In fact, six weeks after the September 11 attacks — before Hamdani’s remains were identified, which Ellison implies to be the turning point of public perception — Congress signed the PATRIOT Act into law with this line included: “Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States, including Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New Yorker of Pakistani descent, who is believed to have gone to the World Trade Center to offer rescue assistance and is now missing.” That is, Hamdani was actually singled out for particular high honors among the thousands of victims of the September 11 attacks.
There’s little evidence of the “rumors” of which Ellison speaks, either. Poke around yourself. Go to Google and search for Mohammed Salman Hamdani’s name, using various time frames from before today’s hearings (say, in the week after the September 11 attack). You’ll discover two discordant sets of returns: none for sites and news reports accusing Hamdani of being a terrorist, and many thousands of pages honoring him as a hero while claiming that he was “widely accused” of being a terrorist.
Web pages that do source the claim that Hamndani was “widely accused” of being a terrorist typically trace back to a single report from the New York Post, dated Oct. 12, 2001, and titled “Missing — or Hiding? Mystery of NYPD Cadet from Pakistan.” The piece has been taken offline, but its content is preserved elsewhere. Here’s what the New York Post wrote:
Read the article
(Hat tip: Dennis Prager Show)
People who are ignorant of Islam have no idea how very different it is from other ”religions,” like, say, Judaism or Christianity.
For example, Keith Ellison lied several times with regards to the Homeland Security Hearings on American Muslim radicalization.
Both Judaism and Christianity have admonishions AGAINST lying.
(See Exodus 20:16; John 8:44; Proverbs 14:5; or Proverbs 6:19)
But Islam actually encourages lying, dissembling and holding back the whole truth.
In Islam these teachings and practices are called Kitman and Taqiyya.
Here’s what Keith E. did:
On Friday on TV Keith invoked a deceitfully redacted extract of Koran 5:32, and the ostensible Koranic paean to “tolerance,” verse 2:256.
See the video here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/03/12/bill_maher_debates_islam_with_democratic_muslim_congressman.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d7c6c533a977980,0
So. Ellison had a “script” ready, and just needed to find a “player” to “fill the role”??? A “missing 9/11 Muslem fit perfectly? Then “create” a “record” to fit the script??? Hmmmm how very “Liberal of him”! Didn’t I see this somewhere once?? Um, oh yeah, it was in a MOVIE! “Wag the Dog”!! Dems seem to use that sort of “Idea” a lot!
@Nan G:
Ellison is not practicing taqiyya (a Shia tradition and allowable under specific conditions). He’s not some evil Islamist hell-bent on destroying this country. He’s simply misguided.
The Koran is up for interpretation. Most of us right-wingers prefer seeing the worst about the Koran, interpreting it through the same lens as the Islamists, wahhabis, salafists, Khomeinites, and jihadis. Apparently we want to convince majority peaceful Muslims about how evil their book is and insist, “No, your book says this- check out the sword verses” when they themselves choose to practice their faith, peacefully.
A number of Muslims who bother to read the Koran believe the fighting verses were revealed for a specific, historical context, permitting the use of force in self-defense. A number of them believe that war according to Islam (as they see it) is justifiable only in self-defense. Most of the Quranic verses have little to do with fighting and warfare (less than 1%); far more have to do with peace.
The Koran is filled with “contradictory” verses. Others who don’t embrace jihadism and wahhibism, and the Taliban, and al Qaeda, and Ahmadinejad’s vision of the Hidden Imam, etc. will argue that the Koran instructs Muslims to be tolerant of people who don’t believe in Islam or God. That Islam doesn’t dictate that only Muslims will go to Heaven; that the Koran forbids discourtesy to Jews and Christians; that the message they learn from the Koran is one of forgiveness, mercy, peace, and tolerance. (There are chapters and verses that back these up; and if you tell me later verses abrogate the supposed earlier peaceful verses, Islamic scholars will argue that this is wrongful interpretation, pushed by a few earlier Islamic scholars (the kind favored by Islamic extremists and puritanical fundamentalists). My understanding is also:
If some of this is based upon pc-reading/interpreting/sugar-coating, then isn’t that the “reform” we should be encouraging?
You may disagree with me and Ellison on the Koran. Call it (willful) ignorance of the book and faith; but, I believe he sincerely believes in the “pc” notions of “Islam is a religion of peace” and is trying to faithfully follow that belief.
What I don’t get is why on every single post that touches upon Islam, my fellow right-wingers feel this knee-jerk need to beat a dead horse and repeat their knowledge of Islam and the Koran all over again…and again…and again- rather than simply focus on the specific topic. As if taqiyya, abrogation, all the shocking excerpts from the Koran are a new revelation to readers, that no one here has ever heard before.
Oh, wordsmith, that’s EASY! We’re used to talking to Liberals about things political.. and that REQUIRES repetitiveness, to penetrate thick skills… over and over and over…..and most of the time, it doesn’t work anyway.. once thru the skull portion, the “great void” in there does not HOLD new ideas or thoughts! All that hard work for nothing! LOL!
😉
@Wordsmith:
You had me until: “…I believe he sincerely believes in the “pc” notions of “Islam is a religion of peace” and is trying to faithfully follow that belief. ”
If you mean that he thinks it says to kill non-believers then I agree. The man is racist bigot who calls anglos white devils and hates Jews. He wants peace? I don’t think so.
Wordsmith, I wonder why, if all you say about how the Koran can be understood, there have been NO REFORMERS of it?
Why is it that would-be reformers cannot use the Koran to REFUTE teachers of violent Jihad and hatred of the non-Muslim?
Not even anonymously on the web?
I personally believe there are many, many weak Muslims, in-name-only types, who would leave that religion if they could do so without family targeting them for death.
(I even know a couple of these, types.)
Sorry, wordsmith, you’re wrong. There is no multiple interpretations to the Qu’ran. Read any Islamic scholar (Bernard Lewis) and you will learn that any edict make by Mohammed that was changed in his later years, it is the later edict that stands, not the earlier one. Then talk to any Islamic scholar and ask them if the Qu’ran is up for different intrepretation, depending on the Imam. They will tell you “no” as the Qu’ran is to be taken literally, not philosophically.
What Ellison did, beside painting a false story about the Muslim victim of 9-11, was to quote an earlier edict and not the later ones that abrogated the earliest. You see, Islam did in fact go through a reformation, but during Mohammed’s time; he was a man of peace the first 13 years, and a violent war lord pedophile the rest of his life.
For some reason I was thinking of Farrakhan when I made my previous post. With that said, he has been buddies with Farrakhan and a member of the nation of islam. I still think Ellison is a fan of the more violent Koran, a racist, and likely an anti-semite.
@Hard Right: You might be right about Ellison. I haven’t followed everything about him beyond his swearing in on Jefferson’s Koran. But listening to him on Maher as well as hearing moderate mainstream conservatives who disagree with him yet speak politely to his character, he comes across to me as your typical multiculturalist liberal Democrat and a Muslim who believes in the “pcified” version of his faith. I believe he sincerely practices his faith as a “religion of peace”, even as he is also one of those who constantly makes excuses on behalf of Islam and is in denial of owning up to some of the more violent tenets of his faith.
@Nan G:
Um….wahhabism was an attempt at reformation. And now right-wingers want to fall into the bin Laden trap of “clash of civilizations” and prop Islamic fundamentalism and political Islam as the one true and only interpretation of Islam.
They do this ALL THE TIME.
Spencerian and Gellerian conservatives refuse to see beyond what they’ve already condemned and decided Islam to be.
And when the kind of reform you’re thinking of is taking place, you guys poo-poo it as, “Nope. That’s pc nonsense. That ain’t Islam. You may believe you’re practicing a religion of peace but your Quran says this and that and the other thing and you have no choice but to kill or convert me because that’s what I read.”
You don’t think Muslims and a number of Islamic scholars haven’t rejected violent jihad? Global jihadism is in the minority. Even many of those who are Islamic fundamentalists have rejected the violence of the global jihad movement as counterproductive and/or not of Islam.
I find most of this sort of take as mostly conspiratorial nonsense.
It’s usually high-profile brou-haha that generates lots of media coverage that gains the attention of Islamic loonies.
Your every day, ordinary, Joe-Muslim does not go around “killing and converting” infidels. Joe-Muslim doesn’t go after those who left the faith.
@retire05:
Of course there is. You have one. Robert Spencer has one. Zawahiri has one. Muhammad Ali has one. Keith Ellison has one. Whose interpretation is the correct one?
But literal interpretation is not the same for each person. And there is no priesthood; there is no Vatican in Islam. Early scholars disagreed with one another. The Quran wasn’t even canonized into one complete, ordered text until years after Muhammad’s death ( the Uthmanic rescension).
Some of the early Islamic scholars in order to promulgate Islamic rule (not the religion itself) interpreted certain later verses to have “abrogated” earlier ones. But not all scholars are even in agreement over what’s abrogated, accuracy in context, and chronology; nor on the issue of abrogation itself. Again, there is no one interpretation. Personally, I’d question if even the early scribes got right what they eventually writ down (years after Muhammad’s death):
I have a hard time with organized religion, in general. I don’t trust man. I don’t trust his memory, his agenda and prejudices, not to distort. What comes down to us as the word of God? What is merely man injecting his own distortions and masquerading it around as God’s will? How closely do today’s Christians resemble the Christians who lived in Jesus’ times?
Look at all the various branches of Christianity and Islam that exists. Why do you suppose this is, if there is only one interpretation?
Were Muslims being persecuted at all during his lifetime? Was marriage to those underage uniquely a “Mohammed-thing” or was it commonplace practice in the culture(s) of the times he lived in, predating Mohammad and Islam?
@Wordsmith:
Does the name Abdul Rahman ring a bell, Wordsmith?
Had Abdul Rahman been acquitted and freed inside Afghanistan the MOB would have torn him to death.
Had he been convicted the Sharia Court would have executed him.
So, mostly because Karzai had billions of dolloars of US money at risk, Abdul Rahman was spirited out of Afghanistan in secret.
Other Christians who used to be Muslim sit in prisons in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere.
And that is their only crime….converting away from Islam.
If our man in Pakistan gets out alive I will be happy.
A CIA man, an infidel, who killed two Muslims.
Now the Pakistani court has found him eligible for US diplomatic immunity.
He is safely out of there.
But blood money was paid.
Rana Sanaullah, the law minister of Punjab province, said, “[Raymond] Davis was freed after the exchange of money in the court.”
So Sharia was adjusted to allow an infidel to pay to cover his own life after the deaths of Muslims.
That is NOT in Sharia Law.
Maybe what you mean when you say, ”Joe-Muslim,” is really ”AMERICAN Joe-Muslim.”
Because on that we can agree.
Muhammad dealt with those who left Islam in his life-time with death.
“…..for the Prophet said, ‘If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.’ ” [ Sahih Bukhari 4.260]
Mohammad said, “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.” [Volume 9, Book 83, Number 17]
”A man embraced Islam and then reverted back to Judaism. Mu’adh bin Jabal came and saw the man with Abu Musa. Mu’adh asked, “What is wrong with this (man)?” Abu Musa replied, “He embraced Islam and then reverted back to Judaism.” Mu’adh said, ” I will not sit down unless you kill him (as it is) the verdict of Allah and His Apostle.” [Volume 9, Book 89, Number 271]
Here are some links about Ellison that lead me to think he supports the more violent version of the Koran. Plus you don’t join the Nation of Islam if you are wishy washy. He claims he is no longer a supporter, but I’m not buying it.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/58385/ellison-arizona-immigration-law-fascist
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/10/congressman-keith-ellison-d-muslim-brotherhood-likens-resistance-to-islamic-supremacism-as-racism.html
http://hazzzmat.blogspot.com/2007/07/ellison-islamofascist-apologist-shows.html
http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/hamas-supporter-muslim-congressman-keith-ellison-d-mn-sweating-over-peter-kings-radical-muslim-probes/
http://presslord.com/speech.htm
Thanks for the links, HR!
@Nan G:
I didn’t realize primitive tribal Afghans represented Joe-Muslim.
The Koran doesn’t specify the death penalty for apostasy. It decrees that apostates be encouraged and given the opportunity to return to Islam.
Muslim medieval jurists are the ones who came up with Islamic jurisprudence that would see fit to punish apostates. Most modern Muslims do not subscribe to this in the modern world, as far as I can tell.
Are you familiar with Pakistan’s court system? Because I’m not. However, there is no one, universal Sharia. And it is the height of chutzpah to tell Islamic practitioners as an outsider what their religious faith/laws allow and disallow. So many conservatives these days are like armchair imam-wannabes, educating Muslims and non-Muslims alike in what Islam is and isn’t rather than allowing Islam’s practitioners to define who and what they believe and practice.
😉
There is no reference to the death penalty in the earthly life for the crime of apostasy in the Quran. This is something debated amongst Islamic scholars. There is no consensus.