Muslims Misbehaving

Ah, the  true face of the "religion of peace"....the 7th century in very much alive in radical Islamism....

When will the Umma speak out against the predation of their own?

K

Fight the good fight. Keep the faith.

Advancing radical Islamists lay waste to religious heritage
Tom Heneghan (Reuters, July 4, 2012)  http://wwrn.org/articles/37635/

Paris, France - The grim sacking of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu is the latest chapter in an assault on prized religious heritage across the Muslim world that has picked up over the past decade with the spread of radical Islamism.

The world got a first taste of this iconoclasm in 2001, when Afghanistan's ruling Taliban blew up two huge 6th-century statues of Buddha despite an international outcry.

Since then, radical Islamists have also struck holy sites of other faiths, especially Christian churches. But their most frequent targets have been mosques and shrines of other Muslims loyal to a version of Islam less puritanical than their own.

This violence has spread through Pakistan, starting near the Afghan border and fanning out to strike famous Sufi shrines as far away as Lahore and southern Punjab.

It broke out in the Middle East last year when, in the wake of the Arab Spring, once-repressed Salafi groups destroyed shrines in Egypt. In Libya, some militants dug up Sufi saints' graves and dumped their remains on garbage heaps.

Like the radicals' strict theology, this assault on rival religious heritage goes back to the dawn of Islam and is rigorously enforced in its birthplace, Saudi Arabia.

Sanda Ould Boumama of the Ansar Dine group now reducing Timbuktu's tombs to rubble told France's RFI radio: "When the Prophet (Mohammad) entered Mecca, he said all the mausoleums should be destroyed. And that's what we're repeating."

AGAINST IDOLATRY

Arch-conservative Sunnis - notably Saudi Wahhabis, other Salafis they inspired and Afghan and Pakistani Taliban - reject idolatry as un-Islamic and aim to destroy any trace of it.

Many targets are Sufis, a mystical school of popular Islam, because they revere saints and sages with ornate shrines and joyous festivals that they say help bring them closer to God.

The radicals also target Shi'ites and Ahmedis, a sect that believes another prophet came after Mohammad, as well as non-Muslims, noted Jamal Elias, Religious Studies Department chair at the University of Pennsylvania.

"At the root, there is a dividing line among Sunni Muslims between those who believe in intercessionary models of religion, and those who don't," he said.

Believers in intercession say the living can pray to a dead saint to ask God to help them. Strict Sunnis insist there can be no mediator between man and God.

The spread of Salafism through the Muslim world in recent decades means these conflicts are almost bound to break out when certain conditions prevail, said Mark Sedgwick, professor of Arab and Islamic studies at Denmark's Aarhus University.

"They believe they have a duty to enforce good and prevent evil," he said, so these attacks are "something that can happen when there is a breakdown of law and order."

Destroying rival sites is also part of the pattern of establishing the new religious order, Elias said.

"When they bring an area under their version of Islamic rule, they make certain kinds of gestures to show the place has now become virtuous," he said.

"They restrict the movement of women. They smash video rental and music shops. And they attack 'bad' Muslim practice."

SALAFISM SPREADS

In this logic, local protests against the destruction of holy places and objects only serve to convince the radicals that their argument is right. "They take that reaction as evidence that the people have fetishised the objects," Elias said.

In the famed city of Timbuktu, known as the City of 333 Saints, Al-Qaeda-linked Salafis took pick-axes and shovels to mausoleums of local saints and tore down a mosque door that locals believed had to stay shut until the end of the world.

They also smashed traditional African statues.

In Pakistan, where the majority of Muslims belong to the Sufi-inspired Barelvi sect, the local Taliban regularly stage bombings and bloody assaults on Sufi and Shi'ite sites.

The size or splendor of the shrines hardly deters them. In 2010, extremists bombed the Lahore mausoleum of Data Ganj Baksh, one of Pakistan's most famous Sufi sites, killing 42 people.

A year later, during the annual festival at another large shrine in southern Punjab far from the Afghan border, two more bombers killed 41 worshippers and injured scores more.

Several small Sufi shrines near Cairo were destroyed soon after Hosni Mubarak's fall from power last year. In Qalyoub, only quick action by residents saved their shrine from Salafi youths hacking away at it with crowbars and sledgehammers.

The fall of Muammar Gaddafi in neighboring Libya left many Sufi shrines defenseless. In January of this year, extremists bulldozed their way into a Benghazi cemetery and carted off the remains of 29 respected sages and scholars to dump elsewhere.

When militants threatened Libya's biggest shrine at Zlitan in March, armed volunteers rushed there in pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft weapons to defend it.

SAUDI EXAMPLE

Saudi Arabia has set an example by systematically destroying many historic Islamic sites in the name of its puritan Wahhabi version of the faith, lest they attract idolatrous worshippers.

The first wave came in the early 1880s, when tribesmen from central Arabia first conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. They flattened the Medina cemetery where Mohammad's family was buried and almost tore down the Prophet's tomb.

The Ottomans drove them out and rebuilt many tombs, but the Saudis destroyed them again when they retook the cities in 1925. Historic Islamic sites have disappeared apace since then as the oil-rich kingdom has remade the holy cities.

"The Saudis have been on a long project to essentially build a new Mecca," said Elias, naming several mosques and tombs now replaced by modern buildings and parking lots.

"Look at the huge clock tower they've built," he said, referring to 600-metre (1,970 feet) tower that stands amid several high-rise hotels overshadowing the Grand Mosque. "It's part of this plan to erase the pre-modern era."

 

Murder of student, musicians stoke fears in Egypt about intentions of Islamists
("Associated Press," July 4, 2012)  http://wwrn.org/articles/37641/

Cairo, Egypt - Three bearded men approached a university student and his girlfriend during a romantic rendezvous in a park and ordered them to separate because they weren’t married, according to security officials. An argument broke out, ending with one of the men fatally stabbing the student.

The June 25 attack has alarmed Egyptians concerned that with an Islamist president in office, vigilante groups are feeling emboldened to enforce strict Islamic mores on the streets.

Islamists, including members of one-time violent groups, were empowered after last year’s ouster of Hosni Mubarak’s secular regime by a popular uprising. They formed political parties and won about 70 percent of parliament seats in elections held some six months ago, although a court dissolved the legislature.

Moderate Muslims along with liberal and women’s groups now worry that Mohammed Morsi’s presidency will eradicate what is left of Egypt’s secular traditions and change the social fabric of the mainly Muslim nation of 82 million people.

Some activists say Islamists already are flexing their muscles in areas outside Cairo and other main cities, taking advantage of the absence of civil society groups and tenuous security in the areas.

They cite reports of efforts to persuade drivers of communal taxis, mostly minibuses that can seat up to 16, to segregate women and men passengers. In some instances, women’s hairdressing salons were told to get rid of male employees or threatened with closure.

“If Islamists are to try and take over the streets and enforce their version of Islam, they will do it in rural areas, at least initially,” said Yara Sallam from Nazra, a women’s rights group.

The security officials said there was no concrete evidence linking the June 25 killing to radical Islamic groups in Egypt, but it still has stoked fears.

Islamist groups, including Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and the ultraconservative Salafis, denied any link to the murders.

Rights groups say they have sent teams to investigate the Suez killing and establish whether Islamists were behind the attacks.

On the same day, two musicians, who were brothers, were murdered as they were traveling home after performing at a wedding in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiyah, officials said. Radical Muslims consider music “haram” or prohibited, as a distraction from religious duties.

Two ultraconservative Salafi Muslims were arrested, but officials said it was not clear if the killings were religiously motivated.

Nonetheless, thousands of residents of Abu Kibeer, the victims’ hometown, protested the killings, cutting off roads and disrupting train services by sitting on the rails. They also destroyed the local offices of a charity they suspected the culprits belonged to and torched the home of one suspect.

Some activists believe that the Brotherhood is at least quietly condoning nonviolent activity designed to bring the country more in alignment with Islam’s teachings — a founding goal of the 84-year-old fundamentalist movement.

“They may not be involved but they are turning a blind eye to what their low and middle rank members do on the streets,” said Nehad Abul-Omsan of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights.

 

Pakistanis kill man accused of insulting Quran
Munir Ahmed ("Associated Press," July 4, 2012)  http://wwrn.org/articles/37642/

Islamabad, Pakistan - Thousands of people dragged a Pakistani man accused of desecrating Islam's holy book from a police station in central Pakistan, beat him to death and then set his body on fire, a police official said Wednesday.

The incident highlighted the highly charged nature of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, under which anyone found guilty of insulting Islam's Prophet or the Quran can be sentenced to death.

Sometimes, however, people take the matter into their own hands.

A senior police officer, Mohammed Azhar Gujar, said in the incident Tuesday in Bahawalpur, a city in a deeply conservative part of central Pakistan, attackers stormed a police station where the man was being interrogated.

Gujar said the victim seemed to be mentally unstable. He was arrested after residents said he threw pages of the Quran into the street.

While the man was being questioned, some people started making announcements over mosque loudspeakers, urging residents to go to the police station and punish him.

Within hours, thousands gathered outside and demanded the man be handed over to them. Gujar said police tried to protect him, but the mob turned violent.

They burned several police vehicles and wounded seven officers before grabbing the man and dragging him into the street, where he was beaten to death and his body set on fire.

Gujar said the mob also attacked the house of an area police chief and burned his furniture and possessions.

It was unclear whether the man was Muslim, a member of Pakistan's Christian minority or belonged to another religion. His name was not released.

Pakistani Christians live in fear of being arrested under the blasphemy laws, which critics say are often misused to settle personal scores or family feuds.

Efforts to change the laws have made little headway. Last year, two prominent Pakistani political figures who spoke out against the blasphemy laws were killed in attacks that raised concerns about the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan.

During a visit to Pakistan in May, Gabriela Knaul, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said lawyers are often reluctant to defend clients accused under the blasphemy laws because of intimidation, and judges are often pressured to convict.