Islam

[CaryP]

Islam

Israeli govt,'s dirty deeds. No, it's not anti-semitic, it's anti-Israeli govt..

Cary

AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops

AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops
by Juan Cole

CBS is reporting that a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst detailed to Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans is under FBI investigation for spying for Israel. The person passed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) confidential documents, including those detailing Bush administration policy toward Iran, and AIPAC then passed them to Israel. There are wiretaps and photographs backing up the FBI case (the FBI agents involved are extremely brave to take this on).

But this espionage case is too narrow. Consider what journalist Jim Lobe wrote about Feith's Office of Special Plans (OSP) and the Pentagon Near East and South Asia (NESA) office:

\"[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neoconservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively. Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); and Michael Makovsky; an expert on neocon icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud Jerusalem Post. Along with Feith, all of the political appointees have in common a close identification with the views of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.\"

Karen Kwiatkowski was an eyewitness in NESA, and Lobe reports:

\"he recounts one incident in which she helped escort a group of half a dozen Israelis, including several generals, from the first floor reception area to Feith's office. 'We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast.' When the group arrived, she noted the book which all visitors are required to sign under special regulations that took effect after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. 'I asked his secretary, \"Do you want these guys to sign in?\" She said, \"No, these guys don't have to sign in.\"' It occurred to her, she said, that the office may have deliberately not wanted to maintain a record of the meeting.\"

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is a lobbying group that used to support whatever government was in power in Israel, and used to give money evenhandedly inside the U.S. My perception is that during the past decade AIPAC has increasingly tilted to the Likud in Israel, and to the political Right in the United States. In the 1980s, AIPAC set up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as a pro-Israeli alternative to the Brookings Institution, which it perceived to be insufficiently supportive of Israel. WINEP has largely followed AIPAC into pro-Likud positions, even though its director, Dennis Ross, is more moderate. He is a figurehead, however, serving to disguise the far right character of most of the position papers produced by long-term WINEP staff and by extremist visitors and \"associates\" (Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer are among the latter).

WINEP, being a wing of AIPAC, is enormously influential in Washington. State Department and military personnel are actually detailed there to \"learn\" about \"the Middle East\"! They would get a far more balanced \"education\" about the region in any Israeli university, since most Israeli academics are professionals, whereas WINEP is a \"think tank\" that hires by ideology.

I did some consulting with one U.S. company that had a government contract, and they asked me about WINEP position papers (many of them are just propaganda). When I said I would take them with a grain of salt, the guy said his company had \"received direction\" to pay a lot of attention to the WINEP material! So discipline is being imposed even on the private sector.

Note that over 80% of American Jews vote Democrat, that the majority of American Jews opposed the Iraq war (more were against it than in the general population), and that American Jews have been enormously important in securing civil liberties for all Americans. Moreover, Israel has been a faithful ally of the U.S. and deserves our support in ensuring its security. The Likudniks like to pretend that they represent American Jewry, but they do not. And they like to suggest that objecting to their policies is tantamount to anti-Semitism, which is sort of like suggesting that if you don't like Chile's former dictator Pinochet, you are bigoted against Latinos.

As can be seen by Lobe's list, WINEP supplies right-wing intellectuals to Republican administrations, who employ their positions to support Likud policies from within the U.S. government. They have the advantage over longtime civil servants in units like the State Department's Intelligence and Research division, insofar as they are politically connected and so have the ear of the top officials.

So, passing a few confidential documents over is a minor affair. Pro-Likud intellectuals established networks linking Defense and the national security advisers of Vice President Dick Cheney, gaining enormous influence over policy by cherry-picking and distorting intelligence to make a case for war on Saddam Hussein. And their ulterior motive was to remove the most powerful Arab military from the scene, not because it was an active threat to Israel (it wasn't) but because it was a possible deterrent to Likud plans for aggressive expansion (at the least, they want half of the West Bank, permanently).

It should be admitted that the American Likud could not make U.S. policy on its own. Its members had to make convincing arguments to Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush himself. But they were able to make those arguments, by distorting intelligence, channeling Ahmed Chalabi junk, and presenting Big Ideas to men above them that signally lacked such ideas. (Like the idea that the road to peace in Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. Ha!)

It was these WINEP and AIPAC-linked U.S. Likud backers in the Defense Department who had the Iraqi army dissolved as soon as Saddam was overthrown. This step threw Iraq into chaos and led to the deaths of nearly a thousand U.S. servicemen so far, since an Iraq without an army would inevitably depend on the U.S. military. But with the Iraqi army gone, and with Egypt and Jordan neutralized, Syria was left the only country anywhere near Israel that could make active trouble for Sharon if he completely screwed over the Palestinians. And Syria was now weak and isolated. So Sharon has had a free hand in his expansionist aggression. And, because the U.S. public has been preoccupied with Iraq, the Likud could pursue its annexation of West Bank land and its expropriation of even more Palestinians without anyone over here even noticing. It is the best of all possible worlds for the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

The Likud policies of reversing Oslo and stealing people's land and making their lives hell has produced enormous amounts of terrorism against Israel, and the Likudniks have cleverly turned that to their political advantage. Aggression and annexation is necessary, they argue, because there is terrorism. Some of them now openly speak of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, using the same argument. But when the Oslo peace process looked like it would go somewhere, terrorism tapered off (it did not end, but then peace had not been achieved).

The drawback for the U.S. in all this is that U.S. government backing for Sharon's odious policies makes it hated in the Muslim world. (Note that Muslims who oppose Israeli aggression are often tagged as \"terrorists\" by the U.S. government, but right-wing Jews who go to Palestine to colonize it, walking around with Uzi machine guns and sometimes shooting down civilians, are not \"terrorists.\") This lack of balance is one big reason that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri hit the U.S. on Sept. 11. In fact, bin Laden wanted to move up the operation to punish the U.S. for supporting Sharon's crackdown on the second Intifada.

Likud apologists have carefully planted the false story that al-Qaeda did not care about Palestine, but that is absurd. Bin Laden always complained about the occupation of the three holy cities (Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, the first two because of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and the third under Israeli occupation). When bin Laden came back from Afghanistan to Jidda in 1989, his first sermon at the local mosque was about the Israeli repression of Palestinians during the first Intifada.

Now the U.S.' occupation of Iraq is making it even more hated in the Muslim world. It is a policy hatched in part by AIPAC, WINEP, and their associated \"thinkers.\" The cynical might suggest that they actively want the U.S. involved in a violent struggle with Muslims, to make sure that the U.S. remains anti-Palestinian and so will permit Israeli expansion.

All this can happen because there is a vacuum in U.S. political discourse. A handful of special interests in the United States virtually dictate congressional policy on some issues. With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a few allies have succeeded in imposing complete censorship on both houses of Congress. No senator or representative dares make a speech on the floor of his or her institution critical of Israeli policy, even though the Israeli government often violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions (it would violate more such resolutions, except that the resolutions never got passed because only one NSC member, the U.S., routinely vetoes them on behalf of Tel Aviv.) As the Labor Party in Israel has been eclipsed by the Likud coalition, which includes many proto-fascist groups, this subservience has yoked Washington to foreign politicians who privately favor ethnic cleansing and/or aggressive warfare for the purpose of annexing the territory of neighbors.

On the rare occasion when a brave member of Congress dares stand up to this unrelenting AIPAC tyranny, that person is targeted for unelection in the next congressional campaign, with big money directed by AIPAC and/or its analogues into the coffers of the senator's or congressman's opponent. Over and over again, AIPAC has shaped the U.S. Congress in this way, so successfully that no one even dares speak out any more.

AIPAC is not all that rich or powerful, but politics in the U.S. is often evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Because many races are very close, any little extra support can help change the outcome. AIPAC can provide that little bit. Moreover, most Americans couldn't care less about the Middle East or its intractable problems, whereas the staffers at AIPAC are fanatics. If some congressman from southern Indiana knows he can pick up even a few thousand dollars and some good will from AIPAC, he may as well, since his constituents don't care anyway. That there is no countervailing force to AIPAC allows it to be effective. (That is one reason that pro-Likud American activists often express concern about the rise of the Muslim-American community and the possibility that it may develop an effective lobby.) Moreover, AIPAC leverages its power by an alliance with the Christian Right, which has adopted a bizarre ideology of \"Christian Zionism.\" It holds that the sooner the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, the sooner Christ will come back. Without millions of these Christian Zionist allies, AIPAC would be much less influential and effective.

The Founding Fathers of the United States deeply feared that a foreign government might gain this level of control over a branch of the United States government, and their fears have been vindicated.

The situation has reached comedic proportions. Congress is always drafting letters to the president, based on AIPAC templates, demanding that lopsided U.S. policy in favor of Israel be revised to be even more in favor of Israel. U.S. policy recently changed to endorse the expansion of Israeli colonies in Palestinian, West Bank territory.

Where Israel is in the right, this situation obviously is innocuous. The United States should protect Israel from aggressive attack, if necessary. United Nations members are pledged to collective security, i.e., to protecting any member nation from aggression at the hands of another. But given that Israel is a nuclear power with a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; given that Egypt and Jordan have long-lived peace treaties with Israel; and given that Syria and Lebanon are small, weak powers, there is not in fact any serious military threat to Israel in its immediate neighborhood. In contrast, Israel launched wars against neighbors in 1956, 1967, and 1982 (all of which it won so easily as to bring into question the necessity for the wars in the first place if they were defensive), and has since 1967 been assiduously colonizing Palestinian land that it militarily occupied ? all the while attempting to avoid becoming responsible for the Palestinian populations on that land. This latter policy has poisoned the entire world.

AIPAC currently has a project to shut up academics such as myself, the same way it has shut up Congress, through congressional legislation mandating \"balance\" (i.e., pro-Likud stances) in Middle East programs at American universities. How long the U.S. public will allow itself to be spied on and pushed around like this is a big question. And, with the rise of international terrorism targeting the U.S. in part over these issues, the fate of the country hangs in the balance.

If al-Qaeda succeeds in another big attack, it could well tip the country over into military rule, as Gen. Tommy Franks has suggested. That is, the fate of the Republic is in danger. And the danger comes from two directions, not just one. It comes from radical extremists in the Muslim world, who must be fought. But it also comes from radical extremists in Israel, who have key allies in the U.S. and whom the U.S. government actively supports and against whom influential Americans are afraid to speak out.

If I had been in power on Sept. 11, I'd have called up Sharon and told him he was just going to have to withdraw to 1967 borders, or face the full fury of the United States. Israel would be much better off inside those borders, anyway. It can't absorb 3 million Palestinians and retain its character, and it can't continue to hold 3 million Palestinians as stateless hostages without making itself inhumane and therefore un-Jewish. And then I'd have thrown everything the U.S. had at al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and frog-marched Bin Laden off to justice, and rebuilt Afghanistan to ensure that al-Qaeda was permanently denied a base there. Iraq, well, Iraq was contained.

Fomenting a War on Iran

Here is my take on the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.

It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, the United States would take out Iraq, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying).

Franklin is a reserve Air Force colonel and former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst. He was an attach? at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv at one point, which some might now see as suspicious. After the Cold War ended, Franklin became concerned with Iran as a threat to Israel and the U.S., and learned a little Persian (not very much ? I met him once at a conference and he could only manage a few halting phrases of Persian). Franklin has a strong Brooklyn accent and says he is \"from the projects.\" I was told by someone at the Pentagon that he is not Jewish, despite his strong association with the predominantly Jewish neoconservatives. I know that he is very close to Paul Wolfowitz. He seems a canny man and a political operator, and if he gave documents to AIPAC it was not an act of simple stupidity, as some observers have suggested. It was part of some clever scheme that became too clever by half.

Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became the Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the \"go-to\" person on Iran for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This situation is pretty tragic, since Franklin is not a real Iranist. His main brief appears to have been to find ways to push a policy of overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been taken care of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise Michael Ledeen for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some way. Franklin was also close to Harold Rhode, a longtime Middle East specialist in the Defense Department who has cultivated far right pro-Likud cronies for many years, more or less establishing a cell within the Department of Defense.

The UPI via Dawn reports that \"another under-investigation official, Mr. Rhode, 'practically lived out of [Ahmed] Chalabi's office.' Intelligence sources said that CIA operatives observed Mr. Rhode as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel, discussing U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects and a discussion of Iraq assets.\"

Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris have just published a piece in the Washington Monthly that details Franklin's meetings with corrupt Iranian arms dealer and con man Manucher Ghorbanifar, who had in the 1980s played a key role in the Iran-contra scandal. (For more on the interviews with Ghorbanifar, see Laura Rozen's weblog). It is absolutely key that the meetings were attended also by Rhode, Ledeen and the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, as well as Rome's Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino.

The right-wing government of corrupt billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, including Martino, was a big supporter of an Iraq war. Moreover, we know that the forged documents falsely purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger originated with a former SISMI agent. Watch the reporting of Josh Marshall for more on this SISMI/Ledeen/Rhode connection.

But journalist Matthew Yglesias has already tipped us to a key piece of information. The Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the U.S. State Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were noticed. Yglesias quotes from the Senate report on the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger:

\"The INR [that's State Department intelligence] nuclear analyst told the Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the [forged] documents was that a companion document ? a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium ? mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien [note: that's not the same as Nigerian] Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as 'completely implausible.' Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document [the stamp was supposed to establish the documents bona fides], the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates.\"

Journalist Eric Margolis notes of SISMI:

\"SISMI has long been notorious for far right, even neo-fascist, leanings. According to Italian judicial investigators, SISMI was deeply involved in numerous plots against Italy?s democratic government, including the 1980 Bologna train station terrorist bombing that left 85 dead and 200 injured. Senior SISMI officers were in cahoots with celebrated swindler Roberto Calvi, the neo-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge, other extreme rightist groups trying to destabilize Italy, the Washington neocon operative, Michael Ledeen, and the Iran-Contra conspirators. SISMI works hand in glove with U.S., British and Israeli intelligence. In the 1960s and 70s, SISMI reportedly carried out numerous operations for CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian president?s palace, and foreign embassies. Italy?s civilian intelligence service, SISDE, associated with Italy?s political center-left, has long been a bitter rival of SISMI. After CIA rejected the Niger file, it was eagerly snapped up by VP Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who were urgently seeking any reason, no matter how specious, to invade Iraq. Cheney passed the phony data to Bush, who used it in his January 2003 address to the nation in spite of warnings from CIA. . . .\"

So Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode, all of them pro-Likud operatives, just happen to be meeting with SISMI (the proto-fascist purveyor of the false Niger uranium story about Iraq and the alleged Iran-Iraq plot against the rest of the world) and corrupt Iranian businessman and would-be revolutionary Ghorbanifar in Europe. The most reasonable conclusion is that they were conspiring together about the Next Campaign after Iraq, which they had already begun setting in train, which is to get Iran.

But now The Jerusalem Post reveals that at least one of the meetings was quite specific with regard to an attempt to torpedo better US/Iran relations:

\"The purpose of the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaeda operatives in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iraq-based rebel Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.\"

The neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the Mujahadeen-e Khalq Organization, or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the U.S. recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from \"scholars\" associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, such as ex-Trotskyite Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the U.S. overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran.

So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.

Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better U.S.-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their prot?g?s, the MEK.

Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the United States.

The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the Israelis. The FBI is construing these actions as espionage or something close to it. But that is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, \"Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?\" And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason ? not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write U.S. policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war.

With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).

Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a right-wing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.

Yeah, it's a long ass post, but one worthy of reading.

 

[Unintentional]

Islam

When I was in the Navy, they caught a father/son spy team spying for Israel. I don't remember the name, but I am sure it is public knowledge. The info they got for Israel, they then sold to Soviets. The Soviet navy caught up with us as fast as China's missle program caught up with us under Clinton. It is very discouraging when our own allies spy and betray us. I don't rmember teh father son team's name, but i do recall they definitely wanted the death penalty. I don't remember the final outcome, but it was between life in prison or exile to Israel (where they would be retired as heroes of the state of Israel).

 

[Phoenix]

Islam

Originally posted by CaryP@Sep 9 2004, 03:21 PM
Not all muslims are \"bad guys\" - an obvious statement.? But an article today in the NY Times caught my attention and thought some of you would apprecite it.

Cary

Massacre Draws Self-Criticism in Muslim Press

Massacre Draws Self-Criticism in Muslim Press
By JOHN KIFNER

Published: September 9, 2004

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 8 - The brutal school siege in Russia, with hundreds of children dead and wounded, has touched off an unusual round of self-criticism and introspection in the Muslim and Arab world.

\"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims,\" Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched satellite television station Al Arabiya said in one of the most striking of these commentaries.

Writing in the pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat, Mr. Rashed said it was \"shameful and degrading\" that not only were the Beslan hijackers Muslims, but so were the killers of Nepalese workers in Iraq; the attackers of residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar, Saudi Arabia; the women believed to have blown up two Russian airplanes last week; and Osama bin Laden himself.

\"The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim,\" he wrote. \"What a pathetic record. What an abominable 'achievement.' Does this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?\"

Mr. Rashed, like several other commentators, singled out Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a senior Egyptian cleric living in Qatar who broadcasts an influential program on Al Jazeera television and who has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for the killing of American and foreign \"occupiers\" in Iraq, military and civilian.

\"Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheik allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians,\" he wrote. \"How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?\"

Mr. Rashed recalled that in the past, leftists and nationalists in the Arab world were considered a \"menace\" for their adoption of violence, and the mosque was a haven of \"peace and reconciliation\" by contrast.

\"Then came the neo-Muslims,\" he said. \"An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.\"

A columnist for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Siyassa, Faisal al-Qina'I, also took aim at Sheik Qaradawi. \"It is saddening,\" he wrote, \"to read and hear from those who are supposed to be Muslim clerics, like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others of his kind, that instead of defending true Islam, they encourage these cruel actions and permit decapitation, hostage taking and murder.\"

In Jordan, a group of Muslim religious figures, meeting with the religious affairs minister, Ahmed Heleil, issued a statement on Wednesday saying the seizing of the school and subsequent massacre \"was dedicated to distorting the pure image of Islam.''

\"This terrorist act contradicts the principles of our true Muslim religion and its noble values,\" the statement said.

Writing in the Jordanian daily Ad Dustour, columnist Bater Wardam noted the propensity in the Arab world to \"place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists and the American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case.''

\"They came from our midst,\" he wrote of those who had kidnapped and killed civilians in Iraq, blown up commuter trains in Spain, turned airliners into bombs and shot the children in Ossetia.

\"They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils and call for the defense of Islamic causes,'' he said. \"Therefore we must all raise our voices, disown them and oppose all these crimes.\"

In Beirut, Rami G. Khouri editor of the Daily Star, wrote that while most Arabs \"identified strongly and willingly\" with armed Palestinian or Lebanese guerrillas fighting Israeli occupation, \"all of us today are dehumanized and brutalized by the images of Arabs kidnapping and beheading foreign hostages.\"

Calling for a global strategy to reduce terror, he traced what he called \"this ugly trek\" in the Arab world to \"the home-grown sense of indignity, humiliation, denial and degradation that has increasingly plagued many of our young men and women.\"

A Palestinian columnist, Hassan al-Batal, wrote in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al Ayyam that the \"day of horror in the school\" should be designated an international day for the condemnation of terrorism. \"There are no mitigating circumstances for the inhuman horror and the height of barbarism,\" he said of the school attack.

In Egypt, the semi-official newspaper Al Ahram called the events \"an ugly crime against humanity.\"

In Saudi Arabia, newspapers tightly controlled by the government - which finds itself under attack from Islamic fundamentalists - were even more scathing.

Under the headline \"Butchers in the Name of Allah,\" a columnist in the government daily Okaz, Khaled Hamed al-Suleiman, wrote that \"the propagandists of jihad succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam.''

\"They turned today's Islam into something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians and exploding people,'' he said. \"They have fixed the image of Muslims in the eyes of the world as barbarians and savages who are not good for anything except slaughtering people.\"

\"The time has come for Muslims to be the first to come out against those interested in abducting Islam in the same way they abducted innocent children,'' he added. \"This is the true jihad these days, and this is our obligation, as believing Muslims, toward our monotheistic religion.\"

​

It is unfortunate but I read this in much the same manner you must have read arnold's speech. I don't believe one word of this. It really looks like window dressing to me. This entire "distorting the pure image of Islam" to me is like the phrase "give social security reform a chance".

 

[Phoenix]

Islam

Originally posted by CaryP@Sep 9 2004, 06:56 PM
Israeli govt,'s dirty deeds. No, it's not anti-semitic, it's anti-Israeli govt..

Cary

AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops

AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops
by Juan Cole

CBS is reporting that a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst detailed to Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans is under FBI investigation for spying for Israel. The person passed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) confidential documents, including those detailing Bush administration policy toward Iran, and AIPAC then passed them to Israel. There are wiretaps and photographs backing up the FBI case (the FBI agents involved are extremely brave to take this on).

But this espionage case is too narrow. Consider what journalist Jim Lobe wrote about Feith's Office of Special Plans (OSP) and the Pentagon Near East and South Asia (NESA) office:

\"[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neoconservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively. Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); and Michael Makovsky; an expert on neocon icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud Jerusalem Post. Along with Feith, all of the political appointees have in common a close identification with the views of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.\"

Karen Kwiatkowski was an eyewitness in NESA, and Lobe reports:

\"he recounts one incident in which she helped escort a group of half a dozen Israelis, including several generals, from the first floor reception area to Feith's office. 'We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast.' When the group arrived, she noted the book which all visitors are required to sign under special regulations that took effect after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. 'I asked his secretary, \"Do you want these guys to sign in?\" She said, \"No, these guys don't have to sign in.\"' It occurred to her, she said, that the office may have deliberately not wanted to maintain a record of the meeting.\"

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is a lobbying group that used to support whatever government was in power in Israel, and used to give money evenhandedly inside the U.S. My perception is that during the past decade AIPAC has increasingly tilted to the Likud in Israel, and to the political Right in the United States. In the 1980s, AIPAC set up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as a pro-Israeli alternative to the Brookings Institution, which it perceived to be insufficiently supportive of Israel. WINEP has largely followed AIPAC into pro-Likud positions, even though its director, Dennis Ross, is more moderate. He is a figurehead, however, serving to disguise the far right character of most of the position papers produced by long-term WINEP staff and by extremist visitors and \"associates\" (Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer are among the latter).

WINEP, being a wing of AIPAC, is enormously influential in Washington. State Department and military personnel are actually detailed there to \"learn\" about \"the Middle East\"! They would get a far more balanced \"education\" about the region in any Israeli university, since most Israeli academics are professionals, whereas WINEP is a \"think tank\" that hires by ideology.

I did some consulting with one U.S. company that had a government contract, and they asked me about WINEP position papers (many of them are just propaganda). When I said I would take them with a grain of salt, the guy said his company had \"received direction\" to pay a lot of attention to the WINEP material! So discipline is being imposed even on the private sector.

Note that over 80% of American Jews vote Democrat, that the majority of American Jews opposed the Iraq war (more were against it than in the general population), and that American Jews have been enormously important in securing civil liberties for all Americans. Moreover, Israel has been a faithful ally of the U.S. and deserves our support in ensuring its security. The Likudniks like to pretend that they represent American Jewry, but they do not. And they like to suggest that objecting to their policies is tantamount to anti-Semitism, which is sort of like suggesting that if you don't like Chile's former dictator Pinochet, you are bigoted against Latinos.

As can be seen by Lobe's list, WINEP supplies right-wing intellectuals to Republican administrations, who employ their positions to support Likud policies from within the U.S. government. They have the advantage over longtime civil servants in units like the State Department's Intelligence and Research division, insofar as they are politically connected and so have the ear of the top officials.

So, passing a few confidential documents over is a minor affair. Pro-Likud intellectuals established networks linking Defense and the national security advisers of Vice President Dick Cheney, gaining enormous influence over policy by cherry-picking and distorting intelligence to make a case for war on Saddam Hussein. And their ulterior motive was to remove the most powerful Arab military from the scene, not because it was an active threat to Israel (it wasn't) but because it was a possible deterrent to Likud plans for aggressive expansion (at the least, they want half of the West Bank, permanently).

It should be admitted that the American Likud could not make U.S. policy on its own. Its members had to make convincing arguments to Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush himself. But they were able to make those arguments, by distorting intelligence, channeling Ahmed Chalabi junk, and presenting Big Ideas to men above them that signally lacked such ideas. (Like the idea that the road to peace in Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. Ha!)

It was these WINEP and AIPAC-linked U.S. Likud backers in the Defense Department who had the Iraqi army dissolved as soon as Saddam was overthrown. This step threw Iraq into chaos and led to the deaths of nearly a thousand U.S. servicemen so far, since an Iraq without an army would inevitably depend on the U.S. military. But with the Iraqi army gone, and with Egypt and Jordan neutralized, Syria was left the only country anywhere near Israel that could make active trouble for Sharon if he completely screwed over the Palestinians. And Syria was now weak and isolated. So Sharon has had a free hand in his expansionist aggression. And, because the U.S. public has been preoccupied with Iraq, the Likud could pursue its annexation of West Bank land and its expropriation of even more Palestinians without anyone over here even noticing. It is the best of all possible worlds for the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

The Likud policies of reversing Oslo and stealing people's land and making their lives hell has produced enormous amounts of terrorism against Israel, and the Likudniks have cleverly turned that to their political advantage. Aggression and annexation is necessary, they argue, because there is terrorism. Some of them now openly speak of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, using the same argument. But when the Oslo peace process looked like it would go somewhere, terrorism tapered off (it did not end, but then peace had not been achieved).

The drawback for the U.S. in all this is that U.S. government backing for Sharon's odious policies makes it hated in the Muslim world. (Note that Muslims who oppose Israeli aggression are often tagged as \"terrorists\" by the U.S. government, but right-wing Jews who go to Palestine to colonize it, walking around with Uzi machine guns and sometimes shooting down civilians, are not \"terrorists.\") This lack of balance is one big reason that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri hit the U.S. on Sept. 11. In fact, bin Laden wanted to move up the operation to punish the U.S. for supporting Sharon's crackdown on the second Intifada.

Likud apologists have carefully planted the false story that al-Qaeda did not care about Palestine, but that is absurd. Bin Laden always complained about the occupation of the three holy cities (Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, the first two because of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and the third under Israeli occupation). When bin Laden came back from Afghanistan to Jidda in 1989, his first sermon at the local mosque was about the Israeli repression of Palestinians during the first Intifada.

Now the U.S.' occupation of Iraq is making it even more hated in the Muslim world. It is a policy hatched in part by AIPAC, WINEP, and their associated \"thinkers.\" The cynical might suggest that they actively want the U.S. involved in a violent struggle with Muslims, to make sure that the U.S. remains anti-Palestinian and so will permit Israeli expansion.

All this can happen because there is a vacuum in U.S. political discourse. A handful of special interests in the United States virtually dictate congressional policy on some issues. With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a few allies have succeeded in imposing complete censorship on both houses of Congress. No senator or representative dares make a speech on the floor of his or her institution critical of Israeli policy, even though the Israeli government often violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions (it would violate more such resolutions, except that the resolutions never got passed because only one NSC member, the U.S., routinely vetoes them on behalf of Tel Aviv.) As the Labor Party in Israel has been eclipsed by the Likud coalition, which includes many proto-fascist groups, this subservience has yoked Washington to foreign politicians who privately favor ethnic cleansing and/or aggressive warfare for the purpose of annexing the territory of neighbors.

On the rare occasion when a brave member of Congress dares stand up to this unrelenting AIPAC tyranny, that person is targeted for unelection in the next congressional campaign, with big money directed by AIPAC and/or its analogues into the coffers of the senator's or congressman's opponent. Over and over again, AIPAC has shaped the U.S. Congress in this way, so successfully that no one even dares speak out any more.

AIPAC is not all that rich or powerful, but politics in the U.S. is often evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Because many races are very close, any little extra support can help change the outcome. AIPAC can provide that little bit. Moreover, most Americans couldn't care less about the Middle East or its intractable problems, whereas the staffers at AIPAC are fanatics. If some congressman from southern Indiana knows he can pick up even a few thousand dollars and some good will from AIPAC, he may as well, since his constituents don't care anyway. That there is no countervailing force to AIPAC allows it to be effective. (That is one reason that pro-Likud American activists often express concern about the rise of the Muslim-American community and the possibility that it may develop an effective lobby.) Moreover, AIPAC leverages its power by an alliance with the Christian Right, which has adopted a bizarre ideology of \"Christian Zionism.\" It holds that the sooner the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, the sooner Christ will come back. Without millions of these Christian Zionist allies, AIPAC would be much less influential and effective.

The Founding Fathers of the United States deeply feared that a foreign government might gain this level of control over a branch of the United States government, and their fears have been vindicated.

The situation has reached comedic proportions. Congress is always drafting letters to the president, based on AIPAC templates, demanding that lopsided U.S. policy in favor of Israel be revised to be even more in favor of Israel. U.S. policy recently changed to endorse the expansion of Israeli colonies in Palestinian, West Bank territory.

Where Israel is in the right, this situation obviously is innocuous. The United States should protect Israel from aggressive attack, if necessary. United Nations members are pledged to collective security, i.e., to protecting any member nation from aggression at the hands of another. But given that Israel is a nuclear power with a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; given that Egypt and Jordan have long-lived peace treaties with Israel; and given that Syria and Lebanon are small, weak powers, there is not in fact any serious military threat to Israel in its immediate neighborhood. In contrast, Israel launched wars against neighbors in 1956, 1967, and 1982 (all of which it won so easily as to bring into question the necessity for the wars in the first place if they were defensive), and has since 1967 been assiduously colonizing Palestinian land that it militarily occupied – all the while attempting to avoid becoming responsible for the Palestinian populations on that land. This latter policy has poisoned the entire world.

AIPAC currently has a project to shut up academics such as myself, the same way it has shut up Congress, through congressional legislation mandating \"balance\" (i.e., pro-Likud stances) in Middle East programs at American universities. How long the U.S. public will allow itself to be spied on and pushed around like this is a big question. And, with the rise of international terrorism targeting the U.S. in part over these issues, the fate of the country hangs in the balance.

If al-Qaeda succeeds in another big attack, it could well tip the country over into military rule, as Gen. Tommy Franks has suggested. That is, the fate of the Republic is in danger. And the danger comes from two directions, not just one. It comes from radical extremists in the Muslim world, who must be fought. But it also comes from radical extremists in Israel, who have key allies in the U.S. and whom the U.S. government actively supports and against whom influential Americans are afraid to speak out.

If I had been in power on Sept. 11, I'd have called up Sharon and told him he was just going to have to withdraw to 1967 borders, or face the full fury of the United States. Israel would be much better off inside those borders, anyway. It can't absorb 3 million Palestinians and retain its character, and it can't continue to hold 3 million Palestinians as stateless hostages without making itself inhumane and therefore un-Jewish. And then I'd have thrown everything the U.S. had at al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and frog-marched Bin Laden off to justice, and rebuilt Afghanistan to ensure that al-Qaeda was permanently denied a base there. Iraq, well, Iraq was contained.

Fomenting a War on Iran

Here is my take on the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.

It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, the United States would take out Iraq, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying).

Franklin is a reserve Air Force colonel and former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst. He was an attach? at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv at one point, which some might now see as suspicious. After the Cold War ended, Franklin became concerned with Iran as a threat to Israel and the U.S., and learned a little Persian (not very much – I met him once at a conference and he could only manage a few halting phrases of Persian). Franklin has a strong Brooklyn accent and says he is \"from the projects.\" I was told by someone at the Pentagon that he is not Jewish, despite his strong association with the predominantly Jewish neoconservatives. I know that he is very close to Paul Wolfowitz. He seems a canny man and a political operator, and if he gave documents to AIPAC it was not an act of simple stupidity, as some observers have suggested. It was part of some clever scheme that became too clever by half.

Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became the Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the \"go-to\" person on Iran for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This situation is pretty tragic, since Franklin is not a real Iranist. His main brief appears to have been to find ways to push a policy of overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been taken care of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise Michael Ledeen for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some way. Franklin was also close to Harold Rhode, a longtime Middle East specialist in the Defense Department who has cultivated far right pro-Likud cronies for many years, more or less establishing a cell within the Department of Defense.

The UPI via Dawn reports that \"another under-investigation official, Mr. Rhode, 'practically lived out of [Ahmed] Chalabi's office.' Intelligence sources said that CIA operatives observed Mr. Rhode as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel, discussing U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects and a discussion of Iraq assets.\"

Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris have just published a piece in the Washington Monthly that details Franklin's meetings with corrupt Iranian arms dealer and con man Manucher Ghorbanifar, who had in the 1980s played a key role in the Iran-contra scandal. (For more on the interviews with Ghorbanifar, see Laura Rozen's weblog). It is absolutely key that the meetings were attended also by Rhode, Ledeen and the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, as well as Rome's Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino.

The right-wing government of corrupt billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, including Martino, was a big supporter of an Iraq war. Moreover, we know that the forged documents falsely purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger originated with a former SISMI agent. Watch the reporting of Josh Marshall for more on this SISMI/Ledeen/Rhode connection.

But journalist Matthew Yglesias has already tipped us to a key piece of information. The Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the U.S. State Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were noticed. Yglesias quotes from the Senate report on the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger:

\"The INR [that's State Department intelligence] nuclear analyst told the Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the [forged] documents was that a companion document – a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium – mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien [note: that's not the same as Nigerian] Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as 'completely implausible.' Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document [the stamp was supposed to establish the documents bona fides], the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates.\"

Journalist Eric Margolis notes of SISMI:

\"SISMI has long been notorious for far right, even neo-fascist, leanings. According to Italian judicial investigators, SISMI was deeply involved in numerous plots against Italy’s democratic government, including the 1980 Bologna train station terrorist bombing that left 85 dead and 200 injured. Senior SISMI officers were in cahoots with celebrated swindler Roberto Calvi, the neo-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge, other extreme rightist groups trying to destabilize Italy, the Washington neocon operative, Michael Ledeen, and the Iran-Contra conspirators. SISMI works hand in glove with U.S., British and Israeli intelligence. In the 1960s and 70s, SISMI reportedly carried out numerous operations for CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian president’s palace, and foreign embassies. Italy’s civilian intelligence service, SISDE, associated with Italy’s political center-left, has long been a bitter rival of SISMI. After CIA rejected the Niger file, it was eagerly snapped up by VP Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who were urgently seeking any reason, no matter how specious, to invade Iraq. Cheney passed the phony data to Bush, who used it in his January 2003 address to the nation in spite of warnings from CIA. . . .\"

So Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode, all of them pro-Likud operatives, just happen to be meeting with SISMI (the proto-fascist purveyor of the false Niger uranium story about Iraq and the alleged Iran-Iraq plot against the rest of the world) and corrupt Iranian businessman and would-be revolutionary Ghorbanifar in Europe. The most reasonable conclusion is that they were conspiring together about the Next Campaign after Iraq, which they had already begun setting in train, which is to get Iran.

But now The Jerusalem Post reveals that at least one of the meetings was quite specific with regard to an attempt to torpedo better US/Iran relations:

\"The purpose of the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaeda operatives in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iraq-based rebel Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.\"

The neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the Mujahadeen-e Khalq Organization, or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the U.S. recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from \"scholars\" associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, such as ex-Trotskyite Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the U.S. overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran.

So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.

Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better U.S.-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their prot?g?s, the MEK.

Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the United States.

The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the Israelis. The FBI is construing these actions as espionage or something close to it. But that is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, \"Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?\" And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason – not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write U.S. policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war.

With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).

Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a right-wing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.

Yeah, it's a long ass post, but one worthy of reading.

​

I am going to sugest that this post is off topic. It should be moved to a topic about Isreal. Satan can you splice this post and create a new topic about Isreal?

Please keep further posts on this topic focused on Islam.

 

[Phoenix]

Islam

http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/a...di/vpopia2.html

Aditi Chaturvedi
Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia - Part 2

In 570 AD, the year of Muhammad's birth, Arabia was a thriving, rich and varied Vedic culture. Although monotheism in the forms of Christianity and Judaism were known to the people of Arvasthan, they were undeterred in their uncompromising faith to the religion of their ancestors: Hinduism . Every household had an idol of a Hindu god or goddess. There were hundreds of sacred groves, places of pilgrimage, and temples which were sanctuaries containing images of the entire range of Vedic gods. The temples in addition to being the religious focus of the Arabs, were also the cultural centres of learning. It was the temples that were the venues of literary and poetry competitions, of glorious festivals.

The virtues most highly prized by people of Arvasthan were bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, loyalty to one's tribe, and generosity to the needy and the poor. They proudly upheld the value of tolerance in matters of religious practice and belief. The respect they showed towards other people's religions was fully in keeping with their Vedic spiritual tradition.

The status of women was that of pride and equal respect. How could it be otherwise with a people whose chief deity was the goddess Durga (Alla). Women married men of their choice and were financially independent. They were entrepeneurs, artisans, poets and even warriors! Later on Muhammad would marry Khadija, who was not only a wealthy merchant but also in the position to choose her own husband. This clearly demonstrates the level of freedom women enjoyed in Vedic Arabia. Hind, who was the wife of Muhammad's chief enemy Abu Sufyan, herself participated in the battlefield.

Hind opposed Muhammad tooth and nail. She followed her husband to the battlefield and when Abu Sufyan surrendered Mecca to Muhammad without a fight she caught hold of him in the marketplace and cried:

\"KILL this fat greasy bladder of lard! What a rotten protector of the people\"

When Muhammad tried to baptise her & asked her not to commit adultery , She spat out the bitter words:

\"A free woman does not commit adultery!\"

How proud this woman was of the rights and privileges that her Vedic society had invested to her!

It was Islam that extinguished the light of knowledge in Vedic Arabia. It is ironic that the man who brought about such darkness himself belonged to the Qurayshi Tribe of Mecca. The Qurayshi were particularly devoted to Allah (Durga) and the famous Shivling of the Kaaba Temple. The fact that the Shivling remains to this day in the Kaaba is solely due to the fact that it happened to be the Qurayshi tribe's faceless Family Deity. As I mentioned before Muhammad's name itself came from Mahadeva, which is another cognate for Lord Shiva. Muhammad's own uncle, Umar-Bin-E-Hassham was a staunch Hindu and fervent devotee of Lord Shiva. He was a renowned poet and wrote many verses in praise of Shiva. One of these has survived on page 235 of Sair-Ul-Okul and reads as follows:

Kafavomal fikra min ulumin Tab asayru
Kaluwan amataul Hawa was Tajakhru
We Tajakhayroba udan Kalalwade-E Liboawa
Walukayanay jatally, hay Yauma Tab asayru
Wa Abalolha ajabu armeeman MAHADEVA
Manojail ilamuddin minhum wa sayattaru
Wa Sahabi Kay-yam feema-Kamil MINDAY Yauman
Wa Yakulum no latabahan foeennak Tawjjaru
Massayaray akhalakan hasanan Kullahum
Najumum aja- at Summa gabul HINDU

which translates as:

The man who may spend his life in sin
and irreligion or waste it in lechery and wrath
If at least he relent and return to
righteousness can he be saved?
If but once he worship Mahadeva with a pure
heart, he will attain the ultimate in spirituality.
Oh Lord Shiva exchange my entire life for but
a day's sojourn in India where one attains salvation.
But one pilgrimage there secures for one all
merit and company of the truly great.


Muhammad's uncle was one of the resident priests of the Shiv temple known as \"Kaaba\". This sacred sanctum was decorated in an extremely rich and beautiful fashion. The Kaaba was astronomically oriented to face the winds. The minor axis of the rectangular base of the Kaaba was solistically aligned towards summer sunrise and winter sunset. It contained 360 statues of Vedic deities and was a shrine primarily associated with sun worship. The temple was an architectural representation of an interlocking set of theories covering virtually all creation and comprehending chemistry, physics, cosmology, meteorology and medicine. Each wall or corner of the Kaaba was associated with a specific region of the world. Thus this glorious Hindu temple was made to symbolically represent a microcosm of the universe. The Arabs would face east when praying. This representation of a microcosm demonstrated by the eight directional structure was derived from the Tantric pattern (Refer to Figure 1) of Hinduism. Right at the centre of the Kaaba was the octogonal pedestal of Bramha the creator. Today this very pedestal is called Maqam-E-Ibrahim by the Muslims.


Figure 1.
A tantric pattern which defines the structure of Kaaba

However, more significant was the fact that the Kaaba was an extremely rich and ornate temple. On its walls hung innumerable gold plaques commemorating the winners of the annual poetry competition known as the Okaj fair. There were gold, silver and precious gems everywhere. It is no wonder that Muhammad armed with his facade of a new brand of religion set out to capture the immense wealth of the Vedic shrine of Mecca. After plundering the riches of the Kaaba, the wealth enabled him to systematically destroy all traces of the religion that threatened him so directly. It is an indisputable fact that money will make any low criminal devoutly religious in a hurry.

Despite the fact that Muhammad had to destroy all traces of Hinduism in order to make his \"new religion\" work, he knew that in order to fool people convincingly he would have to borrow from the Vedic culture that surrounded him. Being illiterate he picked out rituals and symbols that he didn't understand and distorted and falsified them for his own ends. Here is a list of these distortions:
Muhammad destroyed all 360 idols, but even he could not summon the courage to completely obliterate the Shivling in the Kaaba. He entered the temple and kissed the black stone. The Shivling was so sacred that the man who so detested idol- worship ended up kissing the largest idol in the Kaaba. Later his followers in a fit of piety broke the Shivling and then out of remorse repatched it together again. Today it lies broken at seven places and held together by a silver band studded with silver nails, bearing the name \"Sangey Aswad\" which came from the Sanskrit Ashwet meaning non-white or black stone.

He jumbled up the Sanskrit words Nama and Yaja (which meant \"bowing and worshipping\" respectively) into a combination word Namaz and used that to describe his prescribed method of prayer.

Because the Vedic custom was to pray facing the East, in his hatred for all things Hindu, he directed his followers to pray facing only the west.

The method of circling around a shrine seven times in a clockwise direction is an ancient Vedic custom. Muhammad with his lack of originality decided that the 7 ritual perambulations should be retained but again in his hatred of all things Vedic decided the direction of the perambulations should be anti-clockwise.

With his phobia of all things Vedic, Muhammad knew that the greatest reminder and threat to his forced brand of religion were the beautiful Vedic idols of Arabic temples. Thus he destroyed every idol he could find and made idol worship the greatest crime for a Muslim. Such a man could never have comprehended how an abstract concept can be conveyed through a symbolic representation in the form of an image. Thus he made all image representation a sin as well.

Vedic religion is known for its ancient oral tradition. It is well known that the Vedic culture emphasized oral debate and expression far more than the written word. In adition the oral recitation of Vedic scriptures was always done in a lyrical fashion, utilizing music and thus reaching a height of expression. In fear of this musical tradition Muhammad decided to forbid Music.

All Arabic copies of the Koran have the mysterious figure 786 imprinted on them . No Arabic scholar has been able to determine the choice of this particular number as divine. It is an established fact that Muhammad was illiterate therefore it is obvious that he would not be able to differentiate numbers from letters. This \"magical\" number is none other than the Vedic holy letter \"OM\" written in Sanskrit (Refer to figure 2). Anyone who knows Sanskrit can try reading the symbol for \"OM\" backwards in the Arabic way and magically the numbers 786 will appear! Muslims in their ignorance simply do not realise that this special number is nothing more than the holiest of Vedic symbols misread.


Figure 2.
Read from right to left this figure
of OM represents the numbers 786

There are many such instances where the symbols and rituals of Vedic culture were completely distorted and falsified by Muhammad in his bid to \"create\" his brand new religion. However in his haste to deceive and because of his ignorance and illiteracy, thousands of Vedic symbols still remain. Although they have been distorted beyond imagination, they still remain as solemn reminders of Arabia's glorious Vedic past. They can never be supressed.

In fact the rise of Islam put a full stop to all the previous knowledge of Arabia. The imperialistic message of Islam diverted all energies into raiding, looting and destruction. The incentive to learn and preserve the Vedic wisdom that had thrived in Arabia for so many centuries, was wiped out by the brutal pressure of Islam. Making easy money through loot and massacre was far more appealing than upholding the tenets of ancient knowledge. Gone were the schools, teachers, libraries, poets, artists, philosophers and scholars that had littered the Vedic landscape of Arabia like stars. Everyone had to become a raider if not from choice then for the sake of surviving the absolute intolerance of dissenters, that Islam preached. Thus was the light of learning extinguished in Arabia. All that remained was the Koran, the Kalma and the murderous hatred of anything Non-Muslim.

In my next article I will explore how the Arabs fought to keep the integrity and pride of their Vedic culture alive in the face of the violent, unjust and murderous destruction caused by the followers of Islam.

 

[Phoenix]

Islam

http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/a...di/vpopia2.html

Ram Swarup
Fundamentalism is not Accidental but Essential to Islam

Mr. Mushirul Hasan's innocuous opposition to the ban on The Satanic Verses has stirred a hornet's nest. He attempted an apology but could not save himself from the hounds. On May 22, the fire-eating Imam of Jama Masjid declared from the pulpit that 'anyone who defends Salman Rushdie is defiling Islam'. The students of the Jamia Millia shouted: \"Qaum ka gaddar, Maut ka haqdar\"( Betrayer of the community, deserver of death).

Did Mr. Hasan badly miscalculate? Did he not realize the moral pressures under which he was working? Or, did he think he could brazen it out and earn an instant reputation as a liberal and a progressive without having to pay a price for it?

Whatever his compulsions, the episode has proved again that there are not many Muslim liberals around, that they have to work under great pressure, and that though they might establish their credentials cheaply among Hindu secularists, they will have to work at a more fundamental level to deserve it.

The Jamia Millia controversy offered its own dilemma to India's secularists who have a close alliance with Islamism. The alliance works under a veneer of liberal-sounding slogans. But when the Muslims themselves are divided, the secularists too are paralysed and have recourse to equivocation. To retain their ideological face, they must appear to support the Muslim liberals, but in practice they go along with the Bukharis, Ali Mians, Saits and Shahabuddins. The sleight of hand satisfies no party. The Muslim liberals feel let down. The Muslim fundamentalists feel the secularists must follow the mainstream Islam more gracefully. They expect the Hindu secularists to abandon hypocrisy and own up to the alliance with Islam.

The fundamentalists have repeatedly proved that the so called Muslim liberals do not matter. It is they who represent the authentic voice of Islam. That is, the voice of the Quran and the Sunnah, and Muslim law and history. They expect Hindu secularists to realize this.

Muslim fundamentalists have proved that Islam's scripture, its Sunnah, its canonical writings and its history are on their side. A book like The Satanic Verses is blasphemous and the punishment of its author is death. This was clear from the controversy that followed the banning of the book and the death fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie. The Muslim world was seized by a paroxysm of hate and demanded his blood. The author had few defenders even on compassionate grounds in his community. Muslims in India were no exception.

But there was one exception. Mr. Wahid-aldin, editor of 'Al-Risaala', wrote against the death sentence. He based his arguments not on the principle of free speech, but on humanitarian grounds. He argued the death sentence was against the spirit of Islamic scriptures and law and it had no support in Islam's history. He tried to present a human face of Islam.

The effort is commendable, but it was at the expense of historical truth and the subsequent controversy demonstrated this. His antagonists had no difficulty demolishing his argument and showing that Islamic law and history were on the side of the death sentence.

Maulana Muhassan Usmani Nadvi, assistant professor of West Asian Studies at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University, wrote a reply published by the Islamic research Center, Zakir Nagar, New Delhi, which deserves special mention.

In his article, Mr. Khan had argued that Muhammad was a prophet of mercy, not of slaughtr. In his reply, Mr. Nadvi said killing a Shaatim-e rasul was a most merciful act. If he remained unpunished, it would invite the wrath of Allah which could destroy the whole world. To prevent this wrath from becoming operative, the punishment of the defiler was imperative. In that way alone lay the salvation of mankind.

Mr. Khan had appealed in the name of 'mercy', of which he thought Islam had in excess. Mr. Nadvi reminded him Islam is not all spirituality (ruhaaniyat). It was also a state and politics (siyaasat). He said the question had much to do with the prestige, power, glory and domination (izzat and ghalbaa) of Islam. The author refers here to the widely recognized fact among Muslim theologians that the success of Islam owed more to the awe of its political power than to its religious appeal. The initial era of 'reconciling or gaining of hearts' (mullafa quluubhum), the Quranic doctrine of winning the hearts of adversaries or of strengthening the loyalties of recent converts with gifts, soon gave way to the era of 'arbitration of the sword' (faislah derived from faisal or sword). The Kingdom of Islam is not within but without. It should inspire respect through awe, both among foes and the faithful.

Mr. Nadvi argued that Mr. Khan's effor to show the punishment of a detractor of the Rasul in Islam is not death is 'proof of his unfamiliarity with the spirit of Islam and its history'. He wrote that during all the 14 centuries of Islam, its theologians and divines provided a united testimony in favor of death sentrence. Indeed, a Muslim offender incurs a double death penalty. One by reviling the Prophet. The second by becoming an apostate from Islam. He quoted extensively from Muslim commentators, jurists and from the practice of the Companions, the first four rightly guided caliphs, and from the life of the Prophet to prove the point.

Mr. Nadvi gave the example of one lady, Umm Qurfah, who after converting to Islam committed apostasy. She was asked to make amends but upon refusal was put to death by Abu Bakr, the first caliph. During Abu Bakr's reign, we also learn of another case from Tarikh Tabari. A songster of Yemen was accused of writing a satire on the Prophet. Mohajir, the Muslim governor, had her hands cut off and her teeth pulled out so that she could not sing in the future. When Abu Bakr heard of this, he said if the case had been referred to him first, he would have ordered his execution.

Mr. Nadvi quotes another case that belonged to the period of the second caliph, Umar. Umru bin Al'as, governor of Egypt, informed him of a person who had been in and out of Islam several times. Umar wrote to him to offer the accused Islam again but, if he refused, to put him to death. Similarly, Usman, the third caliph, was informed of some followers of Maslamah, who claimed prophethood in rivalry to Muhammad; Usman ordered they should be asked to become Muslims but on their refusal be put to death. Similarly, Ali, the fourth caliph, was informed of some persons who had gone back to Christianity, their religion before they became Muslims. At his orders they were all put to the sword and their children made slaves.

In anothr case belonging to the early period of Islam, a woman Companion, daughter of Haris Alkindi, had asked a Zimmi to embrace Islam. He not only refused but also spoke negatively of the Prophet. The lady killed him on the spot. Umru bin Al'as, Egypt's governor, approved of this. He said that a Zimmi had no right to give pain to a Muslim about Allah and the Rasul.

Mr. Wahid-aldin Khan had quoted some cases of clement behavior of the Prophet belonging to his early life. Mr. Nadvi argues these cases blonged to the Meccan period when the 'orders of the Sunnah had not descended'. During the Medina period, when Islam began to acquire political power, all this changed. He gave several examples, including those of poets who wrote satirical verses against the Prophet and who were assassinated at his orders. These cases are cited in Mr. Wajid Ali Khan's Muqaddas Ayaat (Holy Verses), written in reply to The Satanic Verses.

One case is that of a lady poet of Medina, Asma, daughter of Marwan. She wrote a poem where she warned the tribes of Medina against the Prophet. \"Do you expect good from him after the killing of your chiefs/Like a hungry man waiting for a cook's broth?\" she wrote. When the Prophet heard this, he said to his followers: \"Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter?\" A follower named Umayr, eager to prove his loyalty to Islam, offered to assassinate her. This he did that very night while the victim was asleep with her youngest baby on her breast. The Prophet thanked him and told him: \"You have helped Allah and his apostle.\" We are told by Muslim traditionalists that the message went home and the people of the husband of Asma instead of resorting to retaliation, the customary tribal custom, \"became Muslims because they saw the power of Islam.\"

Another case relates to Abu Afak, a median poet aged over 100 years. Seeing the power equation in Median fast changing in favor of Islam, he appealed to the valor of the Medina people \"who overthrew mountains and who never submitted to anyone,\" but who were now allowing themselves to be spilt by 'an outsider', meaning the Prophet. The latter asked his followers:\"Who would deal with this rascal?\" Another follower volunteered his service and killed the aged poet one night when he was asleep.

Another case relates to Kaab bin al-Ashraf, a Jewish poet of Medina. He tried to incite the Meccans through his verses. Again some loyal followers offered to assassinate him. The Prophet saw them off with the words: \"Go with the blessings of Allah and assistance from High.\" The Prophet received them warmly after they had accomplished the mission. We are told by orthodox Muslim biographers of the Prophet that this \"attack upon the enemy cast terror among the Jews,\" and after it \"there was no Jew in Medina who did not fear his life.\"

Mr Majid Ali Khan quotes all these cases to show how serious is the offense of Salman Rushdie \"of evil religion, apostate and accursed\" bad-din murtdd mal'uun). Interested readers can find a still fuller account of all these cases in the Lives of the Prophet by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham, al Tabari, all respected, orthodox biographers. Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah is also found in English translation by A. Guillaume and published by the Oxford University Press.

The earliest traditions were incorporated into Muslim orthodxy and they shaped much of subsequent Muslim history. They continue to do so at present too. Mr. Nadvi quotes from the book of Ibn Taimiyyah, a medieval theologian, Al-saarim al maslul alshaatim al Rasul (the sword drawn against the defilers of the Prophet).

Today, there is an increasing demand for reviving the Shariat law even in those Muslim countries where it had been kept in abeyance. For example, in Pakistan, as recently as October 31, 1991, all the five judges of the Highest Islamic Court ruled that the punishment for defiling the Rasul was death, and no life imprisonment as the prevailing penal law provided. But in countries like India where the Shariat law no longer prevails, but where Muslim opinion counts, any critical discussion of the Prophet and Islam is regarded as lacking in good taste. It is unsecular, a great lapse from accepted ideological morality. Critical writings are as a rule edited out and even often banned. Indian intellectuals have complete freedom to admire Islam and its Prophet and they make full use of it.

Fundamentalism is not accidental but essential to Islam. It is inherent in those religious ideologies which are built on a narrow spiritual vision, have limited psychic base, and which emphasize dogma and personalities, rather than experience and impersonal truth. Islam's fundamentalism is rooted in its theology, its founder and his practices. It means that it will also have to be fought there. But this point is ill-understood and, therefore, the struggle against Muslim fundamentalism is at the best of times a phoney war.

A worthwhile liberalism among Muslims does not consist in merely having a dissenting opinion on certain matters of personal law and social usage. It involves waging a deeper struggle against Islam's fundamentals, its concept of God, the last Prophet (khatimun nabiyin) and the Revelation that ends all revelations. For example, it will have to discuss whether the Prophet speaks for Allah or Allah speaks for the Prophet. It will have to rethink the whole question of kafirs, Islam's name for its neighbors. It should raise the question whether Muslims should have the kafirs treat them as they treat kafirs. But this is a question best raised by the kafirs themselves and Muslim liberals can follow suit.

The need of the time is to re-examine the whole concept and assumptions of revelatory religions, such as of a particular community being 'chosen' as the swordsmen or salesmen of God. When a divine message commands, \"kill the idolators wherever you find them,\" we must give a closer look not only to the message but also to the messenger and his source of inspiration. Judged by this standard, we find that most of the Muslims who sail under a liberal banner, bring no honor to it. They represent a variant of Muslim fundamentalism.

There was a time when the West faced a similar problem when it had to fight Christian fundamentalism. It did so by fighting Christianity's deeper beliefs and assumptions. And though it still keeps Christianity for export and as an aid to imperialism, it has tamed its wild claims at home. A similar task awaits those who are called upon to fight Muslim fundamentalism or rather Muslim fundamentals.

 

[Phoenix]

Islam

http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/b...v/niictroi.html

Negationism in Europe usually means the denial of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. India has its own brand of negationism.

A section of the Indian intelligentsia, primarily led by Mohanlal Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru during their life time, tried and is still trying to erase from the Hindus' memory the history of their persecution by the swordsmen of Islam. The number of victims of this persecution far exceeds that of the Nazi crimes primarily because it lasted much longer. The Islamic campaign to wipe out what they call Paganism or KUFR could not be equally thorough but it has continued for centuries without any moral doubts arising in the minds of the persecutors and their chroniclers. The Islamic reports on the massacres of Hindus, destruction of Hindu temples, the abduction of Hindu women and forced conversions invariably express great glee and pride.

They leave no doubt that the destruction of Paganism by every means, was considered the Allah-ordained duty of the Moslem community or UMMA. Yet today many Indian historians, journalists and politicians, deny that there ever was a Hindu-Moslem conflict. They ignore the facts that led to the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh, both Islamic theocracies. They shamelessly rewrite Indian history and talk of 'centuries of Hindu-Moslem amity'; now a growing section of the public in India and the West only knows their negationist version of history.

The Negationism regarding the Nazi crimes has been the object of much public discussion. Turkish negationism about the Armenian genocide has received some attention. Less well-known is that India has its own brand of negationism.

Since about 1920 an effort has been going on in India to rewrite history and to deny the millenium-long conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Today, most politicians and English-writing.

Intellectuals in India will go out of their way to condemn any public reference to this long and painful conflict in the strongest terms. They will go to any length to create the illusion of a history of 'communal amity' between Hindus and Muslims.

Making people believe in a history of Hindu-Muslim amity in India is not an easy task: the number of victims of the persecution of Hindus by Muslims is of the same order of magnitude as that of the Nazi extermination policy, though no one has yet made the effort of tabulating the reported massacres and proposing a reasonable estimate of how many millions exactly must have died in the course of the Islamic campaign against Hinduism. On top of these, there is a similar number of abductions and deportation to harems and slave markets, as well as centuries of political oppression and cultural destruction. The American historian Will Durant summed it up like this: \"The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within\".

Only off and on did this persecution have the intensity of a genocide, but it was sustained much longer and spread out much wider geographically than the Nazi massacre. Whereas the Germans, including most members of the Nazi party, were horrified at the Nazi crimes against humanity within a few years, the Moslems, for whom GOTT MIT UNS (or Allah with us) was not a slogan but a religious certainty, managed to keep a good conscience for centuries. We will encounter similarities as well as differences between Nazi and Islamic crimes against humanity, but the most striking difference is definitely the persistence with which Islamic persecutions have continued for 14 centuries. This is because it had more spine, a more powerful psychological grip on its adherents than Nazism.

The ideological foundation of the Islamic campaign was similar to the Nazi ideology. The Muslim invaders (as we can read in numerous documents which they left us, from the Koran and the Hadis onward) distinguished between three kinds of people: first of all the Muslims, the HERRENVOLK (master nation) to which Allah had promised the world; secondly, the Jews and Christians, also sometimes called the AHL-I-KITAB (people of the book), who could live on under Muslim rule but only as third class citizens, just like the Slavic UNTERMENSCHEN (inferior people) in Hitler's new order; thirdly the species to be eliminated, the real Pagans who had to disappear from the face of the earth.

Different from Hitler's victims, the non-combatants among the 'unbelievers' often got a chance to opt for conversion rather than death. What Mohammed (later emulated by his successors) wanted, was his recognition of Allah's final prophet, so he preferred people to live and give him this recognition (by pronouncing the Islamic creed or KALIMA, ie. converting), and only those who refused him this recognition, were to be killed. Still, conversion often came too late to save defeated Pagans from slavery. At this point, Mohammed deserves comparison with Stalin: unlike Hitler Stalin killed people not for their race but for their opinion. But one can hardly say that the one totalitarianism is better than the other.

The BLITZ-KRIEG of the Muslim armies in the first decades after the birth of their religion had such enduring results precisely because the Pagan populations in West and central Asia had no choice (except death) but to convert. Whatever the converts' own resentment, their children grew up as Muslims and gradually identified with this religion. Within a few generations the initial resistance against this forcible conversion was forgotten, and these areas became HEIDENFREI (free from Pagans, cfr. JUDENFREI).In India it didn't go like that, because the Muslims needed five centuries of attempts at invasion before they could catch hold of large parts of India, and even then they encountered endless resistance, so that they often had to settle for a compromise.

The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle for life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) hills of Hindu skulls. Thus, the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the HINDU KUSH, i.e. \"Hindu slaughter\". The Bahmani sultans (1347- 1480 AD) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 Hindus every year. In 1399, Taimur killed 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1565 left large areas of Karnataka depopulated. And so on.

But the Indian Pagans were far too numerous and never fully surrendered. What some call the \"Muslim period\" in Indian history, was in reality a continuous war of occupiers against resisters, in which the Muslim rulers were finally defeated in the 18th century. Against these rebellious Pagans the Muslim rulers preferred to avoid total confrontation, and to accept the compromise which the HANAFITE school (dominant in India) of Islamic law made possible. Alone among the four Islamic law schools, the HANAFITE school gave Muslim rulers the right not to offer the Pagans the sole choice between death and conversion, but to allow them toleration as ZIMMIS (protected ones) living under 20 humiliating conditions, and to collect the JIZYA (toleration tax) from them. Normally the ZIMMI status was only open to Jews and Christians (AHL-I-KITAB or peoples of the book); and even that concession was condemned by jurists of the HANABALITE school like IBN TAYMIYA, which explains why these communities have survived in Muslim countries while most other religions have not. On these conditions some of the higher Hindu castes could be found willing to collaborate, so that a more or less polity could be set up. Even then, the collaboration of the Rajputs with the Moghul rulers, or of the Kayasthas with the Nawab dynasty, only became a smooth arrangement when enlightened rulers like Akbar (whom orthodox Muslims consider an apostate) canceled these humiliating conditions and the JIZYA tax.

It is because of the HANAFITE law that many Muslim rulers in India considered themselves exempted from the duty to continue the genocide of the Hindus (self-exemption for which they were persistently reprimanded by their MULLAHS). Moreover, the Turkish and Afghan invaders also fought each other, so they often had to ally themselves with accursed unbelievers against fellow Muslims. After the conquests, Islamic occupation gradually lost its character of a total campaign to destroy the Pagans. Many Muslim rulers preferred to enjoy the revenue from stable and prosperous kingdoms, and were content to extract the JIZYA tax, and to limit their conversion effort to material incentives and support to the missionary campaigns of SUFIS and MULLAHS (in fact, for less zealous rulers, the JIZYA was an incentive to discourage conversions, as these would mean a loss of revenue). Muslim violence would thenceforth be limited to crushing the numerous rebellions, destruction of temples and killing or humiliation of Brahmins, and occasional acts of terror by small bands of raiders. A left-over from this period is the North-Indian custom of celebrating weddings at midnight: this was a safety measure against Islamic sport of bride-catching.

The last JIHAD against the Hindus before the full establishment of British rule was waged by Tipu Sultan in the beginning of the 19th century. In the rebellion of 1857, the near-defunct Muslim dynasties (Moghuls, Nawabs) tried to curry favor with their Hindu subjects and neighbors, in order to launch a joint effort to re- establish their rule. For instance, the Nawab promised to give the Hindus the Ramjanmabhoomi/Babari Masjid site back, in an effort to quench their anti-Muslim animosity and redirect their attention toward the new common enemy from Britian. THIS IS THE ONLY INSTANCE IN MODERN HISTORY WHEN MUSLIMS OFFERED CONCESSIONS TO THE HINDUS; AFTER THAT, ALL THE CONCESSIONS MADE FOR THE SAKE OF COMMUNAL HARMONY WERE A ONE-WAY TRAFFIC FROM HINDU TO MUSLIM.

After the British had crushed the rebellion of 1857, the Indian Muslims fell into a state of depression, increasing backwardness due to their refusal of British education, and nostalgia for the past. As soon as the British drew them into the political process (founding of Muslim League in 1906) in order to use them as a counter-weight against the Indian National Congress, they immediately made heavy and hurtful demands on the Hindus, such as the unlimited right to slaughter cows; and they started working for political separation. First they obtained separate electorates where Muslim candidates would only have to please Muslim voters and later they would succeed in separating a Muslim state from India.

By the twenties, they took to unscrupled use of muscle power in a big way, creating street riots and outright pogroms. If Hindus retaliated in kind, it was a welcome help in instilling the separate communal identity into the ordinary Muslim, who would have preferred to co-exist with his Hindu neighbors in peace. By creating riots and provoking retaliatory violence, the Muslim League managed to swing the vast majority of the Muslim electorate toward supporting its demand for the partition of India. The roughly 600,000 victims of the violence accompanying the Partition were the price which the Muslim League was willing to pay for its Islamic state of Pakistan (See MUSLIM LEAGUE ATTACK ON SIKHS AND HINDUS IN THE PUNJAB 1947 compiled by Gurbachan Singh Talib and published in 1950 by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. It has been reprinted by VOICE OF INDIA in 1991). While every Hindu and Muslim who took part in the violence is responsible for his own excesses, the over-all responsibility for this mass-slaughter lies squarely with the Muslim leadership.

After independence, the Islamic persecution of Hindus has continued in different degrees of intensity, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir (as well as heavy discrimination in Malaysia). This is not the place for detailing those facts, which the international media have been ignoring completely. What may cut short all denials of this continued pestering of Hindus in Muslim states, are the resulting migration figures: in 1948, Hindus formed 23% of the population of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), in 1971 the figure was down to 15% and today it stands at 10%. No journalist or human rights body goes in to ask the minority Hindus for their opinion about the treatment they get from the Muslim authorities and populations; but they vote with their feet. In the first months of 1990, the entire Hindu population (nearly a quarter million) was forcibly driven from the Kashmir Valley, which used to be advertised as a showpiece of communal harmony. Muslim newspapers and mosque loudspeakers had warned the Hindus to leave the valley or face bullets.

It will be evident that the Hindu psyche has very little sympathy for Islam. Doing something about this was the chief motive for NEGATIONISM.

CONGRESS CONCOCTION
The political context of the first attempts at negationism was chiefly the attempt of the independence movement, led by the Indian National Congress, to eliminate all factors of disunity between Hindus and Muslims. It was the time of the KHILAFAT movement (1919- 23), the agitation of the Indian Muslims against the British take- over of the Islamic sacred places from the deceased Ottoman empire. The khilafatists demanded the restoration of the Ottoman Caliph's authority over the sacred places. Congress saw in this the occasion to enlist the Muslims in the national freedom struggle against the same British imperialists.

This was a miscalculation: the KHILAFAT movement intensified the Islamic sense of communal identity (therefore, the rejection of Indian nationalism), and added considerably to Muslim separatism and the Pakistan ideology. But before 1923, when the Turks themselves abolished the caliphate so that the movement lost its raison d'etre (and got transmuted into pogroms against the Hindus), there was great expectation in Congress circles. Therefore, Congress people were willing to go to any length to iron out the differences between Hindus and Muslims, including the invention of 'centuries of communal amity'.

At that time, the Congress leaders were not yet actively involved in the rewriting of history. They were satisfied to quietly ignore the true history of Hindu-Muslim relations. After the communal riots of Kanpur in 1931, a Congress report advised the elimination of the mutual enemy-image by changing the contents of the history books.

The next generation of political leaders, especially the left-wing, that was to influence the Congress in the thirties, and control it completely in the fifties, would profess negationism very explicitly. The 'radical humanist' (i.e. bourgeois Marxist), M.N. Roy wrote that Islam had fulfilled a historic mission of equality and abolition of discrimination, and that for this, Islam had been welcomed into India by the lower castes. If at all any violence had occurred, it was a matter of justified class struggle by the 'progressive forces' against the 'reactionary forces', meaning 'feudal' Hindu upper castes.

This is a modern myth springing from an incorrect and much too grim picture of the caste system, a back-projection of modern ideas of class struggle, and an uncritical swallowing of contemporary Islamic apologists, which has incorporated some voguish socialist values. There is no record anywhere of low-caste people 'welcoming the Muslims as liberators'. Just like in their homeland, the Muslim generals had nothing but contempt for the common people, and all the more so because they were idolaters. They made no distinction between rich Pagans and poor Pagans: in the Koran, Allah had promised the same fate to all idolaters.

By contrast, there is plenty of testimony that these common people rose in revolt, not against their high-caste co-religionists, but against the Muslim rulers. And not only against heavy new taxes (50% of the land revenue for ALAUDDIN KHILJI, whom negationists hail as the 'precursor of socialism') and land expropriations, but especially against the rape and abductions of women and children and the destruction of their idols, acts which have been recorded with so much glee by the Muslim chroniclers without anywhere mentioning a separate treatment of Hindu rich and Hindu poor, upper-caste KAFIR or lower-caste KAFIR. Even when some of the high-caste people started collaborating, the common people gave the invaders no rest, attacking them from hiding places in the forests. The conversion of low-caste people only began when Muslim rulers were safely in power and in a position to reward and encourage conversion by means of tax discrimination (win the dispute with your neighbor if you convert), handing out posts to converts, and simple coercion. Nevertheless, the myth which M.N. Roy spread, has gained wide currency.

THE BEST KNOWN PROPOUNDER OF NEGATIONISM WAS CERTAINLY JAWAHARLAL NEHRU. He was rather illiterate concerning Indian culture and history, so his admirers may invoke for him the benefit of the doubt. At any rate, his writings contain some crude cases of glorification of Muslim tyrants and concealment or denial of their crimes. Witness his assessment of Mahmud Ghanavi, who, according to Mahmud's chronicler Utbi, sang the praise of the temple complex at Mathura and then immediately proceeded to destroy it. Nehru writes:\"Building interested Mahmud, and he was much impressed by the city of Mathura near Delhi. About this he wrote:'There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of dinars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of 200 years'.\" And that is all: Nehru described the destroyer of Mathura, as an admirer of Mathura, apparently without noticing the gory sarcasm in Ghaznavi's eulogy. Moreover, Nehru denied that Mahmud had committed his acts of destruction out of any religious motive: \"Mahmud was not a religious man. He was a Mohammedan, but that was just by the way. He was in the first place a soldier and a brilliant soldier.\" That Mahmud was definitely a religious man, and that he had religious motives for his campaigns against the Hindus, is quite clear from Utbi's contemporary chronicle. Every night Mahmud copied from the Koran \"for the benefit of his soul\". He risked his life several times for the sake of destroying and desecrating temples in which there was nothing to plunder, just to terrorize and humiliate the Pagans. In his campaigns, he never neglected to invoke the appropriate Koranic verse. In venerating Mahmud as a pious hero of Islam, Indian Muslims are quite faithful to history; unlike Nehru, the ordinary Muslim refuses to practice negationism.

With Nehru, negationism became the official line of the Indian national Congress, and after independence also of the Indian state and government.

MAULANA AZAD'S CONVICTIONS
A second factor in the genesis of negationism was the penetration of Western ideas among a part of the Muslim elite and especially the (in Europe newly emerged) positive valuation of tolerance. The Islamic elite was concentrated around two educational institutes, spearheads of the traditional and of the (superficially) westernizing trends among Indian Muslims. One was the theological academy at Deoband, the other the British oriented Aligarh Muslim University.

The Deoband school was (and still is) orthodox-Islamic, and rejected modern values like nationalism and democracy. It simply observed that India had once been a DAR-UL-ISLAM (house of Islam), and that therefore it had to be brought back under Muslim control. The fact that the majority of the population consisted of non- Muslims, was not important; in the medieval Muslim empires the Muslims had not been in a majority either, and moreover demography and conversion could yet transform the Muslim minority into a majority.

Among the scions of the Deoband school we find Maulana Maudoodi, the chief ideologue of modern fundamentalism. He opposed the Pakistan scheme and demanded the islamization of all British India. After independence, he settled in Pakistan and agitated for the full islamization of the (still too British) polity. Shortly before his death in 1979, his demands were largely met when General Zia launched his islamization policy.

Outsiders will be surprised to find that the same school of which Maudoodi was a faithful spokesman, also brought forth Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was Congress president for several years and who was to become minister of Education in free India. Understandably but unjustifiably, Azad has often been described as a 'moderate' and 'nationalist' Muslim: he rejected the Partition of India and the foundation of Pakistan, not because he rejected the idea of a Muslim state, but because he wanted all of India to become a Muslim state in time.

When in the forties the Partition seemed unavoidable, Azad patronized proposals to preserve India's unity, stipulating that half of all members of the government had to be Muslims (then 24% of the population), with the other half to be divided between Hindus, Ambedkarites, Christians and the rest. In short, a state in which Muslims would rule and non-Muslims would be second class citizens electorally and politically. The Cabinet Mission Plan, proposed by the British as the ultimate sop for the Muslim League, equally promised an effective parity between Muslims and non- Muslims at the Central Government level and a veto right for the Muslim minority. Without Mr. Gandhi's and other Congress leaders' knowledge, Congress president Azad Assured the British that he would get the plan accepted by the Congress. When he was caught in the act of lying to the Mahatma about the plan and his assurance, he lost some credit even among the naive Hindus who used to consider him a 'moderate'. But he retained his position of trust in Nehru's cabinet, and continued his work for the ultimate transformation of India into a Muslim state.

Maulana Azad's pleas for Hindu-Muslim cooperation had an esoteric meaning, clear enough for Muslims but invisible for wilfully gullible non-Muslims like his colleagues in the Congress leadership. Azad declared that Hindu-Muslim cooperation was in complete conformity with the Prophet's vision, for \"Mohammed had also made a treaty with the Jews of Medina.\" He certainly had, but the practical impact of this treaty was that within a few years, two of the three Jewish clans in Medina had been chased away and the third clan had been massacred to the last man (the second clan had only been saved by the intervention of other Medinese leaders, for Mohammed wanted to kill them). Maulana Azad could mention Mohammed's treaty with the Jews as a model for Hindu-Muslim cooperation only because he was confident that few Hindus were aware of the end of the story, and that better-informed Hindus honored a kind of taboo on criticism of Islam and its prophet.

This parenthesis about Maulana Azad may help clear up some illusions which Hindus and Westerners fondly entertain about the possibility of Islamic moderacy. The Deoband school was as fundamentalist in its Azad face as it was in its Maudoodi heart, and its spokesmen had no problems with the horrors of Islamic history, nor did they make attempts to rewrite it. That Muslims had persecuted and massacred Hindus, counted as the fulfillment of Allah's salvation plan to transform the whole world into a DAR- UL-ISLAM.

 

[erikstalhammar]

Islam

Originally posted by PyRo99@Sep 6 2004, 04:24 PM
Honsetly, I really don't have many problems with muslims.

Yes, their religion does seem to be a bit on the off ball way, but, thats because some take it so hardcorely that they think its justified to kill people for their god.

Some of them are not good people though, most are really pacifist.? I know some girl, that detests everyone that catergorizes ALL muslims as \"terrorists\" because they're not.

Yes, we all know how they treat women.? Women are not allowed to basically do anything, they are under the men's control.? The men basically control them, which is sadistic.

And Yes, we also know how they treat non-muslims.? Heck, they'll even threaten to behead their own, because they support Americans.? Sad.? Very sad.

But, Pauli, you should really express, because then this can become a huge topic.? The stuff were touching on Islam, is only the basis of it all.? There is much more, so I hold the door open for you too continue!

Pyro!

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Hmmm women thing?? Islam does not forbid women to do anything... Have any of you seen a movie called "The Message" if not you should becous that is the true religon ISLAM.. Its about the prophet Mouhammed (may peace and blessing be upon him) and it clearly teaches the true form of Islam without any twist .. I belive you should not try to read Islam from what Untrusted people has changed in it .. Insted read what the Prophed mouhammed (may peace and blessings be upon him) has said and his Freinds and trusted once.. I dont support everything as a Muslim but i do have Belif and i do follow some of the groundments of it but i do not pray the ritual prayer 5 times a day allway and if i do pray its usaly on the Friday prayer "Jouma" i dont think all organised religon is good i have many thoughts thats simuler to BBs i think.. But im not saying its a bad thing eather cus it provides Health and is against war.. And the only true War foughten for Islam was the one to take back KABATH that was stolen from Ibrahiim and made to a multi-cultural center in mecca.. And i belive in every other case it is wrong to kill in the name of religon or in the name of anything.. The word Islam is transleted to "peace" so every so called "Muslim" that do not find peace in the other human being (acts as nice to her/him as he should to his own brother or sister) is not a muslim and does not have the rights to call her/him self one
That was my opinion.. May the love be with you

 

[erikstalhammar]

Islam

Not all muslims are "bad guys" - an obvious statement. But an article today in the NY Times caught my attention and thought some of you would apprecite it.

Cary
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[/quote]

No true Muslim are "bad guys" the true Muslims are the good guys or among them
Anyone who is a bad guy in the eyes of the good guys and call her/him self a Muslim is in reality and in the eyes of the good guys and the true muslims and Allah the exalted not a muslim

 

[pauli]

Islam

Hi Cary,

Sorry I haven't gotten back to your posting any sooner. Actually, I am right in the midst of my holidays, so I am not going to have a lot of time to post at present. I will take a look at the links you provided a page or so back and will let you know my thoughts.

In the meantime, I just wanted to check in and let you know I still intend on getting back to you about things.