By Supna Zaidi
Kudos and Hat to Muslims Against Shariah for the Image and the post
By Supna Zaidi
In an election year, no one wants to discuss the nuances of difficult topics like the “war on terror.” Sound bites and bipartisan attacks are used to vilify honest work and gloss over real issues that affect the safety and security of the American public.
Just ask Imran Raza. CNN reduced his documentary, “Karachi Kids,” to a lie when it published an online article entitled, “‘Terror’ School Turns Out To Be A Moderate Madrassa,” because the school did not teach violence like suicide bombings in class, negating three years of work by the filmmaker.
The documentary follows two Pakistani-American brothers from Georgia to a Pakistani madrassa called the Jamia Binoria Institute for religious schooling. Though Islamist indoctrination is evident throughout the documentary, Raza made the mistake of not distinguishing between Islam and Islamism, and more subtly violent Islamism from its subversive non-violent jihadi schooling.
Islamism is political and does not believe in the separation of church and state. Rather, it believes in the supremacy of Islamic law (Shari’a), and wishes to encourage its spread not only in the Muslim world, but in the West as well.
Islamist ideology is spread through violence and non-violent strategies. The violent means is self-evident: USS Cole bombing, 9/11, Madrid and London bombings, etc. The non-violent strategy is at the heart of “Karachi Kids.” This is done through indoctrination, proselytizing, and gaining special rights for Shari’a through secular legal systems. Algeria, Turkey and Iraq, are prime examples of countries where Islamists have put down their guns and formed political parties to affect the same changes they sought violently in years past. Hamas is another in the Palestinian territories. CNN failed to realize that both forms of Islamism are the ‘terror’ we are fighting.
In the documentary, the principal of the school states, “We work on altering the mindset of the student. So when they return to their home countries they will work on altering the minds of the other kids.” He continues, stating, “These children will be able to convert non-Muslims and the Muslim children who are deviating from Islam.”
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/08/cnn-defends-islamism.html
