www.post-gazette.com/pg/04248/373347.stm


American Muslims focus on election, civil rights at annual meeting

Saturday, September 04, 2004
By Rachel Zoll, The Associated Press

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- The largest annual gathering of American Muslims opened yesterday amid a debate over how best to make their voices heard in the presidential election and build relations with other faiths.

About 30,000 people were expected to attend the meeting organized by the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella association representing Muslim groups and mosques.

The conference is the third for the Islamic Society since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and organizers planned to address the problems that have plagued the community since the suicide hijackings.

Presentations will be made on defending Islam against prejudice, creating ties with other faiths and preserving Muslims' civil rights during the domestic war on terrorism.

Heavy emphasis will be made on encouraging Muslims to vote Nov. 2. Voter registration booths will be set up, and American Muslims who have been elected to public office will discuss their campaigns.

As recently as the 2000 election, some Muslim immigrants debated whether their religion even allowed them to participate in democratic elections. American Muslim leaders say those questions are no longer being raised, and they are working for high voter turnout in their communities.

"We are this nation," said Kareem Irfan, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago.

Muslims have sizable populations in swing states such as Ohio, Michigan and Florida and hope that this will help them gain visibility in the tight presidential race. Already, they have been pleased with their representation at the Republican and Democratic conventions, according to Sayyid Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society. Muslims gave invocations or benedictions at both events.

In 2000, major Muslim organizations made their first collective endorsement of a presidential candidate, backing George W. Bush. But many Muslim leaders said they came to regret that decision after Sept. 11. They said the broad new powers that the federal government gained through the USA Patriot Act have made all Muslims suspects. The Bush administration has defended the law as critical for national security.

On interfaith relations, Syeed said his organization has made gains with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Churches, which represents Protestant and Orthodox churches.

The P-G is the leftist commie pinko bastard rag from my neck of the woods and the focker who is editor will take any article that questions Bush in any way shape or form and plaster on the front page where in contrast you could have aliens from the planet Metaluna V land on the white house lawn and pictures of each posing with all of their three mouths smiling next to Bush and signing a peace treaty and the ratfink bastage editor of the P-G would bury it on page 16.

If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, acts like a duck...

So have any of those 30,000 saints denounced or spoken out against their radical bretherns actions ?
I didn't think so.  

Quoted: So have any of those 30,000 saints denounced or spoken out against their radical bretherns actions ? I didn't think so.

They shouldnt have to. Islam is the religion of peace and understanding. Its inconceivable to think of a good Muslim commiting hate crimes such as hijacking planes, planting bombs, oppressing women or murdering children.........

Quoted: So have any of those 30,000 saints denounced or spoken out against their radical bretherns actions ? I didn't think so.

Muslems on 9/11





Google is your friend ! Know it ! Use it !

Quoted: So have any of those 30,000 saints denounced or spoken out against their radical bretherns actions ? I didn't think so.

+1

Quoted: Quoted: So have any of those 30,000 saints denounced or spoken out against their radical bretherns actions ? I didn't think so.   They shouldnt have to. Islam is the religion of peace and understanding. Its inconceivable to think of a good Muslim commiting hate crimes such as hijacking planes, planting bombs, oppressing women or murdering children.........

Their silence is deafening. Muslims probably think the Chechnya incident was a plot by the Jews to make them look bad...

Look who wants Bush to lose
By MICHAEL FREUND

The excitement is palpable. You can almost feel it in the air. The dictators of the Arab world just can't wait for George W. Bush to lose the US presidential election in November.

Gripped with fear as they watch Bush's democratic experiment in Iraq take shape, the tyrants and despots of the Middle East are pinning their hopes on Democratic challenger John Kerry to prevail.

After all, the last thing they want to see is a second-term Bush determined to reform the region, a development that would threaten their grip on power and stymie their efforts to obtain more lethal types of weaponry.

And so the rhetoric in the Arab world is heating up, pointing to a real desire to see the US president go down in defeat.

Take, for example, a recent article in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly (August 12-18 issue) by Cairo University's Prof. Hassan Nafaa. Bush, he wrote, is a "wild eyed zealot" and an "evil fanatic" whose "departure from the Oval Office will mark the beginning of the decline of the forces of extremism and the rise of the forces of moderation."

A Kerry victory, Prof. Nafaa says, barely containing his glee, would mean that "US foreign policy will undergo a major shift that will ultimately impact positively on Washington's approach to the affairs of the Middle East."

In other words, a Kerry administration would be far more compliant as far as the Arabs are concerned.

An August 4 editorial in the Syria Times expressed a similar sentiment, urging Arab-Americans not to make "the very mistake they made in the past when they gave their votes to Bush the Junior" in the 2000 presidential election. Instead, suggested the government-run paper, a vote for Kerry this time would prove to be "a wise one."

Judging by their leadership, the Palestinians seem to feel the same way, with Yasser Arafat said to be among those who is rooting for a Democratic victory.

"Arafat is waiting for November in the hope that George Bush will lose the election to John Kerry," Israel's military intelligence chief Maj.Gen. Aharon Ze'evi Farkash told a cabinet meeting just over a month ago.

Following Arafat's lead, the official Palestinian media has made no effort to hide where its sympathies lie. On July 27, the Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, for example, ran a political cartoon depicting an American soldier bleeding to death in Iraq, his final words being, "Don't Vote Bush."

And then, of course, there is Iran. The mullahs, whom Bush famously labeled part of the "Axis of Evil" in his January 2002 State of the Union Address, are also panting at the prospect of a Republican defeat.

Just last week, on a visit to New Zealand, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said that the US government was "looking for excuses" to act against Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

A June 17 article in the English-language Tehran Times entitled "Pity the Next US President" was even more critical, comparing Bush and his neo-conservative advisers to "neo-Nazis" who have created a "stinking heap of a mess" throughout the world. "Kerry," the paper asserts, "is exactly what the US needs right now."

That the prospect of a Kerry presidency is evoking so much enthusiasm in the terror capitals of Damascus, Ramallah and Teheran is reason enough for Americans, and especially American Jews, to think twice before supporting the Democratic candidate.

Why, after all, would Arafat, Bashar Assad and the ayatollahs want to see Kerry elected if they didn't have good reason to believe he would go soft on terror?

To be fair, Kerry has sought to dispel this image, taking a slap at the Saudi royal family in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last month and subsequently criticizing President Bush for not imposing tougher sanctions on the Syrian regime.

But these statements did little to dispel the notion throughout the Arab world that Kerry is "their man." As Martin Sieff, United Press International's senior news analyst, recently pointed out, no one in the Arab world "really thinks Bush will change: And that is why so many old or former friends of the United States in the Arab world are praying for his defeat."

Nonetheless, it seems, a majority of American Jews continue to lean toward Kerry, as a recent poll by the National Jewish Democratic Council is said to have found. According to the survey, an astonishing 75 percent of US Jews back the Massachusetts Senator, while just 22 percent support Bush.

With the election just two months away, now would be a good time for America, and particularly its Jews, to start thinking long and hard about the choice they face in November.

Because if the ayatollahs are banking on Kerry to win, that certainly cannot be the right way to go.

The writer served as deputy director of Communications & Policy Planning in the prime minister's office under Binyamin Netanyahu.

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1093921794974&apage=1

...the USA Patriot Act have made all Muslims suspects.

Every one of them are suspects in my book, they are a Cult, a cult of Hate.

Quoted: Hypocritical rhetoric.  Someone posted a rather lengthy article about the Muslim denouncement over the terrorist actions in Russia. The response from everyone asking for JUST that kind of proof? "Bah!  Hot air - they don't mean it." So people demand to hear a voice from the non-extremist sect of Muslims and when they get it, its readily dismissed as being meaningless. If that's not hypocrisy, then what is?

You're basing your judgement on the assumption that Muslim interest groups are telling Western publics and governments the same thing they are telling their fellow Muslims in private.  Ample, ample, ample evidence points that this is almost never the case. Many directors of CAIR, the largest "moderate muslim" advocacy/lobbying/PR group for the Religion of Peace in the US, have ties to charity groups that fund HAMAS and Hezbollah while their public line is that they condemn terrorism.

Also, you have to notice that Muslim groups tend to condemn terrorism insofar as it makes life difficult for them living in Western countries.  You almost never hear them condemn terrorism out of principle, it's always "Look, the government doesn't trust us, they're taking our civil liberties, and people begin to stereotype us."  There is never much sympathy for the victims, nor condemnation of the terrorists.  Just whining about the consequences terrorism has on the public's perception of Islam.  Like it's totally unfair or something.

Fuck them.

Quoted: "Many directors...have ties to...Hamas and Hezbollah...?"  How is it you know that and the FBI doesn't?

What the hell gave you the idea that the FBI doesn't know about them?

"Their silence is deafening. Muslims probably think the Chechnya incident was a plot by the Jews to make them look bad..."

To wit:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-mideast-school-seizure,0,3525637.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

"Ali Abdullah, a Bahraini scholar who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as 'un-Islamic,' but insisted Muslims weren't behind it.

"'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Abdullah."

Quoted: I'm not saying you are incorrect nor am I saying the original article is inaccurate.  I have merely stated that neither the article or what you have just written has offered any proof of what you say. "Many directors...have ties to...Hamas and Hezbollah...?"  How is it you know that and the FBI doesn't? "...ample evidence points that this is almost never the case."  Yet you neglect to show that to us.

CAIR
www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13175
www.danielpipes.org/article/394


DUPLICITY
www.americandaily.com/article/3878
www.campus-watch.org/article/id/918

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: "Many directors...have ties to...Hamas and Hezbollah...?"  How is it you know that and the FBI doesn't? What the hell gave you the idea that the FBI doesn't know about them? Maybe the word "many" and that they're not incarcerated?  I would understand keeping an eye on one or two clerics in order to erase their end results.  But "many leaders" financing terrorists groups without getting arrested?  And for average joe citizen to be aware of it? Come on...why did I even respond...

You know, here in the US (even with that EEEEEEVIL Patriot Act) our law enforcement has to have something we like to call "evidence" to prosecute people.  That means that even if the FBI KNOWS you're financing terrorists, they still have to investigate you and get evidence before federal prosecutors will agree to press charges.

Screw 'em...it's not like they were gonna vote for Bush anyway...