The day one man infected a community with hatred

November 12, 2005, Jihad Watch

Contrary to the impression one may get from this article, hatred is not an STD. Nor can it be transmitted through sneezing or coughing, or by handshakes or other casual contact. The gorilla in the living room of this article is why so many of his hearers believed the teachings of Abdul Nacer Benbrika. If they didn't catch them as one might catch a cold, what did happen? Could it be that what he said resonated with what they knew of the teachings of the Qur'an, Hadith and Sira? Of course, no one wants to admit that, because no one wants to deal with its implications.

But what if the media (liberal and conservative) and policymakers did admit that Islam contains incitements to violence within its traditions, theology and law? What would these dreaded implications be? Genocide? Of course not ...

But no one can even ask those questions today because we are all not supposed to notice that Islam contains any elements that might be incompatible with Western pluralism in the first place.

From The Australian ... :
IT was the day that changed the life of accused terrorist ringleader Abdul Nacer Benbrika. Other Muslims see it even more darkly - as the day when al-Qa'ida first infected Australia's Islamic community with its toxic distortion of Islam.

Now for the first time The Weekend Australian can reveal what unfolded on a country property in Victoria in the sunset of 1994. There, in front of the nation's leading Islamic fundamentalists, including Benbrika, a bearded cleric in flowing robes was giving a sermon which many now believe gave birth to radical Islam in Australia.

The speaker was Abu Qatada, now the spiritual leader of al-Qa'ida in Europe. Qatada had been invited to Australia by his childhood friend and fellow hardliner, Melbourne cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran. His message mesmerised the group - and Benbrika.

"He spoke out against Arab governments for not being Islamic enough, for not adhering to pure sharia law," recalls one senior Muslim who asked not to be named.

"He was radical and politicised - we had never heard this stuff before. His impact was enormous and that is where it all began. This is how the ideology of Abu Bakr (Benbrika) entered Australia. Prior to Abu Qatada's visit, most radicals were just normal guys."
And so it goes. Normal guys became jihadists. They were "infected." And this preposterous non-analysis is printed in a major newspaper.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

cmon.. i was at that sermon. The US backed dictators of the Arab world should be removed for not being Islamic enough.

Citizens of these countries are suffering. Muslims should fight for freedom and human rights and remove these dictators such as Hosni Mubarak from power.

What is wrong with that?

Abandon Skip said...

"Muslims should fight for freedom and human rights". Call me naive, but that sounds like a contradiction to me. An Islamic state, to my knowledge, is just another form of dictatorship.

Robert Spencer:
The Qur'an, on the other hand, quite clearly does teach believers to commit acts of violence against unbelievers -- see 2:190-193, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, etc. There are no equivalents to such open-ended and universal commands, addressed to all believers to fight unbelievers, in the Bible.

... all of the schools that are considered orthodox teach, as part of the obligation of the Muslim community, warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers ...

In this view, then, the jihad must continue as long as there are unbelievers, and only falls into abeyance when Muslims do not have the military strength to press forward with it.

Paul Stenhouse:
Muhammad's conduct demonstrates his understanding of the Quran's message.

If his understandings were correct, then all attempts by Islamic apologists to prove that Islam is a basically tolerant and peaceful religion fail when confronted by the Medina Sura and the indisputable facts of Muhammad's life and subsequent history of Islam.

If his understandings were wrong, then he was not a prophet, and Muslims have the problem of reconciling the alleged divine origin of the Quran with its myriad errors of fact, inconsistencies, anachronisms and many other defects.

To those who would claim the nature of Jihad and the militaristic aims of Islam are misunderstood by non-Muslims, we turn back a challenge that Muhammad repeatedly flung at his adversaries in Mecca: prove me wrong 'if you care about the truth'.

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Is that what you want to replace US backed dictators with? Is that what you meant by "Muslims should fight for freedom and human rights?". Please explain.