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"Surely, those who believe, and the Jews and the Christians and the Sabians, whoever have faith with true hearts in Allah and in the Last-day and do good deeds, their reward is with their Lord, and there shall be no fear for them nor any grief." — Qur'an 2:62 Latest from CIPAli Uyanik • September 2, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Prime Minister and leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), has called for revision of the Turkish constitution through a referendum making it impossible for the secular judiciary to close down Islamist parties. His chief political adversary, Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People's Party (CHP), says "No" to constitutional amendments that would reinforce the position of the AKP. Kilicdaroglu comes from the eastern Turkish province of Tunceli. If you travel to Tunceli, you will see inscribed on a hillside a uniquely malevolent warning from the state: "We are strong and brave; we are ready." The message is unmistakable. Tunceli is also the name of the provincial capital, a city 99 percent populated by Alevis, who practise a stream of spirituality combining Sufi mysticism, Shia Islam, and traditional Turkish practices.
Ground Zero Mosque: A Split at the Top? Stephen Schwartz • September 1, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog Will the scheme to locate a multi-story megamosque near Ground Zero be doomed by disaffection between Sharif El-Gamal, the head of Soho Properties, Inc., purchaser of the land for the building, and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the "spiritual guide" of the Cordoba Initiative and American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA)?
Ground Zero Mosque really about pushing Shariah law Salim Mansur • August 28, 2010 • Toronto Sun The swirling controversy over the Ground Zero mosque obscures what should be obvious, at least since 9/11, about the behavioural pattern of radical Islamists engaged in stealth jihad, or "lawfare," to advance their strategic interest of securing concessions by Western governments for Sharia. In generating this controversy, and then pushing hard on it by insisting on the constitutionally protected right of freedom of religion to build this mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero in New York City, Islamists behind the project have masterfully succeeded in greatly dividing Americans as the ninth anniversary of 9/11 approaches.
A Bosnian Commentator on the Fusus al-Hikam Rešid Hafizović • 2010 Annual • Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society Professor Resid Hafizović of the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo has published an important paper in English on Abdullah al-Bosnawi, the 16th century Bosnian commentator on the Fusus al-Hikam of Ibn 'Arabi, in the 2010 annual issue of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society. Al-Bosnawi is one of the greatest Bosnian-language Islamic writers, and Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi is known throughout the Islamic world as perhaps the greatest Sufi author The Center for Islamic Pluralism, which considers Prof.Hafizović a valued friend, has posted the paper as a .pdf at http://www.islamicpluralism.org/documents/1623.pdf,
Ground Zero Mosque Developer: Mosque Could Accommodate 1,000 Worshippers Stephen Schwartz • August 25, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog Supporters of the "Ground Zero mosque" have been oddly obsessed with the idea that the proposed Islamic center shouldn't be called a "mosque." As Frank Rich wrote last Sunday in the New York Times: "It's not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room." But the website for the project, once called the "Cordoba House" and now known as "Park51," explicitly refers to "the mosque," although it tries to minimize the mosque's importance for some reason: "The Mosque
More Facts About Feisal Abdul Rauf Stephen Suleyman Schwartz • August 24, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York As the debate over the Ground Zero "Islamic cultural center" rages, ameliorative press coverage of its "spiritual" promoter, Feisal Abdul Rauf, continues to emphasize his alleged benevolence, while more dismaying facts about him also emerge. The Islamic environment in which he has circulated for many years has included nurturing by fanatical Jew-haters like the former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, with whom Rauf continues to cooperate in the so-called Perdana Global Peace Organization, a significant contributor to the sea raid by Turkish-led radicals on the Israeli blockade at Gaza, at the end of May this year. This parallels Rauf's involvements with functionaries of and propaganda for the Iranian clerical dictatorship.
Don't blame Israel for Arab failures Salim Mansur • August 21, 2010 • Toronto Sun TEL AVIV — Size matters, and in geopolitics it can be critically important. A grasp of this elementary fact could provide a better understanding for, and empathy with, a small country besieged by hostile powers on its borders. Yet this fact often escapes people living in countries of continental dimensions with large spaces empty of inhabitants — as in Canada, the U.S., Russia, Australia and the E.U. — and they may, ironically at times, display a chauvinism reflecting the size of their country. The fact of how small Israel is territorially, and how this fact deepens its sense of vulnerability, weighs down upon anyone who visits the country. As I write sitting at a cafe on Tel Aviv's waterfront, I remember how this city and Haifa to the north were targets of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.
review of Political Islam, World Politics, and Europe Stephen Schwartz • Spring 2010 • Middle East Quarterly Tibi, a leading figure in the debate over the future of Islam in Europe, is a Muslim believer born in Syria and professor in international relations at Goettingen, Germany. His challenging volume presents an exceptionally broad and detailed survey of main topics that will likely become a standard reference work on Islamist ideology in Europe. Tibi is committed to a moderate and pluralistic form of Islam, which supports democratic principles, for a Europe in which Muslims could live on equal, non-confrontational terms with their non-Muslim and non-religious neighbors. His approach will doubtless be especially provocative to those who deny that a moderate Islam is possible, much less can flourish, or who see the new presence of Islam in Western Europe as a threat to a major component of Judeo-Christian civilization.
Internal Paradoxes of Muslim Extremism Stephen Suleyman Schwartz • August 16, 2010 • Patheos.com The faith of Islam today faces a profound crisis. Long-established traditions and spiritual insights are sources of commitment for the majority of the world's Muslims. But these mainstream believers are confronted by adherents of radical ideologies. The latter phenomena include Wahhabism, the interpretation exercising sole dominion over religious life in Saudi Arabia; South Asian Deobandism (inspiration for the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban); the varying political programs of the Muslim Brotherhood in countries like Egypt and Jordan; Pakistani "jamaati" jihadism; Khomeinist clerical rule in Iran (with influence on Iraq); and the "soft fundamentalism" of the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP). While tradition guides most Muslims to reaffirm long-recognized principles of belief, including respect for differing religions, ideology drives other Muslims to acts of violence.
Israel facing revival of deep-seated hate Salim Mansur • August 14, 2010 • Toronto Sun JERUSALEM — The dilemma of Jews and Israel in the contemporary world became acutely vivid to me as I stepped out of the noon-day sun into the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem. The hall stands empty except for an eternal flame in memory of Jews murdered by Hitler's Nazi Germany and on the floor the names of the death camps in central and eastern Europe. Perhaps a large number of Jews exterminated in the Holocaust might have been saved, and the demographic reality of present day Israel would be different, if Britain had fulfilled its pledge made in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 and assisted in the birth of the Jewish state as it did in establishing Arab states following the First World War — like those of Transjordan and the Kingdom of Iraq. The weight of history's cruelty on the children of Isaac, Abraham's son from Sarah, has been unbearably enormous.
Center for Islamic Pluralism • August 10, 2010 • CIP The Center for Islamic Pluralism extends greetings to all Muslims on the commencement of the holy month of Ramadan karim, hijra year 1431.
Jihadists v. Sufis Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz • August 9, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog The people of Pakistan, and Muslims as well as non-Muslims around the world, were horrified when, at midnight on July 1, three bombers struck the Data Darbar Sufi shrine in Lahore. Sufis often perform their rituals, known as zikr or "remembrance of God," on Thursday nights, in preparation for the Friday collective prayer, and the sacred complex was packed. In the attack, 45 people died and 175 were injured. Pakistani media reported that two terrorists blew themselves up inside the building while another stayed outside and threw grenades into the building. "Data Darbar" means "tomb of the generous one," and is the mausoleum of Data Ganj Baksh, a name meaning "giver of spiritual treasures" conferred on the 10th-century Sufi, Abul Hassan Ali al-Hajvery, who is buried there. Al-Hajvery, born in today's Afghanistan, is one of the most prominent Sunni Sufis, beloved among Hindus as well as Muslims in South Asia.
History Corrupted Stephen Schwartz • August 9, 2010 • The Weekly Standard The state of California, a major player in the American textbook market, introduces its students to Islam in the seventh grade. For this purpose, the California State Board of Education has recommended the use of, among others, a world history textbook entitled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, issued by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute of Palo Alto. A review of the 2005 edition of this book (first published in 2004) provides a dismaying example of what has been, and in some states continues to be, wrong with public school teaching about Islam.
Politics of resentment live in West Bank Salim Mansur • August 7, 2010 • Toronto Sun RAMALLAH — I am struck by the construction boom across the city as I visit Ramallah, the legislative and political centre of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank . Just about everywhere, high towers of office and apartment complexes rise above the squalor of old houses, refugee camps, crowded markets and narrow streets of what was once a small town some 10 km north of Jerusalem . I spent the better part of a day walking the streets of Ramallah; had a surprising encounter with the mayor, a Palestinian-Christian woman of much dignity and warmth; made the required visit to Yasser Arafat's tomb; and enjoyed the hospitality of simple folks. There is money here, plenty of it, and those who have it are not hesitant to flaunt it. New cars, beautiful residences, fancy stores and restaurants will startle any outsider arriving here with his head filled by the mainstream media in the West about the misery of the West Bank occupation by Israelis.
Rauf's Radicals Stephen Schwartz • August 4, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog The leader of the "Ground Zero mosque" project in New York, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is commonly portrayed as a moderate and a sincere believer in interfaith dialogue. Typical is a profile in Time that described Rauf and his wife as "the kind of Muslim leaders right-wing commentators fantasize about: modernists and moderates who openly condemn the death cult of al-Qaeda and its adherents." But such descriptions are belied by his record, especially at the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the non-profit that he founded and chairs along with the Cordoba Initiative, sponsor of the proposed mosque and cultural center in downtown Manhattan.
Iran: Students and Sufis Against Stonings Stephen Suleyman Schwartz • August 3, 2010 • Hudson Institute New York The world continues to watch anxiously as the Iranian clerical dictatorship ponders the fate of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani -- a 43-year old mother of two children, Sajad, 22, and Farideh, 17 -- who faces death at the hands of the Tehran tyrants after she was found guilty of adultery, apparently with no evidence – although she is a widow, whose husband had died before her allegedly prohibited conduct. She was sentenced to public stoning; now, possibly, hanging.
A Muslim Case Against the Mosque Stephen Schwartz • August 3, 2010 • New York Post Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf bills his plan for an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero -- which the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission is expected to vote on tonight -- as a platform for interfaith cooperation, dialogue and understanding. But the plan is obviously provocative and confrontational -- and it's hard to imagine that Rauf didn't know that long before it became public. That's one big reason why American Muslims, like other Americans, should reject the project -- particularly if they really want to adhere to traditional Islamic principles. I say that as a Muslim convert since 1997. Traditional, moderate Islam teaches Muslims living in non-Muslim-majority societies to obey the laws and customs of the country in which they reside. They must avoid conflict with their non-Muslim neighbors whenever possible.
John Esposito, Islamophobia, and the Ground Zero Mosque Stephen Schwartz • August 3, 2010 • The American Thinker John L. Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, is America's best-known apologist for Saudi Wahhabism, the Turkish fundamentalist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Islamist ideologies in general. To many, he personifies all that's wrong with Middle East studies in America today.
Walk in Jerusalem affirms beliefs Salim Mansur • July 31, 2010 • Toronto Sun JERUSALEM — There is something special when preconceptions dissolve on your first encounter with a new person or place. As I disembarked a flight at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, I felt some apprehension arriving in Israel so soon after the Gaza flotilla episode, and forebodings of more troubles ahead. But the warmth with which I was greeted and waved through passport control immediately made me feel at home in the country where I had come on a personal journey. Beholding Jerusalem for the first time nestled in the folds of the Judean Mountains was a stunning experience. I felt entirely disarmed of everything I had read, thought and anticipated about the city by the sheer majesty of its grandeur before me. I arrived on a Saturday, when practically all of Jerusalem shuts down for the Jewish Sabbath.
From D.C. Suburbia to Al-Shabab Stephen Schwartz • July 27, 2010 • The Weekly Standard Blog Last Thursday, July 22, 20-year-old Zachary A. Chesser of Fairfax County, Va., was arrested for providing material support to, and attempting to join, the Somali Islamist militia affiliated with al Qaeda, al-Shabab. Chesser has been ordered to remain in jail until his trial. |
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