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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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January 7, 2011 12:00 A.M.
Who Are the Real Hijackers of Islam?
Maybe the hijackers are the peaceful ones.
For years, we’ve heard how the peaceful religion of Islam has been hijacked by extremists.
What if it’s the other way around? Worse, what if the peaceful hijackers are losing their bid to take over the religion?
That certainly seems to be the case in Pakistan.
Salman Taseer, a popular Pakistani governor, was assassinated this week because he was critical of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.
Specifically, Taseer was supportive of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who has been sentenced to death for “insulting Muhammad.”
Bibi had offered some fellow farm laborers some water. They refused to drink it because Christian hands purportedly make water unclean. An argument followed. She defended her faith, which they took as synonymous with attacking theirs. Later, she says, a mob of her accusers raped her.
Naturally, a Pakistani judge sentenced her to hang for blasphemy.
And Governor Taseer, who bravely visited her and sympathized with her plight, had 40 bullets pumped into him by one of his own bodyguards.
“Salmaan Taseer is a blasphemer and this is the punishment for a blasphemer,” Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri said to the television cameras as he was being arrested.
Now, so far, it’s hard to say who is the hijacker and who is the hijackee. After all, Taseer the moderate was a prominent politician, Qadri a mere bodyguard.
A reasonable person might look at this tragic situation and say it is indeed proof of extremists trying to hijack the religion and the country.
Except, it was Taseer who wanted to change the status quo and Qadri who wanted to protect it. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been on the books for decades, and while judicial death sentences for blasphemy are rare, the police and security forces have been enforcing it unilaterally for years.
And what of the reaction to the assassination?
Many columnists and commentators denounced the murder, but the public’s reaction was often celebratory. A Facebook fan page for Qadri had to be taken down as it was drawing thousands of followers.
And what of the country’s official guardians of the faith?
A group of more than 500 leading Muslim scholars, representing what the Associated Press describes as a “moderate school of Islam” and the British Guardian calls the “mainstream religious organizations” in Pakistan not only celebrated the murder, but warned that no Muslim should mourn Taseer’s murder or pray for him.
They even went so far as to warn government officials and journalists that the “supporter is as equally guilty as one who committed blasphemy,” and so therefore they should all take “a lesson from the exemplary death” of Salman Taseer.
If that’s what counts for religious moderation in Pakistan, I think it’s a little late to be talking about extremists hijacking the religion. The religion has long since been hijacked, and it’s now moving on to even bigger things.
Pakistan isn’t the only troubled spot. In Egypt, Coptic Christians were recently slaughtered in an Islamist terrorist attack. The Egyptian government, which has a long record of brutalizing and killing its own Christian minority, was sufficiently embarrassed by the competition from non-governmental Islamists that it is now offering protection. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.
But Pakistan is special because it has nuclear weapons and is inextricably bound up in the war in neighboring Afghanistan and the larger war on terror. U.S. relations with the Pakistani military remain strong, but — as we’ve seen with Turkey — good relations with a military don’t make up for losing support from an allied government as it goes Islamist. And it seems unlikely that a government can long stay secular when the people want it to become ever more Islamist.
Sadanand Dhume, a Wall Street Journal columnist (and my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute), writes that even “relatively secular-minded Pakistanis are an endangered species.”
While most of the enlightened chatterers remain mute or incoherent as they struggle for a way to blame Israel for all of this, the question becomes all the more pressing: How do we deal with a movement or a nation that refuses to abide by the expiring cliché, “Islam means peace”?
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 11, 2011 - 02:01pm PT
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More BS propaganda DaftRat?
Why don't you man up and admit how pleased you would be if the IDF eliminated (with extreme prejudice) the entire Palestinian population. An Eye for an Eye. Six million dead for six million dead.
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Truckee , CA
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Jan 14, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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right on cue.........
Jeff you must be related to Pavlovs subjects of study.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jan 14, 2011 - 02:41pm PT
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 14, 2011 - 04:12pm PT
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Ding Dong Drool.
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Truckee , CA
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Jan 14, 2011 - 05:02pm PT
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Dreidels?
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jan 14, 2011 - 06:30pm PT
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 14, 2011 - 06:42pm PT
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http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/germany-s-jewish-community-combats-german-islamophobia-1.337099
Published 01:04 15.01.11Latest update 01:04 15.01.11
Germany’s Jewish community combats German Islamophobia
Though rich in irony, Jewish leaders see their position as a matter of Jewish self-interest in a Germany in which old ghosts remain laid to rest.
By The Forward
Tags: Israel news Jews and Muslims Germany Jewish World
In Germany today, Muslims are often cited as a crucial factor in contemporary German anti-Semitism—and are themselves increasingly a target of ethnic based prejudice and bigotry.
Yet, leaders of Germany’s Jewish community have joined others in combating what many view as a tidal wave of German Islamophobia.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 14, 2011 - 06:43pm PT
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hmmmm... Sounds Clash-less.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 15, 2011 - 02:18am PT
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philo,
Liberal Jews always make mistakes, like marching off peacefully to ovens.
The evil one
Are you trying to intimate that ALL the Jews who were exterminated were liberals who went willingly?
Your grasp of history is a complete joke.
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Truckee , CA
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Jan 15, 2011 - 07:46am PT
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Jeff,
You just killed any hope of holding even an AIPAC office.
I'll be contacting Zack again soon.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
leading the away team, but not in a red shirt!
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Jan 15, 2011 - 07:51am PT
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Any cool climbing out there?
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jan 15, 2011 - 10:45am PT
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jan 15, 2011 - 05:34pm PT
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"Only the liberal Jews marched peacefully to the gas chambers"
What an incredibly insensitive, irresponsible, childish, and ignorant thing to say.
You are a closet Jew, Jeff.
And an ASS for even thinking it.
You continually prove you have the intellect of a 10 year old.
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Truckee , CA
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Jan 16, 2011 - 04:01am PT
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Which one Jeff?
Any way IF you had any power you wouldn't be swinging it around like you do here on ST.
You MAY WANT power but you have very little.
At least that affects my life.
However, if you do ever run for political office you would have some influence over my life and I can't and won't allow that.
Plain and simple.
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Truckee , CA
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Jan 17, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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Great.
When one of our nuke plants goes haywire we'll have no one to blame but ourselves and Israel.
OOOOOOPPPPSSSS!
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