Via Pajamas Media, I read of another outrage in Great Britain, in which a Muslim police officer was allowed to refuse for "religious reasons" to guard the Israeli embassy. Asks Marc, the post author:
Are Muslim police going to refuse to protect shops that sell alcohol or butchers that sell pork, next?
I suppose they might; cab drivers in the United States (Minnesota) have already been refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol.
Hey, aren't there "religious reasons" to refuse to transport homosexuals? And should a Muslim police officer be forced to render aid to gays who might have been assaulted, or arrest "fag bashers" if that violates his "religious principles"?
I know such things don't typify the thinking of all Muslims, and I know that moderate Muslims like FreeMuslims.org do speak up regularly. So do moderate Muslims like Tashbih Sayyed, who does not mince words:
In the United States of America, Islamists with clear ties to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon are not only being awarded by the administration but are also influencing the U.S. policy in the Middle East. There are reports that the Muslim cab drivers are imposing there restrictive values on the Americans by refusing to accept passengers who carry liquor in their luggage.
In short, radical Islam has perpetuated itself in every part of the globe. No country or community is free from the influences of this fascist strain of political Islam. Islamist leaders are happy that they have been able to carry out the basic mission of Islamism to overwhelm the infidel world. In an interview with an Australian magazine, Nida'ul Islam, 'The Call of Islam', bin Laden called for a global holy war against the West. "Our encouragement and call to Muslims to enter Jihad against the American and the Israeli occupiers are actions which we are engaging in as religious obligations. Allah Most High has commanded us in many verses of the Qur'an to fight in His path and to urge the believers to do so... We have given an oath to Allah to continue in the struggle as long as we have blood pumping in our veins or a seeing eye, and we beg of Allah to accept and to grant a good ending for us and for all the Muslims."
Should I as a Muslim be happy about the situation? After all, these apologies and advances made by radical Islam confirm that the Muslims are winning in their jihad against the "infidel" world. The Judeo-Christian World is on the defensive and has chosen to lay down its arms at the feet of the religious fascists instead of standing up for its ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom.
But I do not feel any happiness or see any victory in finding that the world fears the Muslims. IN FACT I AM SAD. I do not want to be feared. I want to be respected, accepted and loved. The very fact that the world is appearing to be afraid of Muslims concerns me a great deal. I am afraid that the Muslim extremism is pushing this world to a point from where its rescue will be almost impossible. I do not see anything good in the situation.
The fact that the world fears Muslims speaks volumes about the image of my co-religionists. The image is definitely not good. People do not fear GOOD. They fear EVIL. And Muslims have somehow have failed to convey to the world that they are good. And I am not surprised.
The problem is that moderate Muslims are drowned out by political extremists like CAIR -- which recently managed to impose censorship on YouTube.
Moderate Muslims need help. So do bloggers like Ali Eteraz, who right now is campaigning against the Iranian government's impending stoning of a woman to death.
Considering my complaint about cab drivers, I figured the least I could do is link Ali's campaign against stoning to death. As to the latter, Ali reminds us that time is short:
If you fail to do any or even some of these, I assure you that you will remember the image of a bunch of stones pinging against a woman's head cracking open her skull sometime after October 12. You have eight days.
ps - doing good for Iran now helps us help Iranians further their dissatisfaction with Ahmedinejad. His approval rating is not all that great.
pps - while you're at it, why don't you consider following these easy steps to contact President Musharraf of Pakistan to have him pass the Women's Protection Bill, which eliminates Pakistan's draconian Islamist rape laws in which a woman who is raped must produce four witnesses to prove the rape or else she is jailed for committing adultery.
I join with Ali Eteraz in urging readers to write to Supreme Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khameini, to Iranian ambassador Hamid Reza Nafez Arefi in London, and to Minister of Justice Ayatollah Shahroudi.
(After that, they might want to consider my previous proposal to send President Ahmadinejad a necktie.)
UPDATE (10/06/06): The above story about the police officer refusing to do is job gets worse:
Now comes this.
A Muslim police officer who asked to be excused from guarding the Israeli embassy was married by the radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
(Via Glenn Reynolds.) Bakri supports bin Laden, and praised the July 7 London suicide bombers as "the fantastic four." That one of his supporters could become a police officer is more than scandalous; it's insane.
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Comments
I applaud Tashbih Sayyed. Thank you for bringing him to our attention. I also applaud Eteraz and other Muslim bloggers for their advocacy; however, I do find that some of them adamantly defend CAIR, which I believe to be mistaken.
From what I understand, CAIR may be acting within US law, and they may say that they are just exercising their freedom of speech; however, I perceive that they are cynically taking advantage of our current state of fear to further their own cause. American Muslims have more freedoms here than most places in the world, and organizations like CAIR use that freedom to reduce the freedom of the rest of us.
Of course there is a right to ridicule religion or other belief systems. I would not have it any other way, and I do not want that to change because some members of a particular religion demand special privileges. I would love to hear an American Muslim say the following, "I disagree with what you say, but I would defend your right to say it." That would truly be an American Muslim.
Mal · October 5, 2006 02:25 PM
HAVANA (AP) — Photographs of Fidel Castro standing and talking on the phone were published Sunday in Cuba's state-run media, a day after the ailing leader appeared in a video to dispel rumors he was on his deathbed.
The Communist Youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde dedicated its front page to the Cuban president, printing a blown-up picture of a pensive Castro with the title "Always fighting for something, and fighting with optimism!"
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
I applaud Tashbih Sayyed. Thank you for bringing him to our attention. I also applaud Eteraz and other Muslim bloggers for their advocacy; however, I do find that some of them adamantly defend CAIR, which I believe to be mistaken.
From what I understand, CAIR may be acting within US law, and they may say that they are just exercising their freedom of speech; however, I perceive that they are cynically taking advantage of our current state of fear to further their own cause. American Muslims have more freedoms here than most places in the world, and organizations like CAIR use that freedom to reduce the freedom of the rest of us.
Of course there is a right to ridicule religion or other belief systems. I would not have it any other way, and I do not want that to change because some members of a particular religion demand special privileges. I would love to hear an American Muslim say the following, "I disagree with what you say, but I would defend your right to say it." That would truly be an American Muslim.