02 January 2008

They start to turn on themselves

Seems someone named Hussein Ibish (which, if it isn't a bizarre pseudonym, would imply that he's a Muslim) wrote a commentary for the Chicago Tribune back in early December, in which he said, among other anti-Islamic things:

"In a repetition of a now depressingly familiar pattern, the only ones in this affair who have insulted Islam are the extremists and the court that bowed to their intolerant demands. This isn't a case of cross-cultural misunderstanding, in which a better-educated Westerner would have avoided an error that would predictably have caused offense to Muslims. Rather, it is a case of fanatics once again finding offense over something that is no insult at all to any sensible Muslim anywhere in the world. After the verdict, the most extreme of these radicals publicly protested, with several hundred actually calling for her execution."
"Sadly, while hardly characterizing the normal course of justice in Muslim states generally, these cases are not the isolated incidents one would have hoped."
"Such judicial abuses illustrate that a corrosive and morally blind form of religiosity has spread much too far in the Islamic world in recent decades. This is faith shorn of spirituality and religion reduced to a vulgar and often vicious punitive code that bears no resemblance to the principles of traditional Islam and the God who is continuous referred to in the Quran as "the compassionate and the merciful" -- two values almost completely missing from the mind-set of the present day ultraconservatives in the Muslim world."

Rico says he sees a fatwa in Mr. Ibish's future...

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12.1.08

    Hussein Ibish is not a pseudonym. It is my given birth name. My article was not at all anti-Islam, or including any anti-Islamic comments, but was a strong condemnation of extremists who are poisoning a faith and a culture. A fatwa against me for defending the Muslim community against radical lunatics by a crazed fundamentalist would be perfectly welcome.

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