.muslims.convert.to.christianity/55622.htm
Islam will reportedly become the world's largest religion 55 years from now based on recent projections, but the barbarous practices of the Islamic State could undermine the growth of the world's Muslim population, experts said.
According to a recent Pew Research Center study, Christianity and Islam will be near parity by 2050, with Christians expected to comprise 31.4 percent of the planet's population against 29.7 percent who follow Islam.
The study said Islam will grow more than twice as fast as any other major religion over the next half century because of a higher fertility rate in Muslim dominated countries.
However, Muslims frightened by the inhumane acts by the ISIS, which the militants claim they are doing in the name of their god Allah, are now questioning their very own faith, and presumably considering to leave it, CBS News reported on Friday.
This is backed by testimonies from missionaries working in the Islamic world who noted that more Muslims have converted to Christianity in the last 14 years since the devastating Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. The number of converts in the recent period, they said, is greater than during the entire 14 centuries of Islamic history.
"Many Muslims are saying, 'If ISIS is Islam, I'm leaving.' Some are becoming atheists," said Brother Rachid, who hosts a Christian program reaching Muslims called "Daring Questions" in Arabic language. "There is a huge wave of atheism in the Arab world right now and many are turning to Jesus Christ. Islam was never faced with this crisis before."
"Islam is going to collapse," added Brother Rachid, whose father is a Moroccan imam who lived as a secret Christian convert for 15 years.
Pastor Fouad Rasho of Angered Alliance Church in Sweden, who has baptized more than a hundred former Muslims, maintained that ISIS causes many Muslims to come to Jesus.
"Every week I meet one or more persons who come to me and want to know more about Christianity and the Bible because they are very angry about being a Muslim. They don't want to continue to be Muslim," said Imran, who is also an immigrant from Syria.
Many converts keep their shift in religion a secret, fearing for their lives and for being an outcast. Imram (not his real name), a British college student from a Pakistani immigrant family, said leaving Islam is tough.
"If someone leaves Islam and becomes an apostate, he is thrown out of his family; his family will be the first ones to abandon him," he said. "His friends will reject him and he will be killed or he will be persecuted. A lot of my friends said, 'This is the last time I'm talking to you because you disrespected the prophet Mohammed, you disrespected Islam.'"
http://www.christiantoday.com/artic...ore.muslims.convert.to.christianity/55622.htm
Islam will reportedly become the world's largest religion 55 years from now based on recent projections, but the barbarous practices of the Islamic State could undermine the growth of the world's Muslim population, experts said.
According to a recent Pew Research Center study, Christianity and Islam will be near parity by 2050, with Christians expected to comprise 31.4 percent of the planet's population against 29.7 percent who follow Islam.
The study said Islam will grow more than twice as fast as any other major religion over the next half century because of a higher fertility rate in Muslim dominated countries.
However, Muslims frightened by the inhumane acts by the ISIS, which the militants claim they are doing in the name of their god Allah, are now questioning their very own faith, and presumably considering to leave it, CBS News reported on Friday.
This is backed by testimonies from missionaries working in the Islamic world who noted that more Muslims have converted to Christianity in the last 14 years since the devastating Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. The number of converts in the recent period, they said, is greater than during the entire 14 centuries of Islamic history.
"Many Muslims are saying, 'If ISIS is Islam, I'm leaving.' Some are becoming atheists," said Brother Rachid, who hosts a Christian program reaching Muslims called "Daring Questions" in Arabic language. "There is a huge wave of atheism in the Arab world right now and many are turning to Jesus Christ. Islam was never faced with this crisis before."
"Islam is going to collapse," added Brother Rachid, whose father is a Moroccan imam who lived as a secret Christian convert for 15 years.
Pastor Fouad Rasho of Angered Alliance Church in Sweden, who has baptized more than a hundred former Muslims, maintained that ISIS causes many Muslims to come to Jesus.
"Every week I meet one or more persons who come to me and want to know more about Christianity and the Bible because they are very angry about being a Muslim. They don't want to continue to be Muslim," said Imran, who is also an immigrant from Syria.
Many converts keep their shift in religion a secret, fearing for their lives and for being an outcast. Imram (not his real name), a British college student from a Pakistani immigrant family, said leaving Islam is tough.
"If someone leaves Islam and becomes an apostate, he is thrown out of his family; his family will be the first ones to abandon him," he said. "His friends will reject him and he will be killed or he will be persecuted. A lot of my friends said, 'This is the last time I'm talking to you because you disrespected the prophet Mohammed, you disrespected Islam.'"
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