Israeli Ambassador Implies All Muslims Are Terrorists

[xpokerx]

wow, you are incredibly ignorant if you do not believe that most terrorists are muslim. actually, it should be said like this. most terrorists pervert islam to justify their terror.

[Howard Beale]

It appears to me that the Ambassador mis-quoted a remark I've seen before.

From Arab News:

'
A Wake-up Call : Almost all terrorists are Muslims..
Abdel Rahman al-Rashed*


It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Osama bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement." Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

These images, when put together or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.

For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realize the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the sheikh – the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric – and hear him recite his fatwa about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians.

This ailing sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent civilians.

How could this sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg, who was slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers in that ravished country? How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?

In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with nationalist or leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of their adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement in murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.

At that time, the mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life.

Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

*Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel. This article first appeared in the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.'

[nicky g]

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Now even if we take for a fact the statement that nearly all terrorist are muslims using that as a basis for calling all muslims terrorists is a logical fallacy so obvious it shouldn't even have to mentioned on 2+2.

/Bjorn

[/ QUOTE ]

If you're suggesting that I'm basing my argument that the ambassador implied all Muslims are terrorists on his statement that nearly all terrorists are Muslims, you misunderstand. I'm basing it on the fact that he brought up the allegation that all Muslims are terrorists and, rather than state that it was incorrect, stated it was merely "politically incorrect." The right and the pro-Israel lobby almost universally regard "political correct" attitudes to Islam as foolish and blinded; to call something politically correct is to criticse it for them. Therefore for him to state that it is merely "politically incorrect" to call all Muslim terrorists is not only not suggesting such a statement is false, but is velied endorsement of it.

[nicky g]

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wow, you are incredibly ignorant if you do not believe that most terrorists are muslim. actually, it should be said like this. most terrorists pervert islam to justify their terror.

[/ QUOTE ]

You peole are writing without any kind of contextual view of the world. There are probably dozens of terrorist movements around the world that aren't Muslim, many in Latin America alone. The fact that the major terrorist threat to the US at the moment comes from Islamists does not make that true of everywhere. At this very instance, probably the biggest single supra-collection of terrorist groups by religion or ideology comes from radical Islamist movements (although some of these are essentially nationalist movements in Islmaist garb). That hasn't been true for much of the recent past and probably won't be true in the mid-term future. But to jump from that to say nearly all terrorists are Muslims is ridiculous, and an insult to the victims of non-Islamist terrorism such as the Tamil Tigers, the Real IRA, Maoist and right-wing groups in Latin America and so on and so on, not to mention terrorist states such as Israel, Russia and many many others.

[jokerthief]

I've seen this guy speak about this earlier this week (not on OReilly). He said the same thing except he said "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims." So this is definete media strategy and wasn't just a moment of candor. I find this curious. Makes me wonder what Israel hopes to accomplish with that rhetoric or what it's planning.

[nicky g]

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Is the Burden of Proof on Russia in its continuing actions against Chechnya? And while we're on that topic, why is Chechnya never mentioned in this thread? The Russians have engaged in far more brutal activity in Chechnya than Israel ever has.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not entirely sure how this got into this thread, but to answer it, you're right: Russia doesn;t come in for anything like the criticism it should over Chechnya. At the same time, it doesn;t come in for anything like the praise/apologetics Israel does, such as the bipartisan rally in favour of Israel, Congressional resolutions in facour of Israel, hugely influential pro-Israeli pressure groups etc etc. The Arab-israeli conflict gets much more attention from all sides than even much larger conflicts for a variety of reasons, such as pan-Arab solidarity, highly influential pro-Israelis, the US relationship with Israel, the threat of it escalating into regional (and during the Cold War nuclear) wars as it has done before and so on and so forth. It is a shame that Russia has gotten away with so much disgusting behaviour in Chechnya. That doesn't make what Israel is doing any better.

[BCPVP]

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Should add that this isn't really applicable to Christians as I don't recall Jesus going around killing people of different religions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Christians don't follow the example of Jesus very well though, do they?

[/ QUOTE ]
Some do, some don't. Nobody does so all of the time.

[nicky g]

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you are reading way too much into this and, not so ironically, purposefully attemping to distort what he said for your own agenda.

Quote:
Note that it is not actually incorrect to say all Muslims are terrorists according to this scumbag, but only "politically incorrect"



are you [censored] kidding me??? i can assure you he did not think this much into it and your assumption that the word "politically" was placed with some deep rooting is far from obviously verified.

[/ QUOTE ]

The guy seems to speak pretty decent English (KHizballah aside). I'm sure he knows what politically correct means and I'm sure he knows that to say something is politically correct does not mean to say it is true, and often the opposite, especially when coming from a pro-Israeli figure about attitudes to Islam. Even if he did not mean to imply that all Muslims are terrorists, he brought up the issue and he could not bring himself to clearly say it wasn't true.

[xpokerx]

most terrorists are islamic extremists.

to call Israel a terrorists state shows your true colors. i think you are an anti-semite, thus i believe i have found the basis for your opinions.

[nicky g]

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Do you have the same outrage over equally bigoted statements directed against Israel?

[/ QUOTE ]

Over Jews and Israelis, for sure. Over Israel as a state? No, not really, it's state instituions have behaved in a terrorist fashion from the get go.

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Yep there seems to be plenty of hatred and bigotry on both sides of this conflict and I agree that is deplorable.

[/ QUOTE ]

As do I. My point is not that there is no bigotry on the other side. But I find the attitude that rightfully condemns the minority of Western Muslims for believing that attacks on civilian targets may be justifiable in some circumstances while defending Israel and others' right to attack civilian targets or ignore the consequences for civilians of their actions as disgustingly hypocritical.