COMMENT: Thwarting conspiracies?

Hopefully, this week I'll get to finish the final quarter of the book Once Were Radicals. It's been an interesting experience walking down my ideological memory-lane. I'm a little embarrassed to admit some of the unusual stuff I've read during my days of errant youthfullness.

Stuff like Margaret Marcus, more commonly known in Pakistan as Maryam Jameelah. I've previously described her as Islam's (or should that be Judaism's?) answer to Ayaan Hirsi Magaan/Ali. Indeed, both Jameelah and Hirsi Magaan/Ali resort to conspiracy theorising when describing people and ideas they regard as dangerous.

Read this dedication Jameelah makes at the beginning of the Second Edition of her book Islam And Orientalism ...

This book is dedicated to all Muslim college and university students in Pakistan and abroad so that they may gain a full appreciation of the conspiracy working for their ruin and what can be done to frustrate its malicious activities before it is too late.

Gee, thanks for that. I now feel so much better about living in Australia, a nation at the heart of this giant comspiracy.

UPDATE I: I'm not sure if this is Maryam Jameelah's blog. Or whether this is. And here is a review she wrote of one of John Esposito's books of history.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Accommodating mainstream Muslims is no danger ...

Why must I keep repeating this? Surely this should be self-evident. Anyway, here goes ...

Some people suggest that by accommodating mainstream Muslim religious traditions, America and other Western countries are somehow opening themselves up for further terrorist attacks. Many Muslims respond by arguing that the terrorists and the mainstream Muslims are two entirely different groups of people.

The Quran says what it says, but that has no bearing on the fact that mainstream Muslims and their religious traditions pose no threat to the West whatsoever.

So what if the Quran does say Muslims should convert or kill non-believers? So what if the Old Testament says the same? How many mainstream Muslims have killed or wounded non-Muslim Americans or Australians because they weren't Muslim? It just doesn't happen.

Maybe those violent passages in the Quran and/or Old Testament can help us understand more where the terrorists are coming from, but none of that is relevant to mainstream Muslims carrying on with their own peace-loving interpretation of those texts.

We have enough external enemies without creating new ones from a group of people who would like to think of themselves not only as allies but fellow citizens.

I've adapted this from a comment appearing in an online discussion on an American newspaper called the Morris Daily Herald.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

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