After every terrorist attack in the Western World I look for the “B” word in the news the next day. Here we go:
The San Jose Mercury News– Among London’s Muslims, fears of backlash linger, but quietly
Newsday– U.S. Muslims denounce London bombings, brace for backlash
Vive le Canada– Canuck Muslims dread backlash
Monsters & Critics– Australian Moslems fear backlash after London bombs
India Monitor– Muslims cower in fear of backlash
See, here is the thing. Whenever a terrorist attack like this occurs, the cold, dispassionate, analytical side of me asks, “why is the average citizen so afraid to get back aboard that plane, train, or bus the very next day?” The attack was temporally and spatially isolated and not something they must continue to cower in fear of. Aside from not giving the terrorists what they want, the probability that there will be another attack within days or months of the original is just not backed up by the data. The compassionate side of me realizes however, that humans are humans. Fear, real or imagined, is part of who we are and keeps us alive.
For people with brown skin, and especially Muslims, the actual attack is just the beginning of a terrorist incident however. For this group an attack is not a temporally or spatially isolated event. The moment that the physical attack ends is when the real fear begins for a sizeable portion of the population (as shown by the headlines above). With a terrorist attack you don’t know when it’s going to come. You realize that you shouldn’t live your life in fear so you go about your day quite normally, perhaps being slightly more attentive. The general population has a Homeland Security Department to warn them of a possible terrorist attack by means of a color coded system. After a terrorist attack however, if you are brown or Muslim, you need your own system. You have knowledge of credible but unspecified threats.
My point? This is exactly what Reza Aslan stresses. This isn’t a war between Islam and the West. This is a war between Islam and Islam. Brown-on-Brown violence. The West is often just caught in the crossfire because they provide the most dramatic field of battle.New California Media posts this article by Sandip Roy, Notes From a Brown Man in London:
The little Internet cafe I am writing from is in the heart of Brick Lane. This is where much of England’s Bangladeshi community, mostly Muslim, lives. Shops sell burkhas and prayer mats. The supermarket sells stacks of gleaming silvery rui and boal fish flown in from Bangladesh. Restaurants have names like Monsoon and Nazrul and Naz Café. After Sept. 11, 2001, police were posted outside the Jamie Masjid here to keep the peace. This time they are not there.
“Perhaps we don’t really need them,” says Zahid, a law student from Bangladesh who has lived here since 2002. “After all, we are the majority here now.” The areas around Brick Lane are 70 percent Muslim.
But will the attacks scar the image of Muslims in Britain? Zahid, the law student, sighs. “The people who did this can’t be genuine Muslims. How can genuine Muslims kill so many innocent people going to work?” Outside the shuttered Aldgate tube station a forlorn poster is getting soaked in the drizzle. It advertises an exhibition and seminar organized by a Sufi school. “Non Violence: A Choice — 4th to 10th July, Goldsmiths College,” it reads.
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blockquote>but as i imply above, actions speak louder than words. a march and or a plan of anti-islamist action would count for a thousand apologies. as it is now i think the perception is that many muslim communities in the west just want to be left alone and aren’t really fully integrated into the public fora.
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razib, you’re normally pretty thoughtful, so I don’t really understand this position from you. There are a million things that moderate Muslims need to do for their own sakes and the sake of their communities to take back the word “Muslim” and leadership in their communities from al qaeda and others and generally improve the world. Just as there are a million things that U.S. citizens who actually believe in such things as the subtance of democracy, transparency in government, scientific methods, some semblance of secularism, rational budget policy, a livable environment, etc. need to do in order to take back the notion from the radical religious/business coalition that runs the country right now. And how Christians needs to take back the word “Christian” from people that focus primarily on big business interests, homophobia, anti-science, and other such things. All of us should do all these things, because it’s good, but no one has the right to demand that we do these things simply because we’re members of the same group (particularly when it’s almost being used as the equivalent of a loyalty oath). It’s hard enough to get by in this world without that kind of pressure from other people, and, more to the point, that kind of pressure is rarely effective in lieu of support and communication to understand what kind of lives people are living.
If you’re looking for reasons as to why Muslim communities in the United States are not cooperating even more actively than they already are (I’m shocked, as I am that Japanese people served in the U.S. army during WW II, that they cooperate at all, given what’s happened to them), then look no further than the investigative and enforcement practices of “counterterrorism” policy at state, local, and federal levels. When the government eschews more effective practices like community policing in favor of lumping everyone together or xenophobic practices, it’s probably not going to result in widespread cooperation with the government, even if people agree with their aims. If you were subjected to something like this, what would your feelings realistically be toward greater cooperation with the US government and American society in fighting Islamist fundamentalist violence?
And yet, many people who were targeted are more charitable than I am in how they behave towards the government. After countless anti-Muslim policies already, over 80,000 people (from Pakistan, Saudi, Egypt, Indonesia, and many other places) voluntarily showed up for Special Registration–interviews with U.S. immigration services at immigration offices–including many people who, whether they knew it or not, faced deportation. Thousands of additional people complied with the “voluntary” interviews that the FBI conducted in 2002 (and probably still is), etc. And you expect these people to march–perhaps risking their own well being–to implicitly support the “war on terror”?!?!?! I think Muslim communities have shown greater love for the United States than the United States has shown for Muslim communities in the past four years.
btw, a better historical analogy for what’s happened to Muslim and “Muslim looking people” in the US now are the Palmer Raids after WWI, not the internments of the Japanese. Unfortunately, we don’t have a Louis Post these days to try and stand in their way.
The real problem is that the kaffir-world, in my unsubstantiated opinion, is beginning to realize that the jihadis have Islamic theological justification on their side. You know the whole bit from Ibn Warraq – the later more violent Koranic verses that abrogate the earlier more benign ones, hadiths that are sahi, isnad etc. I am coming to the conclusion that the reason the response of the moderates is so muted is because the moderates know that they don’t have Islamic theological weight behind them.
Marches will help, but what will help even more is coming up with a theological argument that destroys the jihadis’ case. I am curious about what arguments rooted in Islamic theology, if any, the “Top Dog – Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti” used to denounce these attacks.
Hope whoever does the denouncing can come up with soemthing other than “this is not real Islam……”. Man, that’s one overworked phrase.
What should be the new phrase then? A spade will be called a spade even the umpteenth time. Note, whether it is a spade at all to some, is subjective and can be debated. But for people who believe it’s a spade, and use it as such, what else will they call it?
This post, and the heavy discussion about whether Muslims organizations should denounce it or not, before or after, Middle East orgzns or Western, how many litres of tears to denounce, and in what way, just press releases would do or marching on streets is the ultimate litmus test. It’s thought-provoking. Post Ayodhya, in my growing up days, I always used to wonder, why was I expected to prove my Indianness every time some dolts bursted firecrackers when Pak beat India in cricket match. I mean, I could speak better Marathi and got more marks than Senapatis-of-soils. Why was I consciously aware while praising Azhar’s running between the wkts in his hey-days?
At the same time, attacks such as these are not cricket matches. It involves lives of innocent people. So yes, I believe there should be as much noise generated for every Ayodhya, London, WTC, Madrid, AbuGhraib what have you. Unfortunately the rise in frequency of such attacks is so prolific, that the denouncers are either panting, or made to look like programmed robots to whisk out a press release every time such a thing happens.
! I think Muslim communities have shown greater love for the United States than the United States has shown for Muslim communities in the past four years.
this is where we simply live in different empirical worlds. i think there have been injustices against muslims, but i think they are balanced out by the fact that americans have been very tolerant in comparison to reactions by other peoples in other times to the militant activities of a subset of a particular community. very few muslims are terrorists, but very many terrorists are muslim. i do agree we should all aim for a more perfect world, but we live in one where there is scarcity, not only of goods, but good will and intention. comparisons give us a sense of context and perspective.
to take a step back, i think there are issues with being both patriotic and religious. this is one reason that machiavelli leaned toward an argument for pagan religion as more compatible with republican patriotism as opposed to christian monotheism, which focused on a transnational god (and specifically in that time and place, a translational pope-prince).
i have expressed my egoism before, but if i have secondary affinities and affiliations they were partly rooted in my nationality. i have asked my jewish friends to pick between israel and the USA if they had to, and saw how some would pick america and some would pick israel (‘what if one nation had to be destroyed?’). if was asked to pick between bangladesh and the USA, i would pick the USA. this is a reductio ad absurdum, but in the end, it smokes out the issues. the details of patriotism can sometimes confound, most of the jacobites who supported the stuart catholic kings were protestants who had to balance their religion against their belief in the divine right of monarchs. they made the imperfect choice, their king before their god.
so, going beyond the specifics, would muslim kill muslim in the service of the american polity? i hope so. would catholic kill catholic in the service of american polity? today i think that is so, though perhaps not in past generations. ultimately american muslims must identify first with this nation, not with the nation of muslims in the ummah. their task is harder than evangelical christians since they can identify with the levers of power as evangelical, no choice is asked of them. but for minority religions this isn’t always so, they get the shaft, but all states of citizenship are not above average. my personal experience is that we aren’t there yet, islam is still rooted in an international sensibility. i think most americans perceive this.
and i freely grant you all the injustices you note, but the maw of the devil’s grinder it’s a pittance. i have great reservations toward the leviathan gov. that straddles this country and its policies, but it’s the best hope that i can see for liberty, no matter whether it treats us justly or not.
I am coming to the conclusion that the reason the response of the moderates is so muted is because the moderates know that they don’t have Islamic theological weight behind them.
Marches will help, but what will help even more is coming up with a theological argument that destroys the jihadis’ case. I am curious about what arguments rooted in Islamic theology, if any, the “Top Dog – Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti” used to denounce these attacks.
1) my experience with family, who are mostly “moderate muslims” of hanfai lineage (with many imams among them) is that they detest violence. when i recently visited them in bangladesh two of my uncles who are very religious (one an imam, the other a tablighi) expressed positive attitudes toward the USA, and asserted it was the “easiest country in the world to be a good muslim.” nevertheless, there is also a disturbing tendency to cede the high ground to hot-heads and radicals when they come on the scene.
2) i don’t think texts are really that important in the shaping of a religion. you can convince religious people anything basically, and once convinced, they’ll stick to it contra all evidence.* it is a matter of social consensus, if everyone says “the sky is green” because god made it that way, all of a sudden it is green.
So you’ve presented how the people with more political and economic power (and are, in addition, the majority) have treated the people with less power better than others in similar circumstances have done. How is this relevant to how people will react to the specifics of the day? Yes, I haven’t heard of anyone being $hot for not standing up during the singing of the national anthem, as reportedly happened during WWI at a baseball game, but that doesn’t mean that morally or politically the approach that state, local, and federal government have taken is morally or strategically defensible. The kinds of overreactions and just flat-out foolhardy decisions they made are unlikely to increase the support of the Muslims who are being targeted (despite that those Muslims and others from their countries continue to show support for the American polity).
I think american muslims need to ultimately identify with the underlying values of tolerance, compassion, civic participation, nonviolent dispute resolution, fairness, honesty about politics and history, etc. Just like the rest of us–some people do this in every faith and belief tradition. That doesn’t mean that they need to pledge allegiance to the American state–and the American state has done a great deal to polarize this situation so that it feels like you have to pick one side or the other (with the added problem that they’ve pursued policies that would systematically alienate a thinking Muslim in the United States, imo). Nor do American Muslims need to identify with an overarching sense of Muslim unity.
By similarly posing a polarizing choice, I think you’re making it more difficult to struggle to find commonalities that transcend identity and speak to an underlying sense of “yes, I have brothers, yes I have a mother, yes I have partners, yes I have sex, yes, I eat, sleep, $hit, think, blah blah blah).” I’m not saying that this will ever be the pervasive culture and sensibility of the world (or even that I’ll be able to live up to it), but that this is what, socially, we need to strive towards–especially now when it’s so thoroughly under attack. Ultimately, it makes more sense to buy into a notion of common humanity than to buy into one side or another in a dispute that’s really about the power of nations vs. the power of elites that have been excluded from national power (among other things).
Marches will help, but what will help even more is coming up with a theological argument that destroys the jihadis’ case. I am curious about what arguments rooted in Islamic theology,
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, the Chief Imam of Al Azhar and Qaradawi have pretty much used the same logic to denounce the attacks.
The Grand Imam of Al Azhar in Egypt and the Grand Mufti in Saudi Arabia are appointed by the respected goverments in these two countries and I wonder about their ability to speak freely.
However I am going to post here the rationale against these kind of bombings by Qaradawi because Qaradawi has tremendous street cred with the Arab masses. He of course is an Arab and has/used to have an Islamic show on Al Jazeera.
Islam does not permit aggression against innocent people, whether the aggression is against life, property, or honor, and this ruling applies to everyone, regardless of post, status and prestige. In Islam, as the stateÂ’s subject is addressed with Islamic teachings, so is the ruler or caliph; he is not allowed to violate people’s rights, lives, honor, property, etc.
In the Farewell Pilgrimage, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) declared the principle that people’s lives, property, and honor are inviolable until the Day of Judgment. This ruling is not restricted to Muslims; rather, it includes non-Muslims who are not fighting Muslims. Even in case of war, Islam does not permit killing those who are not involved in fighting, such as women, children, the aged, and the monks who confine themselves to worship only.
This shouldnÂ’t raise any wonder, for Islam is a religion that prohibits aggression even against animals. Ibn `Umar, may Allah be pleased with them both, quote the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, as saying: “A woman (was made to) enter (Hell) Fire because of a cat which she tied, neither giving it food nor setting it free to eat from the vermin of the earth.” (Reported by Al-Bukhari)
If such is Islamic ruling concerning aggressive acts against animals, then, with greater reason, the punishment is bond to be severe when human being happens to be the victim of aggression, torture and terrorism.
In Islam, every one is held accountable for his own acts, not others’. No one bears the consequences of others’ faults, even his close relatives. This is the ultimate form of justice, clarified in the Glorious Qur’an, as Allah, Most High, says, (Or hath he not had news of what is in the books of Moses and Abraham who fulfilled (the commandments): That no laden one shall bear another’s load. ) (An-Najm 53: 36-38)
Therefore, itÂ’s very disgusting to see some people – who are Muslims by name– launching aggression against innocent people and taking them as scapegoats for any disagreement they have with the stateÂ’s authority!! What is the crime of the common people then?! Murder is one of heinous crimes completely abhorred in Islam, to the extent that some Muslim scholars hold the opinion that the repentance of the murderer will not be accepted by Allah, Most High. In this context, we recall the Glorious Qur’anic verse that reads, (Â…if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people) (Al-Ma’idah 5: 32)
In Islam, the notion “End justifies the means” has no place at all. It is not allowed to attain good aims through evil means, and, therefore, alms collected from unlawful avenues are not Halal (lawful). In this context, the Messenger of Allah, (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Surely, Allah is Good and never accepts but what is good.”
Thus, in Shari`ah, with all its sources– the Glorious Qur’an, the Sunnah, consensus of Muslim jurists– aggression and violation of human rights are completely forbidden.
Besides, it is the duty of the Muslim scholars to do their utmost to guide the perplexed people to the straight and upright path.
Now it has to be noted that Qaradawi has supported violently resisting the Americans in Iraq and has also stated that there are no civilians in Israel because they all have to go through mandatory military service. I am not sure how he reconciles those views with this ‘fatwa’.
I am not sure how he reconciles those views with this ‘fatwa’.
oh, you wouldn’t understand irtidad.
How is this relevant to how people will react to the specifics of the day?
the ‘good life’ is contingent on relative observations of state. american poverty is not bangladesh poverty. american wealth is not bangladesh wealth (though as far as wealth, they are not exactly pointing in the same direction, bangladeshis have many more servants per capita). i believe we must keep in mind both the most perfect island and the reality of the human condition as it is lived. the past and other spatial contexts do not justify fully my perception of the world, but they do inform my weighting of the issues at hand and the magnitude of the various principles on the final summation.
I think american muslims need to ultimately identify with the underlying values of tolerance, compassion, civic participation, nonviolent dispute resolution, fairness, honesty about politics and history, etc. Just like the rest of us–some people do this in every faith and belief tradition. That doesn’t mean that they need to pledge allegiance to the American state
1) the values are not equally distributed amongst peoples who adhere to different religions. consider the median unitarian vs. the median muslim. all movement toward utopia is not at the same rate or velocity.
2) process matters. you can not achieve the ends without some means, and i believe the nation-state is our best hope. and so yes, sometimes a smaller injustice is necessacitated by a larger good at the end of the dark tunnel. love the state that hates you so that your children may breath free. love the people that hate you so that their children may see the virtue in your brood. from the blood of the martyrs the church was born, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. ok, that was over-dramatic, but as a former hardcore libertarian i have made my pact with the evil state which compels me to forgo some of my pleasure seeking activities in the services of the greater good. for shame! the injustice. but so it is….
“In the name of New York, Washington, Bali, Nairobi, Madrid and now London, we shall have vengeance and justice”
That was from the Sun article referred earlier. I guess thats all what “they” want too. Cross purposes?
I hear a few people talking about how the ‘moderate’ muslims should denounce such acts. Then I hear the same people saying that they (the moderates) don’t ‘act’ but just ‘talk’ because they don’t want to get involved with anything bad. But then isn’t that the very purpose of the so-called denouncement you are talking about? To distance themselves…
By being a ‘moderate’ muslim, you resign the right to use religion for your argument. There in lies the flaw.
better than marching.
If we were conducting a historical evaluation on the ways in which the American state (and its components) have reacted to the attacks in 2001, then I would agree. However, I was looking at their actions in the context of the options available to them as well as (and perhaps more importantly for the point at hand) whether or not the actions they undertook were more or less likely to garner support from Muslims in the United States. You can exonerate the United States by looking at history or what actions a government like Syria’s (or even Bangladesh’s) would have undertaken given a similar circumstances, but the fact remains that the federal government gave only lip service (and to be fair the prosecutions of some bias crimes) while at the same time fostering a climate of anti-Muslim (and xenophobic) sentiment through their actions. They didn’t have to do this to the extent that they did (hence I brought up Louis Post, who held some of the powers that Ashcroft and later the Secretary of Homeland Security held in the present, and used them far more fairly).
One extreme frustration I had while I was helping people deal with Special Registration was that even if you believed that rounding up Muslims was a good idea, why would you do it in a way that provided no carrot, but only a stick? Don’t you think more people might have showed up if there had been some respect shown for people risking their well being by showing up rather than fleeing the country? Or was that the point?
I shouldn’t keep harping on Special Registration if only because I don’t want to overshadow the many, many other examples of targeting by the government. All I’m saying is that it’s understandable for people from Muslim communities to be a little apprehensive about dealing with the government these days; that’s probably why some people are afraid to call the police or the fire department, at the risk of their own lives. But my (uninformed) guess is that the level of cooperation is probably a lot higher than it would be if they were a little more cynical…or informed.
I don’t believe in teleological solutions. I believe that if we pursue values that will help, it will probably lead to a better outcome regardless of whether we understand the specifics of what that will look like (and come up with policy solutions for near term solutions as we go). If there is more work to be done in some communities or places than others, then so be it. The fact remains that the work needs to be done on those grounds in all those places.
As you can see above, I agree with the first part of what you said. I have had to reconcile myself to the state too (e.g. my stand on protectionist American labor unions has shifted markedly because I think creating a progressive culture within the United States will ultimately have greater results than a paternalistic imperialism driven by consumer activism in helping foreign workers and more generally making American foreign policy more benign).
The difference, though, is that I read what you were saying as asking people for loyalty to the American state; that’s far different from asking people to serve an effective and important role within the United States. Nation states exist and we need to deal with them, but they’re just political units–places where different interests play themselves out (usually elite, and not so great interests).
Where you call for a smaller injustice, I say that by promoting justice for themselves within the United States, building alliances with other groups that are facing similar issues (e.g. Black people and other immigrants through the War on Drugs, police harassment, and other measures), they’ll be doing more good than by joining the American government in its tunnel vision approach to terrorism. There’s no need to choose sides here politically when one side embraces death as a tactic and the other refuses to engage the problem as it really is and grant a modicum of nuance and humanity to its thinking about it. To the extent that we succumb to that polarization (“crusaders”, “evildoers”, blah blah blah) and abandon pushing basic measures of political decency, the worse off we all are. I don’t see any contradiction in supporting women’s rights in Afghanistan and Pakistan (which I was doing before it was en vogue among Islamaphobes) and opposing the U.S. government’s approach to the “War on Terror.” In fact, a responsible approach makes both of them incumbent on us.
The blood of patriots rarely produces anything except the blood of patriots of other countries (btw, that quote is more appropriately read as an encouragement of domestic activism, not a call to join the state in ending tyranny elsewhere). It’s much better to, as you suggest, focus on process–when it’s necessary to take up arms, it will be quite clear because all other solutions have been exhausted.
btw, that quote is more appropriately read as an encouragement of domestic activism, not a call to join the state in ending tyranny elsewhere
hm. well yes, i assumed it was intelligible in the context of both the french revolution and the whiskey rebellion. but in any case, you seem to misunderstand me, or, we are talking past each other. i’m not particular concerned with the ‘war on terror’ or foreign policy. muslims can be active all they want in terms of militating for their god given rights. my point is that for a CAIR they should also be a muslim american legion. certainly that is a bit much, seeing as how muslims are a recent immigrant group, but the fact remains that muslims as a group can do a lot to help prevent terrorists from attacking their country, their fellow citizens. the terrorists use muslim community contacts and good-will to latch on to a safe harbor. if i was arguing that muslims should support the war on iraq, or stick by my country right or wrong, your rebuttal would be spot on, but i’m not arguing that at all. muslims can provide services to their country at minimal cost to themselves, i’m not suggesting they go to afghanistan or iraq, there is a need from what i gather for human intelligence within western nations where immigrant enclaves are operationally societies within societies.
I wait now for the million man march by muslimns to protest those who are bring hatred upon their religion…thus far, nearly all the statements that are from muslims and oppose the terror manage to also include statements about how muslims are picked on and how American policy is in some measure responsible. Focus upon the simple fact: terror world-wide is carried out by those claiming to be followers of Islam. Those who are Muslims and feel terror and murder is wrong have yet to make their viewws massively heard. Now is the time for groups to march in solidarity and proclaim their disdain for terror. Will it happen? NO. Why? yo answer.
Yes, I felt like we weren’t really talking about the same thing.
Anyway, it’s a two way street. Many folks start out willing to help out, meet with the FBI (which is crazy) and what not, but then when you have had several years of these policies kick in that targeted entire communities, etc., it changes things. The federal government’s policies (and especially, imo, the encouragement of local and state police collaboration with federal immigration enforcement) have probably had a really damaging effect on people’s willingness to snitch on people who are really dangerous. Especially when snitching might get you prosecuted and/or deported because you gave someone a place to stay at night or otherwise helped them out in the ways that working class immigrants help each other. If the federal government had been less psychotic, I think you would have seen even more cooperation from Muslim communities (which, again, I believe already exists to a significant degree on an organizational level– for example, CAIR recently helped organize yet another community forum in New York where the FBI got to say whatever they wanted to to people in the neighborhood). See this article on what’s going on in Lodi–if you were a member of that community, would you feel comfortable approaching the FBI?
That’s what I mean by it being unfair to make these demands on Muslim communities without appreciating that the federal enforcement agencies and state and local police have done little to build or encourage that trust (setting aside the larger issue of how people with engineering degrees and the such are treated when they come here and work as undocumented immigrants). Intelligent law enforcement officials at all levels have been saying this all along, but they’ve been ignored. It’s hard to swallow someone asking Muslim communities to support “their country, their fellow citizens” (setting aside questions of citizenship for a moment) when they’re being set apart, targeted, and generally treated as threats.
But I think many Muslims in the US do it anyway to a greater degree than I would have under similar circumstances, for reasons that I can’t fully comprehend. Perhaps they’re just nicer. Or more naive.
As a postscript, I got an e-mail that described how some immigrant workers on a military base were rounded up this past week and what one government employee sees as the effect on trust (emphasis added):
A nice article that further amplifies the Islam vs. Islam point that Abhi made in his post – http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/international/europe/10neighborhood.html?hp
Well put, AM. Nothing like fear to squash free & forward thinking.
I like Friedmans Column in the New York times this week.
Excerpt The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day – to this day – no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.
When the USA attacks Fallauja and kills hundreds of innocent people, then does not allow the red cross/crescent to go in, knowing too well what they will find there. The USA has not changed in reality from one that was built on the destruction(murder and rape) of the native americans, The one that allowed the servicemen who raped and murdered an entire village(mi-lai)to getaway scott free. This is the USA that allowed all the police oficers in the Rodney King trial to getaway scott free(even with video evidence). This is the USA that holds people under detention in Guantanamo under the term ‘illegal combatants’, this term is not legal itself. The USA is not a signatory to the world court in the Hague, because it knows that many of its policies in war are illegal by world definition. The USA asks other nations like India and Pakistan to sign the NPT, while in no way pushing Israel to do the same. The USA is threatening Iran and wants to take it before the security council because the USA ‘suspects’ Iran of wanting nuclear weapons(which USA seems to have a right to posses),While it knows of Israels nuclear arsenal and helps it further to develop weapons. Americans complain of others hating them, this is not the case, because people want to live and work in the west. In actual fact its you and your government which goes around causing major mayhem and destruction. So people want to emigrate to the USA to escape this destruction. I see some people whinning that muslims should be more vocal in their condemnation of the terorists. Let me tell you that they are , just because you as a person or society don’t hear about it does’nt mean that the condemnation of such acts does not occur. Most of the major US media tows the Flag waving agenda, and cry ignorance when it suits them.
I don’t know if it counts as a major cleric, but muslim clerics in spain did issue a fatwa against Bin Laden following the Madrid train bombings.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/11/madrid.anniversary/