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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (8155)	11/28/2004 9:29:57 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32591

The Elusive Moderate Muslim by Robert Spencer Posted Nov 24, 2004 Imam Siraj Wahaj is in great demand. Last week he was a featured speaker at the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury, Massachusetts. A few days before that, he addressed four hundred people at a Muslim Students Association gathering at Western Michigan University. His star has shone for years: in 1991, he even became the first Muslim to give an invocation to the U.S. Congress. And why not? Not long after 9/11, he said just what jittery Americans wanted to hear from Muslims: "I now feel responsible to preach, actually to go on a jihad against extremism." But what he thinks actually constitutes extremism is somewhat unclear; after all, he has also warned that the United States will fall unless it "accepts the Islamic agenda." He has lamented that "if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." In the early 1990s he sponsored talks by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in mosques in New York City and New Jersey; Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and Wahaj was designated a "potential unindicted co-conspirator." The fact that someone who would like to see the Constitution replaced has led a prayer for those sworn to uphold it is just a symptom a larger, ongoing problem: the government and media are avid to find moderate Muslims -- and as their desperation has increased, their standards have lowered. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find Muslim leaders who have genuinely renounced violent jihad and any intention, now or in the future, to impose Sharia on non-Muslim countries. The situation is complicated by many factors, including: 1. Taqiyya and kitman. These are Islamic doctrines of religious deception. They originated in Shi'ite Islamic defenses against Sunni Islam, but have their roots in the Qur'an (3:28 and 16:106). Many radical Muslims today work hard to deceive unbelievers, in line with Muhammad's statement, "War is deceit." 2. Since most Muslims today are not Arabs but all Islamic worship must be in Arabic, and because the Qur'an itself is in difficult classical Arabic, a significant number of nominal Muslims in the U.S. and around the world have no clear idea of what the Qur'an actually says, or what the traditions of their religion in fact do teach. This group, of course, is the radicals' largest recruiting ground: again and again -- notably in the case of the Al-Qaeda cell in Lackawanna, New York -- they have radicalized such "moderates" simply by teaching them what the Qur'an says. The smallest number is a third group: Muslims who know that the Qur'an and other Muslim sources teach violence against unbelievers but are ready to set that aside in all circumstances. "Moderate Islam" as a viable entity is still in an inchoate state theologically; it is largely a cultural habit that is ever vulnerable to being overturned by by-the-book radicals. Of course, another moderate Muslim spokesman, Stephen Schwartz, vehemently denies this. He recently reacted with contemptuous indignation to the claim "that Bosnian moderation has no basis in Islamic tradition, and that the absence of such means the country will always be susceptible to extremist infiltration." But it isn't that it's not traditional; it's that it's not theological: in the same piece he notes that he "was alarmed during my recent trip to see a resurgence of 'street Wahhabism' among young people and others easily swayed by superficial influences." No doubt these "superficial influences" included copious references to the Qur'an and Sunnah. Schwartz ascribes their appeal to, among other things, poverty and hopelessness. But this fails to explain why places that are relatively untouched by poverty and hopelessness -- most notably, Wahhabism's birthplace of Saudi Arabia, but by no means limited to the Kingdom -- have not been able to stop resurgences of "street Wahhabism." The appeal to "pure Islam" has proven strong. Where is moderate Islam? How can moderate Muslims refute the radical exegesis of the Qur'an and Sunnah? If an exposition of moderate Islam does not address or answer radical exegeses, is it really of any value to quash Islamic extremism? If the answer lies in a simple rejection of Qur'anic literalism, how can non-literalists make that rejection stick, and keep their children from being recruited by jihadists by means of literalism? So far, all self-proclaimed moderate Muslims have left such questions unanswered. But until they are answered, it would be wise to be wary of the likes of Siraj Wahaj. Mr. Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West humaneventsonline.com

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (8155)	11/30/2004 8:50:12 PM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

They should call him Maestro for the way he plays his role: Strange Bedfellows Bid to Rescue Sharon Government DEBKAfile Special Analysis November 30, 2004, 3:15 PM (GMT+02:00) The Sharon government’s permanent crisis peaked again this week over the insufficiency of parliamentary votes to get the 2005 state budget through its first reading Wednesday, December 1. The deadline for its second reading and final enactment is December 31. The acrobatic wheeling and dealing for a majority has accelerated the break-up of national mainstream parties and created incongruous juxtapositions. For instance, the far-left Yahad will vote for a avowedly anti-social budget to help the prime minister last long enough to achieve withdrawal from Gaza and the northern West Bank. The treasury claims there is no money for the poor, the elderly, the handicapped and the jobless, yet it has stumped up the round sum of NIS.290 million (US$65 m) for the Torah Judaism’s five votes for the budget. Abstentions by the 11 members of a second ultra-religious opposition party Shas will also cost the public purse. In protest, the four Shinui (Change) ministers and its 15 Knesset members announced they would vote against the budget draft. The prime minister responded to this act of defiance by his largest coalition partner by declaring that any minister failing to back the budget would be fired. The minority coalition line-up led by Sharon’s fractured Likud has been progressively whittled down in the last six months. Shinui’s departure would bring the government down and force an early election barring a quick remedy. The prime minister, in a race to hold his disintegrating government together for long enough to execute his disengagement plan, has again sent messengers to the opposition Labor party (22 MKs) with an offer to join his coalition – anything to stave off the second general election in two years that would scupper his plan. Last week, Sharon and the sympathetic Labor leader Shimon Peres, himself a former prime minister, reached a quiet understanding to buy time by four steps: 1. Scare tactics against Likud anti-disengagement rebels to impress on them that if the government falls now, their own future and that of the party is fraught with uncertainty. Step one was taken last week when ministers opposed to the removal of settlements but loyal to the prime minister were elected to key party posts. They defeated the rebel faction leaders. Labor’s task in this scenario is to bombard the government with no confidence motions. Labor’s motion Monday, November 29, was defeated as expected, but kept the specter of dissolution in the forefront of the lawmakers’ consciousness. 2. To co-opt Labor to the government coalition without portfolios. This stratagem is designed to overcome its members’ objections to Likud policies in every field excepting only disengagement by relieving them of responsibility for those policies. Likud ministers may buy this lease of life if at least one religious party is brought in as well and they do not have to sacrifice portfolios. 3. To execute disengagement by the end of 2005. With Labor, Sharon would be sure of majority cabinet support. 4. To bring the general election forward from 2006 to late 2005. This proposed timeline is a device to disarm threats to the leadership of Sharon and Peres in their respective parties. Sharon believes one year will be too short for his foremost rival, finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu, to repair his flawed image. His party following was disenchanted by his climb-down over a referendum on disengagement; large segments of the electorate bitterly resent his economic policies which favor the rich and neglect the needy. As for Labor, one year, so Peres hopes, will be not suffice for another former prime minister, Ehud Barak, to buy his way back into the good graces of the Labor party and run against him for the top party spot . Laborites do not forget that he dumped them at their lowest ebb after he was thrown out of office. Heedless of these considerations, the various parties are already acting as though the election campaign was upon them. Vital government business is left in midair as the factions make a show of flexing muscles over the budget and other urgent issues instead of giving them serious parliamentary attention. Against this backdrop, Labor’s central committee convenes Tuesday night, November 30. Peres will face a pressing demand from his opponents, Matan Vilnai and Barak, both hot contenders for the party leadership, to make the party’s entry to government conditional on full-scale party preparations for a general election, including an internal vote on the Labor slate of candidates. This would throw the leadership race wide open much earlier than suits Peres. He will therefore fight for his timeline deal with Sharon while seeking Labor endorsement for joining the government.