Americans' suspicions frustrate U.S. Muslims

[MasterOfPuppets]

NEW YORK — Nine years of denouncing terrorism, of praying side-by-side with Jews and Christians, of insisting "I'm American, too." None of it could stop a season of hate against Muslims that made for an especially fraught Sept. 11. Now, Muslims are asking why their efforts to be accepted in the United States have been so easily thwarted.
"We have nothing to apologize for, we have nothing to fear, we have nothing to be ashamed of, we have nothing that we're guilty of — but we need to be out there and we need to express this," said Imam Mohammed Ibn Faqih in a sermon at the Islamic Institute of Orange County in Anaheim, Calif., the day before the 9/11 anniversary.
There is no simple way for American Muslims to move forward.
Images of violence overseas in the name of Islam have come to define the faith for many non-Muslims at home. The U.S. remains at war in Afghanistan, and although America has formally declared an end to its combat operations in Iraq, U.S. troops there continue to fight alongside Iraqi forces.
Within the U.S., domestic terror has become a greater threat, while ignorance about what Islam teaches is widespread. More than half of respondents in a recent poll by the Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life said they knew little or nothing about the Muslim faith.
Some U.S. Muslims say their national organizations share the blame, for answering intricate questions about Islam with platitudes, and failing to fully examine the potential for extremism within their communities. Muslim leaders often respond when terrorists strike by saying Islam is a "religion of peace" that has no role in the violence instead of confronting the legitimate concerns of other Americans, these Muslim critics say.
"There's a quaintness and naivete or outright whitewashing of some very complex issues," said Saeed Khan, who teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit. "This has caused a lot of frustration for a lot of Muslim Americans, myself included."
The summer frenzy about Islam in America has revolved around Park51, a community center and mosque planned two blocks from New York's ground zero. Opponents and supporters of the center converged on the area for protests and counter-protests Saturday after the morning memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center site.
In recent months, mosques in Tennessee, California, New York and elsewhere have been shot at and vandalized. Threatening messages were left at one mosque. A Florida pastor caused a global uproar with his ultimately unfulfilled threat to make a bonfire of Qurans on Sept. 11.
Many Jewish, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, atheist and other groups have responded with an outpouring of support for Muslims, but suspicion remains high among many Americans.
Islamic centers have become a focus of non-Muslim fears. Federal authorities have placed informants in mosques, saying doing so is a critical counter-terrorism tool. Muslim groups have separately created national campaigns encouraging congregations to monitor for any sign of radicalization, but they have also complained bitterly about the use of informants, worried the innocent will be caught up in the net police have set for criminals.
Akbar Ahmed, professor of Islamic studies at American University, found a wide range of mosques — from literalist to modernist to mystical — while researching his book, "Journey Into America, The Challenge of Islam." He said many mosques are engaged in internal struggles between Muslims with rigid and modernist views, but he found none that fit the imaginings of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists.

Historians, and several Muslim leaders, see similarities to the prejudice Roman Catholics and Jews experienced as newcomers to America starting in the 19th century. The hierarchical Catholic church was denounced as a threat to the separation of church and state. Synagogues were banned in many states, and Jews were viewed as undermining the nation's Christian character.
Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Connecticut, said the experience of Japanese Americans in World War II more closely parallels the current plight of Muslims. After the Pearl Harbor bombing, Silk said Americans asked, "Are our Japanese different from those Japanese?"
"I don't think we're about to round up all the Muslims and put them in concentration camps," Silk said. "But I don't think we've ever seen the degree of legitimacy given by people in positions of authority to straight-up, anti-Islamic expression."
The Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group, blames bigotry on "a small cottage industry" that foments prejudice on the Web and elsewhere. These organizations have dramatically expanded their reach since 2001 through social media, and have made celebrities of Muslim converts to Christianity who disparage Islam as thoroughly violent.
"The reality is that there are very well-funded initiatives to spread misinformation about Islam," said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group for thousands of Muslims. "For the Muslim community, we are finding ourselves so stretched. We're a young community."
U.S. Muslim condemnations of terrorism have failed to persuade other Americans.
This year, in response to recent cases of young Americans lured into jihadist movements by Internet preaching, nine prominent U.S. Muslim scholars made a YouTube video denouncing radicalism. Other American Islamic scholars have written edicts, or fatwas, saying violence is contrary to Islamic teaching. The Islamic Society of North America dedicated its 2005 annual convention, which draws tens of thousands of Muslims, to fighting terrorism and extremism.

However, suspicion persists among other Americans that Muslims say one thing in public and something different among themselves. U.S. Muslim groups that still accept foreign funding are the most vulnerable to this charge. Many critics, within and outside the Muslim community, also find the condemnations so broad that they are meaningless since they rarely denounce specific terrorist groups, including al-Qaida.
It doesn't help that many of the statements against violence are delivered in heavily accented English at a time of heightened anti-immigrant feeling in the United States.
"I think that part of the reason the general American public is not listening is the common human impulse to fear and mistrust what we don't know or understand," said Abdullahi An-Na'im, an expert in Islam and human rights at Emory University School of Law.
Throughout the recent anti-Muslim outburst, American Muslim leaders have taken pains to acknowledge that many in their community have prospered in the U.S., and that Muslims have more freedom here than they would in many other countries.
At the same time, fatigue is setting in. They wonder: How many more times will they have to condemn violent extremism before non-Muslim Americans believe them?

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39136087/ns/us_news-life

[MasterOfPuppets]

this article pretty much sums it up for me .... just look at the problems they're having in europe by not keeping the muslim population in check...

Muslims Have Conquered Europe Without Firing A Shot

America Will Be Next, Unless We Wake Up


Question 1

True or False: In Brussels, Belgium, the capital of the European Union and Belgium, the Socialist mayor presides over a caucus that has a majority made up of Muslims.

Question 2

True or False: In a few years, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Rotterdam and many other European cities will reach majority Muslim status.

Question 3

True or False: The Muslim population of the United Kingdom is increasing 10 times faster than the general population.



Question 4

True or False: British banks have abolished piggy banks, as they might offend Muslims and police in Brussels are enjoined from eating doughnuts during Ramadan.

Question 5

True or False: Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, believes it is perfectly acceptable to blow up buses in Tel Aviv, but objects to those blowing up buses in England.

Question 6

True or False: The British lean over backward to grant freedom of speech to Muslim groups, even as they slander returning war heroes; but they also lean over backward to silence any critics of Islam.

If you answered true to all six questions, you’re tuned into what is going on in Europe. All six are true. This quiz is based on an article by Mark Steyn in Commentary Magazine (May 2009) titled “Israel Today, The West Tomorrow: Acquiescence to extremist Islam’s assault on Jewry and Israel will not save the nations of Europe from a Muslim Fate.”

Mr. Steyn’s thesis is that the Muslims may now be targeting Israel, but their basic objective, for the moment, is to take over Europe … and they are well along in that process, as the six-question quiz suggests.

He wrote a classic book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, in which he found that Europe is virtually finished as a Western, Christian continent and will soon be under Muslim control. But here is his bottom line, to make sure resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t viewed as the magic bullet for peace: “In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them [the Europeans]. It may be some consolation to an ever lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.”

Europe thinks when the canary in the mine dies, the miners are safe. In this case, the Europeans are the miners, and if the present trend continues, they will be as dead as the canary in short order.

Mr. Steyn’s book was frightening on two counts. First, it is shocking to understand that Europe is about to become Eurabia, a continent subject to Muslim domination. Second, it is even more shocking that when you study what is going on in Europe, you get the feeling that America is starting down the same path to the destruction of Western civilization. Mr. Steyn’s book came out in 2006, and it painted a grim picture. Now, just three years later, Mr. Steyn’s predictions are proving to be right on target, and the collapse of Europe is continuing at a steady and rapid pace.

Mr. Steyn’s conclusions are backed in another recent article found in Townhall Magazine (May 2009) by Tim Montgomerie titled “Far From United: The United Kingdom’s Government Has Decided To Appease Muslim Extremists and Act Embarrassed About Western Culture. Can Britain Survive?”

The picture he paints is just as grim and bleak as that of Mr. Steyn’s. Just consider his opening salvo. When British troops returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, they were given a homecoming parade by the southern English town of Luton. The people of Luton enthusiastically greeted the soldiers with cheers, smiles and flowers.

But then came what some might be considered to be unexpected if not the incredible:

“But a day of thanksgiving was overshadowed by the loud protests of a group of Islamic extremists. Holding up placards, they accused Britain’s heroic soldiers of being ‘butchers,’ ‘war criminals,’ ‘murderers’ and ‘baby killers.’ By granting the Muslim protestors a right to insult the soldiers, the police were risking a breach of the peace — and a breach of the peace did occur. But Britain’s police service always appears eager to bend over backwards for a militant minority within the Muslim population.”

The British give every consideration and every doubt to the Muslim population, including freedom of speech to insult war heroes. But when it comes to critics of Islam, the British are willing to abolish free speech to silence them, if that’s what it takes to appease the Muslims.

They did that by banning the appearance before Parliament of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. The ban came after Islamic Web sites threatened to mobilize a mob protest if Mr. Wilders was granted a right to deliver his warning that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion.

More recently, after the Townhall article went to the printer, the British government banned talk show host Michael Savage from entry as his views were apparently considered too inflammatory. This all shows how far along the British and the rest of Europe are to surrendering to the oncoming Islamic tide. Mr. Steyn and others who forecast the end of Europe as we know it were right on course.

For other excellent books documenting the same trend, see Melanie Phillips, Londonistan; Bat Ye’Or, Eurabia: The European Arab Axis; and Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept.

Ms. Phillips, who is right on target in her writings, says the British have an unwritten agreement that they would turn a blind eye to Muslim terrorists as long as they did not target Britain. You would think that would have all changed after the London subway bombing of July 7, 2005 killed 50 Londoners. Instead, Britain answered by more appeasement, according to Mr. Montgomerie. This is the kind of hopelessly stupid and irrational reaction that leads people like Mr. Steyn and Ms. Phillips to write the Europeans off as lost to Islam.

You can’t preserve your own culture and values and fight off those who would subjugate you if you don’t believe in yourself. America, England and much of Europe have become self-loathing apologists for their own culture, and can hardly expect it to be preserved against those who believe in their culture and values and who are determined to see it win.

Even in America, we have important centers of America-hating self-loathing in our academic centers, in much of our mainstream media and in the White House. That does not bode well in an ideological war between two cultures and value systems pitting self-loathing apologists of the West against fanatical enthusiast on the other side.

You also can’t preserve your culture and values if you aren’t forming enough families and having enough children to preserve your nation and its power. Europe is ideologically doomed, but it is also demographically doomed. Its population is shrinking slowly, while the Muslim population is exploding. This is classic conquest by demography on the part of the Muslims and death by demography on the part of the Europeans.

You also won’t preserve your culture and values when one of the bastions of our way of life, the churches, are being weakened and are even disappearing in Europe. That continent seems to have surrendered to secularism and religion has gone out of style. In England, for example, the Church of England is in retreat and is in the appeasement mode. The bishop in charge of the Church’s urban ministry opposed the idea of the Church having a duty to convert Muslims to Christianity. The bishops of the Church seem more interested in accommodating Islamic opinion than in bringing their religion to others. The leader of the Anglican Church has spoken with approval of the introduction of aspects of Shariah law (Muslim law) into Britain.

There’s another deadly trend obvious in England but making headway elsewhere in the West — the union of the left and radical Islam in the hate America campaign. The Townhall magazine article explains the seemingly strange but solid alliance between the left (including major segments of the Democratic Party) and radical Islam. To make the point the article quotes Michael Gove, a leading Conservative member of Parliament:

“The Left’s enemies are no longer primarily a system, capitalism and its agents such as big business. Instead the principal enemy is now the oppressive West and, in particular, The Great Satan, America and the Little Satan, Israel. The Crusaders and the Zionists … Antipathy towards America, like opposition to Israel, has become the touchstone of radical Left credibility.”

So America has to face the music and fight, as no matter what happens to Israel and other obstacles in the path to Muslim world domination, the final target has to be America. Like it or not, we are marked for subjugation and/or destruction.

If we are to win that war against radical Islam, we have to recognize we’re in a battle, which will not be won by retreat and appeasement. And we will not win if we do not believe in our own values and culture and if we do not try to end the hate-America, blame-America streak that is becoming all too common in our national life. Again, Mr. Gove struck a cord, also sounded by Mr. Steyn. He was speaking of the challenge facing Britain, but America and the rest of the West face the same challenge:

“Unless we retain the moral clarity to know that Western society, its freedoms and traditions, are worth celebrating, deserve to be emulated, and will benefit others by being adopted, then we will find them increasingly difficult to defend at a time of trial.”

Those in the process of appeasing the Muslim onslaught should heed the wisdom of Mr. Churchill, one of the great statesmen of history who understood the folly of appeasement: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.”

And then for those who won’t stand up to a bully, an aggressor, or a homicidal maniac until it’s too late, they should heed the words of the German theologian, Martin Neimoller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Social Democrat.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew,

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Rev. Neimoller almost learned his own lesson too late. He supported the Nazis until he finally realized what they were up to. He was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, and was one of the lucky ones to survive and be freed at the end of the war.

Most aren’t that lucky. The sooner you speak up, the more likely you are to escape without catastrophic consequences. Don’t count on being one of the lucky ones.

[Vis]

Keeping the Muslim population in check? How do you propose to do that? Special neighborhoods? Special rules?

[MACH1]

Originally Posted by Vis

Keeping the Muslim population in check? How do you propose to do that? Special neighborhoods? Special rules?

Hunting seasons. Daily bag limit of ten.

[Vis]

First they came for the Muslims, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Muslim.

[MasterOfPuppets]

Originally Posted by Vis

Keeping the Muslim population in check? How do you propose to do that? Special neighborhoods? Special rules?

i don't mean the existing population per say , but the growth of the population.

The Muslim population of the United Kingdom is increasing 10 times faster than the general population.

[Vis]

How do you do that? And why worry about it unless they take over Mexico first?

[MasterOfPuppets]

Originally Posted by Vis

How do you do that? And why worry about it unless they take over Mexico first?

not giving 10's of thousands of them every year visas and citizenship would be a good start..
in 1970 we had an estimated 160,000 muslims... today there are approximately 7 million.

NEW YORK — The events of Sept. 11 transformed life for Muslims in the United States, and the flow of immigrants from countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and Morocco thinned drastically.
But five years later, as the United States wrestles with questions of terrorism, civil liberties and immigration control, Muslims appear to be moving here again in surprising numbers, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security and the Census Bureau.
Immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia are planting new roots in states from Virginia to Texas to California.
In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades. More than 40,000 of them were admitted last year, the highest annual number since the terrorist attacks, according to data on 22 countries provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

[Vincent]

Originally Posted by Vis

Keeping the Muslim population in check? How do you propose to do that? Special neighborhoods? Special rules?

Special toys...



Jimmy's new muslim rifle. That picture gets me all verklempt.

Talk amongst yourselves. Frags. muslims. Discuss.

[Vis]

Originally Posted by MasterOfPuppets

not giving 10's of thousands of them every year visas and citizenship would be a good start..
in 1970 we had an estimated 160,000 muslims... today there are approximately 7 million.

So you want an immigration policy that has quotas based on religion, race or both?