Zitat des Tages:

The paradox of American policy in the Middle East — promoting democracy on the assumption it will bring countries closer to the West — is that almost everywhere there are free elections, the American-backed side tends to lose.

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Der niederländische Parlamentarier Geert Wilders hat in einem Kommentar für die Tageszeitung „Volkskrant“ gefordert, man müsse den „Koran verbieten“.

Geert Wilders Foto: Groep Wilders

Hintergrund sind Angriffe auf einen jungen Mann namens Ehsan Jami, der eine Vereinigung der Ex-Muslime gebildet hatte. Jami, ursprünglich iranischer Herkunft, war am 4. August von drei Männern nach dem Verlassen eines Supermarkts zusammengeschlagen worden.
Jami steht seither unter Personenschutz. Geert Wilders begrüßt dies und ergänzt:

De kern van het probleem is de fascistische islam, de zieke ideologie van Allah en Mohammed zoals neergelegd in de islamitische Mein Kampf: de Koran. … Verbied dat ellendige boek zoals ook Mein Kampf verboden is! Geef zo een signaal aan de overvallers van Jami en andere islamisten dat de Koran in ons land nooit en te nimmer als inspiratie of excuus voor geweld mag worden gebruikt.

Will heissen: „Der Kern des Problems ist der faschistische Islam, die kranke Ideologie von Allah und Mohammed, wie sie im islamischen ‚Mein Kampf‘ niedergelegt ist: im Koran. … Verbietet dieses elende Buch, so wie auch Mein Kampf verboten ist! Gebt denjenigen, die Jami überfallen haben, und anderen Islamisten ein Signal, dass der Koran in unserem Land niemals als Inspiration oder Rechtfertigung von Gewalt benutzt werden darf. „

Na toll! Und um diese Selbstverständlichkeit durchzusetzen – dass religiöse Empfindamkeiten keine Rechtfertigung für Gewalt sein können -, muss man das heilige Buch der Muslime verbieten?

Die Partei von Herrn Wilders heißt „Partij voor de Vrihjheed“ – Freiheitspartei! Schöne Liberale sind das, die solche Signale senden möchten.

Ausserdem wäre ich sehr dankbar, wenn die verharmlosenden Nazi-Vergleiche endlich unterbleiben könnten. Das ist wirklich langsam widerlich. „Mein Kampf“ ist ein rassistisches Welteroberungs- und Völkermordprogramm. Der Koran ist das ausserordentlich vielschichtige Gründungsbuch einer universalistischen Offenbarungsreligion, deren Eroberungen und Gewaltexzesse ein würdiges Thema sind, aber mit exterminatorischem Rassismus Hitlerscher Art nichts zu tun haben.

Wenn man die Gewalt der jungen Lumpen, die einen (in ihren Augen) Apostaten zusammenschlagen, mit einem Koranverbot beantwortet (oder auch nur mit dem populistischen Ruf danach), bestätigt man sie darin, dass sie den Koran richtig ausgelegt haben.

Aber genau das will der feine Herr Wilders ja. Er ist selbst ein Hassprediger, der berechtigte Kritik am Islam und an der Mentalität junger Muslime für seine paranoide Angstpropaganda benutzt. So endet sein Artikel:

„Ich habe genug vom Islam in den Niederlanden: keine muslimischen Immigranten mehr. Ich habe genug von der Verherung Allahs in Holland: keine Moscheen mehr. Ich habe genug vom Koran in Hollan: verbietet das faschistische Buch.“

Natürlich weiss Wilders ganz genau, dass es nicht möglich ist, den Koran zu verbieten. Es ist ihm letztlich ganz egal. Er ist ein liberaler Ayatollah. Seine Parole heißt: Es gibt keinen moderaten Islam.“
Er will den Bürgerkrieg herbeireden. Er ist der beste Partner der verhetzten jungen Marokkaner, die die Gesellschaft hassen, in der sie aufgewachsen sind. Er surft elegant auf den Ängsten einer verunsicherten Gesellschaft.

Wir müssen die freiheitliche Ordnung in Europa gegen die Islamisten und gegen Hetzer wie Geert Wilders verteidigen, die ihnen in die Hände arbeiten.

Ehsan Jami hat andere Verteidiger verdient.

Schaich Sayed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Mitbegründer und theologische Autorität der schiitischen Hisbollah, hat eine Fatwa gegen Ehrenmorde veröffentlicht. Zitat von seiner Website:

„A vicious phenomenon, that of the so called „crimes of honour“, is on the rise in more than one country in the Arab and Muslim worlds, especially in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. Some men tend to kill their daughters, sisters, wives and female relatives, under the pretext that they had committed acts that harm chastity and honour.

Scheich Fadlallah

While on the contrary, those men are not enraged when their male relatives commit such acts. As if chastity is a duty that is should be observed by the woman only.

In fact, „honor crimes“ are based on the male tribal mentality that is still controlling the minds of many people, and not on a sense of honour or dignity.

I view „the crime of honour“ as a repulsive act, condemned and prohibited by religion. It is also a full crime whose perpetrator must be punished without any commutations. That is because these crimes are committed without any sound evidence from the juristic point of view and are mostly based on suspicions. Hence, the man, whether he was the husband, father, brother, or the male relative does not have the authority to take the law into one’s own hands or to punish the woman, which should be the authority of the just judicial power.

Those who commit such crimes must be punished in this life. This crime is also considered a one of the Kabair (severe sins) whose perpetrator deserves to enter Hellfire in the afterlife.“

Na bitte! Geht doch. Wenn wir jetzt noch eine kleines Gutachten zum Existenzrecht Israels haben könnten…

Eine wütende Klage des jordanischen Liberalen Shaker Nabulsi gegen die Machtergreifung des Klerus in der arabischen Welt. Interessanter Weise findet sich dieser sehr lesenswerte Essay auf einem saudischen Debattenforum:

The cleric is the number one man in the Arab world today. He is the one in first place, the owner of the first position, the one who preaches the first sermon, who drinks the first cup of coffee. If he wants to hold a public demonstration, he need utter only one word and streets are closed in his honour. Clergymen shut down newspapers, fire their editors, direct TV and radio stations, threaten ministers of culture, and haul them into court. Clergymen issue fatwas on satellite channels to kill poets and intellectuals, to burn their books, and to exile them from the country.

Shaker Nabulsi

One cleric will issue a fatwa commanding Arabs to spill the blood of Arab liberals, without an investigation. Another will call Arab intellectuals infidels and atheists, and the accused will be convicted by public opinion, and denied the right of legal representation in the courts. In such cases international human rights organizations are often denied the right to defend the accused. Those who issue such fatwas are not punished, or even held accountable for their actions.

A cleric today can issue a personal fatwa demanding the death of an entire group of Arab liberals, and there is no requirement for an investigation of possible wrongdoing.

Today clergymen interfere in the smallest details of Arab daily life, forcibly entering and searching the homes of people, ordering the police to arrest fathers and sons, accusing the head of the household of being an immoral infidel, spitting in the faces of women, accusing them of being prostitutes. Clergy are not required to obtain a special order or an authorization from the authorities in order to commit such atrocities.

Today, in the Arab world, the cleric has become the first politician. The Arab mind, through lifting the Koran high, has thrown all other books to the ground, trampling on them and tearing them to pieces. Now that „Islam is the solution“ has become the belief of the people, all the scientific, political, economic, social and cultural knowledge that was so painfully acquired over centuries is being trampled upon.

…

Islam’s original message was one of unification and liberation. It opposed the forces of obscurantism, the sorcerers and the charlatans. It was a message that called for thinking and contemplation. That message has been betrayed. It has been taken over by a set of daily fatwas characterized by illiteracy, magic, sorcery, and quackery.

How did clergymen manage to become the leaders of our human caravan? How have these magicians taken the place of the horsemen who led us in the past?

Muslim clerics in Arab states have been encouraged to issue fatwas on all matters, useful and useless, important and puerile, small and big, to the point that we need a fatwa to tell us how to eat or go to the bathroom. This shows how the Arab mind has degraded itself.

In die Debatte um Krieg, Dschihad, Apostasie und Frauenrechte im Islam, aus der ich bereits den Beitrag von Scheich Ali Gomaa zitiert hatte, schaltet sich Ayaan Hirsi Ali ein. Sie unterscheidet zwischen füng Gruppen im heutigen Islam:

The first group includes those Muslims who leave the faith because they cannot reconcile it with their conscience or with modernity. This group is important for the evolution of the Islamic world because they ask the urgent and critical questions believers usually avoid. Ex-Muslims living in the west are just beginning to find their voice and to take advantage of the spiritual and social freedoms available to them.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foto: Tweede Kamer

The second group is comprised of genuine Muslim reformers, such as Irshad Manji, who acknowledge the theological out-datedness of the Koranic commands and the immorality of the prophet. They tend to emphasize the early chapters in the Koran urging goodness, generosity and spirituality. They argue that the latter chapters wherein Islam is politicized and the concepts of sharia, jihad and martyrdom are introduced should be read in the context in which they were written, some 1,400 years ago.

The third group is made up of those Muslims who support the gradual perpetuation and domination of Islam throughout the world. They use the freedoms offered in democracy to undermine social modernity and, though initially opposed to the use of violence, foresee that once the number of believers reaches a critical mass the last remnants of unbelievers may then be dealt with in violence, and sharia law may be universally implemented. Ayatollah Khomeini used this method successfully in Iran. Erdogan of Turkey is following in his footsteps. Tariq Ramadan, deeply rooted in his Muslim Brotherhood heritage, is devoted to such a program among European Muslims.

The fourth group is the most obvious and immediately threatening. In this group we find a growing number of hard-line Muslims who have defined martyrdom as their only goal. This is an army of young men whipped into a frenzy of suicidal violence by power hungry clergy. These clergy have public platforms and work with impunity from institutions untouched and often funded by national authorities.

The fifth group is largely ineffective and only threatening in their refusal to acknowledge the truth. Here we find the elite clergy who make a show of trying to reconcile Islam with modernity. They are motivated by self-preservation and have no interest in true reform. They take selective passages from the holy books to make a case for a peaceful Islam, ignoring the many passages inciting violence, such as those verses which command the death of apostates.

It is through the first two of these five groups that progress and reform will come. As for the rest, the western world would be wise to recognize the realities of Islam, a religion laid down in writing over a millennium ago with violence and oppression at its heart.

Eine hoch interessante Debatte auf Aljazeera English über die Muslimbruderschaft in Ägypten – zwischen einem Vetreter der regierenden Nationaldemokraten, einem ägytischen Politologen und einem Ex-Sprecher der Bruderschaft, der in London lebt.
Mir gefällt vor allem der Part, bei dem die deutsche Christdemokratie als Modell für die politische Rolle der Bruderschaft ins Spiel gebracht wird.

Und hier ist Teil 2:

Ein Stück von Matthew d’Ancona im Guardian lässt mich hoffen. Der Reporter des (konservativen) Spectator war mit Brown bei Bush und glaubt, einen Strategiewechsel von Blair zu Brown beobachten zu können.

Vom Pudel zurück zur guten alten britischen Bulldogge. Brown bei Bush. Foto: White House

Vor allem zuletzt die Attentate der islamistischen Doktoren in Glasgow hätten Brown zu der Überzeugung gebracht, dass es viel mehr um die ideologische Seite des Terrorismusproblems gehen müsse als nur um die militärisch-polizeiliche Bekämpfung.

Brown habe früher auch gerne ökonomische Erklärungen für den Terrorismus gesucht. Doch das Inferno am Glasgower Flughafen, so d’Ancona

sealed in his mind a shift of analysis: that twisted ideas, rather than poverty, were the true basis of the problem. In the PM’s eyes, it follows that the next phase of the struggle must be more subtle, much of it completely concealed.

Es müsse gezielt die kulturelle und ideologische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Dschihadismus gesucht werden, ganz ähnlich wie seinerzeit im Kalten Krieg mit dem Kommunismus:

… it does mean finding resources for moderate Muslims and cutting off funding to anyone else: Brown believes that the old left’s version of „multiculturalism“ led us to the insanity of financing groups precisely because they were extreme. Expect big changes.

Browns neue Doktrin

on winning „hearts and minds“ is based not on making local people feel affection for you, but on persuading them that you can protect them better than the enemy.

Meanwhile, young Muslims drawn to the flames of Islamism – in West Yorkshire as much as Basra – have to be targeted for „ideological conversion“, a process Kilcullen compares to the tactics used to keep young men out of street gangs. Easier said than done, of course. But this is the way Brown’s counter-terrorist thinking is heading: away from invasions, „crusades“, and „shock and awe“, and towards something that owes much more to a cold war theorist such as George Kennan than it does to Donald Rumsfeld or, indeed, to Tony Blair.

(Was mich zu einem Vorschlag verleitet: Wollen wir hier alle miteinander Kennans legendären Aufsatz über „Containment“ lesen und debattieren? Das Wort scheint mir, gerade auch im Bezug auf Iran und die neue Aufrüstungsinitiative der Amerikaner hoch aktuell.)

Eine willkürlich herausgegriffene Nachricht aus der Welt des „moderaten Regimes“ in Saudi-Arabien, das die Amerikaner demnächst noch massiver aufrüsten wollen. Eine 19jährige Gastarbeiterin aus Sri Lanka ist zum Tod durch Enthauptung verurteilt worden.
Wer solche Freunde hat…
Nicht nur, was im Lande geschieht, ist haarsträubend. Saudi-Arabiens Einfluss geht bekanntlich weit über die Halbinsel hinaus. Ich rede hier nicht nur vom exportierten Dschihadismus, von der Vergiftung hunderttausender junger Köpfe in saudisch finanzierten Medressen in Südostasien, von der Finanzierung des Terrors durch mit Ölgeld gefütterte „islamische Wohltätigkeitsorganisationen“.
Nein: Der Einfluss saudi-arabischen Geldes auf die westliche Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit ist erschreckend, wie dieser Fall zeigt. Cambridge University Press hat ein Buch über die Finanzierung des Terrorismus fallen lassen, nachdem der Verlag von saudisch finanzierten Anwälten mit Prozessen bedroht wurde.
In dem Buch „Alms for Jihad“ geht es unter anderem auch um die Beteiligung der saudischen Königsfamilie an der Finanzierung und Beförderung des militanten Islam.

Die Historikerin Deborah Lipstadt, die selbst einen Prozess gegen den Holocaust-Leugner David Irving gewann, berichtet auf ihrem Blog:

The authors explore how, in the words of Michael Rubin, writing in the New York Sun:

The Saudi royal family played a pernicious role, founding and promoting charities to spread militant Sunni Islam, not only as an inoculation against resurgent Shi’ism from revolutionary Iran, but also to radicalize the Muslims in Europe and America.

The British lawyers for Khalid bin Mahfouz and his son Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz wrote Cambridge University Press saying they intended to sue the Press and the authors for defamation against their clients.

Cambridge University Press contacted the authors,and they provided detailed material in support of their claims made in Alms for Jihad.

Nonetheless, Cambridge University Press decided not to contest the argument and next week they will apologize in court.

Cambridge University Press wird sich bei der saudischen Königsfamilie entschuldigen!
Willkommen in einer neuen Welt.

Dennis Prager hat ein interessantes Stück über Nutzen und Nachteil des Begriffs „Islamophobie“ geschrieben. Kernzitat:

Therefore, Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism should be just as subject to criticism as conservatism or liberalism.

However, the only religion the West permits criticism of is Christianity. People write books, give lectures and conduct seminars on the falsity of Christian claims, or on the immoral record of Christianity, and no one attacks them for racism or bigotry, let alone attacks them physically. The head of the Anti-Defamation League announces that conservative Christians are the greatest threat to America today, and no one charges him with racism or Christianophobia.

…

The fact remains that the term „Islamophobia“ has one purpose — to suppress any criticism, legitimate or not, of Islam. And given the cowardice of the Western media, and the collusion of the left in banning any such criticism (while piling it on Christianity and Christians), it is working.

Latest proof: This past week a man in New York was charged with two felonies for what is being labeled the hate crime of putting a Koran in a toilet at Pace College. Not misdemeanors, mind you, felonies. Meanwhile, the man who put a crucifix in a jar of urine continues to have his artwork — „Piss Christ“ — displayed at galleries and museums. A Koran in a toilet is a hate crime; a crucifix in pee is a work of art. Thanks in part to that brilliant term, „Islamophobia.“

Sehr guter Punkt von Bradley Burston in Haaretz:

Self-hate, after all, has been a staple of Jewish life since Jewish life began. Moses had to face the Children of Israel’s dissent, discomfort, discontent and distaste, much more often than he would have liked (witness Korach, Datan and Aviram, Numbers 16:1-33 or the episode of the golden calf, Exodus 32: 1-35).

It may be argued that an element of self-hate could benefit the contemporary Muslim world no less.

Bradley Burston. Foto: Varda Spiegel

The sense of moral superiority and ultimate entitlement is strong within Islam as well. This has proven no healthier for Muslims than it has for Jews. It has reached its most extreme form in jihadism, and an explicit goal of eventual domination of all areas once ruled by Muslims. But in making war on the West, Al-Qaida has effectively touched off a war against Islam. For quite some time, the vast majority of victims of worldwide Islamic terror have been Muslims.

Recently, perhaps as a result, there are signs that Muslims in growing numbers are questioning the sheikhs, mullahs and ayatollahs who preach Muslim superiority and Islamic entitlement. The same Internet and satellite television that drove jihadist terror forward are serving as platforms for Muslims who question, critique and counter the extremists.

May we, Muslim and Jew, have the wisdom to address our own failings with the vigor with which we attack each others‘.

Let’s hear it for healthy self-hate. It may just be what the world needs now.