11 Wednesday Jun 2014
Tags
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/06/10/The-Next-Great-Movement-Muslim-Womens-Liberation
Chair Ibn Warraq called for “an age of Enlightenment. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical, and intolerant, and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality, and truth.”
09 Monday Jun 2014
Tags
Birmingham, Great Britain, Islam, Islamic subversion, nepotism, radicalism, radicalization process
On the subject of the hardline takeover of Birmingham schools, I think The Guardian may be Britain’s most dishonest newspaper.
Now I’m curious about the merely less dishonest newspapers!
🙂
However the scribblers spill ink or etch their brilliance into long-term optical-magnetic storage, the British jotters appear to be picking up on the latest in the conflict between the truth and political correctness.
Hardline Muslim governors led an ‘organised campaign’ to change the character of ordinary state schools, the Education Secretary Michael Gove told MPs in a fiery Commons statement this afternoon.
Her Majesty’s Inspectors carried out inspections of 21 schools in Birmingham between 5 March 2014 and 1 May 2014. All of the schools that were inspected are publicly funded and none is a faith school.
The inspectors found evidence that governors of some schools had exerted ‘inappropriate influence’ on the day to day running of schools — including narrowing of the curriculum, manipulating staff appointments and misuse of school funds. The makeup of some governing bodies has changed ‘markedly’ over recently years, leaving the schools vulnerable to ‘influence by unsuitable governors’.
In particular, some of the academies were judged by Ofsted to be breach of their funding agreements — including not having ‘broad and balanced’ curriculums, a ‘balance in religious education’ or fulfilling a ‘general requirement to promote community cohesion’.
That last excerpt includes a four-minute-and-forty-second address by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Ofsted organization’s chief inspector. Less than two minutes along, he says, ” . . . there has been a sudden and distinct decline in these schools . . . .’
A Muslim school found to have books suggesting stoning and lashing as appropriate punishments says it is the victim of “hostility”.
BBC. “Books ‘promoting storning’ found at Olive Tree Primary School.” June 9, 2014.
# # #
12 Monday May 2014
Posted in Religion
Tags
IANT, imam Nadzaku, Islam, USA
THE “COOL” WAHHABIS. A modernized, “cool” offshoot of the conservative Wahhabi-Salafi Dar-us-Salaam (in Maryland, USA) that later transformed into a full-fledged organization of its own, the al-Maghrib Institute and its affiliates now attract more followers by making Wahhabism look less closed-minded and more open-minded and “doable” in modern society (US, UK, etc.). Beneath the paraphernalia, however, is the same ugly accusations of “shirk” and “kufr” against the majority of Muslims . . . .
http://sunni1.wordpress.com/purpose-of-this-blog/ – circa 2012.
The “cool Wahhabis” must have won a round or two, for “sunni1.wordpress” appears to have stopped publishing about the al-Maghrib organizations in March of 2012.
* * *
Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku is an inspiration to all those who are starting their knowledge-seeking late. He did not grow up learning Arabic or the Qur’an; in fact he went to the Islamic University of Madinah with only a few short Surahs memorized.
http://ruhma.almaghrib.org/instructors/shpendim-nadzaku#profile – n.d.
Section Update – September 10, 2018
The above link has been discovered defunct, and so after so many years dimmed for viewing. Nothing has been made up out of nothing, earlier or later, so BackChannels wishes not to send the section (in Orwellian fashion) down the “memory hole”. This adjustment has been made because traffic has risen for this page, which has long pulled two to a few looks a day, and the editor thought to have a look at it. It appears as much was done in 2015 as well.
In addition: the “sunn1.wordpress” page’s most “recent” post appears to have been published March 6, 2012 — “NEW! Yaser Birjas says: Muslims can eat chicken in fast-food restaurants in America”, so the blog appears also abandoned. Its information was but two years old when this post was developed; it is now six years old. Moreover, Sunni1’s “About” page leads to an indeterminate “Muhammad”, so one shy BackChannels (in 2014) has no way today of reaching the source blog’s author for a chat. 😦
Finally, and now from “long ago” — a day on the World Wide Web can be a long day, and four years (is that all it has been?) may feel like a decade or more — BackChannels impression had been that Turkish imam Yusuf Kavakchi had “retired” from his mosque in a hasty manner without fanfare. Who knows why? Appointed in his place not too long thereafter: a Macedonian born American raised in New Jersey and for his profession educated at the Islamic University of Madinah.
Section Update – October 21, 2015
The cited URL is defunct: this location, however, continues to provide a paragraph — search the page — about Shaykh Nadzaku: https://sunni1.wordpress.com/al-maghrib-institute-exposed/ —
“Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku has an intriguing name that roots back to an intriguing country reflecting his even more intriguing character. Born in 1973 to Albanian parents in the beautiful city of Ohrid Macedonia, his parents immigrated to America when he was just a year old. He was raised in New Jersey and soon took to the UNIVERSITY OF MADINAH where he graduated from the College of Shariah in 2001. He was contemporary to our other instructors from Madinah, Shaykhs Mohammad Alshareef and Yasir Qadhi.”
* * *
Alhamdulillah! The Boards of IANT are pleased to announce that inshaAllah Sheikh Shpendim Nadzaku will be joining the IANT community as our Imam and Resident Scholar from mid-June. May Allah SWT bless him and his family and make their move to our community a blessed one.
______
Related: Islamic Association of North Texas.
Related on BackChannels: Richardson, Texas – Imam Leaves Dallas Central Mosque, Quietly.
______
My sources sometimes nudge me toward domestic events, and I remind right back that . . . what happens in America in the the imam’s / priest’s / rabbi’s office stays there, rattles around in there, makes waves or shakes it up in there, but outside of the church, mosque, or synagogue no one cares unless or until something really bad — worth going to jail for — happens in connection with it.
Add: and no smart imam / priest / rabbi should care today to play an Anwar al-Aulaki / Holy Land Trust / Weather Underground, etc., role in his or her church / mosque / synagogue.
The Dallas Central Mosque’s former imam, the esteemed Yusuf Kavakci, returned without fanfare — actually, without public notice — to Turkey the week ending October 12, 2013 according to my then surprised and baffled source. The Muslim pluralist universalist on the spot, Mike Ghouse, wrote of the event the following week as if it were happening as he composed the farewell.
Hmm.
The moment remains ever curious: after more than two decades of continuous service, why the swift flight to Istanbul by the former imam?
Be that mystery as it may, seven month’s later: congratulations are due Shaykh Shpendim Nadzaku, whom it appears will pick up the reins at IANT come June.
Mike Ghouse’s original has disappeared from its primary space at Blogger’s “worldmuslimcongress”, which is why I chose an alternative link; however, after some reading through that location and some searching, I found it appearing on Ghouse’s “The Ghouse Diary”: “Great Imam of Dallas, Dr. Yusuf Zia Kavakci Retires” (October 17, 2013).
The cute, well known, and naughty travel slogan, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” applies everywhere in business of every sort in the U.S. until whatever has happened in Vegas has made its way into a report on a police blotter.
Count that a good thing.
# # #
26 Saturday Apr 2014
My name is Tolga Yıldız.
I am interested in global policy and diplomacy.
Turkey’s geopolitics status is very important in the Middle-East and Caucasia. Middle-east is very important with strategic and energy power. Today we need new politic, social and economic strategies for new World System. There are many social, economic, political problems in the World. I am a citizen of the Turkish Republic.
Today Middle East is Islamic area.
Turkey is secular country in the Middle-East. Turkey is an important country between East and West. Turkey is first Secular Muslim Country in the Middle east. Today Turkish government(AK Party) is Islamic government. AKP want to moderate islamic administration in Turkey. But Turkish Nation know that Turkey is Atatürk’s secular country not islamic arab country.
We will always defend secular system and Democracy.
______
I’ve made minor grammatical corrections and added paragraphs to what was a two paragraph submission.
In correspondence, Tolga described the above as “short but gist important article“.
“Gist important” — I like that!
Is it an article?
Is it important?
The passage contains is an important message for Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP: “We will always defend secular system and Democracy.”
As regards, “Today Middle East is Islamic area” . . . well, it is a Muslim-majority region, but it is not entirely Islamic: it is a little bit Jewish too, or perhaps more Jewish than it knows considering the changes Hillel the Elder brought to the Jewish community, by extension Israel, and the world re-envisioned by both Jesus-Paul-Constantine and General Muhammad.
America’s Founding Fathers, perhaps intent on avoiding the kind of religious warfare that ran amok across Europe set forth in principle and constitution a system enabling belief and faith of every kind, most connected to some version of metaphysics, a few rejecting metaphysics altogether. The purpose: whatever it is in the head, let’s not fight over it — we’d rather a society, and by the mid-20th Century “One nation under God” notwithstanding, purposed toward the well being of its inhabitants, and at that, inclusively, without regard to race, creed, religion, origin, gender, or sexual orientation.
Done.
Knowing President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s vision for Turkey, Tolga Yildiz would appear to understand the connection between secular democracy and the assertion and confirmation of human dignity and freedom guaranteed by equality under the law.
No dhimmi.
No caliphate.
No dictator.
No scapegoats.
Instead: equal stature — again, under the law — and the freedom to speak and vote and to experience being — and voting — within a society free of coercion and cynical manipulation.
That’s quite a message.
From Turkey.
Thank you, Tolga Yildiz.
# # #
14 Monday Apr 2014
Tags
autocracy, dictatorship, Islam, narcissism, political, politics, theocracy
In Egypt, the government that “came to power in a fair election” represented the only party with a program at the time, such had been the character of Mubarak’s suppression of all political competition, and, indeed, it proved its identity in values by immediate rewriting the state’s constitution to serve its own most undemocratic ends. Notably, it not only maintained Mubarak’s torture chambers but made them its own.
While “the problem” may be labeled “authoritarianism” and attention deflected away from Islam thereby, the primary driver in both unconstrained military and theocratic ambition has been “malignant narcissism” AKA “political narcissism” AKA “civilizational narcissism”. In individuals diagnosed with “narcissistic personality disorder” the signal that is “grandiose messianic delusion” may be quite distinct; in politicians, the same in personality may be recognized too late or — as happens with dictators, secular or religious — abetted by the “gonna get something” mentality of their followers plus the naturally strident and normal narcissism of youth.
Result: ih conflict, the same mentality playing on both sides of the table (“different talk; same walk”).
Against both, the middle in humanity — sometimes I call that the “humanity of humanity” — needs to assert or reassert its interests, and that would seem to involve a unique struggle but one familiar to many of many religions: the revolution on the outside may need to be matched by another within the heart.
Inspiration for the above note: Rodrik, Dani. “The Problem is Authoritarianism, Not Islam.” World Affairs, August 12, 2013.
Q: Why narcissism?
A: Narcissistic mortification.
Causes and encouragements are more probably multivariate regarding contributing factors in producing, say, an actor-producer-director of a personality and a contemporary monster like the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei, which is not to suggest that all of their counterparts opposite their position in Syria are honky dory either.
In any case, Dani Rocrick’s essay well covers the “all-for-all” character of the open democracies, the Musketeer quality of my paraphrase extending easily from “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” However, as if with a sharp plane, he criticizes the authoritarianism on the surface of governance associated with the Muslim-majority states.
It may be noted of BackChannels that while I give portion of the “Islamic Small Wars” attention, such as the junta in Burma, Paul Biya in Cameroon, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe are never far from mind either, nor for that matter at this time is Russia’s President Putin, who appears to have been hastened along his predictable track by his commitment to Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War. “Washington” as if it had a mind rather than contained a collection of such, may have thought that Putin representing Russia’s interests in the middle east would have no investment in Ayatollah Khamenei’s client state and platform for Hezbollah, but it turns out that what Putin, Assad, and Khamenei value most are their respective positions as absolute authorities, achieved or in ambition, in each of their states. That quality also provides a political basis for greater cooperation between China and Russia.
Where fits Muhammad in this?
Approaching the eve of Passover today, some may be reminded that, “So We took retribution from them, and We drowned them in the sea because they denied Our signs and were heedless of them” (Quran 7:136).
Who is “We”?
The Jewish mythos acknowledges God alone as having parted the Red Sea with Moses as merely a leader: “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided . . . . ” (Exodus 14:21).
Repeat: ” . . . all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind . . . .”
Moses, recruited by God in the first place, speaking to Pharaoh as intermediary for God (for it would not do for God to speak to Pharaoh, Pharaoh having confused himself with God), and, by God’s will, leading the Jewish People and a “mixed multitude” down to the sea, may have in “Abracadabra” fashion reached out a foot or two over the lapping tide, but the language doesn’t change as regards who’s Boss, from beginning to the end, alpha-omega, and Who, exactly, “turned it into dry land”.
# # #
04 Friday Apr 2014
Tags
extremism, free speech, freedom, freedom of the press, Islam, Islamism, political, politics, publishing, religion, terrorism
Link to Qanta Ahmed’s “Honor Diaries: Silencing Speaks Volumes”
Victims of honor crimes are silenced. Victims of honor crimes are shamed. Victims of honor crimes are made pariahs. And, often, victims of honor crimes are extinguished. This week, Honor Diaries, a documentary focusing on the global manifestations of honor violence, was itself silenced, when two American universities — the University of Michigan at Dearborn and the University of Illinois in Chicago — canceled planned screenings. With this act of censorship, the movie has become a metaphor for its message. Just like the women and girls it portrays, the movie has been silenced and its progenitors shamed.
Rights & Wrongs: The Story of Women in Islam (web site).
The Stoning of Soraya M (via Amazon).
# # #
05 Wednesday Mar 2014
Tags
conflict, genocide, Indonesia, Islam, Islamic Small Wars, Papua New Guinea, political, politics, United Nations, West Papua
Their story is more evidence that Christian children are being taken from West Papua and converted to Islam – a practice officially denied after being revealed in Fairfax Media’s Good Weekend magazine last year. It also makes clear for the first time that knowledge of the practice reaches high into the upper echelons of Indonesia’s political elite.
The religious conversion of any young child is illegal in Indonesia, and the United Nations deems any transfer of a minor, even for education, as trafficking.
Papuan children taken to Jakarta to be converted to Islam – 3/2/2014.
* * *
Posted on Facebook by the Free West Papua Campaign, March 3, 2014: “Indonesian police and plainclothes police can be seen taking sickening “trophy photos” of the corpses of West Papuan people they have just stripped and murdered and thrown into a drainage ditch used as a makeshift mass grave in the middle of a highlands village.
According to sources, this is in the Central Highlands of West Papua, possibly the Puncak Jaya region and was taken relatively recently.
What appears to be the National flag of West Papua, the Morning Star can be seen raised behind the horror. The raising of this flag has been made illegal by Indonesia and carries a 15 year jail sentence.
As this photo has just emerged, we are currently finding out as much as possible about the details and cannot yet verify the exact date and location but what is for sure is that this photo, taken in the highlands of West Papua is 100% real and genuine, hard evidence of Indonesia’s 21st century apartheid and genocide in West Papua.”
I have yet to download a conflict photo loaded with EXIF/IPTC verbal data identifying the camera used, the photographer, and photographer’s title and caption. Most often too, these incendiary images come out of the special interest press representing religious denominations and organizations that repeat their use or transpose images taken in one place to captions representing another event. The Free West Papua Campaign, however, insists itself on locating the specific photographer who took it, when, and where. It believes in the veracity of the image enough to question its exact provenance, and therefore I believe in its accuracy too.
UPDATE, OCTOBER 16, 2017: for those coming off third-party sites using the above photograph — one has actually disinformed its public by putting “Rohingya Muslims” in place of West Papuans in its headline — I’m no longer certain of the forensic quality of the photograph: the bodies look related in hands-behind-head security postures; the police could just be checking ID in a most humiliating manner; or there could be some mix of dead and living. One had to be there, of course, and the one who was there to take the picture has not apparently distributed the same with captioning data intact.
______
How BackChannels views the West Papua Conflict: on the border between the Muslim and Christian worlds, the indigenous of West Papua struggle to keep their culture and land intact, refusing forced conversion and assimilation to the Muslim-majority state whose international boundary has overrun their property.
As is common and familiar to Muslim-majority states worldwide, the tack pursued with regard to West Papuans has been than of cultural annihilation and political suppression.
Coming from an American of European descent, this layout of the story would seem hypocritical, for as West Papuans may be to Indonesia, so Native Americans would seem to have been to European colonizing forces. However, these days, the Native Americans of the United States have title to reservation as well private properties, the freedom to arrange themselves and worship as they see fit, and in all other aspects to own businesses and enjoy or hate the American tapestry as they see fit within the bounds of the common law, which codes revolve most around the freedom and security of all persons.
America’s Native Americans are not getting their continent back, of course, but they are supported in their endeavors related to the defense of culture, family, property, and religion, the same as any, and every, American.
Coming from a Jewish background that includes lending attention to Israel as the unique cultural, political, and religious homeland of the Jews, the bond between the true indigenous of a land and indigenous elsewhere might apply, albeit in the progressive Jewish manner with adaptation toward modernity — some things will stay with the people forever in freedom, and some (like cannibalism) may recede into history.
In the larger scheme, our planet supports 6,900+ living languages, and it loses a few each month: it should be sustaining those few and perhaps working to encourage separable language evolution or new language development although natural language behavior is not like biology: we’re just not going to ship a healthy population of humans to an island, cut them off from social commerce, and visit them again in a thousand years (if they have survived their own company).
______
JONAH WENDA (voiceover): They were picked from different places like school, gardens, on the road and even taken from their home and kill them and throw them in the bush.
PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013
* * *
In May, Indonesia’s human rights record was assessed under the UN Universal Periodic Review. The government rejected key recommendations to review specific laws and decrees which restrict the rights to freedom of expression and thought, conscience and religion. In July, Indonesia reported to the CEDAW Committee. In November, Indonesia adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, despite serious concerns that it fell short of international standards.
Amnesty International | Working to Protect Human Rights, n.d.
Alleged mass killings in West Papua – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/24/2013: “Shootings have become so frequent that locals have taken to calling it the ‘Gaza Strip’.” / Indonesian counter-terrorist unit accused of mass killing in disputed Papua province – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/24/2013.
Indonesia rejects Papua mass killing accusations – Australia Network News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/27/2014.
PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013: “The Indonesian Embassy in Canberra has issued a blanket denial, describing the reported violence as rumours and lies. / But the ABC has been provided further information that tells a different story, as Peter Lloyd reports.”
Related to the history of the West Papua Conflict: Searching for the truth about a massacre in West Papua – 16/12/2013
(3) Free West Papua Campaign (Facebook).
Free West Papua – Campaign for a free and independent West Papua
Wamena – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Communal conflict in Wamena kills four | The Jakarta Post – 5/31/2014 / Mako Tabuni – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Approach on Papua slammed – 6/16/2012: “Meanwhile, Tabuni’s family collected the activist’s body from the Bhayangkara Police Hospital, ahead of the burial planned for Saturday in Wamena.” / Police urged to publicise the photo of Mako Tabuni’s bag | West Papua Media Alerts – 6/26/2012 /
A Message To The United Nations From The Family Of Opinus Tabuni – YouTube – 12/29/2012: “An estimated 100,000 Papuans having died since the Indonesian government took control of the disputed province in what is widely considered a sham 1969 United Nations observed referendum.”
# # #
26 Wednesday Feb 2014
Tags
conflict, Islam, Islamic Small Wars, language, philology, political, politics, programming, scripting, tribalism
Here’s an interesting divide: do we choose the security of a loyal untruth over the presence of a disloyal but uncomfortable truth?
As you know, because you have read “Shimmer”, I track Pamela Geller as a friend (friendly) but not as the final word on Islam: I know and love too many “Islamic Humanists”, Muslim Americans living with all Americans no differently than Christian Americans or Jewish Americans or Sikh Americans or Hindu Americans (the list of religious affiliations and differentiation in America gets quite long). I enjoy the effort of Irshad Manji and and Mudar Zahran and others to know the location of their hearts and ethics and find it in their lives as Muslims.
The American anti-Jihad and counter-terrorism and related communities — not to mention the consultant-watchers of NSA and other organizations about — is fairly extensive and scholarly in their reading (I haven’t friend Robert Spencer) in their reading of Qur’an and Hadith in something like the manner in which those elements are interpreted by terrorists who are Muslim and who carry out their crimes with what they believe accords injunction found in the Qur’an.
Geller rakes muck, perhaps doesn’t follow up as meticulously as she should, and she writes with interest, so we may frame her in the “special interest” press, not far off the Coptic press, the Catholic one, the Jewish one, or, alas, the jihad ones with the black flags. Nonetheless, and having looked, I must accept Jeremy D. Mayer’s criticism, she’s on a right track IF we’re chatyping about al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Muslim Brotherhood as exemplified in the policies and practices demonstrated so swiftly by former Egyptian President Morsi, etc. She asks — as Sinem Tezyapar might ask — what kind of human, what kind of Muslim, troops into Mumbai, for example, and commits the atrocities committed there? Were those humans Muslims or not? New York – London – Madrid: same question. Westgate Shopping Mall, Nairobi, Kenya: Muslim? Not Muslim? Something else?
Here’s where I differ some from Pamela Geller: I’m willing to recognize the humanity in my humanist, reformation, trying hard Muslim friends because they recognize humanity in me, a Jew, a Zionist, and have in their deeds and in their words both goodness and integrity.
It’s that last word that the fighting — all of it, from the Gaza Strip to to whatever’s going on today in Iraq — is all about.
Is it permissible to deceive the infidel? Or not? In the name of Islam?
There’s a lot of money tied up in conflict, and not all of it — probably little of it — goes into fighting. It goes into extraordinary self-aggrandizement (count the number of Saddam’s palaces – and we rue the day we did business that way: that’s an era that has passed, God willing). It goes into “skimmers” who use their political power to dip their hands into the state’s wealth, or leverage it (Putin-Assad-Khamenei could not be more different in their talk, but for the character of their person, they are the same person, until one, and only one has the power today, turns around).
So what manner of Muslim these days – “Carlos” solidarity, OBL base, out into the universe with Rumi (I like him), tenuously holding on to balance like Musharraf, promoting the whole program like Zia Haq? This is hard stuff. The Jews, for the most part, are arranged differently: we don’t take the word of God at face value (because we believe He doesn’t want us to but rather means for us to discover His meaning from one generation to the next: it doesn’t give us a lot of room for launching offensives in the manner of Constantine or other generals; we don’t conflate men with God; and we search tirelessly for better answers in accord with Hillel’s question: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, WHAT am I?”
Pamela Geller isn’t about hate. She’s about love. So I believe are many others I have met and what they have in them may be less the province of religion and more the nature of a decent and still emerging humanity.
* * *
Most conversations like the above that I’ve encountered take place in a spectrum of what I call “middle east hate-peace peace groups”. Some are nasty. It’s easy to meet through chatyping the most strident of Israeli nationalists and the worst of hidebound anti-Semites, not that I’m about to name names. Some are closed and collegial and inclined to scrape up the documents and narratives of hurtful histories but, alas, with parochial spin.
I co-moderated one such group on another social network a long time ago (or, here in cyberspace, what seems like a long time ago). Since then and with the memory of my first encounter with deeply embedded anti-Semitism have arrived at some thought that is close to the heart of this blog, i.e., that “attitudes and beliefs” are contingent on early language uptake programming — how we are taught to listen and to know what is important to listen to — and scripting, which is the transmitted way of a (language) culture. To navigate through and out of conflict that has its life primarily in the mind means addressing some early programming and scripting with the knowledge that some things need to become the artifacts of age left behind.
# # #
BackChannels 