Pamela Geller’s tweeting got my attention a few minutes ago with a story highlighting Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s latest anti-Semitic and one-hundred percent (by way of Hadith) Muslim remarks:
Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi: “Our whole ambition is to die on the path to Allah… I am sure we will conquer” said Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, as he touched down in Gaza on Wednesday for a three day solidarity visit. Before he left on Friday he told a Muslim Brotherhood rally that Israel had no right to exist. The rally was the scene of mass chanting of “liberate Palestine … from the sons of monkeys and pigs”.
Why stop with one source of comment on the tone of the latest from the Islamic Small Wars?
A quick look-up brings up journalist Abeer Ayyoub’s report noting how Qaradawi’s visit to Gaza highlighted the divisive relations between Fatah and Hamas. Ayyoub made no mention of the cleric’s inflammatory and vicious remarks about “The People of the Book”.
What would Mohammad have said about that?
Perhaps “Give up telling lies first and always speak the truth.”
By western standards, that would be a truth told clearly, accurately, and completely.
Writing for The Telegraph, Alan Johnson played it straight with the header “Ken Livingstone’s favourite Islamist spreads Jew-hatred in Gaza” before going on to note within-camp criticism and discomfort with the cleric’s visit, including this gem: “As for Gaza itself, the local beleaguered journalists boycotted the visit in protest at recent vicious Hamas assaults on their colleagues.”
Ken Livingstone, a former First Mayor of London, “has positioned himself on the hard left of the Labour Party,” according to his Wikipedia entry.
They are so easy to boot, those British hard lefties.
Here is Livingstone in action (April 19, 2008):
The want of accommodation, of course, comes from a common good soul, and we should all want to live and let live.
However, be that as it may, responding at the time, “Spacecowboy95” quoted “Qaradawi on the Jews”: “Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”
Is Qaradawi Muslim or not?
Is he to be taken at his word?
Is his word representative or not?
At any point, one might dive for “shimmer” (the term’s listed on a new page on this blog: “Coins and Terms“), but clerics ranting like Qaradawi drown out other Muslim voices: they are telling Jews and others what Islam has in store for the Jews, today, now if it could do it, and the Jews and others have learned to take such delusional, impious, malignant, misguided, narcissistic, and self-indulgent expression seriously.
We know where it leads and where it will take the world again if unbridled.
In a related dissent from Britain’s left, self-describe left winger Peter Tatchell posted on Harry’s Place last week, “When OutRage! and I protested against Qaradawi being hosted by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in 2004, much of the so-called “left” denounced us as racists, Islamophobes, imperialists and neo-cons. Sick! I’m a left-winger but nowadays too many leftists are apologists for Islamism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and homophobia.”
No need to take Tatchell’s word for it as regards the line taken by the subject of interest:
Is there an arguable, authoritative, consistent, dependable, powerful, and reliable repudiation within Islamic thought to match Qaradawi’s script?
Such questions may be left to Islamic humanists, also the growing portion of Muslims who themselves become the targets of bomb-setting militants and self-appointed takfiri.
As things stand in Gaza, the Gatestone Institute notes, “Had the Muslim Brotherhood’s al-Qaradawi visited the Gaza Strip to urge the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist, he would have been received with shoes and rotten eggs.”
Reference
Tatchell, Peter. “Qaradawi is an anti-Semite.” Guest post. Harry’s Place, May 8, 2013.
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