Petition to Punish Religious Leaders who Preach Violence and Justify Terrorism
Dean
Quoted:
The Free Muslims Against Terrorism (Free Muslims) have partnered with progressive Arabs and Muslims to hold religious leaders accountable for justifying violence and encouraging terrorism.
The Free Muslims are petitioning the UN Security Council and the United States government to establish an international tribunal to prosecute religious leaders, including clerics who issue "fatwas" which are religious opinions, edicts, rulings and conclusions that incite violence and justify the use of terrorism. These religious leaders are especially dangerous because some of their followers consider their opinions to be gospel.
More on the petition on the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism web site.
Granted, there's a difference between protected speech and inciting people to violence in US law, but when it's illegal to opine that people who die fighting Americans will instantly go to heaven just because some people are going to take you seriously gets into murky waters.
Moreover, what's the difference between them and people (in the US) who say that soldiers fighting Saddam are virtuously fighting for freedom?
I mean, we're right and those muslim clerics are wrong, but other than that? What's different in principle?
I guess that's a very Western outlook. I'd prefer to call it progressive modernism, but whatever.
Terrorism is a serious matter and it can't be dealt with through non-serious means. These guys are a joke for a) thinking the UN would ever sign on to anything like this and b) that even if the UN were to sign on, anything could possibly come of it.
For a long while I've been searching for reliably pro-modernist, pro-Western, and vocally anti-terrorist Muslim groups.
I've taken a lot of guff for it from any number of my readers and other webloggers. I've had endless lefties snearing at the "bigoted" notion that anyone would so much as question whether such muslims exist, and righties who snear that they can't possibly exist.
Well they do exist, but they're distressingly hard to find. (And if they were so damned easy to find you'd think that the lefties who snear and call people names would have an easier time pointing to them, wouldn't you?)
What's my point? Who gives a damn what impact this petition would have on the UN? It's not the point, except to draw attention to the fact that groups like this, people like this, exist.
Despite the desperate wishes of my Christian friends that these Muslims simply abandon Islam and convert to Christianity, I have long felt that a foolish notion. You're not going to get 1.5 billion people to abandon a religious faith that's lasted for a millenium and a half to embrace what they've always seen as a rival faith. You aren't. When I read stories of the "ex-Muslims who found Christ" they read to me no different from the tales of the "ex-Catholics who became Christians" (i.e. some form of protestant evangelical) or the "ex-Christians who excaped dogma and became freethinking atheists!" and all the rest. You know what? I'm not interested in converting people to anything. I'm interested in finding away to live in peace with 1.5 billion people who happen to be Muslims.
Now either you insist (as some of my readers regularly do) that Islam itself is the enemy and must be crushed, or, you take the position that it's the nutjob muslims who are the enemy and that we must do what we can to recognize and encourage whatever Muslims we find with whom we can make common cause for freedom.
To be honest, I don't know who I find more dangerous: the idiot liberals with their heads in the sand insisting that we must simply understand the "root causes of poverty and injustice" that bring about the bin Ladens of the world, or the lunatic conservatives who think that the only "real answer" is to "just admit" that the only thing to do is wipe out Islam itself.
So what should we do Hatcher? Sit around like the grumps at Little Green Footballs, snearing endlessly at Islam, making drippingly-sarcastic comments about "the religion of peace" and about killing ragheads and insisting that we're all fools, FOOLS I TELL YOU for not "just admitting" that we're at war with 1.5 billion people? Or should we be like the fuckwads over at Daily Kos who think that the whole problem is anti-Muslim bigotry?
I'd rather make note of decent, progressive Muslims and make common cause with them whenever possible myself, even if sometimes their gestures are merely symbolic. Because I got news for my righty frights: you aren't going to be distributing copies of The New Testament and/or The Fountainhead and getting these people to slap their foreheads and yell, "What was I thinking!" Nor are we about to invade every Muslim nation on Earth and put them to the sword.
No, I don't see freedom of speech issues there because the mullahs aren't just saying that people who die fighting Americans (or blow themselves up and kill innocent civilians) will go to heaven. Though I'd call that a gray area.
They are specifically telling people "it is your duty to go and kill". That's not a gray area, it is incitement to violence.
"Because I got news for my righty frights: you aren't going to be distributing copies of The New Testament and/or The Fountainhead and getting these people to slap their foreheads and yell, "What was I thinking!""
Maybe if we threw in some Chick tracts.... ha! ha! ha!
I love the _style_ of this spectrum, or of the Starboard side of this spectrum. Ever since 9/11/2001, I myself have leaned very far to the Right indeed on this spectrum, but I now think (or hope) Dean is right instead. I'll give it a vacation and let President Bush, Secretary Rice, and their Generals do their work.