I read the latest foiled terrorist plot in Portland like many people do, with a mix of shock and relief. However, this one struck closer to home, literally. While I have lived in New York now for over six years, I grew up just outside Portland in a small town called Battle Ground, and frequented downtown Portland most of my life, including for school and church. The day after the arrest, I received the following text message from my sister:
"Hey, I was at Pioneer Square last night when they found that guy who was going to bomb it. He was Muslim and he was yelling 'allahu ackbar' when he was arrested. If the FBI hadn't have intercepted his plan you'd be down a sister. Why aren't Muslims speaking out more publicly against these people?"
My sister's text was an earnest message from a reasonable American. Despite the stereotypes of living in rural Oregon, she has come to the defense of Muslims when an in-law claimed that "Muslims want to kill us (Americans)." She is not an Islamophobe. However, when the crosshairs of violent extremism finds you, the fear breeds both confusion and anger. Why aren't more Muslims speaking out against terrorism?
The fact is, many are, both in America and abroad. Virtually every prominent imam and Muslim organization has issued statements condemning terrorism at every point possible. New leaders speaking out against terrorism are mobilizing, including Dr. Ali Shehata from al-Maghrib Institute. The Fiqr Council of North America issued a fatwa against terrorism. Even in the days following the Portland incident, my friend and fellow Huffington Post contributor Harris Zafar handed out "peace fliers" explaining how Islam is against extremism, and speaking out against the attack on any press who would listen, including MSNBC and Fox News. Abroad, many have also joined the fight against extremism. A British Imam issued a detailed, 600-page fatwa against terrorism, while millions of Muslim Indians protested the Mumbai attacks, canceling the Eid celebrations.
The point is, many Muslims do protest and mobilize against extremism. However, if you haven't heard any of the previous examples, it's because the media didn't cover it with anywhere near the same zeal with which they covered the attacks themselves.
Many Muslim Americans, born and raised in the States, have been vehemently denouncing terrorism on deaf ears for nine years, and have grown tired of it. Whether religious or non-observant, many young Muslims, with much more in common with all American youth than foreign extremists, are frustrated that their names single them out for bullying, ridicule and suspicion. As one friend told me, "I don't ask you to apologize for the Srebenica massacre, even though you are Christian. Why should I as a Muslim constantly have to prove my innocence from terrorism when I have nothing; not nationality, language, ethnicity, denomination or life experiences, in common with these unislamic violent extremists?"
Still, others who despise violence in all forms are shy to demonstrate. Rather than doing anything that draws attention to themselves, they'd rather work hard, study hard and pursue the American dream. Others fear from doing any public demonstration for fear of retribution, from either extremists or Islamophobes.
As I head back to Portland to spend Christmas with my father, I wonder how we can change this narrative of violence in an otherwise peaceful city in the Pacific Northwest. In particular, how can reasonable people like my sister get answers to their questions and fears, and a chance to engage with Muslim Americans who hate terrorism and love America?
There are many organizations and people who are engaging this issue on various levels, such as Fareed Zakaria's eloquent rebuttal of misinformation, local Muslims speaking out against violence like Harris Zafar, and organizations engaging in the issue locally and nationally, such as the Interfaith Youth Core, the Interfaith Council of Greater Portland, and even World Faith and Religious Freedom USA, projects in which I hold leadership roles. However, the interfaith movement must move central to the debate to counter the narrative of conflict on media. Muslim Americans, if they have the patience to persevere, may soon have the ability to speak to eager ears. Will we listen?
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Portland bomb plot case likely to serve as primer on entrapment ...
Mohamed Osman Mohamud Arrested In Portland Car Bomb Plot
Alleged Portland Bomber To Claim Entrapment : NPR
Mohamed Mohamud, Portland Bomber Suspect: Young Radical? - TIME
Two hardened ideologies are slugging it out on the world stage. Traditional Islam vs. Liberal Democracy. UN Declaration of Human Rights vs. Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.
Not many Westerners are adopting Islam and moving to the Middle East, but many Muslims are leaving the Middle East for the West. Some of them are trying to find a way to redefine being Muslim in a way that allows them to be an immigrant citizen of the West. Other Muslims in the West have no intention of immigrating and assimilating. They are in the West to bring Islam as colonizers.
Muslim terrorists are the violent wing of the colonization movement. Violent or non-violent, the goal of the colonization movement is the reinstatement of the Islamic state, wherever possible. At this point, the West is only resisting the violent arm of the movement, and many Westerners do not believe there is a non-violent colonizing effort.
In the short term, the violent Islamists are causing problems for the colonizers by amping up the local resistance to all Muslims. In the long term, the peaceful colonizers are going to produce more children and eventually have the political power to get what they want, especially in Europe.
http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm
Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 is also a great source of information (even if you believe just 5% of what he says, it is still scary).
On the other hand, violent islamists have plenty of material to go by, based on the historical islamic records of the life oh mohammed, who is known to have killed inside and outside of the battlefield. But I'm sure you already knew that, right?...
Even our president failed to condem the Church Bombing recently in Iraq..he did however find time to condem a Misque Suicide Bombing in Iran...it would appear not only are some Muslims willing to look away out of fear of reprisals, but our President as well...
The US has invaded our lands and killing millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Yemen. No one is listening to what rank and file Muslims are saying; it is though we are invisible!
Many Americans have redesigned Arabic words and phrases and butcher the meaning to represent evil and war. And, still when Muslims try to correct these bad and incorrect meanings, no one listens.
Al Jazeera Arabic has been recently banned in Morocco and throw out in Kuwait. We in our lands know the threat leveled against them by the US gov for exposing the US gov before wikileaks began it's quest to expose the US. No is listening to us!
The Muslimeen are asking for the US to stay out of our business and let us select our own leaders in democratic elections and you see the results in Egypt and Palestine and other Muslim countries, only those leaders that have apostate and trained in the west are allowed to govern. No is listening to our talk!
Non Muslims the world over, have been school incorrectly on Islam and its history and anyone who has the temerity to challenge this, is branded a terrorist. This is why there are Mujahideen now using the sword to be heard!
The prophet sws told that the Muslim ummah is a one big family and there is no color barrier or superiority of white over black or black over white; or Arab or non Arabs, the best of you have taqwa in their hearts.
So when I speak on behalf of other Muslims this is part of the shari'ah. I am to regard them and not disregard them, just because they live in different parts of the world.
Muslim lands have been described, I suggest that you do your research and these lands have been designed for the Muslimeen.
There are the land of the prophets and then there is the land of Muslimeen.
If you see what is transpiring in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now in Yemen, Muslims from Chechnyia, Sudan, Morocco, Eqypt, even America are joining the ranks of the Taliban and other Mujahideen to help their brothers. This is what is meant about Muslim lands!
As usual you must use profanity and of course HP prints your responses to me and most of my response to your profanity, is not with profanity but Islamic facts, they nix it!
I have not and will not address you with profanity even if you continue to respond to me in such language.
This is a major difference between you and me!
There was NO BOMB.
Two sentences into the news report we have this: “The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.” The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator.
The FBI successfully foiled it's own terrorist plot. Woop-di-doo.
Did you notice how the protests stopped after this hoax?
Use your brain.
I believe there is a religious war going on. It is not between Islam and the West as some might claim. It is between secular Islam and fundamentalist Islam.
First, there's almost no such thing as secular Islam. It is a contradiction-in- terms.
Due to almost totalitarian control of Islamic regulation of Muslim lives both political and cultural, successful attempts to secularize Islam usually lead to rejection of all religious dogma (See Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali etc).
In this way an Egyptian Muslim who rejects the suffocating tenets of Islam and Shariat becomes an Egyptian citizen. to them him/her-self and the world.
And when you write to chastise me on jihad, you should do plenty research on this topic. For jihad comes in two stages and this you should understand.
Muslims practice the faith are classified in the west as terrorist, radicals and other bad names. You in the west have made classifications of Muslims that makes no sense to us in Muslims lands and make sense to those like you!
You can read as many novels on Islam as you like but the true sources are the Qur'an, the sunnah and ahadiths of the prophet sws.
When you state a figh issue, I don't use books or novels on Islam, but I review the original sources.
Secular Islam lives in the minds of the apostate leaders who carry this banner. In order to make it strive, they deploy western trained security forces to suppress Islamic tenets for secular tenets. The Muslimeen are still quite Islamic but our leaders are not and that is what the US supports.
To fully understand the aqeedah, figh and shari'ah you must tackle the Qur'an and ahadiths to get the correct understanding, no novel will do this. So you philisopical post on Islam does not hold water on knowledgeable Muslims.
You can argue in emotion but no on Islamic facts!
Bingo. F/F.
The West is a target as the main purveyor of secularism through globalized business practices. The sooner we internalize this fact, the sooner we stop blundering around the world trying to find our enemy.
Fundamentalist Islam is defined as those Muslims who believe that:
1) Koran 9:29 is an ongoing declaration of war against unbelievers, and
2) Every Muslim has a religious obligation to work for the implementation of an Islamic state, no matter where that Muslim may live.
These two concepts are found in the classic Islamic fiqh--an interpretation of the Koran written in the Middle Ages and now known as Sharia law.
Our war policy should be to find and destroy all Muslims and Muslim organizations who promote this Islamic agenda. Without this understanding, our soldiers are in the untenable position of having to wait until someone shoots at them. Then they know who the enemy is.
We need to switch from this reactive stance to a more proactive one. Armed with this knowledge, we can recruit non-fundamentalist Muslims as allies
He also was told that the sword within Islam will cause trouble until the day of judgement.
Also, in another ahadith the prophet sws stated that within his nation will come a segment of it that wil enter in Jihad fee sabili Allahi and will not be defeated.
We can see this transforming as we speak.
I must admit, the US gov is doing it's job of fortifying these apostate leaders and their rule by training security forces to tackle and interdict Islamic political parties. And thus, we cannot vote out these leaders and bring back shari'ah law.
Look at Egypt and the MB and other Islamic parties who were arrest in droves prior to the last election and other scare tactics so the pepole could not vote in a shari'ah based political party.
Let me make it clear to you and others like you, the Muslimeen from Morocco to Pakistan want to return to shari'ah, this study was conducted by Al Quds newspaper.
Again, the west wants to distate and redefine Islam, it will not happen for the apostates are hanging on to power threw the might of the US gov and their military.
But, insha'a'Allah, the shari'ah will return to our lands.
They should have turned in the Stockholm bomber, that would have made the condemnation far more credible.
As you point out, "Virtually every prominent imam and Muslim organization has issued statements condemning terrorism at every point possible " and have been doing so to varying degrees since Sept. 11, 2001. However, Islamophobia is at an all time high, so clearly, such efforts over the past nine years haven't been connecting (I'm actually in the process of putting my professional background to this exact problem).
I've noticed that conservatives react to the latter statement as an insult (e.g., "Instead of expressing what a horrible thing this was, Mayor Sam Adams immediately warned us not to be violent, as if we're bigots and racists"). The other reaction I've seen is that statements about the nonviolence of Islam is the wrong focus ("why is the first thing out of their mouths a defense of Islam, instead of concern about the targets?"). I'm not making this up. This is what I read in the blogs. To me, it's convoluted. But to fearful conservatives, these messages from Muslims don't easily come across as intended. I think the key here is "fear." It's a hard filter to penetrate.
What Muslims have failed to do is elucidate the political nature of violence from Muslims and how America's foreign policies and global empire are the leading cause of the violence.
I haven't such cowardice from a leadership in my lifetime.
While Western intervention in the affairs of Muslim nations may have sparked a lot of anger and outrage among Muslims, it is never a valid excuse for violence against innocents. Furthermore, this "excuse" does not explain Muslim-on-Muslim violence, violence in places like the Sudan where the West really is not a factor, and violence in response to perceived insults like cartoons of Muhammed.
The real problem is radical Islamists vs. what they perceive to be non-believers, including moderate Muslims. I'm pleased to hear whenever moderates speak out against the radicals: Keep speaking and eventually you will be heard.
Perhaps you will be limited in your reply, but America is directly tied to causing suffering and corruption and chaos in several Muslim countries, and many think tanks, like StratFor, recognize that this is America's strategy in the Muslim world to keep Muslims weak and unstable.