Thursday, April 08, 2004
Mix-n-match
These two stories in the news recently aren't really related, but reading them side-by-side sent a couple chills up my spine.
U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that hit a mosque compound filled with worshippers today, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to nearly all of the country.
And this one:
....another prominent neo-conservative, Daniel Pipes of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum (MEF), recently declared that the ''ultimate goal'' of the war on terrorism had to be Islam's modernization, or, as he put it, ''religion-building''.
Such an effort needs to be waged not only in the Islamic world, geographically speaking, added Pipes, who last year was appointed by President George W. Bush to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP), but also among Muslims in the West, where, in his view, they are too often represented by ''Islamist (or militant Islamic)'' organizations.
Pipes is currently seeking funding for a new organization, tentatively named the ''Islamic Progress Institute'' (IPI), which ''can articulate a moderate, modern and pro-American viewpoint'' on behalf of U.S. Muslims and that, according to a grant proposal by Pipes and two New York-based foundations obtained by IPS, can ''go head-to-head with the established Islamist institutions''.
''Through adroit media activity and political efforts'', says the proposal, ''advocates for a supremacist and totalitarian form of Islam in the United States -- such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) -- have effectively established themselves as the spokesmen for all Muslims in the country''.
''This situation is fraught with dangers for moderate Muslims as well as for non-Muslims'', the proposal continues, adding, ''Islam in America must be American Islam or it will not be integrated; there can be no place for an Islam in America that functions as a seditious conspiracy aimed at wiping out American values, undermining American inter-faith civility, and, in effect, dictating the form of Islam that will be followed in America''.
posted by chris at 4:47 PM
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