Saying ‘Islamic threat’ over and over doesn’t make it real
Pro Muslim propaganda has stepped up a gear
Where to begin, the propaganda assault by the Muslims in the UK has stepped up a gear stoically aided and abetted by The Guardian Newspaper
Soumaya Ghannoushi waxes lyrical in the Guardian denying the “Islamic threat” and rolling out the “we are victims” scenario yet again
From her Article:
In the fog of the so-called war on terror, al-Qaida, terrorism, extremism and Islamism – the list of -isms goes on – have been employed as potent weapons in a range of battles. They have been deployed to demonise vulnerable minorities – their community groups and their leaders, mosques and faith schools. They have been adopted to eat away at civil liberties. And they have been exploited to target mainstream Islamist political parties. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party; the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest opposition in the Egyptian parliament; and Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice party in Malaysia, are among the movements cast in one terrifying category labeled “Islamism”, alongside al-Qaida. The huge differences are willfully ignored to justify this strategy of unrelenting confrontation. The consequences have been devastating for social stability and community coexistence, as well as for relations between the “Muslim world” and the “west” – something which, ironically, has been recognized by President Bush recently.
” demonise vulnerable minorities – their community groups and their leaders, mosques and faith schools. They have been adopted to eat away at civil liberties.”
It occurs to me that the “demonization” this lady refers to is another way of saying “do not criticize us ” it does not matter if we ridicule,threaten, verbally abuse or blow you up, you must not blame or demonise us.
Mosques as we all know are not Religious places, they are meeting places, they are outpost of Islam and their “leaders” as we know from the “undercover Mosque” programme do urge people to kill the Kufr and take what is theirs.
Faith Schools are Madrases, nothing less, they are places where young children are taught to hate anything unislamic
“The principal of an Islamic school has admitted that it uses textbooks which describe Jews as “apes” and Christians as “pigs” and has refused to withdraw them.”
The eating away of civil liberties, The Muslim community in the UK has not lost any of its “liberties” the remaining community has lost many of the liberties we once had.
Our liberty to travel reasonably unhindered has gone, now we ar subjected to humiliating searches, restricted to what we can take into a plane cabin and that even includes a tube of toothpaste.
Our freedom of speech and action has been severely restricted because no one must offend the Muslim, yet the Muslim claims it is their right according to the Koran to call us names and defame our culture.There are over 2000 Muslims in this country that are a danger to this country, these people are supported by the Islamic Ummah in the UK.
What can or cannot be displayed is also censored by Islam, if a poster is perceived as being offensive to Islam, Muslim voices yell foul.
As for the Muslim Brotherhood the Author of the article implies that they are a bunch of nice guys, where is this womans head.-
“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”—Muslim Brotherhood
The author also states:-
The much hyped Islamic threat is one of the greatest lies of our time. The “Muslim world” – though no such bloc really exists – is politically fragmented and economically impoverished. It is reeling under the weight of crises and a long colonial legacy. Militarily, it is of scant significance. It is laughable that we should be discussing the Islamic threat when in the past seven years alone two Muslim countries have come under direct military occupation, ending hopes that the world had firmly closed this chapter of history decades ago.
“The Muslim world, though no such bloc really exists” The Muslim world is the Ummah and this woman knows that and yes the Ummah is fragmented, yes it is impoverished this is because the world of Islam does not create anything, it lives off others, the Gulf states are rich but they are only rich because of western technology and expertise, they are rich because they import people from other poor Muslim states to do their dirty jobs for them Arabs do not work they have slaves for that
Oh here we go, the “colonial Legacy”, the fact remains that when Muslim countries were governed by western countries the rate of development of those countries increased, move on lady stop living in the past.
The Islamic threat, indeed it would be very good for Islam if we did not recognize its intent but we do and that is really what Islam does not like.
Muslim countries have come under military occupation, yes that is true, it would help if the Author of this article actually said why this ahas happened, she omits that part, as you know there was the first Gulf war, Kuwait, a Muslim country was invaded by Iraq, another Muslim country. The west kicked him out thus restoring Kuwait .
The Iraqis then complained that the west did not go far enough and kick out Saddam Hussein, when the west did do this in the second Iraq war the Iraqis yelled foul and started killing western troops.
As for Afghanistan, the author must be a supporter of the Taliban, the subjugation of women, the denial of education and the butchering of anybody who criticizes them.
In short this article expresses ill informed views in a poor attempt to pull the wool over peoples eyes, no evidence is offered to support her claims, I have evidenced most of what I have said
Years of peddled fear and demonisation have left vulnerable minorities more isolated and the world fixated by a myth
Pick up any newspaper today in Britain or elsewhere in Europe, switch on the TV or tune in to any radio station, and you’re very likely to get the impression that “our societies” – if not western civilisation in its entirety – face an imminent Islamic threat, on a par with the old dangers of fascism. Since the terrorist bombings of New York, Madrid and London, the “fundamentalist peril” has become part of the air we breathe. It has become a rhetorical crutch for everyone from rightwing bigots to opportunistic politicians and repenting “former extremists”, each with their own agenda.
Today we live amid an explosion of discourse and imagery around Islam and Muslims. Sparked by al-Qaida’s lunatic atrocities, it has since fed on the politics of fear and suspicion. The victims have included objectivity, balance, and the ability to judge issues calmly and rationally. Flawed material is endlessly reproduced and recycled, so it is little wonder that the public’s understanding of Islam and the complex political problems of the Muslim world are limited at best.
Years of peddled fear and demonisation have had severe consequences: a widening of ignorance and bigotry, deepening mistrust between individuals and communities, and the resurrection of the pernicious language of racism and fanaticism – as journalist Peter Oborne illustrated in his Channel 4 Dispatches documentary earlier this week.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that Islam is now the religion closest to Europe and remotest from it. Islam is no longer an alien, distant religion. It is now woven into the very fabric of European society. Muslims are the largest of the continent’s minorities. Yet their physical proximity does not appear to have made them more familiar or better understood. If anything, to most European eyes they seem stranger, more distant, more ambiguous than ever.
The much hyped Islamic threat is one of the greatest lies of our time. The “Muslim world” – though no such bloc really exists – is politically fragmented and economically impoverished. It is reeling under the weight of crises and a long colonial legacy. Militarily, it is of scant significance. It is laughable that we should be discussing the Islamic threat when in the past seven years alone two Muslim countries have come under direct military occupation, ending hopes that the world had firmly closed this chapter of history decades ago.
I suspect many military experts must struggle to keep a straight face every time the subject of the “Islamic threat” is broached. They know that strategic threats are not founded on mere anxieties, imagination and illusions, but on concrete military and political facts. This is not to play down the seriousness of the dangers presented by al-Qaida and other violent groups. But these constitute a security problem to be dealt with through the intelligence and security services. Whatever its braggadocio, al-Qaida does not amount to a strategic military threat, let alone a menace to “western civilisation”.
The security risks posed by al-Qaida, moreover, face Muslims and non-Muslims alike. After all, al-Qaida has perpetrated more atrocities in Muslim countries than western capitals. Attacks in Casablanca, Bali, Riyadh, Algiers, Tunisia, Istanbul and Iraq have outnumbered those in New York, Madrid and London.
In the fog of the so-called war on terror, al-Qaida, terrorism, extremism and Islamism – the list of -isms goes on – have been employed as potent weapons in a range of battles. They have been deployed to demonise vulnerable minorities – their community groups and their leaders, mosques and faith schools. They have been adopted to eat away at civil liberties. And they have been exploited to target mainstream Islamist political parties. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party; the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest opposition in the Egyptian parliament; and Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice party in Malaysia, are among the movements cast in one terrifying category labelled “Islamism”, alongside al-Qaida. The huge differences are wilfully ignored to justify this strategy of unrelenting confrontation. The consequences have been devastating for social stability and community coexistence, as well as for relations between the “Muslim world” and the “west” – something which, ironically, has been recognised by President Bush recently.
Political expediency and scaremongering has seen the propagation of the idea of a grave Islamist threat to the status of orthodoxy. But however easy it might be to surrender to this fiction, it remains just that: a myth fabricated by a few, exploited by a few, and consumed by many. No matter how widely circulated, or endlessly regurgitated, a myth remains a myth.
· Soumaya Ghannoushi will join John Esposito, Alastair Crooke, Martin Bright and Robert Leiken to debate “The Islamic threat: myth or reality?” at IslamExpo in London tomorrow. The expo runs from today until Monday at Olympia in Kensington
islamexpo.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/11/islam?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
