No Surprise, The Islamicists Have Read The West Correctly

[Annie]

This article, written for a Pakistani paper from an Islamicist writer in Germany, makes clear that the CAVE from the West has been heard and assimilated. The bit at the end, a 'warning' to the Islamicists, is eerily reminiscent of DNC warnings in 2004 to the 'faithful' not too 'appear' to leftist, for fear of losing the election:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\02\11\story_11-2-2006_pg3_4

Saturday, February 11, 2006

VIEW: Modernity and protests by Muslims —Farish A Noor

What we have seen therefore is clear evidence of a globalised Muslim world on the march. Islamist NGOs, parties, movements, civil society groups, media outlets and politicians have mobilised Muslims and got them on the streets to demonstrate the will of the Muslim masses and — more importantly — the power of the Muslim dollar

Thus far much has been said and written about the global Muslim response to the controversy surrounding the caricature of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that appeared in a Danish newspaper last year. Western observers in particular seem to be shocked by the extent of Muslim anger worldwide, and the level of organisation that has gone into the demonstrations that have erupted from Europe to Southeast Asia. Those who read this as an instance of the ‘revenge of God’ or a sudden display of emotional piety are missing the point.

The demonstrations, global in scope and highly orchestrated in their execution, show precisely how modern, developed and globalised the Muslim world has become. This was, in fact, a demonstration of a parallel form of globalisation at work: albeit one that is not capital-driven but rather based on a set of firmly shared values.

For decades, if not centuries, Occidental scholars have been asking the same questions: Are Muslims modern? Can Islam be reconciled with modernity? It appeared as if these questions were being asked in some ahistorical vacuum, oblivious of the fact that Muslims have been among the first to embrace the tools of modernity from the beginning: the printing press, modern transport, modern notions of identity, citizenship, the nation-state; modern commerce and now Internet and virtual communication technology and modes of representation.

The cartoons were transmitted world-wide via a network of interlinked Islamist websites and portals, they were discussed and criticised in Islamist chat-rooms in cyberspace, and the protests against them were likewise organised and coordinated in cyberspace. How modern can Muslims get?

What we have seen therefore is clear evidence of a globalised Muslim world on the march. Islamist NGOs, parties, movements, civil society groups, media outlets and politicians have mobilised Muslims and got them on the streets to demonstrate the will of the Muslim masses and — more importantly — the power of the Muslim dollar. The boycott of Danish goods has shown that the Muslim dollar has clout — Muslims are rich, by the way — and that the Muslim dollar can make or break Western economies.

But beyond the spectacular aspect of these demonstrations and their equally spectacular results (leading to Western leaders cringing and begging for forgiveness on Arab-Muslim TV channels) we have lost sight of the issue itself and the real underlying problems that perhaps could have done with a little more academic interrogation.

The cartoons themselves could be read not as caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) for we do not know what he actually looked like but were really caricatures of the everyday ‘Muhammad’ of the contemporary Arab-Muslim world. The cartoons were racist, offensive, abusive in more ways than one. They revealed the dark side of the Western liberal conscience and how some segments of Western society — including those who proudly claim to be Western liberals — really see Arabs and Muslims today.

The stereotype image of the Arab as gun-carrying, murderous fanatic was and is more an invention of the paranoid Western liberal mind, blind to its own racism, than anything else. This is perhaps one of the reasons that the cartoons caused so much pain to so many Arabs, who already have to labour with the painful realities of a Palestine under occupation and an Iraq brought to its knees by the American war machine.

The other aspect of the demonstrations that ought to be studied seriously is how well developed the global Islamist media machine has grown. Over the decades, Islamist groups have learnt the power of the media. Orchestrated media-directed protests, such as we have seen, show just how well integrated this parallel universe has become. Also, the time between the spark that ignites the crisis and the reaction to the crisis has grown shorter. Within 72 hours of the cartoon controversy re-emerging, the Muslim response was seen and heard from London to Indonesia.

But orchestrated protests, mediated and reproduced via the media, can become ritualistic, predictable and thus easy to manipulate. Indeed, one cannot help feeling that the entire crisis has been manipulated on both sides by conservative elements that wish to see the Muslim and Western worlds grow further apart.

There is a real danger therefore in the absence of circuit-breaking mechanisms — in the form of level-headed commentators and dialogue agents who can prevent such crises from spinning totally out of control — of incidents, real or imagined, being spun by media-savvy demagogues who want to create controversies for the sake of publicity. For voices of reason capable of calming the nerves were clearly absent. Muslim intellectuals ought to have stepped in and cautioned the angry young men of the Muslim street before they started doing stupid things.

One such case was that of the British Muslim youth, Umar Khayyam, who dressed as a suicide bomber during the demonstrations in London last week. The demonstration was also marred by the presence of placards bearing provocative slogans like “Kill those who insult Islam” — a slogan designed not to defend the image of Islam and its prophet but which rather had the effect of helping demonise Muslims further.

We are left now with the tricky question: what may happen in the future if this culture of global, mediated protest continues without any introspection? Will Muslims react to every incident in such an unreflective way? What might happen, for instance, if some driver accidentally backs his car into a mosque in London? Will this be seen as an “attack on Islam”? Will there be another round of protest demonstrations and boycotts of British goods?

Muslims have every right to protest against injustice to them. But let the injustice be real, not imagined. And as Muslims make their case and take their stand, they can and must be polite, rational. Being blindly reactionary will only confirm the negative stereotypes of Muslims they have been fighting against all these years.

Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist, based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin

 

[Annie]

Perhaps not 'read' but rather acknowledging the implementation of a plan?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/704xewyj.asp?pg=1

The Cartoon Jihad
The Muslim Brotherhood's project for dominating the West.
by Olivier Guitta
02/20/2006, Volume 011, Issue 22


IT IS NOW ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that the recent murderous protests over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September were anything but spontaneous. The actions of Islamist agitators and financiers have deliberately drummed up rage among far-flung extremists otherwise ignorant of the Danish press. The usual suspects--the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran--have profited from the spread of the disorders, and even the likes of tiny Kuwait has reportedly offered funds to spur demonstrations throughout France. More important, however, and perhaps less widely understood, the cartoon jihad is tailor-made to advance the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term worldwide strategy for establishing Islamic supremacy in the West.

As first reported by the Italian terrorism expert Lorenzo Vidino on the Counterterrorism Blog, one of Denmark's leading Islamists, Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban, led a delegation late last year to visit influential figures in the Muslim world. He took with him a dossier of cartoons, both those that had been published and others, much more offensive, of dubious provenance. One place he took his road show was Qatar, where he briefed Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a star of Al Jazeera.

Even after the riots began, Abu-Laban continued his meddling. On February 4, he told Islamonline.net that Danish demonstrators were going to burn Korans in the streets of Copenhagen, a falsehood that nevertheless added fuel to the fire.

Abu-Laban's extremist connections are well established. A Palestinian who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, he was expelled from the United Arab Emirates in 1984 for his fiery sermons and denunciations of local leaders. According to Vidino, he served as translator and assistant to Talaal Fouad Qassimy, top leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Gamaa Islamiya, in the mid-1990s. During the Iraq war, he called the Danish prime minister "an American puppet." In August, he told the Washington Post that the Danes "have made immigrants pay the price. Muslims have become the scapegoat. They think we will undermine their culture and their values."

Abu-Laban's labors were not in vain, and everywhere the loudest protests have come from the Muslim Brotherhood. On February 3 in Paris, Larbi Kechat, an imam linked to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, said, "The most abject terrorism is the symbolic kind, which spreads unlimited violence." Meanwhile, in Qatar, al-Qaradawi was calling for an "international day of anger for God and his prophet," describing the cartoonists as "blasphemers" and Europeans as "cowards." Acknowledging the latter's role, the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, in London, stated on February 8, "The issue disappeared from the radar until Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the mufti of Al Jazeera TV, seized upon it and called for Muslims worldwide to protest."

Finally, according to the Moroccan daily Le Matin, the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim American Society (MAS), called on Muslims everywhere to use their economic power to punish European countries where the cartoons were published. After French and German newspapers reprinted the controversial cartoons, MAS executive director Mahdi Bray commented, "Denmark has already paid an economic price for disrespecting Islam. If France and Germany want to be next, then so beit."

THAT THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD would seek to inflame this controversy makes perfect sense, given the organization's Islamist philosophy and past links to al Qaeda. What may not be sufficiently appreciated, however, is the extent of the Brotherhood's deliberate planning for an Islamist takeover of the West--and how neatly the cartoon jihad conforms to its strategy.

A new book published by Le Seuil in Paris in October may further Western understanding of this reality. Written by the Swiss investigative reporter Sylvain Besson and not yet available in English, it publicizes the discovery and contents of a Muslim Brotherhood strategy document entitled "The Project," hitherto little known outside the highest counterterrorism circles.

Besson's book, La conquête de l'Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes (The Conquest of the West: The Islamists' Secret Project), recounts how, in November 2001, Swiss authorities acting on a special request from the White House entered the villa of a man named Yusuf Nada in Campione, a small Italian enclave on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano in Switzerland. Nada was the treasurer of the Al Taqwa bank, which allegedly funneled money to al Qaeda. In the course of their search of Nada's house, investigators stumbled onto "The Project," an unsigned, 14-page document dated December 1, 1982.

One of the few Western officials to have studied the document before the publication of Besson's book is Juan Zarate, named White House counterterrorism czar in May 2005 and before that assistant secretary of the treasury for terrorist financing. Zarate calls "The Project" the Muslim Brotherhood's master plan for "spreading their political ideology," which in practice involves systematic support for radical Islam. Zarate told Besson, "The Muslim Brotherhood is a group that worries us not because it deals with philosophical or ideological ideas but because it defends the use of violence against civilians."

"The Project" is a roadmap for achieving the installation of Islamic regimes in the West via propaganda, preaching, and, if necessary, war. It's the same idea expressed by Sheikh Qaradawi in 1995 when he said, "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America, not by the sword but by our Dawa [proselytizing]."

Thus, "The Project" calls for "putting in place a watchdog system for monitoring the [Western] media to warn all Muslims of the dangers and international plots fomented against them." Another long-term effort is to "put in place [among Muslims in the West] a parallel society where the group is above the individual, godly authority above human liberty, and the holy scripture above the laws."

A European secret service agent interviewed by Besson explains that "the project is going to be a real danger in ten years: We'll see the emergence of a parallel system, the creation of 'Muslim Parliaments.' Then the slow destruction of our institutions will begin."

One point emphasized in "The Project" is that Muslims must constantly work to support Islamic Dawa and all the groups around the globe engaged in jihad. Also vital is to "keep the Ummah [the Muslim community] in a jihad frame of mind" and--no surprise here--"to breed a feeling of resentment towards the Jews and refuse any form of coexistence with them." (On February 2, At-Tajdid, a Moroccan Islamist daily close to the Brotherhood, explained to its readers that the Danish cartoons were "a Zionist provocation aimed at reviving the conflict between the West and the Muslim nation.")

By inflaming a controversy such as the current one, the Muslim Brotherhood attempts to widen the rift between the West and Islam. It specifically targets Muslim communities living in the West, aiming to radicalize their moderate elements by continually pointing out the supposed "Islamophobia" all around them. Right on cue, the Saudi daily Al Watan reports that the Council of Islamic Countries decided in December to create a worldwide Islamophobia watchdog organization that will lobby for the adoption of "anti-Islamophobia" laws, as well as promoting a common position against states or organizations it sees as attacking Islam.

Under the scheme outlined in "The Project," the Muslim Brotherhood would seek to become the indispensable interlocutor of Western governments on issues relating not only to Islam but also to international issues touching the Islamic world, notably the Israeli-Arab conflict, the war in Iraq, and even the war on terror.

The same approach turns up in Qaradawi's 1990 book Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase. Qaradawi sees the presence of large Muslim populations in the West as a major opportunity. For him, "the Islamic presence" in the West is necessary "to defend the interests of the Muslim Nation and the land of Islam against the hostility and disinformation of anti-Islamic movements." He actually calls on Western Muslim communities to reform their host countries.

The cartoon jihad has been a godsend for Islamists throughout the world. For the past year, Muslim lobbies in Europe have been pushing for the adoption of blasphemy laws by the United Nations, the European Union, and the nations of Europe. Predictably, Qaradawi endorsed this cause in his sermon of February 3 (translated and posted on the web by the Middle East Media Research Institute): "The governments must be pressured to demand that the U.N. adopt a clear resolution or law that categorically prohibits affronts to prophets." Like the cartoon jihad, it is a ploy straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood playbook--and, most worryingly, a move likely to have strong appeal to Muslim moderates.

 

[archangel]

Perhaps not 'read' but rather acknowledging the implementation of a plan?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/704xewyj.asp?pg=1

there is nothing in the Quran against pictures of the Prophet or anyone for that matter being depicted...this is a issue of policy adapted after the original text was written...they are nothing more than zealots and hypocrits...something that should be ignored as anything of value!

 

[Annie]

there is nothing in the Quran against pictures of the Prophet or anyone for that matter being depicted...this is a issue of policy adapted after the original text was written...they are nothing more than zealots and hypocrits...something that should be ignored as anything of value!

Arch, I'm sure I'm missing somthing connecting my 2 posts and yours, what is it? Your point has been made by myself and others in other threads.