Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review (The Iconoclast)
Having learned much about Islam since 9-11, I have come to distrust the term, "moderate Muslim", especially here in the US. Many of the people who are regarded as moderate Muslim leaders are just trying to put a happy face on Islam for our benefit. I have visited several mosques over the last decade and listened to their presentations when they invite the public in. They invariably say Islam is a religion of peace, and that the terrorists (whose acts they condemn), are not practicing true Islam. While I concede that the vast majority of Muslims worldwide are not terrorists and lead peaceful, lawful lives, that doesn't clear up the problems I find within Islamic doctrine. I am not so convinced that the terrorists are not actually practicing the true Islam as outlined in the Koran, the hadith, the Sunna, and the very life of the Prophet Mohammad.
I should point out at the outset that certain Islamic factions have a pretty good record in not being involved in terrorism and other forms of violence. I am referring to the Sufis and the Ahmadiya. The former practice a mystical version of Islam while the latter, formed in the 19th century in British Mandate India by a man known as Ahmed, believe that this person is a latter day prophet-after Mohammad. Because of this, the Ahmadiya are considered heretics by mainstream Muslims. They are persecuted in countries like Pakistan, where their numbers are greatest. The Sufi are also considered outside of mainstream Islam.
That has led me to searching for true Muslim reformers those who recognize there is a problem within the religion, and that young Muslims must be taught to be against violence and intolerance toward other religions. Perhaps, the best known reformer is Zuhdi Jasser, a Syrian-American based in Phoenix. Dr Jasser is a physician and former military officer. He is the head of an organization called American Islamic Forum for Democracy, which is dedicated to human rights (the American concept of human rights) and fighting what he terms, political Islam, that is Islam that seeks to dominate.
Another is a young Iranian-American woman named Shireen Qudosi (with whom I happen to be in email/Facebook contact). She recently testified before Congress, and she is someone to watch. I predict she will become quite prominent in the years to come. Her website is called, "The Qudosi Chronicles".
But here is my dilemma: Can Islam-The Perfect Religion- as Muslims are taught, really be reformed?
Islam, as we know, was not subjected to the Reformation as was Christianity. Nor was it subjected to the Enlightenment as were Christians and Jews in Europe. As to the Reformation, however, there are a couple of points to remember.
First of all, when Martin Luther began the Reformation, he was not rejecting Jesus Christ, nor was he rejecting the Bible. He was rejecting what he saw as the corruption of the Vatican. When the Reformation took hold and succeeded, the Bible and the figure of Jesus Christ were still sacred with Protestants.
In my view, for Islam to undergo a true reformation means they would have to reject those parts of the Koran which advocate hate, violence, and even death toward non-Muslims. That constitutes a lot of the Koran. The estimates I have read indicate that about 62% of the Koran refers to non-Muslims. And those references are not complimentary or respectful. Muslim leaders in the US love to recite the portions of the Koran that are peaceful, such as , "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (Sura 2 verse 256). They don't recite the verses that urge Muslims to commit violence against unbelievers.
The key to understanding the obvious contradictions in the Koran is the rule of abrogation, handed down by the top Islamic scholars over the centuries. The Koran is not written chronologically. The chapters (suras) are ordered (with tiny exceptions at the front and end) by longest to shortest. Therefore, there is no story that the reader can follow. When Mohammad first began preaching his revelations in Mecca, he was peaceful, but the powers that be drove him and his followers out of Mecca, at which time Mohammad settled in Medina. Once he consolidated his power in Medina, he began to spread Islam at the point of a sword. That process continued after his death, but what is important to note is that as his life changed, so did the revelations from God, which he claimed he was receiving through the archangel Gabriel. In other words, the revelations evolved from peaceful to hateful and violent.
Thus, the rule of abrogation tells us that in case of conflicting verses, that which was received or revealed later in time abrogates the one revealed earlier.
So much for the Koran and its hateful and violent passages (from Mohammad's Medina period). For a true reformation to take place within Islam, Muslims must also reexamine Mohammad himself, his deeds and his words, which have been passed on generation to generation via the Hadith and the Sunna. Muslims consider Mohammad as the man to emulate in every way. How can they reconcile his wars, the execution of prisoners, the taking of their wives and daughters into sexual slavery, his orders to have people murdered with the demands of a modern world that all religions should co-exist in peace? Is it reasonable to expect that such a meaningful reformation could take place?
I also take issue with those who say that the killers of ISIS, Al Qaeda etc are violating the teachings of Islam. If so, where is the theological debate that should be raging all over the Islamic world? Aside from certain national armies (Iraq, Syria), where are the armies of Muslims rushing to fight and kill those who are giving such a bad name to Islam? There are tens of thousands of Western Muslims who have gone to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. Others, mostly Somalis, have gone back to Somalia to join Al Shabaab. Many more in the US have been arrested attempting to leave. I don't mean to stigmatize all Western Muslims, but the numbers are alarming.
How many Western-based Muslims do we know of who have gone to those areas to fight against ISIS or Al Shabaab?
There are many reasons why Muslims have not risen up. For some it is fear. For some it is ambivalence or a degree of sympathy. However, I suspect that the biggest reason more don't confront the extremists is that they fear they cannot win the theological argument. After all, remember that 30 years ago, we were calling these killers fundamentalists.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Friday, November 18, 2016
Have Our Universities Bottomed Out Yet?
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review (The Iconoclast)
I have been teaching English as a second language part-time at the University of California (UCI) Extension (now Dept. of Continuing Education) since 1998. Since I am retired from the Drug Enforcement Administration, this has been a part-time endeavor only to keep me busy and provide a little beer money to boot. It has also given me a chance to observe the goings-on at UCI and other college campuses at least since I became involved as an activist around 2006.
I should note at the outset that as a conservative, I have had no issues with my co-workers. To teach ESL only requires a masters degree. My co-workers are people who almost all have either lived in other countries, married spouses of other nationalities, and have opinions across the political spectrum. Usually we tend not to discuss politics in the office anyway. My campus activism, which has no doubt alienated some within the UCI administration and faculty in the humanities sections, has not touched upon my work in the Extension. Furthermore, I have made it a personal policy never to bring my personal beliefs into the classroom. I have reserved them for on-campus events, seminars, and comments in the campus newspaper.
In recent years, UCI has gotten a black eye due to incidents on campus involving groups like the Muslim Student Union (MSU) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Generally speaking, however, UCI is a school with a rather small humanities department, concentrating mostly on departments like engineering, biology, and other hard sciences etc. The overwhelming majority of UCI students don't get involved in campus craziness as they do at UCLA, Berkeley, and so many other universities around the country. Slightly over half of the student body is Asian-American, and they pretty much concentrate on their studies and enjoying their university experience. Most of the damage to the school's reputation is thanks to the above two groups.
For years, however, the MSU has annually sponsored an ugly week of events dedicated to bashing Israel. Many of their invited speakers can only be described as radicals, who also bash America and in some cases, Jews as people. In 2010, MSU disrupted the speech of Michael Oren, the then Israeli ambassador to the US. Just this past May, SJP disrupted a film event sponsored by Students Supporting Israel necessitating the call for campus police to quell the disturbance. No arrests were made, and only a warning letter was issued to SJP. Like so many other universities, the UCI administration has been sorely lacking in standing up to groups like these as well as confronting campus anti-Semitism. For this, I have publicly criticized the UCI administration as well as University of California presidents-past and present.
Being conservative, I have been appalled by the politically-correct liberal dominance on college campuses in general. To me, this is the culmination of a process that began when I was a college student in the 1960s, and we were experiencing campus protests over the Viet Nam war and other causes. It is safe to say that many of the campus protesters of the 1960s went on to become the professors and administrators of our universities decades later. This is a culture that has been decades in the making, and it will not soon go away. To be sure, students need to get a variety of different viewpoints, but most conservatives, in my view, would prefer to stay in the real world rather than put up with all the nonsense.
Still, it is troubling to see how our young people are being indoctrinated by so many professors in the classroom and led to believe that their country is imperialistic, racist, and in need of a drastic overhaul. In my view, it is necessary to inform the public what is going on in academia. After all, it is we who are footing the bill-at least for public universities. Fortunately, I think the message has now gotten out.
The past couple of years have been really troubling, yet comic in a way. The Black Lives Matter movement, which arrived about 50 years too late, has gained a lot of traction on University campuses. In places like the University of Missouri, administrators have resigned under pressure because of complaints of racism, some real, some imagined. In one astounding videotape, we watched a University of Missouri professor of journalism actually try to stop a student reporter from videotaping a Black Lives Matter protest in a public space on campus. She actually called for "some muscle" to remove the young man. The university, figuring it had no use for a journalism professor who didn't understand the First Amendment, rightly fired her. Not surprisingly, many parents have opted not to send their kids to Mizzou resulting in a sharp decline in enrollment. I applaud those decisions just as I applaud the decision of Jewish parents not to send their kids to the University of California until it gets serious about the problem of campus anti-Semitism.
Similarly, we are seeing one of the most absurd movements of all as universities fall all over themselves to be "inclusive". White students are being actually demonized for their "inherent racism" and "privilege". To be a person of color is noble. To be white is to be privileged. Indeed, many white students are rushing to don sack cloth and ashes not because of what they have done or said, rather because of what they are.
Even more absurd is the effort to make students feel secure, included and protected from such things as "macro-aggressions", "micro-aggressions", "trigger warnings" and other boogie men. Universities now talk of "safe spaces", where the little snowflakes (our term) can even hold teddy bears, hold hands and express their fears.
Just in time for President Donald Trump.
With Trump's election, our universities have truly lost their collective minds. Fortunately for them (and unfortunately for the rest of us) they already have the safe space infra-structure in place. University administrators, aided by their departments of equity, diversity and inclusion, are offering students counseling and group therapy sessions in order to cope with the pending arrival of the Evil Donald. If students are too traumatized to attend class or take a test, preferring to attend a protest instead, faculty are all too accommodating. (After all, they are probably too traumatized themselves to teach a class.) In effect, our universities have put their imprimatur on rejecting the results of this election. When a university president sends a campus-wide email out stating that "the university understands how deeply sad you feel about this election and we are here to help you," they are stating that they are also sorry that Hillary Clinton was not elected. That may be OK for a private school, but it is not OK for a public one.
To be fair, universities also have science departments, foreign language departments, engineering departments, and others where real education is taking place. It is in the humanities and social sciences where you usually see the misfit professors and indoctrinated students. Entire departmental chairs devoted to ethnic studies, gender studies, and gay and lesbian studies are of questionable value other than fostering group identity and separating our students into tribes. Now some schools are even instituting black dorms. Segregated water fountains can't be far off. New words-especially pronouns-are being invented for those students who feel our current vocabulary is too sexist. The University of California at Santa Cruz, which I call, "America's Wackiest University", actually has a Community Studies department (teaching the little rascals how to organize and protest) as well as a History of Consciousness Department, in which the notorious Angela Davis was a faculty member.
This is what we are paying for in California.
It is tempting to say that it can't get any worse than this, and that from now on, it can only get better. Yet until these universities see their enrollment and funding drying up, they will not reform. Until then I cannot answer the question of whether they have truly hit rock bottom. I try to maintain a sense of humor about it all. It is easy to laugh at the utter stupidity exhibited by people who, with their advanced degrees, should know better. It isn't funny, however, when you consider that every future leader of this great country is walking on our college campuses today.
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review (The Iconoclast)
I have been teaching English as a second language part-time at the University of California (UCI) Extension (now Dept. of Continuing Education) since 1998. Since I am retired from the Drug Enforcement Administration, this has been a part-time endeavor only to keep me busy and provide a little beer money to boot. It has also given me a chance to observe the goings-on at UCI and other college campuses at least since I became involved as an activist around 2006.
I should note at the outset that as a conservative, I have had no issues with my co-workers. To teach ESL only requires a masters degree. My co-workers are people who almost all have either lived in other countries, married spouses of other nationalities, and have opinions across the political spectrum. Usually we tend not to discuss politics in the office anyway. My campus activism, which has no doubt alienated some within the UCI administration and faculty in the humanities sections, has not touched upon my work in the Extension. Furthermore, I have made it a personal policy never to bring my personal beliefs into the classroom. I have reserved them for on-campus events, seminars, and comments in the campus newspaper.
In recent years, UCI has gotten a black eye due to incidents on campus involving groups like the Muslim Student Union (MSU) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Generally speaking, however, UCI is a school with a rather small humanities department, concentrating mostly on departments like engineering, biology, and other hard sciences etc. The overwhelming majority of UCI students don't get involved in campus craziness as they do at UCLA, Berkeley, and so many other universities around the country. Slightly over half of the student body is Asian-American, and they pretty much concentrate on their studies and enjoying their university experience. Most of the damage to the school's reputation is thanks to the above two groups.
For years, however, the MSU has annually sponsored an ugly week of events dedicated to bashing Israel. Many of their invited speakers can only be described as radicals, who also bash America and in some cases, Jews as people. In 2010, MSU disrupted the speech of Michael Oren, the then Israeli ambassador to the US. Just this past May, SJP disrupted a film event sponsored by Students Supporting Israel necessitating the call for campus police to quell the disturbance. No arrests were made, and only a warning letter was issued to SJP. Like so many other universities, the UCI administration has been sorely lacking in standing up to groups like these as well as confronting campus anti-Semitism. For this, I have publicly criticized the UCI administration as well as University of California presidents-past and present.
Being conservative, I have been appalled by the politically-correct liberal dominance on college campuses in general. To me, this is the culmination of a process that began when I was a college student in the 1960s, and we were experiencing campus protests over the Viet Nam war and other causes. It is safe to say that many of the campus protesters of the 1960s went on to become the professors and administrators of our universities decades later. This is a culture that has been decades in the making, and it will not soon go away. To be sure, students need to get a variety of different viewpoints, but most conservatives, in my view, would prefer to stay in the real world rather than put up with all the nonsense.
Still, it is troubling to see how our young people are being indoctrinated by so many professors in the classroom and led to believe that their country is imperialistic, racist, and in need of a drastic overhaul. In my view, it is necessary to inform the public what is going on in academia. After all, it is we who are footing the bill-at least for public universities. Fortunately, I think the message has now gotten out.
The past couple of years have been really troubling, yet comic in a way. The Black Lives Matter movement, which arrived about 50 years too late, has gained a lot of traction on University campuses. In places like the University of Missouri, administrators have resigned under pressure because of complaints of racism, some real, some imagined. In one astounding videotape, we watched a University of Missouri professor of journalism actually try to stop a student reporter from videotaping a Black Lives Matter protest in a public space on campus. She actually called for "some muscle" to remove the young man. The university, figuring it had no use for a journalism professor who didn't understand the First Amendment, rightly fired her. Not surprisingly, many parents have opted not to send their kids to Mizzou resulting in a sharp decline in enrollment. I applaud those decisions just as I applaud the decision of Jewish parents not to send their kids to the University of California until it gets serious about the problem of campus anti-Semitism.
Similarly, we are seeing one of the most absurd movements of all as universities fall all over themselves to be "inclusive". White students are being actually demonized for their "inherent racism" and "privilege". To be a person of color is noble. To be white is to be privileged. Indeed, many white students are rushing to don sack cloth and ashes not because of what they have done or said, rather because of what they are.
Even more absurd is the effort to make students feel secure, included and protected from such things as "macro-aggressions", "micro-aggressions", "trigger warnings" and other boogie men. Universities now talk of "safe spaces", where the little snowflakes (our term) can even hold teddy bears, hold hands and express their fears.
Just in time for President Donald Trump.
With Trump's election, our universities have truly lost their collective minds. Fortunately for them (and unfortunately for the rest of us) they already have the safe space infra-structure in place. University administrators, aided by their departments of equity, diversity and inclusion, are offering students counseling and group therapy sessions in order to cope with the pending arrival of the Evil Donald. If students are too traumatized to attend class or take a test, preferring to attend a protest instead, faculty are all too accommodating. (After all, they are probably too traumatized themselves to teach a class.) In effect, our universities have put their imprimatur on rejecting the results of this election. When a university president sends a campus-wide email out stating that "the university understands how deeply sad you feel about this election and we are here to help you," they are stating that they are also sorry that Hillary Clinton was not elected. That may be OK for a private school, but it is not OK for a public one.
To be fair, universities also have science departments, foreign language departments, engineering departments, and others where real education is taking place. It is in the humanities and social sciences where you usually see the misfit professors and indoctrinated students. Entire departmental chairs devoted to ethnic studies, gender studies, and gay and lesbian studies are of questionable value other than fostering group identity and separating our students into tribes. Now some schools are even instituting black dorms. Segregated water fountains can't be far off. New words-especially pronouns-are being invented for those students who feel our current vocabulary is too sexist. The University of California at Santa Cruz, which I call, "America's Wackiest University", actually has a Community Studies department (teaching the little rascals how to organize and protest) as well as a History of Consciousness Department, in which the notorious Angela Davis was a faculty member.
This is what we are paying for in California.
It is tempting to say that it can't get any worse than this, and that from now on, it can only get better. Yet until these universities see their enrollment and funding drying up, they will not reform. Until then I cannot answer the question of whether they have truly hit rock bottom. I try to maintain a sense of humor about it all. It is easy to laugh at the utter stupidity exhibited by people who, with their advanced degrees, should know better. It isn't funny, however, when you consider that every future leader of this great country is walking on our college campuses today.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Hussam Ayloush (CAIR) Shows His True Colors With Trump Election
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Hat tip Middle East Forum, National Review and Debra
Hussam Ayloush, CAIR's Southern California director, is a man who poses as a human rights activist. He is anything but. Here is what he had to say when America elected its new president, Donald Trump:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2016/11/cair-leader-overthrow-the-us-government
Ayloush, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, may think that he is living in Egypt or his native Syria, but he is not. This is America. This campaign may have been messy and ugly, but the actual election Tuesday night was fair and orderly. That is what separates us from the region from which Ayloush came. The "revolution" came from millions of people who merely went to the polls and voted. They didn't grab a gun and storm the capitol. They didn't take hostages or blow off bombs. They voted. That is what Mr. Ayloush wants to overthrow.
One can only hope that with a new administration, attorney general, and Justice Department, these organizations like CAIR and others will be thoroughly investigated, which they have not been since Obama came into office.
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Hat tip Middle East Forum, National Review and Debra
Hussam Ayloush, CAIR's Southern California director, is a man who poses as a human rights activist. He is anything but. Here is what he had to say when America elected its new president, Donald Trump:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2016/11/cair-leader-overthrow-the-us-government
Ayloush, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, may think that he is living in Egypt or his native Syria, but he is not. This is America. This campaign may have been messy and ugly, but the actual election Tuesday night was fair and orderly. That is what separates us from the region from which Ayloush came. The "revolution" came from millions of people who merely went to the polls and voted. They didn't grab a gun and storm the capitol. They didn't take hostages or blow off bombs. They voted. That is what Mr. Ayloush wants to overthrow.
One can only hope that with a new administration, attorney general, and Justice Department, these organizations like CAIR and others will be thoroughly investigated, which they have not been since Obama came into office.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Why Hasn't Huma Abedin Been an Issue in This Campaign?
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Finally, the American public is learning who Huma Abedin is. The question is why only now?
As things stand now it may be that Antony Weiner's sexting and weird sexual communications with females, some of whom may have been minors, have been cross-posted with official Hillary Clinton communications with her aide Abedin when she was secretary of state. A revoltin' state of affairs to put it mildly. Even CNN is being forced to discuss this sordid mess albeit with their own spin.
Yet Huma Abedin has been written about for several years now on sites such as this. It's not just rumor and innuendo either. Abedin and her family have been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood up to their eyebrows. Why isn't anybody in the mainstream media reporting it?
As previously reported, Huma was an asst editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a publication of the Brotherhood-linked Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. A key figure here is Abdullah Omar Naseef, a MB figure reportedly linked to funding of Al Qaida. His own association with the journal coincided with Huma's employment there for at least seven years.
As has been previously pointed out, it is inconceivable how Abedin was ever allowed to become a State Department aide to Mrs Clinton give her obvious associations. Where was the background check?
Now the airwaves are filled with reporters of Abedin's laptop (with her husband) filled with messages involving Mrs Clinton and presumably State Department business. Everybody is shocked. However, this is what you get when you allow questionable people like Huma Abdine into positions of power.
Even if it turns out that hackers into Secretary Clinton's communications have been treated with images of Anthony Weiner in his now-famous locker room poses, this is the least of the problems involving Huma Abedin.
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Finally, the American public is learning who Huma Abedin is. The question is why only now?
As things stand now it may be that Antony Weiner's sexting and weird sexual communications with females, some of whom may have been minors, have been cross-posted with official Hillary Clinton communications with her aide Abedin when she was secretary of state. A revoltin' state of affairs to put it mildly. Even CNN is being forced to discuss this sordid mess albeit with their own spin.
Yet Huma Abedin has been written about for several years now on sites such as this. It's not just rumor and innuendo either. Abedin and her family have been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood up to their eyebrows. Why isn't anybody in the mainstream media reporting it?
As previously reported, Huma was an asst editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a publication of the Brotherhood-linked Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. A key figure here is Abdullah Omar Naseef, a MB figure reportedly linked to funding of Al Qaida. His own association with the journal coincided with Huma's employment there for at least seven years.
As has been previously pointed out, it is inconceivable how Abedin was ever allowed to become a State Department aide to Mrs Clinton give her obvious associations. Where was the background check?
Now the airwaves are filled with reporters of Abedin's laptop (with her husband) filled with messages involving Mrs Clinton and presumably State Department business. Everybody is shocked. However, this is what you get when you allow questionable people like Huma Abdine into positions of power.
Even if it turns out that hackers into Secretary Clinton's communications have been treated with images of Anthony Weiner in his now-famous locker room poses, this is the least of the problems involving Huma Abedin.
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