Islamism is the new totalitarianism, according to a controversial manifesto published this week in European papers and signed by 12 prominent writers worldwide, including Toronto's Irshad Manji, and Salman Rushdie, who remains the subject of a fatwa for his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses.
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Some Canadian Muslims deplored the manifesto.
"It's quite a childish kind of ranting of these people. I also note a kind of desperation in their tone," said Zafar Bangash, President of the Islamic Society of York Region. He said some of the signatories are lapsed Muslims, including Rushdie. "All of these people are misfits as far as Muslims are concerned. What they are saying is quite racist and is Islamphobic."
The manifesto will serve only to increase Islamophobia, which is already on the rise, said Jamal Badawi, professor emeritus at St. Mary's University in Halifax. Depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist in the cartoons, which were reprinted in Europe, the U.S., and three publications in Canada, implied that he preached terrorism. The cartoons fostered the idea that Muslims who follow his path are terrorists who should be subjected to mockery, hate and violence, he said.
Muslims in Denmark were also critical of the manifesto, according to a news story to appear in Jyllands-Posten today, said the paper's night editor Steen Hansen. "They think it's too confrontational, too right-wing extremist." He would not comment on why the paper chose to run the manifesto. The editor-in-chief of the paper has taken the position that there will be no comment on the matter, he added. The manifesto was one of at least three to appear this week, calling for calm in the Muslim world in the wake of weeks of violent protests in which dozens of people have been killed.
Yesterday, nationalreview.com, the Web base for the conservative American news magazine of the same name, published "A Muslim Manifesto," calling for an end to the violence. "A zeal for Allah is rightful only when it is expressed in an enlightened manner, since Allah himself has ordained a restrained response," wrote Mustafa Akyol, a writer and journalist based in Turkey, and Zeyno Baran, director of International Security and Energy Programs at The Nixon Center.
Baran said yesterday that reaction after the first day of the posting was generally positive. If moderates fail to speak up, Islam will be taken over by political extremists, she said. "If you politicize Islam then it's not Islam anymore and the whole religion becomes polluted by that," she said. "It is for the moderate Muslims and the average Liberal Muslim a huge threat that these people are becoming mainstream. Moderate Muslims have to start speaking out against them."
Funny how those same Canadian Muslims who think the Manifesto are racist and promote Islamphobia are never offended enough to speak out against the widespread practice of slavery in certain Islamic countries run under Sharia law.
Speaking for myself, the widespread use of torture, beheadings, stoning, slavery, honour killings, wife abuse, the persecution of gays, and the whole burka thing in Islamic countries is by far a far bigger turn off in my eyes than anything written in the Manifesto. And those protest signs reading “Behead anyone who says Islam is Violent” in the neverending Looney Tune cartoon saga do not serve to convince anyone who is not Muslim that there is a benign quality to radical Islamism that the rest of us are missing.
But far more disturbing is how any criticism of radical political Islamism is now met with denouncements of “racism” which has become the new catch phrase to silence the alleged critics of Islamism in our multi-cult pc western world. A brief memo to all concerned; Muslims are not a race unto themselves no matter how they might want or aspire to be. It has also been my experience that Muslims come in all shades and colours, and furthermore, I rather be a called a racist than be a practicing jew hating, misogynistic, homophobic slave trader and/or owner living under the protection of state run Sharia law.
1 comment:
Hear, hear.
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