Category: General

BRUCE BAWER

An Anatomy of Surrender

Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.

*  One example of Western self-censorship: Belgian officials prohibited Shark, by David Cerny, depicting Saddam Hussein as an aquatic predator.

Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Kho meini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.

 Another example of voluntary Dhimmitude: 

THE HAGUE,  – The controversial Mohammed-exhibition of work by Iranian artist Sooreh Hera remains hidden from the public. For the third time in succession, an exhibitor willing to show her work has reversed this decision.

Hera took photos of homosexuals wearing masks of the prophet Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali. The work was first going to be exhibited by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, but the museum changed its mind because it “did not wish to become part of a political debate,” as Director Wim van Krimpen put it.

Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission.

Read it all

*   Big-mouthed Americans  should take a good look at themselves:

*  Not ONE of their news-channels or major papers printed the dreaded Muhammad cartoons!

 Richard Kerbaj/The Australian

MUSLIM community leaders have urged Griffith University to return a $100,000 grant from the Saudi Arabian embassy as prominent academics attacked vice-chancellor Ian O’Connor for his confusion over the Islamic ideology embraced by Osama bin Laden.

* How does mainstream Islam differ from the Islam of OBL & Al Zawahiri? Do they read a different Koran?

Professor O’Connor was yesterday also attacked by fellow academics for partly plagiarising his written defence of the Saudi grant from online encyclopedia Wikipedia – as revealed by The Weekend Australian – and accused of being out of his depth on Islamic issues.

The anger in Muslim and academic circles follows revelations by The Australian that the Queensland university asked the Saudis for a $1.37 million grant, of which it received $100,000, and offered to keep elements of the funding deal secret.

The nation’s most senior female Muslim leader, Aziza Abdel-Halim, urged Griffith to return the Saudi funds, saying the Saudi Government was known for funding projects such as mosques and religious activities in Australia to “subtly” impose its hardline ideology on recipients.

* Damage control:

“If there are no guarantees they have a free hand in their curriculum … then it is safer to give the money back,” she told The Australian. “If they are not able to have no strings attached, then it’s better to not have the money.”

Documents unveiled by The Australian last week revealed that Professor O’Connor, among other staff, offered the embassy a chance to “discuss ways” in which the money could be used.

Professor O’Connor was defended yesterday by Griffith’s chancellor, Leneen Forde, who described him as an “outstanding leader”, saying the university would not have accepted Saudi funds if they had conditions attached.

“In relation to the two sentences lifted from the Wikipedia entry, Professor O’Connor has acknowledged this was inappropriate,” she wrote in a memo to staff. “This is regrettable, but is a very minor error compared to the outstanding work which Professor O’Connor has done and will continue to do for the university.”

A Howard government adviser on Islam, Ameer Ali, said Professor O’Connor was wrong to interchange the term Wahabbism – a Saudi-pioneered Islamic ideology espoused by al-Qa’ida – with Unitarianism when he defended the Saudi grant in an opinion piece published by The Australian last week.

Melbourne University associate professor Shahram Akbarzadeh said Professor O’Connor played down and did not properly reflect the essence of Wahabbism by calling it Unitarianism.

“Wahabbism and Salafism are a social ideological movement … and it’s all about merging political power with religious piety,” he said. “That was an early case of … political rulers appealing to Islamic principles and Islamic justification for their rule.”

* But Islam is always political, not spiritual. And the smiling taqiyya doctor Mohamed Abdalla from the Griffith ‘Islamic Studies Centre’ along with his cronies distribute a Koran and glossy proselytizing  brochures  which are authorized  and produced by the King Fahd Academy of Sowdi Arabiyah. How much more Wahabi-Salafi can it get?  The fox is in the henhouse…

“Our Man in Kabul” escapes attack:

 CNN calls assassins ‘militants’

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) — Taliban militants opened fire at a military ceremony in the capital Sunday morning. A lawmaker, tribal leader and 10-year-old child were killed, but President Hamid Karzai escaped unhurt, according to an official and a statement from Karzai’s office.

More

Afghan soldiers and armed police flee with crowd

* Hugh Fitzgerald: Our ‘friend’ Karzai

*

*  “The court referred to a medical report that said “her hymen was broken” and to the “defendants’ honourable motivation”.

Sian Powell/The Australian

Pela Altrosi

 Pela was an intelligent and good-looking girl. When she emigrated with her family to Sweden in 1995, she took to Swedish ways – eventually leaving the family home in January 1999. But after a time she missed her parents and six younger brothers and sisters and returned, agreeing to an arranged marriage in Kurdistan. It was a front – the men in her family had decided to kill her in their home town of Dohuk, northern Iraq, where honour killings were considered minor crimes, and where the Atroshi clan commanded immense respect.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk, in a report last year to the Human Rights Council, said she had been told that a “family council of male relatives living in Sweden and Australia decided that Pela had to die to cleanse the family honour”.

More

Amina & Sarah Said

‘Honor Killer’ Yasr Said, their father who killed these beautiful girls, is still on the run

*  Pamela has done enormous work to bring this killer to justice, here

ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: “HONOR” KILLER YASER SAID HAS TIES TO AL QAEDA

*

Honor killing in Iraq: Father murders 17-year-old girl for loving British soldier

“You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws. The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn’t hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten.”

“Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier,” by Sadie Gray in The Independent 

*

Norway: Fear of honor murder by suspected rapist

The police and the Kristiansand court think a 59 year old might commit honor murder if he’s released from custody. The man is suspected of having sex with his two minor daughters for several years. After the attacks were reported, he threatened to kill his children. As a result one of the daughter has been housed in a secret address for fear of threats and reprisals from the father. Both girls say they fear their father will kill them if he gets out.

One of the daughters was told by close relatives to forget what happened or she’ll be killed.

More

*

A true Heroine of India

A true martyr, Neerja Bhanot

* You can read her story here

Neerja Bhanot, a truly amazing young Hindu who died
saving the lives of strangers from Allah’s Holy Warriors.
(Pakistan recently released her killers from prison).

*  Emancipation:

Terror suspect who won court battle is named as a ‘top al-Qaeda agent’

A ‘key player’ accused of radicalising British Muslims is living openly in the UK

Pirates can claim UK asylum

* Obviously:  the ‘human rights’ of Islamic terrorists are more important than the lives of indigenous Brits…

More

Somali pirates freed a Spanish fishing boat and its 26-member crew after receiving a ransom of US$1.2 million (€770,000)

Herald Tribune

AL QAEDA PIRATES: JIHAD ON THE HIGH SEAS

Thomas Jefferson fought the Barbary Pirates, the ‘Algeriennes’

Early in the history of the United States, the nation had to take on and defeat jihadist pirates. It is time to do it again.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman or (Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). Upon inquiring “concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury”, the ambassador replied:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

* America and the Barbary Pirates: An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe

“Al-Qaeda pirates target UK ships,” from The Sun 

BRITAIN’S 18,000 merchant sailors face a growing danger from pirates with links to al-Qaeda.

Attacks worldwide are up 20 per cent this year – and tourists on passenger liners are now feared to be at risk.

* More from Atlas Shrugs

Conviction overturned for commander of Bosnian Jihad beheaders 

One law for Serbs and another for Muslims: Milosevitch died in jail,Islamic terrorists run free…

THE HAGUE, Netherlands-A U.N. appeals panel overturned the murder convictions and reduced the sentence Tuesday of a Bosnian army commander in charge of Muslim fighters who murdered and tortured Bosnian Serbs and Croats in the Balkan wars in 1993.

More

Afghanistan: Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring to teach girls

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.

More

Mahatir rants and raves:

Malaysia’s ex-PM Mahathir wants Iraq war leaders on war crimes charges

* He seems to think his name is Peanut Khadr

LONDON (AFP) — Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called for an international tribunal to try Western leaders with war crimes over the war in Iraq, a spokesman for the organisers said.
In a speech at Imperial College, London, Mahathir called for a tribunal to try US President George W. Bush plus former prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia for their part in the conflict, said a spokesman for the Muslim group the Ramadhan Foundation, which set up the event.
Spokesman Mohammed Shafiq told AFP that Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, wants to see the trio tried “in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq.
“It was a opportunity for students to put a range of questions about war crimes and the international situation.
“He said that people have to stop killing each other and use arbitration, negotiation and discussion as an alternative to violence, war and killing.”

More

 

Muslims don’t have monopoly on “Allah”-, 

A Catholic  newspaper in Malaysia goes to court to challenge the Malaysian government’s ban on its use of the word “Allah”  for God.

The case illustrates growing complaints by religious minorities that their rights have been undermined by government efforts to bolster the status of Islam, Malaysia’s official religion.

Ethnic Malays – who are legally required to be Muslim – comprise nearly 60% of Malaysia’s 27 million people, while ethnic Chinese and Indians – mostly Buddhists, Christians and Hindus – are the main minorities.

Dissatisfaction with court rulings over the right to leave Islam, along with religious issues like the demolition of Hindu temples by state authorities, contributed to the ruling government’s poor performance in March elections, when it lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament.

In a separate case, the Sabah Evangelical Church of Borneo has also filed a lawsuit to be allowed to use “Allah” after officials last year banned the import of books containing the word. Hearings in that case remain in the preliminary stages.
More

*

U.S. fumes after Israeli envoy to UN envoy brands Carter ‘a bigot’

* Well,  for lack of a better word bigot will do for now. But why would the US shield this despicable, demented fool?

 The United States registered an official protest with Israel against its ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, for calling former U.S. President Jimmy Carter an “enemy of Israel” prior to Carter’s recent visit to the region.

A senior Foreign Ministry source said Saturday that the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv asked that Gillerman be made aware of the U.S. administration’s dissatisfaction with the disrespectful comments about the former U.S. President.

In addition, the State Department is planning to issue a public statement condemning comments made by Gillerman at a press conference in New York on Thursday, where he called Carter a “bigot.”

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, “went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas,” Gillerman told reporters. Gillerman also described the Carter-Meshal as “a very sad episode in American history.”

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni refused yesterday to respond to the demand by MK Yossi Beilin that Gillerman be recalled for his statements against Carter. Beilin described the ambassador’s statements as “mad.” 

A Livni aide said that the foreign minister does not normally communicate with Israeli ambassadors through the media.

However, a Foreign Ministry source said that Gillerman is due to leave his post in the coming months, following five years at the UN.

The same source said that Gillerman’s attack on Carter “surprised and embarrassed” Jerusalem, which contravened direct instructions from Livni to avoid comments on the former president.

Even though Israel’s political leadership expressed its reservations at Carter’s intention to meet with the Hamas leaders, the Foreign Ministry contributed to coordinating his meetings and emphasized that no decision was taken to boycott him.

Fitzgerald: Questions Jimmy Carter was not asked

Carter is interviewed on this station and on that. Not one of the interviewers thinks to ask Carter if he understands what a “hudna” is. Not one asks him why he thinks the figure of ten years, rather than five, or fifteen, or twenty years, was chosen by the leaders of Hamas as the appropriate length of time for this “hudna” or truce.

Not one of them has asked him, or will ask, if he has any idea that the model for this offer is the Treaty made at Hudiabiyya in 628 A.D. between Muhammad and the Meccans. Not one of them will ask Carter if he has heard about that treaty, knows its terms, knows when, and why, Muhammad chose to break it. Not one of those interviewing Carter will ask him if he knows the significance of Muhammad in Islam, if he knows what Muhammad said and did, if he knows what the phrases “uswa hasana” and “al-insan al-kamil” mean. Not one will ask Jimmy Carter if, since he has been an ex-president for nearly 30 years, and since he has considered himself a great expert on Middle Eastern matters, and even offered public relations advice, free, to Yassir Arafat, and clearly has a thing about Israel, a most unpleasant thing. There seems to be no need at this point to point out what prompts Jimmy Carter to have that “thing” about Israel.

More

*

Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal. (AP)

* A Hudna? But of course! When the Muslims are weak, they are perfectly within their rights to call for a hudna, a temporary cease-fire that allows them to regroup. But that doesn’t mean that the attacks on Israel have to be halted,  it only means that the Jews are not allowed to retaliate.

Right Meshal?

* The Treaty of Hudaybiyah/Why did Hamas offer a 10-year truce?

Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal on Saturday said the Palestinian militant group would accept an Egyptian-mediated cease-fire with Israel but it would only be a “tactic” in the group’s conflict with Israel.

“It is a tactic in conducting the struggle – It is normal for any resistance that operates in its people’s interest… to sometimes escalate, other times retreat a bit,” Meshal said in an interview with pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television.

“The battle is to be run this way and Hamas is known for that,” he added. 

“He also warned of an explosion of violence in Gaza if Israel rejected the truce.”

Cease-fire is a tactic, “it is normal for any resistance that operates in its people’s interest … to sometimes escalate, other times retreat a bit.”

The Hamas leader said his group was ready to cooperate in the six-month truce Egypt had proposed a between the Hamas rulers of Gaza and Israel. He also warned of an explosion of violence in Gaza if Israel rejected the truce.

Earlier on Saturday, Meshal said Hamas is awaiting an Israeli response to the proposed truce. He made the comments speaking to reporters in Doha.

Meshal said the Palestinian militant group requested that Egypt provide a document with Israel’s agreement outlining the terms and conditions of the truce, among them the opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings.

The Damascus-based Hamas leader added that the group’s leadership would convene following Jerusalem’s reply in order to decide how to respond to the Egyptian initiative.

On Friday, Israel dismissed a proposal by Hamas to call a conditional six-month truce in the Gaza Strip, calling it a ruse aimed at allowing the Islamist group to recover from recent fighting.

“Hamas is biding time in order to rearm and regroup. There would be no need for Israel’s defensive actions if Hamas would cease and desist from committing terrorist attacks on Israelis,” a spokesman from the Prime Minister’s Office, David Baker said.

“To Israel’s dismay, Hamas is not serious. It’s playing games, trying to buy time in order to regroup and rearm,” said Baker.

* Exactly. Read it all

 Trusting a Muslim to protect us from the soldiers of Allah is not a good idea:

Head Of UN Nuclear Monitoring Agency ElBaradei Casts Blame On Israel And US For Destroying Clandestine Syrian-North Korean Nuke Facility

IAEA head ElBaradei, who is human Muslim, criticized Israel on Friday for bombing a Syrian nuclear facility he had no clue about and he chastised the U.S. for withholding information about the site from him. More HERE.

AP reports:
“The Director General deplores the fact that this information was not provided to the Agency in a timely manner, in accordance with the Agency’s responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to enable it to verify its veracity and establish the facts,” ElBaradei’s office said.

Additionally, “the Director General views the unilateral use of force by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the non-proliferation regime,” it said.

ElBaradei did not criticize North Korea or Syria in his statement.

 

* ‘Our Man’  stooge in Afghanistan, the odious Hamid Karzai, is not content with his sponsors who  spend untold amounts of money on his crap-hole of a  country. He would like to be taken seriously:

Afghan leader criticises US over war

AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai criticized the US and British conduct of the war in Afghanistan, telling The New York Times in an interview published today his Government must be accorded the lead in policy decisions.

Mr Karzai told the newspaper he wanted US forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban members and their sympathizers, saying that fear of arrest along with past mistreatment were discouraging them from coming forward and laying down their arms.

“It has to happen,” he said of the end to such arrests.

Mr Karzai also said in the interview conducted yesterday that he did not have specific details about alleged mistreatment of people in custody.

Ousted from power in 2001 by US-led and Afghan forces, the al Qaeda-backed Taliban has vowed to topple the Afghan Government and drive out the foreign troops who back it.

Nearly 12,000 people, including more than 330 foreign troops, have been killed in violence in the past two years.

More from the Australian

*  Meanwhile, in Pakistan: 4000 women go apeshit over cartoons & Fitna

KARACHI (Reuters) – Chanting “Down with Denmark” and “Down with The Netherlands,” about 4,000 Pakistani women protested in Karachi on Saturday against a film critical of Islam and over the reprinting of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad.

More 

 

Standing firm: Taj Din al-Hilali at Lakemba Mosque, Sydney, yesterday.

Richard Kerbaj/The Australian

* In Iraq, at least a hundred women have been raped and killed for not wearing the veil.  In Iran, the religious police arrests and beats women in the street who don’t cover up from head to toe. In Padang, Indonesia, Female students who do not wear the headscarf (hijab) are frequently suspended from school.  The requirement to observe Islamic customs, sanctioned by the controversial regional law of 2005, is also imposed on non-Muslim girls, and has generated an atmosphere of strong pressure on religious minorities. In Turkey, the Islamic government wants to ‘liberate’ women by forcing them to cover up.

 Muslim cleric Taj Din al-Hilali says the Bible “mandates” the wearing of the veil by Christian women.

Writing in a new book, Sheik Hilali, who lost his job as mufti of Australia after comparing scantily clad women to uncovered meat, argues that the Bible and the Koran make similar demands of a woman’s modesty.

Sheik Hilali, who remains the head of Australia’s largest mosque, in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Lakemba, says the purpose of the book is to show the commonalities of Islam with the Jewish and Christian faiths when it comes to women’s modesty and clothing.

In the soon-to-be published The Legitimacy of the Veil for Women of the Scripture – Evidence of the Veil in the Bible, the cleric points to references in the Old and New Testaments to women wearing a veil.

“Through this I hope to raise awareness and understanding and eliminate apprehensions and misunderstandings about the veil,” he writes.

The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, yesterday challenged Sheik Hilali’s comments about the veil being “mandated” in the Bible, saying they were misleading.

“The New Testament does call upon people to dress modestly,” he said. “But there is no understanding that women are commanded to wear the veil. But it is mandated that you should dress appropriately for your social context.”

Sheik Hilali also says the Virgin Mary is often depicted with a veil covering her head.

“The veil upholds the modesty and protects the dignity of women, whether Muslim or non-Muslim,” he writes. “Wearing the veil creates the most realistic similarity with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ.”

Sheik Hilali caused an uproar with a Ramadan sermon in 2006 in which he talked about immodestly dressed women being like “uncovered meat” and made remarks about Sydney’s notorious gang rapes.

He has used the book to hit back at criticisms of his comments, which were given during a lesson to Muslim men and women on theft and adultery, and which he says were misinterpreted with “ill-intent” and with the intention to “slander” him.

He has included an “explanatory statement” to clarify his position, saying that rape is a heinous crime and the perpetrator deserves the maximum punishment. He also says women in Australia, or any Western society, have absolute freedom to wear whatever they like.

* Damage control taqiyya:

“The Muslim has no right to impose the rules of his religion on others. My religious duty is to advise the Muslim woman to be modest and to wear the Islamic dress. It is her choice whether to comply or not.”

* That’s what he must say as long as Muslims have no power to enforce their rule on others. But watch out Australia: once they get critical mass you better run for cover!

* One Aussie gal is better than 1000 Hilali’s!

He said his comments about uncovered meat were drawn from an analogy used by the Arab writer Al-Rafii that uncovering flesh publicly may be degrading to the woman and may make her vulnerable to those with a diseased heart. “Through these words I wanted to protect women from rapists who have lost their humanity, lost their minds and religion.

* The rapists, of course, are the Musulmaniacs who  are led to believe that infidel women are ‘war-booty’…

“Whilst I believe that the rapists are responsible for their crimes, I wanted to protect my daughters by encouraging them to adopt all available lawful means of protection,” he writes.

Sheik Hilali concedes that the uncovered meat example was not correct or appropriate for the Western mentality. “I did not mean this analogy to denigrate immodestly dressed women; rather I meant to denigrate those men who set aside their humanity and turn into predators.”

* Ship out, Hilali! Pack up and get the f*#k out!

*  Latest survey: What should be the response of Muslim Ummah to the blasphemous caricatures published in Denmark?

Symposium: Hate Behind the Niqab

 Why would a culture want to cover the female from head to toe in this way? One angle is the hate (and self-hate) that the men behind this ideology have in terms of trying to put the female gender out of sight and mind. But another angle is also the women who wear it voluntarily (and many do not of course). Their psychology is also very interesting in terms of how they look down at the unveiled women. This is a form of discrimination that is almost never discussed in our society.

It is very intriguing – and disturbing — how our culture frames this debate. The Left is always teaching us that we must have tolerance for those Muslim women who want to wear the veil. But the real question is: how about those Muslim women who do not want to wear the veil and who face violence and discrimination in their own communities and families if they do not wear it? Where is the Left’s outrage about that? Where is the Left’s defense of these Muslim women? And how about the Muslim men and women who despise and look down at the Muslim and non-Muslim women in our society who are not veiled? Where are the sensitivity courses for them that the Left should be setting up if it really believes in multiculturalism and tolerance?

Read it all

*

 *  This whole ridiculous Da’wa Centre at Griffith should be closed down instantly. How can anyone justify a proselytizing  nest of Wahabites in a respectable institution of higher learning? The whole idea is a sick joke!

Clueless O’Connor

GRIFFITH University vice-chancellor Ian O’Connor has admitted lifting information straight from online encyclopedia Wikipedia and confusing strands of Islam as he struggled to defend his institution’s decision to ask the repressive Saudi Arabian Government for funding.

*  WoJ reported, here

Professor O’Connor also appears to have breached his own university’s standards on plagiarism as they apply to students’ academic work – a claim he denies. And he appears to have ignored his own past misgivings about Wikipedia and internet-based research.

In September, The Australian revealed that the Queensland university had accepted a grant of $100,000 from the Saudi Government. Last week, it was revealed that Griffith had asked the Saudi embassy in Australia for a $1.37million grant for its Islamic Research Unit, telling the ambassador that certain elements of the controversial deal could be kept a secret.

Griffith – described by Professor O’Connor as the “university of choice” for Saudis – also offered the embassy a chance to “discuss” ways in which the money could be used.

Professor O’Connor’s response to The Australian’s revelations, which was published as an opinion article in the newspaper on Thursday, contained whole passages of text “cut and pasted” from Wikipedia.

“The primary doctrine of Unitarianism is Tawhid, or the uniqueness and unity of God,” Professor O’Connor wrote. “Wahhab also preached against a perceived moral decline and political weakness in the Arabian peninsula and condemned idolatry, the popular cult of saints, and shrine and tomb visitation.”

The Wikipedia entry for Wahhabism reads: “The primary doctrine of Wahhabism is Tawhid, or the uniqueness and unity of God … He preached against a ‘perceived moral decline and political weakness’ in the Arabian peninsula and condemned idolatry, the popular cult of saints, and shrine and tomb visitation.”

Professor O’Connor, whose academic credentials are in social work and juvenile justice, appears to have substituted the word Unitarianism for Wahhabism.

He has admitted that the substitution, which came under fire from religious commentators, was not appropriate.

 More from the Australian