Author Archives: Editors

“Muslims, Jews & Presidential Politics” Brief Thought By F. Sheikh

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During 2000 Presidential elections, Al Gore and Lieberman were on the Democratic ticket. The American Jewish population was thrilled to see one of their own at the ticket for vice President. But many conservative Muslims were worried about the possibility of Jewish politician only a heartbeat away from becoming the President of United States. It was a hard to swallow scenario so they voted for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But eight years of Bush and Cheney turned out to be worst nightmare for Muslims.

As the things stand now in Presidential Primaries, there is a strong possibility that Bernie Sanders, competing for Democratic nomination, and Donald Trump, competing for Republican nomination, will emerge as nominees of their respective parties. The Jewish reaction to Bernie Sanders, a non-practicing Jew, is low key as compared to enthusiasm for Joseph Lieberman in 2000. Mr. Nicholas Confessore writes in NYT:

“Did Bernie Sanders Just Grab Jewish Crown in New Hampshire?” asked a headline in The Forward. An essay published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency questioned why Mr. Sanders’s victory received less attention as an emblem of acceptance and accomplishment than the selection of Joseph I. Lieberman as the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee in 2000.”

Despite the low key reaction, one can still expect overwhelming Jewish support for Bernie Sanders. But how the conservative Muslims will choose between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?   

And how Mr. Trump, who has offended every minority, will react to a Jewish opponent with overwhelming Jewish support? Mr. Donald is already upset about his cancelling of Israeli visit  and he may turn ugly against Jewish minority as he has done with other minorities. Mr. Dana Millbank writes in Washington Post:

“This year’s Holocaust remembrance comes at a time when Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, retweets to his nearly 6 million followers a message from @WhiteGenocideTM based in “Jewmerica,” and a time when his nearest challenger, Ted Cruz, brandishes the endorsement of a minister who says Hitler was a “hunter” sent after the Jews by God. There has never been a more important time for Americans to heed the moral authority of the Holocaust survivors still among us.”

Mr. Dana Milbank further writes:

“I am exceptionally concerned about demagogues,” the 85-year-old Weiss told me at Wednesday’s commemoration at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “They touch me in a place that I remember. I know their influence and, unfortunately, I know how receptive audiences are to demagogues and what it leads to.”

“It has echoes, and maybe more so to me than to native-born Americans,” she said after lighting a candle for Hitler’s victims. “I’m scared. I don’t like the trend. I don’t like how many people are applauding when they hear these demagogues. It can turn.”

Mr. Dana Milbank continues;

“Munzer, who lost two sisters and his father to the Nazis, said he never thought such things could happen in America, but now he’s not so sure. “Thinking that Germany was somehow unique is wrong,” he said.

If the choice is between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, I hope Muslims has the wisdom to join Jewish friends to support Bernie Sanders and stop a bigot who may turn out to be worse than Bush and Cheney.

F. Sheikh

 

 

Here’s What Happens When You Compare Violence in the Quran to Violence in the Bible Let’s not get it twisted.

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Nasik Elahi shared this with you

Interesting analysis and one that deserves to be highlighted for the danger of religious and racial profiling.

BOOK REVIEW Name: Conflicts of Fitness.Islam, America and Evolutionary Psychology

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BOOK REVIEW
Name: Conflicts of Fitness.Islam, America and Evolutionary Psychology
Author: A.S. Amin
ISBN-13 # 978-1483442846
Publisher: Lulu, lulu.com
Available from Lulu and Amazon; Price $11.99
Disclaimer: I have a slight conflict of interest in reviewing the book “Conflicts of Fitness”; May be a little more than slight. The author is my son.
If you are looking for a book that takes a very clinical – sometimes too clinical – and a Darwinian look at things like love, courtship, marriage, divorce, pornography, feminism, polygyny, women’s role in Islam and even hip hop lyrics, you need to read this book.
The title is not very catchy nor indicative of the book’s contents; the subtitle clarifies it a bit but it’s the introduction that clarifies the “fitness” in the title; it refers to “reproductive fitness.”
 The book starts with a defense of Islam’s allowance of polygyny – a risky venture, especially nowadays – on the basis of maximizing a society’s reproductive fitness. It has you assume some unreal assumptions about mating possibilities in an imaginary village that most readers may find too far fetched. But the basic scientific arguments regarding polygyny that the author makes cannot easily be dismissed as nonsense or medieval; the author infers that it  just happens to be one of the traditions that like any other traditions like monogamy, “serial monogamy”, polyandry has its plusses and minuses.
The book then goes on to explain other aspects of Islam that are usually criticized in the non Muslim world – like veiling, early marriage, women’s reduced access to divorce, women’s subordination etc. – on the basis of reproductive fitness and “reproductive climate”. Again, very few would like those practices in Islam – the author even looks at these issues from the angle ” Is it Islam or is it Muslims”  and seems to infer that it is more Muslims than Islam – but the scientific arguments offered for those practices’ defense cannot easily be denied.
The author then compares the cultural differences between the Muslim world and the West, again from the point of view of reproductive fitness. He describes the advantages and disadvantages of each system taking examples of feminism, late marriages, no marriages, serial monogamy, cultural and generation gaps and uses a lot of hip hop lyrics to explain the West’s method of achieving reproductive fitness. Some readers may find some concepts repeated too many times but given the novelty of the author’s hypotheses and the possible difficulty to grasp them by a person without a scientific background , the repetition may be justified.
If your knowledge of philosophy is limited to Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant etc.,  you’ll become  familiar with more contemporary “philosophers” like Jay-Z, 50 cent and Tupac Shakur after reading this book. The author has used many of their lyrics to explain his points and you’ll become familiar with words like “wifey”, “humpin'” etc.
All in all it is an easy and informative read, a fairly short book that can be finished in one sitting; but it’s possible you may want to read it a second time, as I did.
Shoeb Amin

Do extremists has the freedom of speech right to praise ISIS or other terrorist organization?

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” Trial Of Anjem Choudary, Defending Rights Of Extremists & Quandary Of Freedom Of Speech”

By Duncan Pike

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels,”wrote H.L. Mencken. “For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

anjem choudary tv

Mencken dealt with a considerable cast of charlatans and rabble-rousers in his own day, but he could have been thinking of someone exactly like Anjem Choudary when he made his remark. Choudary, a British Islamist cleric, made the news recently when he was charged and taken into custody for “inviting support” for the Islamic State “in individual lectures which were subsequently published online.” After several delays, his trial is scheduled to begin March 7.

Choudary is in the news a lot, in fact, and as ‘scoundrels’ go has few contemporary equals. He is a familiar figure in the British media; well-spoken and self-assured, he frequently appears on television and gives interviews to argue in support of ISIS and other extreme Islamist causes. He has mastered the art of gaining publicity through statements and actions carefully calculated to incite outrage and inspire sensationalistic tabloid headlines.

Choudary has called the September 11 hijackers “magnificent martyrs,” and stated that non-Muslims cannot, by definition, be considered innocent: “When we say ‘innocent people,’ we mean Muslims—as far as non-Muslims are concerned they have not accepted Islam and as far as we are concerned that is a crime against God.” As for permissible tactics when confronting such ‘criminals,’ Choudary is unequivocal: “Terrorizing the enemy is, in fact, part of Islam,” he told Russia Today. “This is something that we must embrace and understand as far as the jurisprudence of jihad is concerned.”

Choudary has a flair for touching off gratuitous media spectacles and earning mass attention with little more than a press release. In 2010, Choudary announced that his group, Islam4UK, would march through the town of Wootton Bassett carrying hundreds of coffins, symbolizing Afghani Muslims who were “killed for political mileage and for the greedy interests of the oppressive US and UK regimes.” Wootton Bassett had previously obtained a degree of reverence in the UK as the site of solemn and well-attended funeral processions for British soldiers killed in the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—similar to Canada’s “Highway of Heroes.” This was so perfectly crafted to spark outrage that one can almost admire the skill involved. Islam4UK was furiously condemned by groups across the political spectrum, as well as by many Muslim organizations, with then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling the plans “abhorrent and offensive.” In the end, the march never went ahead: Choudary had already gained maximum media coverage, the point of the exercise.

Some might understandably read all of this and think, pace Mencken, that what we have here is something far worse than a mere scoundrel. And indeed, while Choudary has never been accused of direct involvement in acts of violence, he has unquestionably influenced some who have. One of the murderers of British Army soldier Lee Rigby in 2013 was formerly a member of Choudary’s Al-Muhajiroun extremist organization, and was reportedly heavily influenced by Choudary’s preaching. Likewise, a 2011 report by the Henry Jackson Society found 25 terrorism convictions between 1999 and 2010 were connected to Al-Muhajiroun, the precursor to Islam4UK.

As Douglas Murray, associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, told me, “[Choudary’s] followers have been involved in most of the major plots in the UK, including the attempt to do a Mumbai-style attack on the London Stock Exchange.”

Still, and to be perfectly clear, Choudary is not being charged with planning terrorist attacks, raising money for a terrorist organization or even the nebulous crime of ‘inciting violence.’ He is being charged with expressing a political opinion. The charges come under Section 12 of the UK’s 2000 Terrorism Act, which states that a person commits an offence if he “invites support for a proscribed organisation” or “addresses a meeting and the purpose of his address is to encourage support for a proscribed organisation or to further its activities.”

http://www.cjfe.org/the_free_speech_quandary_defending_the_rights_of_extremists

or

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2016/02/04/free-speech-and-double-standards-2/

posted by f. sheikh