THE BROTHERHOOD'06

With countless examples of Islamic intolerance each day,

the West’s tolerance correspondingly wanes

Osama’s directive to kill freethinkers is backing a

worldwide islamist crackdown,

applying terror on “moderate” muslims

Militant repressions at the hands of Islamist religious terrorists

are harming Western interests and are effectively

using terror to stifle the voices of Muslims

who wish to speak openly or wish to leave islam.

here: An accounting of

an assassination in Islamist Sudan

giving a light of understanding

to the true meanings of the word “extremism” in Islam.

The United States of America

is under sustained attack.

wake up! ye who love liberty!

the best way of observing is by looking

A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist !!! …

A Muslim is a Muslim Is a Muslim ??? …

Al’Qaeda is the word most think of when asked to name an Islamist terror network, but it’s just a name. It’s a name in the Arabic language which means, appropriately, “the Base,” conceived of as a root, The root, of a movement of Muslim jihadists, or holy warriors, dedicated to driving the West from “the Middle East” and to establishing a single, fundamentalist Islamic religious regime over the whole area. This, the return of the Caliphate, is to be funded by oil revenues from a captive market. The Base was originally the name of a list Osama kept in Afghanistan, a list with the names and numbers of people who could be counted on for waging Islamist jihad. So it has grown, into many cells around the world, under many names and no names at all.

Yet, Al’Qaeda knows Al’Qaeda is not really alone in the world of jihadists and lately its virtual mother, the root of roots, the infamous Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt has re-appeared in the media as the villain in the case of the assassination of a Muslim intellectual. So today, the Brotherhood provides the images by which we can continue to understand that the threat of Islamism, no matter what its base, is a major threat to the freedom of consciousness in the U.S. and the West, which freedom of thought and expression the west holds dear.

It is in actuality a threat to the very idea of Liberty and to the institutions which support it as a glorious conception, to be defended as a god.

The threat of Islamism, that is a threat to free thinking, has become very malignant, very militant, very dangerous, inviting its enemies to strike it with death. (See Osama's Order t kill freethinkers.) So, since its intent is to quash freedoms of thought and speaking, it is no doubt worth fighting against, and no doubt worth learning to fight it as it fights, with both force and stealth and brilliance.

It’s worth knowing about:

Hopes fading for democratization in the World of Qur’an

The hopes for liberalizations, “democratization,” in the despotic Islamic regions of the world are fading, if they were ever real hopes for grass roots and liberal Islam at all. Yet many still hoped that the Muslim Brotherhood might useful in that regard, for some democrats had hoped that such conglomerations of “moderate” Muslims would get behind “democratization.” They had been permitted to run candidates for office in Egyptian elections, and many had won! Certainly it’s a movement learning to be democratic! Many in the West implored officials to open dialogue with those cleric-driven radicalists and with others who share their political reason for being.

Now, today, the Muslim Brotherhood is back on view and it is further demonstrating for us the violence inherent in the nature of fundamentalist Islam and the implications of its ascendancy.

THE CRIME

A question of Muhammad’s ancestral lineage

In 2005, Ahmed took the actions that would unleash an irreversible and deadly chain of events leading to his assassination: He commissioned an article daring to question the ancestral lineage of the Prophet Muhammad. Ahmed had to plea to his persecutors that he had indeed vehemently criticized the article at publication but had printed it nonetheless in the spirit of discourse.

“intellectual apostasy” must be eradicated

The presence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikwhan, is apparent in this affair when we become clear about the crime of “intellectual apostasy.” The spiritual emir of the Muslim Brotherhood, the detestable Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi, recently articulated that:

Intellectual apostasy is “a kind of apostasy among people who do not declare their explicit disbelief and openly wage war against everything that is religious.”

He warms about the craftiness of those silent, secret apostates who do not carry guns, how they wrap their apostasy in camouflage, sneaking in a very cunning manner into the mind of believers, the same way that malignant tumors sneak into the body. The victims often do not know when they have been so invaded or that they have begun to speak falsehood, a falsehood from an infected mind, devilishly cunning in its attack on “truth.” Sheikh Yusuf has noticed everyday the symptoms of this infection in the free press, and on radio and TV, as well as in laws legislated to govern people’s affairs.

This apostasy is “more dangerous than openly announced apostasy; for the former works continuously on a wide scale, at the same time, it cannot be easily resisted in the same manner as the latter (openly announced apostasy), which always makes much fuss, attracts attention, and stirs up public opinion.” These are the ideas of the notorious Al Qaradawi, “spiritual emir” to the World of Islamism and a founder of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. In Egypt, the Brotherhood is electioneering while simultaneously enforcing totalitarian Islam in Sudan. Can you catch a glimpse, even if brief, of the two faces of Islamism?

Traditional mob plea for justice against the apostate

Following publication of Ahmed’s article, thousands of Islamists (from Khartoum Itnein to Khartoum As-sharq) converged on the central Court in Khartoum calling for the had’ [punishment] of death for Ahmed for the crime of blaspheming the Prophet and for the crime of murtad’ [apostasy]. Despite apologies and immediate retraction, Ahmed was prosecuted for blasphemy and apostasy by the government, which sought the penalty of death. Leading the charge was the notorious Musa Mohamed Ali, a prosecutor well known in Sudan for his penchant for apostasy prosecutions. But even before formally convicted, Ahmed was kidnapped and beheaded, his body found in the first days of September 2006 of the Common Era.

While the government of Sudan has attempted to shift responsibility of the killing to Al-Qaeda, it is well known on the ground that the Muslim Brotherhood (which myopic Western commentators have implored Western governments to engage with) is responsible.

Ahmed’s death is a stark warning to moderate Muslims and Islamists, not only in Sudan but in the region as a whole – and an alert to the world as a whole. Especially does this idea of the fear of “religious” prosecution echo in the vast areas of the world of Qur’an where Muslim populations, trained for submission, have developed a fervent sympathy for these stricter, fear-motivated Islamist interpretations, of Ikhwahn an Muslimuun, or other Islamist-based groups and their guns. In Egypt those sympathetic to Ikwhan murdered Farog Foda and have menaced Ayman Nour, Sa’id Ebrahim, and Abu Za’id for infractions against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam. We are seeing Ikwhan’s Egyptian electioneering and strategerizing operation.

Reform of the Many Faces of Islam?

Overcoming a false assumption

There exists in the West an underlying and sympathetic assumption that the ideologies espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood, and its progeny, are the primary source of Islamism in Sudan. This is a false assumption. In Sudan, a significant proportion of extremism in Sudan also emerges from the Sufi community, which built strong religious and social ties with Bin Laden during the 1990’s. Many in Sudan consider Bin Laden to actually follow Sufism. The implications of this development are significant, as they undermine the popular understanding that “extremism” in Islam is somehow limited to Sunni —Shia, or to Wahabbism—Salafism.

No Compromises are Possible

Reform in Islam (rightly or wrongly) is often viewed by non-Muslim (and Muslim) commentators as an impossible exercise, as the Qur’an, Sunnah and entire body of Islamic jurisprudence is immutable because given by god. As long as the current Islamist revival rejects critical evaluation, rejects itjihad, rejects new principles of usul al fiqh, and is allowed to murder those who not only call for such reforms — but also provide a forum for these discussions to exist in the region and in Muslim countries in general — liberalization and reformist movements will never have the impetus to progress.

To Do: marginalization and/or containment

An imaginary scope of any comprehensive liberalization of Islam is very narrow, due to the force of idolatry given to the “holy” scriptures, the Qur’an and Sunnah. The author gives as the only hope for the liberalization of Islam is the bringing about in the world the structural marginalization and/or containment of Islam — because reform can only occur in an Islam where there is freedom and a “safe” forum to debate.

Participants in reform must guarantee freedom to develop ideas and, if need be, create mechanisms to leave Islam, and these freedoms of thought must be implemented within the Islamic world itself. According to the custom of this land, discussions of what’s so should well be relegated to the quiet corners of social clubs and not through the khatib at Juma’ prayers.

NO DIALOGUE WITH ISLAMISM

– FREE SPEECH NOW!

Western support/dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood and its tentacles harms Western interests, but such discourse also contributes to the constraints on Muslims who wish to openly speak on the reform of Islam, or who wish to leave Islam altogether. The Brotherhood’s tentacles include affiliated organizations operating in both governments and in their oppositions, and operating through Muslim advocacy groups and Islamic centers in the West. Their “spiritual” growth of supporters has been astounding. Truly moderate Muslims cannot heed the false advice of false reformers who claim that reform can only occur through gradualism. Gradualism has played an integral role in the evolution of Islamic law, indeed, but is not a luxury that moderate Muslims can afford now. Substantive Islamic reform cannot take place under current circumstances and there must be an immediate reversal of gradualism concerning freedom of speech.

MUSLIMS MUST LEAD A REFORMATION

A modern Shariah?

It may be possible that Shariah law is partially capable of adaptation and modernization, despite being seemingly existentially frozen at the time of the illiterate “Prophet” and his “divine” recitations in the Dark Ages, and then written in stone long before the Enlightenment. Since then, generations learned to read from its writings and learned to revere the writings, and reading. Reform may be possible only because a significant portion of shari’ah is not based in “divine guidance” but rather on rules of law developed by fuqaha over centuries. These “innovations” include those strictures which have stifled any chances of Islamic liberalization. They can be fixed by Muslims through internal academic discourse which comprehensively identifies the failings of Islam, and attempts to reconcile these failings with a radical re-evaluation and re-interpretation of the various sources of Islam.

Moderate Muslims must distinguish themselves from Islamists starting now, not just through words or assurances to non-Muslims, but by the meaningful dialogue amongst themselves and with non-Muslims, in the spirit of free speech. To date, only a smattering of Muslim speakers have begun to engage in this type of discourse. And when they do engage, they do so individually, without a unified voice.

New Foreign Policy and

Domestic Legislation Needed

Governments must take a multifaceted approach in confronting Islamist movements (as well as “moderate Islamist movements”), and their supporters and affiliates, through foreign policy and domestic legislation. (In the U.S. special attention must be paid to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, all of its interconnections and all of the positions of power its members have been granted due to governmental sufferance in the name of religious freedom.)

The United States of America

is under sustained attack.

The death of Ahmed, Mohammed Taha, is at the same time a stark reminder and an escalation of the challenges that face democrats and all sorts of “liberals” and “libertarians,” “democrats” or “republicans” — today!

With each passing day and its countless examples

of Islamic intolerance

— the West’s tolerance wanes correspondingly —

The above is a synopsis of an article by Thomas Hamza Muhammed Haidon. This Muslim reformer from New Zealand offers his series of provocative observations on the recent murder of his friend Mohammed Taha and the prospects for reform in Islam. Thanks to Jihad Watch. Full article, September 20, 2006, ‘Some reflections on the death of Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed.’ http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/013211.php#more