ANDREW BOLT: IF GEERT WILDERS IS WRONG….EXPLAIN THIS ****
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/if_wilders_is_wrong_explain_this_conference/
“But for me there are even bigger questions. Why are politicians, journalists and Jewish leaders now demonising Geert Wilders for warning against exactly the ideology of Islam as preached by many speakers at this conference?Why do they pretend Wilders has misrepresented Islam when the very things he describes are preached openly?”
Geert Wilders, the Dutch political leader now on a speaking tour of Australia, has not only had his speeches blockaded by violent demonstrators trying to stop Australians from hearing him.
He has not only been vilified in the media for trying to warn that Islam as an ideology is a menace to Western values and freedoms – from the freedom to speak to even identify as gay.
Depressingly, he has even been shunned by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Jewish community leaders. It seems to me that political or community advantage is being put before principle – and fear is preventing a rational discussion of Wilders’ message.
It’s driven Abbott, even Abbott, to misrepresent what Wilders is in fact saying and play blind to the issue he actually raises – which is about the nature of Islam, not its followers:
Mr Abbott said Wilders’ was “substantially” wrong about Islam and the preparedness of Muslims living in Australia to integrate.
“He is entitled to his view but I think that the Muslims in this country see themselves rightly as fair dinkum, dinky-di Australians, just as the Catholics and the Jews and Protestants and the atheists, we see ourselves as Australians,” Mr Abbott told host Neil Mitchell.
This hypocrisy and fear is exposed best by what is misleadingly called a ”Peace Conference and Exhibition” being organised in Melbourne in March.
The conference is advertised on billboards in Broadmeadows, Altona, Dandenong and South Melbourne and is organised by the Islamic Information Services Network of Australasia and Islamic Research and Educational Academy. It is also and backed by the Islamic Council of Victoria and a range of other Muslim groups, mosques and communities.
It is fronted by Melbourne Muslim activist Wazeem Razvi, who in a recorded speech, boasted of the range of speakers:
Our guest speakers are … more than 15 international speakers, the chief guest that we have is Abdul Rahman Al-Sudays, the imam of Mecca … and the big news is alhumdulillah he has agreed to come to Australia and he has agreed to come to our Islamic conference … Also Brother Imran from India, Sheikh Abdul Hadi who is one of the speakers from PeaceTV from UK, Sheikh Anwar Sahib from New Zealand , one of the speakers from the Islamic Online University, run by Dr Bilal Philips … Brother Eddie [Eddie Redzovic] from USA, Sheikh Hussain Yee of Malaysia, the Buddhist convert to Islam, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, the Board of Imams president in Australia … Sheikh Issa from the Werribee mosque, Abu Hamza from IISNA , Abu Ayman from Ahl As-Sunnah wal Jama’ , Sheikh Mohamad Abou Eid from Preston mosque, and … Sheikh Mishari Alafasy from Kuwait, … Mishari from Emirates Dubai in the UAE … Sheikh ‘Assim alHakeem, the English speaker from Saudi Arabia…
We have to invite Dr Zakir Naik from India. He is, I reckon, inshallah, a very good scholar of Islam and comparative religion. He is my boss’ boss, so we are definitely going to invite him….
The big news is, alhumdulillah, that we have approached the Prime Minister, Miss Julia Gillard, now this word has to be made between us, don’t let it go out, alhumdulillah, she has agreed to be present in the conference …
With such wide backing, and so many prominent speakers, it would be fair to say it represents Muslim thought today in Australia and the world.
And when you check precisely what a number of the speakers have said, you come up with a picture of Islam remarkably similar to the one Geert Wilders is trying to warn against.
Take the main organiser himself. In a lecture recorded last December in Melbourne, Waseem Razvi, who supports Sharia law in Australia, said Islam allowed violence in defence of the faith:
You don’t have to try to convince by being compromising on Islam … you don’t have to say that Islam is all about peace, “no we don’t fight, we are not violent.” You know, the Prophet fought 30 wars … yes, we are not non-violent, we are violent but when there is a need for it. We are battles people. We are not like Buddhists wearing an orange dress and always saying we want peace, and you never get your own country. No, we fight for our country. We have in Islam Jihad, yes, but we will never do terrorism. Yes Jihad is very Islamic, so you don’t have to retreat from that.
Here are some facts you should know about the other invited speakers.
Al-Azhar Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, is the highest-ranking cleric in the Sunni Muslim world. He has prayed to God to “terminate” the Jews and is a virulent anti-Semite to judge from his sermons:
[Jews are] the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs…
Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others’] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers… the scum of the human race ‘whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs…’ These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption…
Another invited speaker is Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem, who says the punishment for gays is death:
In a video on YouTube in which he is asked whether being gay is wrong, Al-Hakeem says homosexuality is ‘unnatural’.‘If you refer to the Old Testament, you will find that homosexuality is forbidden and the punishment for that is stoning to death. In Islam, the same thing applies.
He added: ‘Homosexuality is an abnormality which should be treated and should not be accepted as a normal thing.’
In answer to a question on his website, Al-Hakeem also compares gay people to ‘animals that seek only their sexual satisfaction through their weird ways’.
Al-Hakeem also calls for the death of those who leave Islam:
What is the penalty on a person who change his religion from islam to some other religion ?This is apostasy and it is punishable by death in an Islamic society.
Another invited speaker – described by the conference organiser as “my boss’s boss” – is Sheikh Zakir Naik, who has said he was a supporter of Osama bin Laden if he was attacking enemies of Islam:
Every Muslim should be a terrorist.
Naik also denies Islamists caused the September 11 attack:
It is a blatant, open secret that this attack on the Twin Towers was done by George Bush himself.
Another invited speaker is Abu Hamza from Melbourne-based IISNA, who has offered Muslims advice on ”how to beat your wife” to make them “shape up”:
In a lecture titled “The Keys to a Successful Marriage”, … Mr Hamza said men could beat their wives, “to shape them up”…
He also said women “must respond” if their husbands wanted to have sex, and ridiculed laws that prohibit rape within marriage…
In the sermon Mr Hamza initially tells his listeners “don’t hit your wife”.
But he goes on to detail how men should hit their wives, according to his interpretation of Islamic teachings.
He says it is permissible to hit women as a “last resort” but that “the beating the Mohammed showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth”.
“You are not allowed to bruise them, you are not allowed to make them bleed…”
Sheikh Yee, another invitee, claims Jews celebrated the September 11 attacks, which weren’t the work of Muslims, and Jews are the real extremists:
The most extreme nation in this world is the Jews. So if they use ‘extremists,’ it doesn’t apply to Muslims. It applies to the Jews. They are the extremists of the world. That’s why they kill Palestinians every day…. [Jews] go to Hell.
I dispute any evil action linked to bin Laden.
Later he was a little more equivocal – but only a little:
He is a good man in some ways, and not in other ways.
But the choice of Philips is even odder given the United States named him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” over the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Centre, and our own security agencies judged him such a threat he was banned from coming here.
Philips insists he rejects terrorism and considers al-Qaida a “deviate” group. But … he was hired by the Saudi air force during the first Gulf War to preach to American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia and convert them to Islam…
Philips didn’t just take down their names; he also visited them back in America. “My role was confined to encouraging them to train Muslim-American volunteers and go to Bosnia to help the mujahidin and take part in the war (against Serbia),” he boasted. That worked, too.
Philips says his name was dragged into the investigation of the first World Trade Centre bombing, in which six people were killed, because some African-American soldiers he’d converted were offered by someone else to Sheik Abdel Rahmen, spiritual head of the terrorists behind the attack….
Anglican vicar Mark Durie, a student of Islam, has questions about the conference:
If interfaith visitors do visit the Melbourne Showground for the ‘Peace Conference’ they might inquire what Koranic verses they are being asked to listen to, and whether the following passages will be included:
Jews are pact breakers – Sura 5:13 and 2:27
Allah turned some Jews into apes (and pigs) (the inference being that some of today’s Jews are descendants of those people who were turned into apes and pigs: hence they referred to as ‘grandsons’ or ‘descendants’ ‘of apes and pigs’) – Sura 2:65, 5:60 and 7:166
Jews are murders of the prophets – Sura 3:181, 2:55What sense are the people of Melbourne meant to make of the proposition that they needn’t worry that the preacher [ Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid, who will recite the Koran at the conference] has called for the annihilation of Jews, because he was only speaking Arabic?
But for me there are even bigger questions. Why are politicians, journalists and Jewish leaders now demonising Geert Wilders for warning against exactly the ideology of Islam as preached by many speakers at this conference?
Why do they pretend Wilders has misrepresented Islam when the very things he describes are preached openly?
Why are they silent over or even complicit in attempts to silence or frighten Wilders – who has not advocated violence – yet apparently happy that true hate-preachers who preach death for gays, Jews and enemies of Islam may speak freely in this country?
Why the hypocrisy? Why the fear?
(An earlier version of this post misidentified Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais.)
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