YMO: Praying For Hamas

This is a cross-post of an article by habibi from Harry’s Place

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This post from earlier this week covered the men the Young Muslim Organisation (YMO), the youth wing of the Islamic Forum of Europe, recommends for spiritual advice about Ramadan. Every single one of them is an extremist. Three of the nine have been convicted or charged with serious terrorism offences.

So it is no surprise to come across a page that the YMO lists as its most popular, “Du’a (prayer) for Gaza”, and find a video of this man first on the list: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

There are five more videos on the page. Four have been removed from Youtube “due to terms of use violation” and one has been deleted. Hmm, why might that be?

Well, this might be a clue. Two of the missing tapes feature Rashid Al Afasy, a Saudi-trained Kuwaiti imam. Here is another tape where he prays for Gaza (warning – graphic). He calls Jews – not Israelis – “evildoers” and “murderers of the messengers and prophets”. He beseeches Allah to “crush them down and shatter them”.

Saudi preacher and judicial official Saleh Al Luhaidan is the star of another tape that has been removed. Here he is in 2004 advocating jihad in Iraq:

In an audiotape secretly recorded at a government mosque last October and obtained by NBC News, Luhaidan encourages young Saudis to go to Iraq to wage war against Americans.

“If someone knows that he is capable of entering Iraq in order to join the fight, and if his intention is to raise up the word of God, then he is free to do so,” says Luhaidan in Arabic on the tape.

He warns Iraq is risky because “evil satellites and drone aircraft” watch the borders. But he says going is religiously permissible.

“The lawfulness of his action is in fighting an enemy who is fighting Muslims and came for war,” says Luhaidan.

…

A Saudi spokesman twice denied the tape was authentic, claiming Saudi intelligence analysts determined it was “a crude fake.” So NBC News called Luhaidan himself, in Saudi Arabia, and played the tape.

Luhaidan confirmed those were his words, saying in Arabic, “Yes, this is my voice.”

But the sheik said what he really meant was that it’s not worth it for young Saudis to go to Iraq and that the Iraqis are capable of fighting on their own.

Uh huh. For Luhaidan, even television network owners deserve death if they are “evil”:

A Saudi scholar has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of television networks broadcasting “depravation and debauchery”.

“It is lawful to kill … the apostles of depravation … if their evil cannot be easily removed through simple sanctions,” Saleh al-Luhaidan, chief justice of the supreme judicial council, was quoted by the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel as saying.

“The situation is serious … the degradation of morals is a form of perversion on Earth,” al-Luhaidan said.

The 79-year-old scholar, who holds the highest judicial authority in the kingdom, made the comments during a recent radio show in which he was asked by a caller for his opinions on immoral programmes being broadcast on Arab televisions during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Here’s another Gaza page from the YMO: “Questions from Palestine“. It employs typical antisemitic themes – Israelis are Nazis at war with the whole world and Zionists control the media:

Israeli leaders intensified their blitzkrieg following intensive aerial “shock and awe” that killed hundreds of civilians. This was intended to subdue not only the 1.5 million impoverished and starved Palestinian but the larger human community around the world and reengineer the political map.

…

To be honest with ourselves, we must recognize that what Israel counted on materialized in a few cases: ineptness of the UN security council under threat of a US veto (itself under threat of the Zionist lobby), ineptness of the Arab league, the collaboration of many Arab governments, the apathy of large segments of the Israeli public, predicted local attempts to contain the anger in the street (from Cairo to Ramallah to Baghdad etc), and success of Israeli and Zionist forces and well financed propaganda not only in preventing reporting from the ground in Gaza but in controlling the message in much of the supine Western media.

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The slaughter of the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII similarly cannot be said to be justified by weak Jewish leadership and strong Nazi leadership. History is not kind to aggressors and in this case history will be written differently. An army that shells a market place causing this kind of destruction will not be successful at surviving any more than any other fascist army in history

…

For Zionized Western media, why do you think you can keep a lid on the anger of and keep oppressing the aspirations of 10 million Palestinians, 300 million Arabs, 1.5 billion Muslims, and nearly 6 billion human beings who aspire for JUSTICE with peace?

The YMO helpfully provides a link to the website of the author of the piece, Mazin Qumsiyeh. There you will find the poisonous work of Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, with this cute disclaimer:

Posting articles on my website does not imply endorsement or agreement with ideas expressed. I think it is useful to post controversial material that start discussions and exchanges.

Yes, just asking questions and trying to be helpful, aren’t we. Here is some more of Mr Qumsiyeh’s wisdom:

The overriding fact also remains that Zionism is the main cause of wars and conflict throughout the region from Palestine to Afghanistan. Peace is possible and it must start with ending US support for that apartheid regime…

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…Italy and Egypt have governments that are subservient to Zionist and US imperial and elite interests. It ensures that money is funneled through corporations and governments in support of Zionism from ordinary citizens who have no clue about these transactions. Hence extra cost for products that carry a “kosher label” that go not for the cost of such certification but through the Orthodox Union to support Israel and Zionism. Hence US taxpayers unwittingly pumping several billion every year to Israel because their politicians want to be (re-)elected and need the power of the Israel-first lobby (cash and media access).

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The Zionist tribalistic mentality [sic] exists out of its own desires to be separate and treat any non-Jew with contempt. It is the same idea that lets Zionists express that the world is always “against us” and privately claim to each other that any support they get is because of their might and muscle

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War, instability, and fear are needed to perpetuate injustice. No wonder Hitler thought highly of Zionists and Zionists regularly collaborated with the Nazis.

This is how the Islamic Forum of Europe opens its reaction to the Dispatches broadcast:

The IFE wholly rejects the allegations made against it by Andrew Gilligan in the latest episode of Channel 4’s “Dispatches”.

It is untrue that:

1. the IFE supports extremism;

As they say, you couldn’t make it up.