Westerners misunderstand Islam

[stroller]

Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam

22 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A huge survey of the world's Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.
The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism.
AFP: Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam

Enjoy...

[Mid]

so how about Muslims step up to the plate and do something about changing Western Perceptions ?

PR , for short .

[stroller]

A bit pointless, the peanut gallery will never listen, and for whoever likes to inform themselves there is plenty on the net.

[Mid]

^

disagree , complaining without doing is pointless ............

has not the religion been hijacked from with-in ?

help those who help themselves comes to mind

[AntRobertson]

so how about Muslims step up to the plate and do something about changing Western Perceptions ?

PR , for short .

Good news doesn't sell.

[Mid]

Good news doesn't sell. it's self

that's why they ( the injured party ) need some PR ,

to me it's too much like buck passing , just to complain we don't understand

[stroller]

Isn't it up to the Mussie-haters to seek out info for their accusations?

Sure, I'd kick a lot more arse on the net if I was a Muslim, but it is an unthankful task going against the tide, as you can witness in here.

[Mid]

to answer a question with another ........

is this not about Muslims being seen in the correct light globally ?

[paulsmithson]

Quran
quote---kill all no believers
Quote ---never make a friend of a christian nor a jew
Quote ---lie when you are outnumbered

And on and on it goes ---that fithly hate riddled book.

go see faith freedom international --a site run by ex muslims like myself who have refused to succumb to being brainwashed.

Islam is EVIL-- it is not a religion ---it is a cult

[chitown]

What is there to understand - it is a controlling religion and those people have been stuck in time for about a 1000 years........

[Bluecat]

I do not think both parties want to understand each other.
This is what religion is for.
Not understanding each other...

[chitown]

The West did not go into their countries and start blowing things up and murdering innocent people. If they just took care of themselves and handled their business, then we wouldn't not even think about or care about them.

As Rambo said "They drew 1st blood......."

And if anyone disputes that, then please post a time when the West started it. Post some dates with links and descriptions about how we murdered them and committed terrorist acts on their soil and started the problem.............

[dobella]

it's not a two way street.
they come to our lands in huge numbers and refuse to integrate, whilst to a
large extent being allowed to continue their alienating practices unhindered
by western authorities.
you know what happens to westerners who offend them fcukers on their
homelands - they get hammered.

[DrB0b]

The West did not go into their countries and start blowing things up and murdering innocent people.

History says different. Anyway, aside from past history, have you ever heard of a place called Iraq?


Some references to past events:

Crusades - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http//www.exn.ca/napoleon/egypt.cfm
Britain Sudan Reconquest 1896-1899
Algerian War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Avalon Project : Balfour Declaration November 2, 1917
French Protectorate of Morocco (1912-1946)

Interesting article below:
Political Islam « The Middle East Interest

February 8, 2008


It is tempting to suggest that in a culture in which political violence has publicly triumphed over political compromise, a culture in which recognition of force rather than of persuasion is the accepted definition of consensus, liberalism would fall flat.

However, the good news is that liberal Islam is on the rise, representing the overwhelming majority within the Muslim world today. The bad news is that it is a silent majority, or more accurately, a silenced one.

Despite the fact that in the Muslim world people are systematically silenced by their authoritarian regimes, Muslim communities have responded positively both to democracy and to most aspects of liberalism. This is clearly shown by the World Values Survey, pooled sample 1995-2001.

The survey includes 22 countries representing Western Christianity (a West European culture that also encompasses North America, Australia, and New Zealand.
10 Central European nations (sharing a Western Christian heritage, but which also lived under Communist rule)
11 societies with a Muslim majority (Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey)
12 traditionally Orthodox societies (such as Russia and Greece),
11 predominately Catholic Latin American countries, 4 East Asian societies shaped by Sino-Confucian values,
5 sub-Saharan Africa countries, plus Japan and India.


The Cultural Divide
Approval of Political and Social Values in Western and Muslim Societies

· Democratic Performance: WESTERN 68% vs. MUSLIM 68%

· Democratic Ideals: WESTERN 86% vs. MUSLIM 87%

· Strong Leaders: WESTERN 61% vs. MUSLIM 61%

· Religious Leaders: WESTERN 62% vs. MUSLIM 39%

· Gender Equality: WESTERN 82% vs. MUSLIM 55%

· Divorce: WESTERN 60% vs. MUSLIM 35%

· Abortion: WESTERN 48% vs. MUSLIM 25%

· Homosexuality: WESTERN 53% vs. MUSLIM 12%

Source: World Values Survey, pooled sample 1995-2001

As the survey indicates, support for the goal of democracy is surprisingly wide-spread among Islamic publics, even among those living under authoritarian rules. It goes without saying Muslims do adhere to principles which could described collectively as “Liberal Islam.” The problem is the public perception in the West which has been focused on Islamism, thus failing to pay enough attention and support to liberal Islam, the nascent voice of the Muslim world’s silenced majority

This article is from a muslim website but still makes valid points:

"The legacy of colonialism remains alive today. Colonialism altered the geographical map of the Muslim world. It drew the boundaries and appointed leaders over the Muslim countries. After WWII, the French were in West and North Africa, Lebanon, and Syria; the British in Palestine, Iraq, Arabian Gulf, the Indian Subcontinent, Malaya, and Brunei; and the Dutch in Indonesia. It replaced the educational, legal, and economic institutions and challenged the Muslim faith. Colonial officers and Christian missionaries became the soldiers of European expansion and imperialism. Christianity was seen by the colonialists as inherently superior to Islam and its culture. This attitude can be seen in the statement of Lord Cromer, the British counsel in Cairo from 1883-1907, “…as a social system, Islam has been a complete failure. Islam keeps women in a position of inferiority…it permits slavery…its general tendency is intolerance towards other faiths…”

European colonialism replaced Muslim self rule under Islamic Law, which had been in existence from the time of the Prophet Muhammad, by their European lords. The colonialists were modern Crusaders – Christian warriors going out of their way to uproot Islam. The French spoke of their battle of the cross against the crescent. The only difference was that the Europeans came, this time, not with cavalry and swords, but with an army of Christian missionaries and missionary institutions like schools, hospitals, and churches, many of which remain in Muslim countries to this day. The French seized the Jami’ Masjid of Algiers and turned it into the cathedral of Saint-Philippe with the French flag and cross on the minaret, symbolizing Christian domination.[1]

The Muslim world’s centuries of long struggle with Western colonial rule was followed by authoritarian regimes installed by European powers. The absence of stable states has led many to ask whether there is something about Islam that is antithetical to civil society and rule of law. The answer to this question lies more in history and politics than in religion. Modern Muslim states are only several decades old and they were carved out by European powers to serve Western interests.

In South Asia, the British divided the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, giving portions of the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir to each of them. The conflicts that resulted from these actions have led to the deaths of millions in the communal warfare between Hindus and Muslims, the civil war between East and West Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh, and conflicts in Kashmir over Indian rule that persist to the present day. In the Middle East, the French created modern Lebanon from portions of Syria, and the British set the borders for Iraq and Kuwait and created a new entity called Jordan. They also created a new country called Israel, ousting non-Jewish locals and taking land once belonging to Christians and Muslims and surrendering it to a foreign Jewish authority. Such arbitrary borders fed ethnic, regional, and religious conflicts including the Lebanese Civil War between Christians and Muslims, the occupation of Lebanon by Syria, the Gulf War, which resulted from Saddam Hussein’s claim to Kuwaiti territory, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict which need no further explanation.

Political and economic models were borrowed from the West to replace the Islamic political and economic systems after independence from colonial rulers in the mid-twentieth century, creating overcrowded cities lacking social support systems, high unemployment, government corruption, and a growing gap between rich and poor. Rather than leading to a better quality of life, Westernization led to the breakdown of traditional family, religious, and social values. Many Muslims blame Western models of political and economic development as the sources of moral decline and spiritual malaise.

Unelected governments, whose leaders are kings, military or ex-military officers, rule the majority of countries in the Muslim world. State power is heavily reliant on security forces, police, and military, and where freedoms of assembly, speech, and press are severely limited. Many Muslim states operate within a culture of authoritarianism that is opposed to civil society and a free press.

In addition to influencing those who came to power in emerging modern Muslim nation-states, Europe, and later America, forged close alliances with authoritarian regimes, tolerating or supporting their non democratic ways in exchange for, or to ensure, Western access to oil and other resources

[1] Some of the early imperialist policies of the colonial powers carried not only economic, but religious and cultural agendas. The French, for example, sought to replace Islamic culture with their own by, among other measures, imposing controls on Islamic courts and suppressing many Muslim institutions. After transforming the Grand Mosque of Algiers into the Cathedral of Saint-Philippe, for example, the archbishop of Algiers announced a missionary plan to “save” Muslims from “the vices of their original religion generative of sloth, divorce, polygamy, theft, agrarian communism, fanaticism and even cannibalism.” Azim A. Nanji, ed., The Muslim Almanac (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1996), p. 123; Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., A Concise History of the Middle East, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1988), p. 231; John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 50; Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)."

[sabang]

Or Palestine / Israel?

[chitown]

The West did not go into their countries and start blowing things up and murdering innocent people.

History says different. Anyway, aside from past history, have you ever heard of a place called Iraq?

I figured someone would throw in Iraq. As I said, in other threads, they invaded Kuwait. The West liberated Kuwait and then for years Iraq ignored and refused the mandates set by the UN. They would not allow UN inspectors in and led the US to believe they were hiding WMD's. I could care less if they had WMD's or not, we were the the ones, not the UN, that had the balls to unseat Saddam. The UN is a worthless organization that sucks up money like every govt. cash cow and is filled with pussies.

Now please list for me a time where a Western nation committed terrorists acts in an Arab country. Blew up a plane. Set off a bomb on a bus filled with innocent civilians. Flew a plane into a building. Sent suicide bombers onto a train and detonated an explosive. Cut the head off of anyone. Blew up a ship, like the USS Cole?

Any takers?

[DrB0b]

The West did not go into their countries and start blowing things up and murdering innocent people.

History says different. Anyway, aside from past history, have you ever heard of a place called Iraq?

I figured someone would throw in Iraq. As I said, in other threads, they invaded Kuwait. The West liberated Kuwait and then for years Iraq ignored and refused the mandates set by the UN. They would not allow UN inspectors in and led the US to believe they were hiding WMD's. I could care less if they had WMD's or not, we were the the ones, not the UN, that had the balls to unseat Saddam. The UN is a worthless organization that sucks up money like every govt. cash cow and is filled with pussies.

Now please list for me a time where a Western nation committed terrorists acts in an Arab country. Blew up a plane. Set off a bomb on a bus filled with innocent civilians. Flew a plane into a building. Sent suicide bombers onto a train and detonated an explosive. Cut the head off of anyone. Blew up a ship, like the USS Cole?

Any takers?

Disingenuous, Chitown, I thought better of you.

[chitown]

And why is that Dr. Bob? It is true, is it not?

Which part?

I was not being at all calculating when I asked the question. The answer is never. We never have committed any terrorists acts. Britain has never went into Iran and beheaded someone or blew up a bomb. Not as a nation or nor has one of their citizens. If a rogue Brit did such a think, the whole West would call him out, find him and serve justice.

The Arab governments? Don't do a damn thing, encourage violence and hide the perpetrators.

[John]

Is it really the Islam? There are crazy people everywhere. Don't forget how many people got killed by the organization in the Vatican. When did they burn the last witch? The Islam is harmless compared to this. There might be some extreme people. But still nothing compared to the people killing for instance the Jews in the Nazi world. And how many innocent people got killed by the US-army to find the son of good friends of the GWB family? It might help if GWB goes there with a west full of explosives and blows himself up.

[chitown]

You are speaking of things hundreds of years old. Today in the civilized world, is only the uncivilized Arabs that are the the problem. They are behind their times in their thinking - say 1000 years behind.

If you study history, the Arabs were the murdering and beheading innocent people long before the crusades.

[AntRobertson]

If you study history, the Arabs were the murdering and beheading innocent people long before the crusades.

chitown,

The 'Arabs' had civilisations and culture well in advance of what your or my ancestors did.

[DrB0b]

The West did not go into their countries and start blowing things up and murdering innocent people.

History says different. Anyway, aside from past history, have you ever heard of a place called Iraq?

I figured someone would throw in Iraq. As I said, in other threads, they invaded Kuwait. The West liberated Kuwait and then for years Iraq ignored and refused the mandates set by the UN. They would not allow UN inspectors in and led the US to believe they were hiding WMD's. I could care less if they had WMD's or not, we were the the ones, not the UN, that had the balls to unseat Saddam. The UN is a worthless organization that sucks up money like every govt. cash cow and is filled with pussies.

Now please list for me a time where a Western nation committed terrorists acts in an Arab country. Blew up a plane. Set off a bomb on a bus filled with innocent civilians. Flew a plane into a building. Sent suicide bombers onto a train and detonated an explosive. Cut the head off of anyone. Blew up a ship, like the USS Cole?

Any takers?

Disingenuous can mean naive, one form of naivety is based around the eye-for-an-eye school of atrocity comparison. For example, "Q.Did they blow up a school bus, eh? A. Yes, they did. Q.Ah, but was it a Harvester school bus? A. No, it was a Panorama Elite. A.That's not the same thing at all, you're wrong, nah nah nah!" Naivety can also be shown in the failure to understand the differences between conventional and assymetric warfare, a failure you've demonstrated here. There is no need for western powers to use suicide bombers, conventional weaponry can provide the same or better results without the need to squander the lives of soldiers, a cluster bomb can achieve greater casualties and cause as much terror as a suicide bomb without the risk of detonation in a target-free environment or interception by enemy operatives.

Some related info:

As the New York Times revealed in June 2004:
(This is not the original NYT story, the original is linked below)

"Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990s's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the CIA, several former intelligence officials say. Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosives devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq… One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period ‘blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed.'"

According to one of the Times' informants, the bombing campaign, dead school kids and all, "was a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability." It allowed the CIA to portray the then-exiled Allawi and his suspect group of ex-Baathists as a serious opposition to Saddam Hussein and an alternative to the coterie (so favored by Washington neoconservatives) around Ahmed Chalabi. "No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," another CIA veteran reflected. "I don't think anyone could have known how things would turn out today."
The New York Times > Washington > New Premier: Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90's Attacks


"Fernand Meyssonnier has me by the head. With four meaty fingers behind each of my ears, he is tugging me forward out of my seat. It doesn't exactly hurt, but the effect is certainly unsettling.

"That's the way to do it. You've got to make sure you don't hold the guy too near the neck, or you could have an accident. It happened.

Mr Meyssonnier is - or was - an executioner. In 21 years from 1947, he helped to guillotine the heads off more than 200 people - the vast majority of them Arabs - in French Algeria. During the war there he was taking off five or six a month."
BBC NEWS | Europe | The executioner's tale

[sabang]

Noam Chomsky recently wrote a quite lengthy article that details several Western 'Acts of Terror'. I'll supply the Link, and copy a few choice passages below. But ultimately this 'you started it, no you started it' rhetoric solves nothing, indeed just acts to justify the continued cycle of violence in too many misguided minds.

Radical Islam has it's spurious justifications- the Crusades, the Palestine issue, invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, US troops in Saudi etc.

The West has it's- 911, the bombing of the USS Cole, the Iranian Revolution, invasion of Kuwait etc.

I think Chomsky pretty much said it right- "If you wish to stop Terrorism, then don't indulge in it".

Anyway, heres the link to the full article, it was only published a few days ago. Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Terrorists Wanted the World Over

But all ongoing violence is 'justified' by this empty rhetoric of Payback, or Blowback. Doesn't it get a bit hollow, and repetitive? The survey btw was a valuable one. It shows what many of us knew anyway- the majority of Moslems want to get on with their lives in peace and prosperity, just like us. No surprises there really. They even admire certain aspects about the West- but wish for their differences to be respected, which is reasonable.

1- "The Achille Lauro hijacking was a retaliation for the bombing of Tunis ordered a week earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. His air force killed 75 Tunisians and Palestinians with smart bombs that tore them to shreds, among other atrocities, as vividly reported from the scene by the prominent Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk. Washington cooperated by failing to warn its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way, though the Sixth Fleet and U.S. intelligence could not have been unaware of the impending attack. Secretary of State George Shultz informed Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir that Washington "had considerable sympathy for the Israeli action," which he termed "a legitimate response" to "terrorist attacks," to general approbation. A few days later, the UN Security Council unanimously denounced the bombing as an "act of armed aggression" (with the U.S. abstaining). "Aggression" is, of course, a far more serious crime than international terrorism. But giving the United States and Israel the benefit of the doubt, let us keep to the lesser charge against their leadership. "

2- "The "terrorist attacks" that Shultz and Peres offered as the pretext for the bombing of Tunis were the killings of three Israelis in Larnaca, Cyprus. The killers, as Israel conceded, had nothing to do with Tunis, though they might have had Syrian connections. Tunis was a preferable target, however. It was defenseless, unlike Damascus."

3- "Take, for example, the murder in April 2002 of two crippled Palestinians, Kemal Zughayer and Jamal Rashid, by Israeli forces rampaging through the refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank. Zughayer's crushed body and the remains of his wheelchair were found by British reporters, along with the remains of the white flag he was holding when he was shot dead while seeking to flee the Israeli tanks which then drove over him, ripping his face in two and severing his arms and legs. Jamal Rashid was crushed in his wheelchair when one of Israel's huge U.S.-supplied Caterpillar bulldozers demolished his home in Jenin with his family inside. The differential reaction, or rather non-reaction, has become so routine and so easy to explain that no further commentary is necessary."

4- "A car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast "burned babies in their beds," "killed a bride buying her trousseau," and "blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque." It also "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years later in the Washington Post.
The intended target had been the Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan's CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain's help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987.:

5- "A third competitor for the 1985 Mideast terrorism prize was Prime Minister Peres' "Iron Fist" operations in southern Lebanese territories then occupied by Israel in violation of Security Council orders. The targets were what the Israeli high command called "terrorist villagers." Peres's crimes in this case sank to new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder" in the words of a Western diplomat familiar with the area, an assessment amply supported by direct coverage."

6-"Israel's "assassination of former Hizbollah leader Abbas Al-Mussawi in an air attack in southern Lebanon." About the assassination, there is no need for evidence: Israel proudly took credit for it. The world might have some interest in the rest of the story. Al-Mussawi was murdered with a U.S.-supplied helicopter, well north of Israel's illegal "security zone" in southern Lebanon. He was on his way to Sidon from the village of Jibshit, where he had spoken at the memorial for another Imam murdered by Israeli forces. The helicopter attack also killed his wife and five-year old child. Israel then employed U.S.-supplied helicopters to attack a car bringing survivors of the first attack to a hospital.
After the murder of the family, Hezbollah "changed the rules of the game," Prime Minister Rabin informed the Israeli Knesset. Previously, no rockets had been launched at Israel. Until then, the rules of the game had been that Israel could launch murderous attacks anywhere in Lebanon at will, and Hizbollah would respond only within Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory.
After the murder of its leader (and his family), Hizbollah began to respond to Israeli crimes in Lebanon by rocketing northern Israel. The latter is, of course, intolerable terror, so Rabin launched an invasion that drove some 500,000 people out of their homes and killed well over 100. The merciless Israeli attacks reached as far as northern Lebanon."

7- "the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing -- so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at self-justification."

At the end of the day, the radicals on both sides are solving and will solve nothing, they are just spuriously justifying a contination of the cycle of violence.

[barbaro]

Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam

22 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A huge survey of the world's Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.
The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism.
AFP: Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam

Enjoy...

I think many Westerners (including me) don't understand Islam for at least 2 reasons:


1. Islam has a different ecclecticism. It's alien to us. Our knowledge of the Quran and Hadiths are limited, and there are many interpretations of the Quran.

2. The rituals are different. And many Westerners (and non-westerners) consider these rituals to be strange.

3. Suicide bombings, raping women, stoning people, throwing acid in a person's face for Allah is hard for us to understand.


Islam is whacked. I learn about this religion when I can. The more I learn, the strange I think this cult is.

[John]

You are speaking of things hundreds of years old. Today in the civilized world, is only the uncivilized Arabs that are the the problem. They are behind their times in their thinking - say 1000 years behind.

If you study history, the Arabs were the murdering and beheading innocent people long before the crusades.

You can count some years. But the human being did not change so much in all this time. I am afraid we are still the same - just with a different motivation AT THE MOMENT.