Op-Ed: Rise of Islamist movements casts shadow over Egypt

[AMP 54]

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- The Muslim Brotherhood did not initiate the current upheavals in the Middle East, but the Islamist parties in Egypt, as in Tunisia and Libya, have been the chief beneficiaries of the collapse of longstanding authoritarian repressive regimes across North Africa.

In Egypt itself, the two largest Islamist groups -- the Brotherhood and the Salafists -- won about three quarters of the ballots in the second round of legislative elections held in December, while the secular and the liberal forces took a battering.

The Brotherhood (which garnered over 40 percent of the votes) is an organization founded by an Egyptian schoolteacher, Hassan el Banna, back in 1928. It has never deviated from its founder’s central axiom: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

It is this radical vision which animates all those in the region who seek a fully Islamic society and way of life. The Muslim Brotherhood has always been deeply anti-Western, viscerally hostile to Israel and openly antisemitic -- points usually downplayed in Western commentary on the so-called Arab Spring. Indeed, the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories promoted by the Brotherhood and its affiliated preachers are in a class of their own.

This is especially true of Egyptian-born Yusuf al-Qaradawi, undoubtedly the most celebrated Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world. The still vigorous 84-year-old, often misleadingly depicted in the West as a “moderate,” flew in from Qatar to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Feb. 18, 2011 to lead a million-strong crowd in Friday prayers, thereby ending 50 years of exile from his native land. He called for pluralistic democracy in Egypt while at the same time offering the hope “that Almighty Allah will also please me with the conquest of the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem].”

Two years earlier, in a notorious commentary on Al-Jazeera TV (January 28, 2009), the “moderate” Qaradawi had provided religious justification for both past and future Holocausts: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption ... The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them -- even though they exaggerated this issue -- he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them ... Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.”

In other words, the loathing of Jews, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel by Muslims were linked by Qaradawi as things mandated by God himself.

Regarding Israel and the Jews, fundamentalist Muslim attitudes have not deviated since the 1940s. Islamist ideologues, despite their virulent anti-Westernism, have had no problem drawing on Western sources for their radical anti- Semitism -- whether these libels come from “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” forgery, Henry Ford’s “The International Jew,” Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” fantasies about Judeo-Masonic plots, Christian anti-Talmudism, medieval blood-libels or the slanders of contemporary or Holocaust deniers in America and Europe.

The current swelling of Islamist ranks within Egypt and across the Arab world has hardly improved matters. At a vocal Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo’s most prominent mosque on Nov. 25, 2011, Islamic activists ominously chanted “Tel Aviv, judgment day has come,” vowing to “one day kill all Jews.” The rally, which sought to promote the “battle against Jerusalem’s judaization,” was peppered with hate-filled speeches about the “treacherous Jews.” There were explicit calls for jihad and liberating all of Palestine as well as references to a well-known hadith concerning the future Muslim annihilation of the Jews. Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University (the most senior clerical authority in Sunni Islam) even claimed that Jews throughout the world were seeking to prevent Egyptian and Islamic unity, as well as trying to “Judaize al-Quds [Jerusalem].”

This kind of incitement and the pressure from the Egyptian street does not mean that the fragile peace treaty with Israel will be cancelled overnight. But calls for such a step have been repeatedly heard in recent months even from the “liberal” and “progressive” sectors of the political spectrum as well as from the Islamist parties.

Dr. Rashad Bayoumi, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, bluntly told the Arabic daily al-Hayat on the first day of 2012 that his organization will never “recognize Israel at all,” whatever the circumstances. Israel, he emphasized, was a “criminal enemy” with whom Egypt should never have signed a peace treaty in the first place.

If this treaty is not to be abrogated, much will depend on the United States making clear to Egypt how dire the economic and political consequences would be.

It is particularly chilling to note that the Islamic wave already dominates not only in Iran, which is on the verge of nuclear weapons, but also in Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, the Gaza strip under Hamas and the Lebanese state, currently in the iron grip of Hezbollah. Apart from seeking to impose sharia law, and to further downgrade the status of women -- while repressing Copts and other non-Muslim minorities -- the neo-Islamist movements and regimes remain as determined as ever to wipe out Israel and to radically reduce American influence in the region.Needless to say, like the Brotherhood itself, Islamists consider themselves to be the sole authentic interpreters of Divine will.

In the face of this mounting fundamentalist danger, Israel has no choice but to consolidate its deterrent capacity, close ranks and treat with the upmost skepticism any siren voices calling on it to take unreasonable “risks for peace.” At the same time, it will have to develop a new regional strategy that takes into account the seismic changes currently shaking the Middle East.

Prof. Robert Wistrich is the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of "A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, 2010).

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

It won't end well for gays, women, daughters, infidels..... ad infinitum.

[luckytxn 2,264]

It won't end well for gays, women, daughters, infidels..... ad infinitum.

They chose it so no need for us to worry here.

[AMP 54]

It won't end well for gays, women, daughters, infidels..... ad infinitum.

gays under shariah law

women shariah law

infidels under shariah law

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

“IN dreams begin responsibilities,” wrote Yeats in 1914. These words resonate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who have witnessed dramatic shifts in our relationship to power. After generations of sacrifice and organization, gay people in parts of the world have won protection from discrimination and relationship recognition. But these changes have given rise to a nefarious phenomenon: the co-opting of white gay people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in Western Europe and Israel.

In the Netherlands, some Dutch gay people have been drawn to the messages of Geert Wilders, who inherited many followers of the assassinated anti-immigration gay leader Pim Fortuyn, and whose Party for Freedom is now the country’s third largest political party. In Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, the extremist who massacred 77 people in July, cited Bruce Bawer, a gay American writer critical of Muslim immigration, as an influence. The Guardian reported last year that the racist English Defense League had 115 members in its gay wing. The German Lesbian and Gay Federation has issued statements citing Muslim immigrants as enemies of gay people.

These depictions of immigrants — usually Muslims of Arab, South Asian, Turkish or African origin — as “homophobic fanatics” opportunistically ignore the existence of Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even hatred of gays. And that cynical message has now spread from its roots in European xenophobia to become a potent tool in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2005, with help from American marketing executives, the Israeli government began a marketing campaign, “Brand Israel,” aimed at men ages 18 to 34. The campaign, as reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, sought to depict Israel as “relevant and modern.” The government later expanded the marketing plan by harnessing the gay community to reposition its global image.

Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of around $90 million to brand the city as “an international gay vacation destination.” The promotion, which received support from the Tourism Ministry and Israel’s overseas consulates, includes depictions of young same-sex couples and financing for pro-Israeli movie screenings at lesbian and gay film festivals in the United States. (The government isn’t alone; an Israeli pornography producer even shot a film, “Men of Israel,” on the site of a former Palestinian village.)

This message is being articulated at the highest levels. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress that the Middle East was “a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted.”

The growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation has named these tactics “pinkwashing”: a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life. Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv University, argues that “gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool,” even though “conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic.”

Pinkwashing not only manipulates the hard-won gains of Israel’s gay community, but it also ignores the existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations. Homosexuality has been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s, when anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow. More important is the emerging Palestinian gay movement with three major organizations: Aswat, Al Qaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. These groups are clear that the oppression of Palestinians crosses the boundary of sexuality; as Haneen Maikay, the director of Al Qaws, has said, “When you go through a checkpoint it does not matter what the sexuality of the soldier is.”

What makes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies so susceptible to pinkwashing — and its corollary, the tendency among some white gay people to privilege their racial and religious identity, a phenomenon the theorist Jasbir K. Puar has called “homonationalism” — is the emotional legacy of homophobia. Most gay people have experienced oppression in profound ways — in the family; in distorted representations in popular culture; in systematic legal inequality that has only just begun to relent. Increasing gay rights have caused some people of good will to mistakenly judge how advanced a country is by how it responds to homosexuality.

In Israel, gay soldiers and the relative openness of Tel Aviv are incomplete indicators of human rights — just as in America, the expansion of gay rights in some states does not offset human rights violations like mass incarceration. The long-sought realization of some rights for some gays should not blind us to the struggles against racism in Europe and the United States, or to the Palestinians’ insistence on a land to call home.

NYT: Israel and 'Pinkwashing'

Also, gay community in Israel speaking out against Israeli Apartheid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNV6QkRtj3A

[AMP 54]

maybe they should watch the video I posted and the the will reconsider. gays in Israel have more rights in there then in the US and defiantly defiantly then in the middle east. I love how PLO likes to say look these people are for us, then the next day they are preaching death. pals are nothing but back stabbing idiots

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

maybe they should watch the video I posted and the the will reconsider. gays in Israel have more rights in there then in the US and defiantly defiantly then in the middle east. I love how PLO likes to say look these people are for us, then the next day they are preaching death. pals are nothing but back stabbing idiots

Your video talks about gays being murdered in Tel Aviv simply for being gay.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Your video talks about gays being murdered in Tel Aviv simply for being gay.

Don't confuse him more than he already is.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Don't confuse him more than he already is.

Another confused person gave it a thumb's up

[luckytxn 2,264]

Another confused person gave it a thumb's up

The confused hang together.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

© Homosexuality

One way of fulfilling the sexual urge which is now becoming acceptable in the Western world is sexual relations between members of the same sex: homosexuality (which by definition includes lesbianism). By saying that it is becoming acceptable in liberal societies I do not mean to say that homosexuality is a 20th century phenomenon; no, not at all. But there is one big difference between the past and the present: in the past, homosexuality was considered a perverted sexual behavior whereas now it is being labeled as 'natural' and as a result of 'inborn tendency' !

All revealed religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam form a united front against such sexual behavior. It has been clearly condemned in the Bible and the Qur'an. The Qur'an describes the people of Lut (Lot) as follows:

• When We sent Lut, he said to his people, "What! do you commit the indecency which none in all the nations had committed before you? Look at you! You approach the men lustfully instead of approaching your women! No, you are a people who have exceeded the limits." The only answer of his people was that they said, 'Expel them from your city, surely they are a people who seek to keep themselves clean!" So We delivered him and his followers, except his wife; she was one of those who tarried behind. We sent upon them a rain. So behold how was the end of the guilty people. (7:80-84)
  
  

The Qur'an also describes how Prophet Lut tried to reason with his people when they approached his three guests (who were actually angels in human form):

• When the people of Lut saw the handsome young men, they came to him, running towards him. Lut had anticipated this because they had been doing evil deeds from before.
  
  When the people reached close to his house, Lut saidpointing towards his daughters that, "O my people! These are my daughters, they are purer for you. Fear Allah and do not disgrace me in regard to my guests. Isn't there among you a man of right mind?"
  
  They said, "You know better that we have no desire for your daughters; and you surely know what we desire." (11 :78-79)
  
  

Explaining the details of the punishment, Allah says,

• So when Our punishment came upon the people of Lut, We turned the city upside down and showered them with stones of baked clay, one after another.(11:82)
  
  

So we see that as far as the Qur'an is concerned, homosexuality is an "indecency," and that Allah had destroyed a whole nation because of this indecent sexual behavior.

In the Islamic legal system, homosexuality is a punishable crime against the laws of God. In the case of homosexuality between two males, the active partner is to be lashed a hundred times if he is unmarried and killed if he is married; whereas the passive partner is to be killed regardless of his marital status. In the case of two females (i.e., lesbianism), the sinners are to be lashed a hundred times if they are unmarried and stoned to death if they are married. (See the chapter on "hudud" in Sharaya and Sharh Lum'a also al-Khu'i,Takmilah, p. 42-44.

Why is Islam so severe in matters of fornication, homosexuality and lesbianism? If the Islamic system had not allowed the gratification of the sexual urge by lawful means (without even associating guilt with it), then it would be right to say that Islam is very severe. But since it has allowed the fulfillment of sexual instincts by lawful means, it is not prepared to tolerate any perverted behavior.

The homosexuals are considered as the high risk group for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This shows that nature has not accepted it as a normal sexual behavior among mankind. The homosexuals are told that in order to have safe sex, they must use condoms. If homosexuality without condoms is not safe sex, then how can it be natural? Isn't the statement that "it is natural but not safe" a contradiction in itself?

The moral bankruptcy of the West is clearly evident in the present trend where some Christian churches are willing to consider modifying the Biblical moral values to accommodate the whims of those who want to justify their immoral behavior! A high ranking Anglican cleric in Canada says that it's time his church approved some form of service or rite that would bless the union of committed same sex couples. (See the statement of The Very Rev. Duncan Abraham. Dean of St. James Cathedral in Toronto. The Toronto Sun, Nov. 24, 1993.) After a three-hour debate in 1987, the General Synod of the Church of England "decided that homosexuality is wrong, but has refused to condemn it as a sin." (The Globe & Mail (Toronto) Nov. 12, 1987) It seems that instead of providing moral and ethical leadership, the church is being led by the special interest groups. Such groups even want the public schools to change the definition of family so as to make their life-style acceptable.

http://www.al-islam.org/m_morals/chap3.htm

Shields up for the coming claims this source is 'out to defame Islam.'

[AMP 54]

The only people confused here are you two? I will be happy to lose on the freedom of Gay rights, if what Im hearing is that Shariah law and Shariah law contries are okay with homosexuality. Its not an Isralie thing or a land issue its a Political item under muslim law.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

© Homosexuality

http://www.al-islam.org/m_morals/chap3.htm

Shields up for the coming claims this source is 'out to defame Islam.'

Although you could find plenty of examples of Christian and Jewish (and probably other) religious leaders who would interpret their holy books to agree with this guy 100%, there is no such thing as one "Islamic legal system" that is common to all Muslim countries. Different places have different laws.

For example, it seems you missed this - from the New York Times' "Pinkwashing" article I posted:

Homosexuality has been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s, when anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow. More important is the emerging Palestinian gay movement with three major organizations: Aswat, Al Qaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. These groups are clear that the oppression of Palestinians crosses the boundary of sexuality; as Haneen Maikay, the director of Al Qaws, has said, “When you go through a checkpoint it does not matter what the sexuality of the soldier is.

So it wasn't even "Islam" that introduced these anti-homosexual laws in Palestine in the first place; it was the British. And it's the predominantly Muslim Palestinians who changed the law.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Yes indeed discrimination against gays is a universal religious tenet. Only one still calls for the death penalty in the modern era, although I grant you that it varies across the various sub-groups amongst said religious faith and is therefor not universal across Islam. Wonder why Palestinians follow Jordanian law though?

[AMP 54]

Yes indeed discrimination against gays is a universal religious tenet. Only one still calls for the death penalty in the modern era, although I grant you that it varies across the various sub-groups amongst said religious faith and is therefor not universal across Islam. Wonder why Palestinians follow Jordanian law though?

Guys great to hear you follow Jordanian law, it seems thats what Jordainins should do. But please be aware that this tread is about Egypt. Im sure they are not going to follow Jordanian law.

Jordanian