There are some enlightened Mulsim here who help us non-Mulsims understand the religion, but if you are right, then it appears that you have a much larger audience that needs your help. The article sounds positive, with some academics questioning some aspects of Islam's approach to non-Muslims, but then I think it turns depressing for all involved: "Before Sept. 11, it was just an opinion, `I think we should hate the others,' " he said. "After Sept. 11, we found out ourselves that some of those thoughts brought actions that hurt us, that put all Muslims on trial." Such positions remain controversial. After scores of Saudi religious scholars and academics issued a manifesto this spring suggesting that Muslims might find common ground with the West, they were subjected to withering rebuke by those who accept the Wahhabi notion that Islam thrives on hostility toward infidels. "You give the false impression that many people condemned the war against America," read one such denunciation on a popular Web site, "But the truth is that many people are happy declaring this war, which gave Muslims a sense of relief." In another, Sheik Hamad Rais al-Rais, an elderly blind scholar, suggested the manifesto writers showed too much sympathy for the victims of Sept. 11 and debased Islam by neglecting to mention that jihad, or holy war, remains a central tenet. "You cry for what happened to the Americans in their markets and offices and ministries and the disasters they experienced," he wrote, "and you forget the oppression and injustice and aggression of those Americans against the whole Islamic world." Or: Bookshops in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, for example, sell a 1,265-page souvenir tome that is a kind of "greatest hits" of fatwas on modern life. It is strewn with rulings on shunning non-Muslims: don't smile at them, don't wish them well on their holidays, don't address them as "friend." A fatwa from Sheik Muhammad bin Othaimeen, whose funeral last year attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, tackles whether good Muslims can live in infidel lands. The faithful who must live abroad should "harbor enmity and hatred for the infidels and refrain from taking them as friends," it reads in part. Saudis in general, and senior princes in particular, reject the notion that this kind of teaching helps spawns terrorists. "Well, of course I hate you because you are Christian, but that doesn't mean I want to kill you," a professor of Islamic law in Riyadh explains to a visiting reporter. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...a_rigid_islam_to_debate_their_own_intolerance If accurate, this does not bode well for anyone.
Comments from the Muslims on this board? Hopefully this harboring hatred thing is only going on in a few extremist circles... I refuse to believe that it's most of you... (but I only know the one Muslim who works in my office, and she was just as much against the terrorist attacks as the rest of us)
I'm not a muslim myself, but I've studied a little bit about it. Wahabbi is a fundementalist sect of Islam. It's like saying that all Christians are like Jerry Falwell. At least that's my understanding. One thing to remember is among the innocent victims at the WTC were many Muslims. We are all victims.
