Anti-Islamist manifesto
Tomanbay is right. This is Big news: A number of critics to the islamists (not islamic, islamists. there is a difference) ideology have drawn together an anti-islamists manifesto and published it-get this-in Jyllands Posten. Ha. It's a courageous step, but one that is long overdue, given that most of those people had Fatwas on their heads for quite a while now. This was bound to happen sooner or later, and it's a necessary evil so to speak, because it will draw the line and force people to be in one camp or the other, instead of the usual indifference exhibited by the silent muslim majority. It's very definitive in stating you are either with the extreemists with their fatwas and culture of death, or you are against it. Here is the full transcript: After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
12 signatures
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Chahla Chafiq Caroline Fourest Bernard-Henri Lévy Irshad Manji Mehdi Mozaffari Maryam Namazie Taslima Nasreen Salman Rushdie Antoine Sfeir Philippe Val Ibn Warraq
Ok, where do I sign up?
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 3/01/2006 02:51:00 AM
14 Comments:
Finally!
Now, can we get the cowards in the US media to publish this?
~Gary
Gary is right, this could just fissle out while the media ignores it. Perhaps spinning it as final proof that Jyllandsposten are evil provocateurs initially will help bring attention to it.
Let's conspire.
it's especially pleasing that the evil twin ‘cultural relativism’ is also denounced.
Cultural relativism sees publishing cartoons as a worst crime than intimidation and even killing by islamists.
Questioning the Burkas as a personal choice for many Muslim women is equated to Islamophobia.
Islamists have become like a spoilt child, they know they have been able to get way with literally murder.
That is "cultural relativism" is part of the problem of Islamism in the West, and it needs to be criticized as vigorously as the totalitarian ideology of Islamism.
The manifesto is spot on. Where do I sign?
Right on Jyllands Posten...and SM for letting us know about it! At least someone has the guts to say what so many of us are thinking!
The people who signed this declaration already have several fatwas on their heads, so it's not like they have anything to lose. But if we can get the chicken littles like the NY Times and LA Times to sign it, then we'll see some new cojones.
jonas
Is that the same S. Rushdie who wrote the "Satanic Verses?"
Dear anon 11:44
Yes it is. Have you read the book?
I am sorry to say but it was first published in a France news paper. But also in the JP on fatwa more will not make difference. They did actually also publish the France Mohamed drawing.
denmark still standing
Look who's on top of the list of signitures. Go figure... lol
Hello Mr. Sandmonkey,
There is an Arabic text as well? Perhaps we can post the two to a web
site and invite people to submit their names as an online "petition".
A secular American like me could trumpet this manifesto til he is blue
in the face, but it is the smart and hopefully brave and hopefully
triumphant people of the Arab world like you and BP who make this
struggle go somewhere.
I am somewhat handy with CGI scripting and the like. If you'd like to
collaborate on an online petition, please drop me a line and I will do
what I can.
Though, taking to the streets of Cairo is where this needs to go,
right? I just don't want to see you get hurt.
Also, a button for the sympathetic:
ISLAM YES
ISLAMISM NO
Or maybe:
ISLAM YES
FASCISM NO
Love,
-danny
Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen presented on 20.November 2005 the annual given “Prize of Freedom” to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He said: “Now we have reached the point, that also in Europe it could cost you your life using the right of Freedom of speech. It has now reached a point, where a MP has to live underground. For no other reason, that the right to Freedom of speech was used to express criticism about Islam. Let me say it, so it can not be misunderstood: in a free democracy we can express criticism about whatever issue and about whomever we want to. In a modern, enlightened society everything can be an object for critical analyses and debate. Also the Bible and the Koran”.
“We must express our outmost sharpest condemns on these brutal attacks on the right of free speech. The killing of Theo van Gogh is more than a killing of an individual person. It is an attack on ground values as our free and democratic society”. If we duck our heads in this case, then we are betraying our ideals of freedom. To Islamic fundamentalists and tyrants and terrorists of all kinds, we must say laud and clear: we praise freedom. We praise liberalism. We praise progress”.
(Ayaan Hirsi Ali couldn’t receive the prize herself because she was underground. Instead her colleague in parliament, Hans van Baalen, was present to receive the prize on Ayaan’s behalf). Hans van Baalen said: “her chair in parliament is standing empty next to mine, because she can’t be protected. Ayaan Hirsi Ali can’t work as a politician and can’t speak out her opinion. This is terrible. This we can not accept in a democracy like Holland, Denmark and the other countries in EU”
Would you like to know the reaction from a spook man representing one of the Islamic communities on this one? Here it comes.
According to Imam Fatih Alev from Copenhagen, the Prize of Freedom given to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he said, could be provoking young Muslims in Denmark. He was calling politicians as well as artists not to challenge limits and dig ditches. Imam Fatih Alev said: “this prize can provoke young Muslims, which already are frustrated. If a Muslim organization gave a prize to that Mufti, who spoke about girls who asks to be raped, (i.e. girls who doesn’t dress to the Muslim code, i.e. all Danish and European girls) how would the Danish population then react?
This is what we have to put up with here in Denmark or for that matter, in Europe. We can not give prizes to who we want, without some Muslims protesting, trying to threat us not to “challenge limits”. We, the people of Europe, including politicians, authors, journalists and artists have, in other words, to submit ourselves to Islamists. Our PM is asked to submit himself to a brain-dead imam who tells him, that he, the PM, can not decide to whom he wants to give a prize! Wonder what the next thing will be. Well, as long as we are confronted with something we think is wrong, we will never stop “challenge limits” or speak out. Giving prizes isn’t against the law in Denmark. Raping girls certainly is against the law. What a sick comparison. But also we have to listen to that twist minded kind of talk again and again, like this from a discussion forum, where a subject was about common known ways of punishments by Islam law: a panel member asked this question to a Muslim (who was not an Imam) “You cant be serious when you claims these kinds of punishments are okay?” The answer: “I’m serious, and that is going to happen, as soon as Muslims have gain (enough) power in Denmark”.
The latest news, just heard from Danish Television an hour ago: UNWRA, the help organisation for Palestinian refugees, has according to a Swedish press bureau just warned Nordic diplomats, that rumours are saying they are in danger of being killed. Danish diplomats in Palestine have now been called back to Denmark. The Danish ministry Of Foreign Affairs don’t want to comment the rumours right now.
Another news: SPA (Saudi Press Agency) says that today the Danish ambassador in Saudi Arabia Hans Klingenberg has apologized for the cartoons on behalf of the Danish Government. Hans Klingenberg denies that very sharply.
And more news: Imam Abu Laban is considered to be a HERO in Muslim countries. A Muslim reporter living in Europe (Brussels, I think), has been glorifying Imam Abu Laban again and again, and also he has been passing lots and lots of highly one-eyed information to Muslim countries. In Denmark, Abu Laban is considered to be a very bad guy, because he participated very active in uprising anger upon Denmark, for instance by presenting false documents, and also on Danish television he said he didn’t agree in boycotting Denmark, whilst the same day saying in the Muslim medias, that he supported the boycott. Lying and making false documents apparently isn’t against the Koran.
Bad-and-sad-mood Kiki
None so blind as those who will not see.
Could you imagine, if our rights to talk about AIDS back when it first started surfacing were taken away?
That everytime someone said anything about it's dangers, how it was transmitted and how to prevent it, someone stood up and denied every word that person said. Then the government and all of the other institutions stopped allowing the information to be distributed.
One of the biggest reasons we have freedom of speech and want it for the world, is to protect people from danger, no matter where that danger lies.
We are not born to hate. Be we are born to survive. We have not only the inate ability to pick up on danger, but to do what we need to do to fight it.
If our ability to fight against something that has threatened our very lives is taken away, we are finished as a human race.
I will sign up faster if I can just get a Fatwa of my own.
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