Thursday, April 29, 2010

Stoning As a Religious Value

An Alpine version of Abdul Wahid Pedersen is causing a lot of controversy in the Swiss media. As many readers (and most Danes) know, Abdul Wahid Pedersen is a Danish convert to Islam who was unwilling to declare himself against the stoning of women for adultery.

A little further south, meet Nicolas Blancho, president of the Islamic central council in Switzerland. JLH has translated an article about him from Basler Zeitung:

Stoning As a Religious Value

April 26, 2010

After his weekend appearance on Swiss TV, Nicolas Blancho, president of the Islamic central council, is really under fire for the first time. He himself proceeds on the assumption that he is being watched by national security.

Nicolas Blancho

According to the “Sunday Newspaper,” Nicolas Blancho did business with a man who allegedly had ties to al-Qaida. According to the newspaper, Blancho founded the firm Tradex with a Yemeni citizen. In 2007, the (Swiss) federal court convicted this Blancho companion of smuggling Yemenis into Switzerland and providing them with false papers. The federal attorney’s office also had indications that this Yemeni was in contact with an al-Quaida terrorist. However, it could not be proved that he supported al-Quaida.

Two national party leaders have made critical remarks about Nicolas Blancho’s appearance on Swiss TV’s “Arena.” CVP [Christian-Democratic People’s Party, “conservative”] President Christophe Darbellay said over the weekend that Blancho has to “distance himself from methods that do not accord with our legal order.” And: “Fundamentalists have no place in Switzerland.” Similarly, Fulvio Pelli, president of the FDP [Free Democratic Party,”liberal”]: “Religious fanatics are dangerous. You must not underestimate them.”

The background to these comments is as follows. On Friday in his “Arena” appearance, Blancho said emphatically and repeatedly that he and the Islamic Central Council obey Swiss law, even when it is in conflict with his religious views. However, he would give no clear answer to whether he was for or against stoning in Islamic countries.
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In an interview with the newspaper, “Sunday,” Blancho said in regard to stoning: “For me as a Muslim, it is a component, a value of my religion.” However, it is, “with the given conditions in the world and in Switzerland, not transplantable.” He did not want to distance himself clearly from stoning in the “Sunday” interview. “You can’t ask someone to distance himself from celibacy. Or the Jews to distance themselves from the Talmud.”

Blancho thinks it is “okay” for his organization to be in security’s crosshairs. He says he is prepared at any time to invite security into his mosque in Biel. He goes on the assumption that his organization is being surveilled. “As far as I am concerned the whole country can come into the mosque in Biel.”

People in Blancho’s hometown are concerned too. City president and SP [Social Democratic Party — “socialist”] national councilor, Hans Stöckli, said in reference to the “Sunday” interview, that he had not been informed by either the federal police or the intelligence service of any observations or insights concerning this “central council.” It is unsatisfactory, he said; the city of Biel did not wish to be drawn into “these kinds of important, political-security questions.” Stöckli explained that the Biel city administration had therefore tasked him with “an analysis of the situation, to clarify what action may be necessary concerning extremist groups in Biel.”

13 comments:

The Observer said...

Maybe it would be a good idea once in a while to try and give some publicity to those Muslims who wishes to reform their religion and who are opposed to Sharia law, instead of only giving publicity to those mad lunatics who only wishes to blow things up in the name of Allah?

Because there are actually Muslims who are quite keen on reforming their religion.

Anonymous said...

In Islam, the lunatics run the asylum.

To Muslims, the Koran is the immutable word of God. How could an imperfect human reform a perfect God?

In Islam, "reforming" Islam is called hypocrisy and is punishable by death.

Convertion from Islam is called apostacy and is also punishable by death.

Any speech or action that fails to further the cause of Islam is called blasphemy and is again punishable by death.

The entire larger worldwide ummah or community of Muslims is theologically empowered to kill all hypocrites, apostates, and blasphemers - in addition to infidels.

Moderate Islam is a myth because the Koran is filled to the brim with prescriptive violence designed to forceably control existing Muslims and create new Muslims from infidels.

Zenster said...

kritisk_borger: Maybe it would be a good idea once in a while to try and give some publicity to those Muslims who wishes to reform their religion and who are opposed to Sharia law, instead of only giving publicity to those mad lunatics who only wishes to blow things up in the name of Allah?

In theory, it might. However, as with all theories; they always look better on paper than they actually turn out.

Are you familiar with the Islamic principles of kitman and taqiyya? Once you are up to speed on those topics, please feel free to explain how it is possible to trust what a Muslim says about anything.

Ex-Muslims, only maybe. Practicing Muslims, never!

How useful would it be for Islam's own goals to have supposedly pro-reform Muslims convince even a small portion of the unbeliever's population that Islam can be reformed and that those in dar al harb should refrain from waging war upon Islam in the hope that it might moderate itself?

In all of this, please keep in mind that Islam has reformed.

It has become more intolerant, more violent, more misogynistic, more puritanical, more tyrannous and more barbaric. If anything, Islam is closer to its original roots than at any time in recent history.

Because there are actually Muslims who are quite keen on reforming their religion.

Let's do the numbers. Even if there were one million of these "reformers", that would represent .00008% of this world's Muslim population and I can assure you that it would be difficult to find one million Muslims who would be willing to risk death by being declared apostates or blasphemers for advocating the reform of Islam.

By comparison, some 25% of Muslims polled support the use of terrorism. That's over 300,000,000 Muslims who probably cheered during the 9/11 atrocity.

Quite simply, the number of pro-reform Muslims is statistically insignificant and their capability to influence or distort popular perception regarding Islam's true threat to civilization carries the potential with it to do much harm.

Islam has made its own bed, it's up to the West to make sure that Muslims lie in it. Historically, Muslims have killed more people than Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. It's time to relegate this diseased pseudo-religion cum death cult to the dust bin of discredited ideologies where it belongs.

The Observer said...

Egghead, Zenster,

Out from a statistically and biological point of view your arguments that all Muslims are the same simply doesn’t add up. Westerners are not all the same, nor are Muslims. Nor are they one unified political force and nor do they all act and react in the same manner. There are devout Muslims and there are non-practicing Muslims, who are only Muslims by birth. It’s probably a little bit of a cliché, but the same thing goes with Christians, there’s a big difference between the vile Phelps clan in the US and liberal Christians in Sweden.

Have you guys ever been to Malaysia? It’s a Muslim country, but you can still buy beer in the supermarket or go to a pub and drink alcohol. Women still go down to the beach in their bikinis and they don’t have to wear a bhurka. Kuala Lumpur could be just another American city. Saudi Arabia on the other hand is the complete opposite.

And it doesn’t really matter what the Koran says, because the people who’re attempting to reform Islam are not the people who follow the word of the Koran to the letter. Just like present day Christians doesn’t follow the word of the Bible to the letter. And one has to start somewhere. Just because there are few Muslims in the reformist movement at the moment doesn’t mean that it will stay that way forever. The bigger that movement gets the higher the odds are that more Muslims will join them.

There’s also a very real chance that in a generation or two, Muslims will realize that their traditional ways are inferior to ours, and that this will cause them to leave their religion or accept a reformed version of it.

Anonymous said...

kritisk, did you study why the Quran can't be reformed? Rejecting literalism means rejecting Islam entirely and this is why in a debate, a Muslim will always destroy the points a reformer makes. It takes just reading the Qu'ran and the Bible and using your brain a bit. Also, in a few generations, there will be enough of them to do whatever they want here - why not just make all European women slaves, rape and plunder around like their profit(read as prophet) did? Why not make the Europeans work for you? I'm glad I won't be around in two-three generations to find that out and if I will still be alive, if things not change, I won't be in Europe to begin with.

And yes, that cliché works for ignoramuses. Meh!

Yorkshireminer said...

Only 60% are Muslim in Malaya, the Chinese make up nearly 25% of the population, and they own the majority of the industry. The percentage on the peninsular where Kuala Lumpur is situated is even higher. Economic power is real power, it pays to be polite. China would not tolerate any pogroms against there own. The Muslims are not stupid. Its as simple as that kritisk_borger

Anonymous said...

Yorkshireminer nailed it. In the same sense, the Muslims didn't act in stupid ways when we didn't tolerate their behaviour and crushed their parties. In the same sense, the Haitians didn't kill the whites there until Europe abadoned them there.

The Observer said...

Yorkshireminer,

I didn’t say that everything is perfect in Malaysia I was simply trying to make a point that all Muslim countries aren’t the same, and that all Muslims aren’t the same. People who seriously believe that every Muslim in the world (how many are there 1.5 billion or something like that?) is somehow programmed to act and react as one, are pretty naive. There’s a big difference between countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, and there is a big difference between Malays and Saudi Arabians.

Here’s a question for RV, were all the citizens living behind the Iron Curtain exactly the same? Did they all think alike and react alike? Where they all die-hard communists, or were there individual differences?

Siegetower said...

kritisk_borger: Poor analogy I'm afraid. Behind the Iron Curtain there were Communists, ruthless zealous killers who followed Marx's ideology over their own culture. And then there were their slaves, the indigenous people from Germany to Tajikistan who tried to follow their culture, religion, economy etc as much as they could while under the oppressive smothering blanket of communism. Not all the Polish were communists. Not all the Ukrainians were communists.

In Saudi Arabia, all the muslims are muslims. And in Malaysia, all the muslims are muslims. And in the US, all the muslims are muslims. The Muslims say that often enough themselves on various media. When will people listen to their words and learn their lesson.

Zenster said...

kritisk_borger: Egghead, Zenster,

Out from a statistically and biological point of view your arguments that all Muslims are the same simply doesn’t add up.


Please feel free to provide a cite with URL link to where I have ever said that "all Muslims are the same". If you cannot do so, then please feel equally free to retract your false accusation.

What part of "the number of pro-reform Muslims is statistically insignificant" do you not understand? I fully concede that there may well be sincerely pro-reform Muslims. It just so happens that I also believe their number to be statistically meaningless.

Westerners are not all the same, nor are Muslims. Nor are they one unified political force and nor do they all act and react in the same manner.

None of that changes how the beliefs of all Muslims are informed by a single, immutable source called the Qur'an. Since closing the door on ijtihad almost one millennia ago Islamic doctrine has been cut. in. stone. Cafeteria Muslims, non-mainstream Muslims, Sufis, Ahmadiyyas and whatever Muslims notwithstanding, they all center upon the Qur'an as a locus for their belief and it is a hateful document that propels a violent, tyrannous ideology which threatens modern civilization like few others in recent history.

Moreover, the Muslims of greatest concern and those who must be dealt with soonest do all act the same, or similarly enough, to where a single policy of extrajudicial termination is an exceptionally effective measure.

Lest you persuade yourself, as many other of my detractors have, into believing that I advocate the genocide of all Muslims, you can get dispense with that ill-founded concept right now, if not yesterday.

My specific intent is to prevent the likely extermination of this world's Muslim population due to Islam's total intransigence over establishing a global caliphate.

All evidence points towards a complete failure on Islam's part to reform itself or permanently reject jihad and that must inevitably lead to its extinction as there are too many other nuclear-armed nations that simply will not tolerate the usual violent Muslim nonsense.

When that happens, it is more than likely that the Moderate Muslim™ baby will be thrown out with the jihadist bathwater. After enough Islamic terrorist atrocities, there shall be very few who will have the patience or inclination to fastidiously sort amongst this single group of ideologues in order to winnow out their fanatics. The economy-of-scale provided by nuclear weapons simply prohibits it and you can be damned sure that nuclear retaliation, if not pre-emptive nuclear strikes, loom in Islam's future. From the linked article:

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

... The authors - General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato's ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato's military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK - paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope.

Sol Ta Triane said...

kritisk_borger

I tried your link but didn't see any reformed Muslims there.
If you have any evidence of a serious reform movement or individuals I think some of us here would be glad to know about them.

In the mean time, specific criticism, such as that reported by GOV, seems to be needed so to overcome the tall, tall tales presented the media and educational systems.

Also, the MINOs (Muslims in name only) aren't going to go and get themselves in trouble by sticking their neck out on the block. Granted, there's ten's of millions of 'em, but they ain't gonna get together and start a New and Happy Islam Lite.

They know that they can be a bad Muslims and get away with it, they know that they can be a MINO and get away with it, but the one thing they can't do is to just plain quit.

The Observer said...

Just to give one example. There have been several attempts in Iran by students and liberals to reform the countries strict Islamic laws. This have led to serious riots where countless of people have died. In 1999 massive riots broke out as a direct consequence of a reformist paper being shut down. The latest riots in Iran were triggered by the election in 2009 and led to students and liberals taking to the streets demanding reforms in the country. The candidate that “lost” in that rigged election was a well known pro-reformist.

I’d say these people who opposed the Mullahs in Iran in these riots were a lot braver than certain keyboard warriors in the west who like to act tough, but when push comes to shove don’t even dare to look at a Muslim the wrong way.

Siegetower said...

“And then there were their slaves, the indigenous people from Germany to Tajikistan who tried to follow their culture, religion, economy etc as much as they could while under the oppressive smothering blanket of communism. Not all the Polish were communists. Not all the Ukrainians were communists.

In Saudi Arabia, all the muslims are muslims. And in Malaysia, all the muslims are muslims. And in the US, all the muslims are muslims. The Muslims say that often enough themselves on various media. When will people listen to their words and learn their lesson.”

Read that quote one more time, and you should, if you’re not completely brainwashed, be able to understand what a contradictory quote that is.

Zenster said..

“All evidence points towards a complete failure on Islam's part to reform itself or permanently reject jihad and that must inevitably lead to its extinction as there are too many other nuclear-armed nations that simply will not tolerate the usual violent Muslim nonsense.”

Well the willingness by certain groups in Iran to reform the laws in their country and move away from a strict interpretation of the Koran is a good proof that there are people willing to reform. And if not what is it that this movement is trying to achieve? Also the willingness of moderate Muslims groups in Europe to reform is an indicator that their religion could be reformed over time. I’m not saying that it will, but I’m saying that it could and that I think that this effort should be commended and supported.

Anonymous said...

kritisk, no, not all Romanians were communists, since they cursed communism behind closed doors and if it was found out they went to jail or got killed. But they did curse communism either behind closed doors or in public, the latter not having a very fortunate fate. I don't see Muslims cursing Mohammed like we cursed the party leader. Also, Romanians moving West on foot or on the underside of trains or that got political asylum stopped being communists. They didn't try to reform communism. Actually, in 1990 we had protests against this exactly - the full rejection of communism, not it's reform. Communism, just like Islam can't be reformed. And Muslims in the West can drop their religion, but they don't. When Eastern bloc people fled communism, they completely renounced it in their countries.