Israel in freefall: A thorn in the world’s side, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Israel in freefall: A thorn in the world’s side

By Sever Plocker

Published: 11.03.09

I’ve been invited to deliver a lecture about Israel’s economy and society at Oxford University. As it is a short lecture, and a respectable forum, I gladly accepted the offer. The invitation was extended about six months ago. Yet now, as my trip approaches, I feel concern. I’m hesitating.

My acquaintances are warning me: Don’t go. Hostile elements will cause disturbances, protest, shout and interfere. The atmosphere at British universities is anti-Israel to an extent unseen in the past. Israel is perceived as a thorn in the civilized world’s side.

An Israeli professor who quietly left a prestigious British university told me: “My academic and social life there was intolerable. Colleagues stayed away from me as if I was a leper. I was not invited to meetings, which were shifted from university buildings to private residences in order to keep me out. The fact I openly expressed leftist views was to no avail. My objection to the occupation and endorsement of a return to the 1967 borders made no difference. In practice, I became ostracized.”

“Today you are a welcome guest in the British and European academic world only if you reject the very existence of the colonialist and imperialistic creature that methodically commits war crimes, known as Israel,” he said. “Today it isn’t enough to condemn Bibi and Barak; in order to be accepted by academia outside of Israel one must condemn the Balfour Declaration.”

http://newageislam.com/israel-in-freefall--a-thorn-in-the-world%E2%80%99s-side/islam-and-the-west/d/2096

Was Miliband really speaking for Britain? Why is UK a sanctuary for jihadis?, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Was Miliband really speaking for Britain? Why is UK a sanctuary for jihadis?

By Inder Malhotra

For example, why was it necessary for Mr Miliband to arrive within four weeks of Mr Brown’s visit? Was he foolish to air his personal views, or had he brought a message from the government he represents, even if he delivered it rudely and crudely? At one stage in his hectoring talks with Dr Singh and foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, Mr Miliband spoke of his discussions with US President Barack Obama’s team. Was he using this to reinforce his own remarks? All in all, the situation calls for a keen vigil and brisk activity on the part of Indian diplomacy. It is no secret that during the last eight years India has dealt with the Republican administration in the US. When the controversial Indo-US nuclear deal was the main item on the agenda and former President George W. Bush was exceptionally supportive of India, this country had put virtually all its eggs in the Republican basket. Whether sufficient effort has been made to contact, inform and befriend the new rulers in Washington is not known.

There is another aspect of the matter that most official sources are trying to avoid, but it cannot be waved aside with snide remarks about the British foreign secretary. So objectionable were Mr Miliband’s misdemeanors that he should have been asked to cut short his visit and return home. In similar circumstances even world statesmen of Charles de Gaulle’s stature have been so treated, as happened when, during a visit to Canada, the towering French leader had spoken of independence for the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. Here, Mr Miliband was invited to accompany Rahul Gandhi to the latter’s parliamentary constituency, Amethi.

http://newageislam.com/was-miliband-really-speaking-for-britain?-why-is-uk-a-sanctuary-for-jihadis?-/war-on-terror/d/1141

Mumbai shows Partition was a tragic mistake, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Mumbai shows Partition was a tragic mistake

By Sarfraz Manzoor

Earlier this year I was invited by the Kitab book festival to visit Mumbai. I arrived on a searing February afternoon and took a taxi to my hotel, the Taj, in Colaba on the southern tip of the city. From my window I could see the Gateway to India, the giant stone arch through which the last British troops to leave India passed 60 years ago. Born in Lahore, I was slightly nervous about being in India; I had a faint suspicion that my Pakistani heritage would be instantly identifiable to every passerby. The truth was, of course, that I blended in as well as any other person who did not truly belong; I spoke Urdu to the street vendors and they replied in Hindi, which is practically the same; I ordered saag aloo, which my mother makes for me at home; and everywhere I inhaled the city’s wild, chaotic energy. And as I sat in the back of a speeding rickshaw and soaked up the sight of Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs living in the city, I kept wishing I could take my mother to Bombay.

Like my late father, my mother was born Indian in what 14 years later became Pakistan under the 1947 Partition. I wondered how she would feel about being in India and whether it would feel like home. She left Pakistan in 1974, bringing me and my siblings to join my father, who had come to Britain 11 years earlier. For second-generation British Pakistanis, home is a complicated question. I see my generation as the casualties of a double fracture: ripped out of India and then torn from Pakistan. The enmity that is meant to lurk inside every Pakistani towards India has therefore always seemed ridiculous to me; it is like being asked to hate one’s own past. It seems natural that my best friend of the past 20 years is a British Indian Sikh: what is different is so much less important than what is shared.

http://newageislam.com/mumbai-shows-partition-was-a-tragic-mistake--/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/1053

'There is no room for suicide in Islam': Al Qaeda's racist attack on Obama signals the death of jihad, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

'There is no room for suicide in Islam': Al Qaeda's racist attack on Obama signals the death of jihad

London: With both countries facing the common threat of suicide bombings, India-born inter-faith champion Lord Khalid Hameed says a recent British exercise in bringing Muslim and Jewish students together holds important lessons for India.

"There is absolutely no room for suicide in Islam," said Hameed who has been visiting top British universities along with a group of like-minded parliamentarians, addressing challenging religious issues.

Their visits follow reports of campus tensions between Muslim and Jewish students in Britain.

Lord Hameed is British Asian of the year 2007

"I'd say the same thing to Muslim youth audiences in Britain and in India," the Lucknow-born Hameed, who was honoured with a Padma Shri in 1992 for services in the field of medicine, said.

"You need to come out of the margins and participate in nation-building. Be non-violent, go in for education and put in hard work. At the end of the day, the solution is education, education and education.

"The problem is that Muslims lack credible, sincere and honest leadership. There are no leaders - the community is like a ship with no anchor and no captain, travelling in all directions in turbulent waters," he said.

http://newageislam.com/-there-is-no-room-for-suicide-in-islam---al-qaeda-s-racist-attack-on-obama-signals-the-death-of-jihad/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1023

Uncertain future as Pakistan goes broke, Islam and the West,

Islam and the West

Wounded Sovereignty: Uncertain future as Pakistan goes broke

Uncertain future as Pakistan goes broke

By G Parthasarathy

In these circumstances, the 'Friends of Pakistan' will use their economic leverage to see that Pakistan moves in the direction of ending support for terrorist groups and dealing with pro-Taliban groups operating across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It is in this background that one has to assess the rather shady role being played by America's British allies, who are preaching virtual defeatism and surrender in Afghanistan through both their military commander and Ambassador. The British quite evidently have no stomach for further casualties. Over the past two years they have played a duplicitous role in establishing secret contacts with the Taliban behind the back of President Hamid Karzai, who has reacted with rage, expelling a British national who was involved in clandestinely transferring money to the Taliban and by pre-empting a British ploy to get Lord Paddy Ashdown, who had earned notoriety in Bosnia and is said to have had MI 6 links in his short career as a diplomat, as a UN High Representative to Afghanistan.

http://newageislam.com/wounded-sovereignty--uncertain-future-as-pakistan-goes-broke--/islam-and-the-west/d/940

The Stiff Upper Blip: Taming The Islamic Shrew, By Farzana Versey, NewAgeIslam.com

The Stiff Upper Blip: Taming The Islamic Shrew

By Farzana Versey

27 July, 2008

Countercurrents.org

Why is Islam being singled out? One of the spokespersons of the group said, “We need to encourage and create safe places for sensible debate around issues that extremists can seek to exploit and make sure that young British Muslims recognise their faith teaches shared citizenship values.”

Extremists, of the Islamic persuasion or of any religion and ideology, do not follow the dictates of that faith or ideology to further their agenda. And if they knew their faith then they would not need to be taught what is there. Predictably, there has been a reaction from an Islamic group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose spokesman Taji Mustafa stated, “It is a supremacist war that aims to force one system, capitalism, and secular liberal values on the whole world.” As someone rightly pointed out, this is a “transparent ploy to create a British state-sponsored Islam”.

There is cockiness in such transparency. It is almost as militant in its motives as any terrorist activity. Is this merely an attempt to ensure that a radical version of Islam does not reach these people or is it exclusionist in its intent? And what is Britain’s idea of “hate-filled teaching”? That it is designed to destroy the Western “way of life”, as has been reported.

http://newageislam.com/the-stiff-upper-blip--taming-the-islamic-shrew/islam-and-the-west/d/314

Globalists Create Wahhabi Terrorism To Destroy Islam, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Globalists Create Wahhabi Terrorism To Destroy Islam

by David Livingstone

Abdul Wahhab was the instrument by which the British were able to insinuate this vile idea into the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula . Basically, Wahhab contrived the idea that, simply by the trivial act of offering prayers to saints, that their Turkish brethren had forfeited their faith, and therefore, that it was permitted to kill all who refused to adhere to his reforms, and enslave their women and children. But, that included the entire Muslim world, except for his small misguided band of followers.

But the Wahabbi movement was insignificant without the allegiance of the Saudi family, who, despite claims otherwise, were descended from Jewish merchant from Iraq . http://www.fortunecity.com/boozers/bridge/632/history.html Orthodox jurists of the time branded the Wahhabis as heretics and condemned their fanaticism and intolerance. Nevertheless, the Wahhabis then demonstrated their contempt for their pretended faith by indiscriminately slaughtering Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The Wahhabis then set about destroying all the holy tombs and burial grounds. They stole the Prophet’s treasure, which included holy books, works of art and innumerable priceless gifts sent to the city during the previous thousand years. The leather and gilt bindings of the Islamic holy books they had destroyed were used to make sandals for the Wahhabi criminals.

The Ottoman Sultan brought an end to the first Wahhabi rebellion in 1818, but the sect revived under the leadership of the Saudi Faysal I. The movement was then somewhat restored until once again destroyed at the end of the nineteenth century.

http://newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/david-livingstone/globalists-create-wahhabi-terrorism-to-destroy-islam/d/7236