Muslims against Terrorism & Osama

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
Several times I've seen statements about how Muslims don't protest against terrorism. I thought to post this....
Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot about Islam. Why, then, does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his latest column, "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden."

A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim jurisconsult. Such opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say that is easy, since Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are the leaders of 120 million Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that is one. Tracking these things down is time-consuming, but this should do:
Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden.

So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden?

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. And:

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden.

What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics who are fans of Bin Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But the allegation Friedman is making is that no major cleric has condemned him. Try this: Prominent Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda! See also:
Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda.

There are also substantial Muslim communities in Europe with leaderships that have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.:

Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden. There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain.

High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden. The Russian Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15 percent of Russia's 143 million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in a century Russia may be 50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing here.

A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up by al-Muhajabah.

See also Charles Kurzman's page.

Friedman also does refer to a major conference of Muslim clerics, thinkers and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a powerful statement about religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin Laden stands for. But he seems oddly unaware of the significance of having Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and many other great Muslim authorities sign off on this epochal statement of Muslim ecumenism.

The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another "not a Muslim" if the believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites of Sunnism and Shiism. The whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims." The statement also demands that engineers should please stop pretending to issue fatwas, which should be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para. is also a slam at Bin Laden.

PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong that this is only a Muslim problem. In the global age all problems are everybody's. That's part of flat world, too, Tom
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Source
 
:eek13:

WTF! get your head back in the sand, man!!! There's no reality allowed here!!! :disgust:
 
Trusted source #1
Sheik Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah, spiritual leader of Hezbolla
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Where is an actual quote/story of this public condemnation/
Lawmaker Says Grand Shaykh of Al-Azhar in Egypt Condemns bin Laden
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Deep commitment to ending terrorism
The Taliban, he said, should have handed over bin Laden and other terrorists to the United Nations or any other neutral international organization before the air strikes began. "They can still do it and save their country from further destruction," he said
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How long did it take to look up these few people? How many pictures can you produce of Jordanians or Syrians dancing in the streets when Hussein was captured or the Taliban fell? Less than we can produce of Palestinians or Egyptians or Lebanese, I'll bet.

These people who supposedly (I believe they did) condemmed terror are probably in the category as those here who nobody listens to. When the Muslims are in the streets helping end terror (as they are in Iraq) I'll begin seeing it as more than a moral minority.
 
Facts schmatcs. Facts can be used to prove anything that's even remotely true.

I want truthiness.
 
Lesse... truthiness... relativity... facts... hmm... *scribble, scribble*

take away the two.. minus the machismo factor... add back 3/8 of the stereotypical kneejerk quotient...

*erases a small portion*

multiply human history by the negative whole number of religion... divide everything by apathy and work the entire function to the square root of alcoholic rage and round to the nearest blue collar bar... Viola!


42
 
Here's another news flash.

The current US government has approval ratings of 30%.

The terrorists are judging us by the actions of the guys in charge, even though it's a relatively small percentage of Americans, with the approval of less than one third of Americans.

But we can't judge them by the actions of their terrorists, because what, fifteen percent of them don't like the terrorists?
 
Gonz said:
Trusted source #1

Quote:
Sheik Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah, spiritual leader of Hezbolla
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i can easily imagine hizballah speaking out against bin laden. bin laden's objectives are at many levels at many level's different from hizballah's. if memory serves, hizballah has achieved a level of political legitimacy that stunts like bin laden's serve to undermine.
 
unclehobart said:
Lesse... truthiness... relativity... facts... hmm... *scribble, scribble*

take away the two.. minus the machismo factor... add back 3/8 of the stereotypical kneejerk quotient...

*erases a small portion*

multiply human history by the negative whole number of religion... divide everything by apathy and work the entire function to the square root of alcoholic rage and round to the nearest blue collar bar... Viola!


42
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that's always the answer isn't it
 
Altron said:
But we can't judge them by the actions of their terrorists, because what, fifteen percent of them don't like the terrorists?
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Not sure where you're getting 15% :shrug:

These statements were the equivalent of the Muslim's Popes coming out against Osama and terrorism...where religion is so important that the average Muslim makes fundamentalist born-again Christians look lax. :eek5:
 
MrBishop said:
Not sure where you're getting 15% :shrug:

These statements were the equivalent of the Muslim's Popes coming out against Osama and terrorism...where religion is so important that the average Muslim makes fundamentalist born-again Christians look lax. :eek5:
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Well, the one dude who represented 10% of them said it, and a few other dudes did too, so 15% is a rough estimate.
 
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