islam doesn't speak, muslims do | "the ink of the scholar is worth more than the blood of the martyr" – Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
Zombie Lie: Right Still Clinging To Decade-Old Fabrication About Radicalized Mosques | Media Matters for America. Zombie Lie: Right Still Clinging To Decade-Old Fabrication About Radicalized Mosques
Howard Dean: ‘I’m Uncomfortable Focusing on Radical Islam’… – Howard Dean – Fox Nation. I’m a little uncomfortable focusing on the notion of ‘radical Islam’ because the truth is radical anything is what’s bad, and people who use violence.… What radicals do is they polarize people to get this kind of reaction. … Intolerance breeds intolerance. And we can’t fight intolerance with intolerance. … The radicals that are targeting us are in fact bigoted, misogynist, and intolerant. And if we respond that way, they’ve won. I’m not gonna give up what America believes in because different individuals happen to belong…
Follow the link. Really good interview on the topic. The interviewer also clearly did his homework, and asked some good questions. The Gist: What the Protests Mean for LGBT Egyptians. Activist and scholar Rasha Moumneh, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who works with feminist and LGBT groups in the Middle East, including Egypt, spoke with me on the show from Beirut on Tuesday about what the protests might mean for LGBT Egyptians, who’ve long been brutally repressed by the Mubarak regime.Here is the full interview.
STUDY: TERRORISM BY MUSLIM-AMERICANS DOWN IN 2010. A new study released today by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security shows that the number of Muslim-Americans who perpetrated or were arrested for terrorist acts declined sharply in 2010. The study, “Muslim American Terrorism Since 9/11: An Accounting,” reports that while 47 Muslim-Americans committed or were arrested for terrorist crimes in 2009, the number dropped to 20 this past year. h/t Faith in Public Life
Yemen is not Tunisia or Egypt – CNN.com. Yemen’s regional diversity actually helps a weak central government to remain in power. No rival commands a large enough following to challenge Saleh’s rule. The protesters call on Saleh not to put his son in power, but no one is chanting a viable successor’s name. There is no ElBaradei waiting in the wings, as we see in Egypt.
Bin Laden’s Lonely Crusade | Politics | Vanity Fair. Is al-Qaeda simply going to wither away? Yes, with a little help, though not in the short term. History shows that small, violent groups can sustain their bloody work for years on end with virtually no public support. However, embedded in the DNA of groups such as al-Qaeda are the seeds of their own destruction. To begin with, al-Qaeda and allied groups have launched terrorist campaigns from Iraq to Indonesia that have killed thousands of Muslim civilians. For groups that claim to be defending Muslims, this is not an impressive achievement.…
Opinion: Homegrown terrorists are not just Muslims – Rep. Bennie Thompson – POLITICO.com. Today’s terrorists do not share a particular ethnic, educational or socioeconomic background. Recently, when state law enforcement agencies were asked to identify terror groups in their states, Muslim extremist groups ranked 11th on a list of 18. Law enforcement agencies identified neo-Nazis, environmental extremists and anti-tax groups as more prevalent than Muslim terrorist organizations. The sophisticated explosive device found along a parade route in Washington on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, an act of domestic terrorism clearly motivated by racist ideology, should prove that other groups are…
She gets that we can no longer politicize religion and hope that it stays “safe.” Violating the Saints – NYTimes.com. There is no poetry in the aftermath of a bombing. After the initial fireball, there’s choking black smoke, people running everywhere, screaming in fear and panic. There is blood, and body parts strewn on the ground. Rescue workers must claw their way inside, facing searing heat and burning wreckage, to find what little remains of both the victims and the perpetrators.
by Zoe Pollock Scott Horton interviewed father and son Charles and Gregory Fried about their book, Because It Is Wrong—Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror. Horton asked why they paired torture with privacy and surveillance: [After 9/11] the general public, and even the informed public, reacted as if both transgressions were equally serious and equally deserving of condemnation. Indeed, there may have been a markedly greater tolerance of torture than of surveillance—maybe because few of us expect to undergo torture, but all feel our phones or Internet may be tapped into. This gets things exactly wrong.…
New Terrorism Adviser Takes A ‘Broad Tent’ Approach : NPR. “A number of years ago, before he went into government, he did some of the most path-breaking work not only on who was susceptible to being radicalized, but most importantly, who was the most resistant to being radicalized,” says Christine Fair, an expert on terrorism and radicalization at Georgetown University. “And the findings that he came up with based upon his work really shattered some of the stereotypes we have about Muslims and radicalization.” As part of his research, Wiktorowicz interviewed hundreds of Islamists in the United Kingdom. After compiling…