Re: Sad but true…
Let me pick apart the article, to demonstrate my point:
Right there in the headlines…sigh…typical.
In other words…if you stay silent, your silence will be interpreted as being supportive of terrorism. You denounce it…you’re a liar. Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t. Such people cannot be taken seriously. Ever.
[quote]
Why should Muslims renounce the doctrine entirely? What if we are attacked? What if we are trying to be ethnically cleansed? In the minds of people like this, a more blunt question such as “do you support Jihad in Canada?” would never be asked, because the answer will not be favorable (almost always no). But no, they have pretensions to a pacifistic world view and if we don’t live up to a pacifist ideal, we will be portrayed as violent. This dualism is nonsensical. First, they are hardly pacifists. Tarek Fatah has no problem waging a war against not only militants, but those who would prefer a conservative culture enforced on a willing population. This is apparent from his writings. Second, society as a whole is not pacifistic. The concept subscribed to is that of just war, and Jihad can be construed as a just war doctrine. Why should we renounce something, everybody else considers as their right? The question is made overly general to elicit the desired response, without delving into the reasons why the response was given.
Never heard one myself. But, again, not exactly pushing people to pick up a gun and go on a random shooting spree. Extremism requires a different kind of indoctrination. Asking Allah for victory in Palestine is hardly the same as preparing one to fight a war in a land that they have citizenship in. We of Pakistani ancestry know this, given Pakistan’s hsitory with Jihadis starting with the Afghan-Soviet war. We know how it works, how people are recruited and convinced of going to far flung places to do the bidding of their political masters. We know the deal…most Westerners don’t.
Now how the hell is this (violent!) metaphor any different than a simple prayer asking God for victory over the Kuffar? Conservative Muslims are to be exterminated…I mean, it’s right there…
To make a long story short, at best Tarek’s goal is the social ostracization of conservative Muslims. To do this, we are made out to be unloyal fifth columnists, who are all secretly supportive of or waiting to become Jihadis. To this extent, he sets up a narrative of what it is to be an “acceptable” Muslim: on who is quiet, or who echos the liberal ethos verbatim of the society they find themselves in. It is insufficient to acknoweldge it as the dominate ehtos of society, one must actually subscribe to it (free thought is not a concern…so he’s not a liberal, as you suggested). Anyone else is a threat.
Do you agree with that assessment of conservative Muslims?