(Non) Muslims Against Sharia
MAS presents themselves as religious Muslims who wish to reform Islam “away from the evil and into good.”
What made me suspicious of this site? First, for religious Muslims, they use a tremendous amount of obscenities in commenting on other sites. Secondly, they do not use the required “pbuh” (praise be unto him) when referring to Muhammad, as religious Muslims do. Third, they want to – and are in the process of – rewrite the Qur’an, a holy book delivered from God to an angel to Muhammad. One does not do major rewrites to the word of God. Lastly, the anti-Muslim rhetoric is too almost identical to sites run by anti-Muslim and neo-Nazi extremists.
Let’s take a look at who is really behind this site (and all their periphery sites.)
Site information from Whois:
Registrant:
Whois Agent
PMB 368,14150 NE 20th St
C/O reformislam.org
Bellevue WA 98007 US
Whois Agent
PMB 368,
C/O reformislam.org
Administrative:
Whois Agent
PMB 368,14150 NE 20th St
C/O reformislam.org
Bellevue WA , 98007 US
Phone: +1.4252740657
Fax: +1.4256960234
Whois Agent
PMB 368,
C/O reformislam.org
Phone: +1.4252740657
Fax: +1.4256960234
Technical:
Whois Agent
PMB 368,14150 NE 20th St
C/O reformislam.org
Bellevue WA , 98007 US
Phone: +1.4252740657
Fax: +1.4256960234
Whois Agent
PMB 368,
C/O reformislam.org
Phone: +1.4252740657
Fax: +1.4256960234
QUOTES FROM MUSLIMS AGAINST SHARIA:
Sharia
Sharia Law must be abolished, because it is incompatible with norms of modern society.
Outdated practices
Any practices that might have been acceptable in the Seventh Century; i.e., stoning, cutting off body parts, marrying and/or having sex with children or animals, must be condemned by every Muslim.
Outdated verses
The following verses promote divisiveness and religious hatred, bigotry and discrimination. They must be either removed from the Koran or declared outdated and invalid, and marked as such.
Outdated words & phrases
Use of the following words and phrases or their variations must be prohibited during religious services:
• Infidel / Unbeliever: these terms have negative connotation and promote divisiveness and animosity; Islam is not the only religion
• Jihad: this word is often interpreted as Holy War against non-Muslims
• Mujaheed / Holy Warrior: no more wars in the name of Islam
• American (Christian / Crusader / Israeli / Zionist) occupation: these terms promote bigotry; at this point in time, Muslims living in non-Muslim lands have more freedoms than Muslims living in Muslim lands
Sharia Law must be abolished, because it is incompatible with norms of modern society.
Outdated practices
Any practices that might have been acceptable in the Seventh Century; i.e., stoning, cutting off body parts, marrying and/or having sex with children or animals, must be condemned by every Muslim.
Outdated verses
The following verses promote divisiveness and religious hatred, bigotry and discrimination. They must be either removed from the Koran or declared outdated and invalid, and marked as such.
Outdated words & phrases
Use of the following words and phrases or their variations must be prohibited during religious services:
• Infidel / Unbeliever: these terms have negative connotation and promote divisiveness and animosity; Islam is not the only religion
• Jihad: this word is often interpreted as Holy War against non-Muslims
• Mujaheed / Holy Warrior: no more wars in the name of Islam
• American (Christian / Crusader / Israeli / Zionist) occupation: these terms promote bigotry; at this point in time, Muslims living in non-Muslim lands have more freedoms than Muslims living in Muslim lands
The Crusades vs. The Inquisition
While the Inquisition was a repulsive practice by Christian Fundamentalists, the Crusades were not unprovoked acts of aggression, but rather attempts to recapture formerly Christian lands controlled by Muslims.
While the Inquisition was a repulsive practice by Christian Fundamentalists, the Crusades were not unprovoked acts of aggression, but rather attempts to recapture formerly Christian lands controlled by Muslims.
(My note: Of course, the quote about the Crusades is true only if one completely overlooks the Crusades against pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political enemies of the popes. (Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Oxford History of the Crusades New York : Oxford University
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Mail: Muslims Against Sharia, P.O. Box 241732 , Omaha , NE 68124
(My note: Ah, Omaha , Nebraska
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More info here: http://freethinker.co.uk/2007/09/24/non-muslims-against-sharia/ showing Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs and Ted Belman of IsraPundit as members/authors. Belman is a self-admitted member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a terrorist organization of which we’ve previously written. http://www.chasingevil.org/2006/12/jdl-kahane.html
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One of many other sites by Muslims Against Sharia is a blog on a site for Jews: http://www.jewcy.com/user/5061/reformislam
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From:
The site exists in three versions - English, Swedish, and Russian. Hmm. No Urdu. No Punjabi. No Pashto, Persian, Uzbek, Turkmen, Malay…in other words, none of the languages spoken by the vast majority of the world’s Muslims. But this is a group that claims to be an international Islamic reform movement. Odd.The site’s blogger profile says that “Muslims Against Sharia” is from
Curiously, the site contains absolutely NO membership or governance information at all. No indication of who created this organization, who its members are, who manages it, who governs it, who sets its policies and direction…nothing. Sort of odd for a non-profit advocacy group - especially one that’s fundraising.
There is, however, a page that allows you to donate by Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, or Amex to “help fight Islamofascists”. And that page lists the donors. The first “donor” on the list, if you google it, turns out to be the Executive Director of the organization. The second “donor”, turns out to be a member of the organization who seems to spend most of his time posting anti-Muslim taunts on various blogs. At that point I stopped Googling “donors”. Feel free to continue down the list - I’d be curious. There aren’t many of them.
Back to the home page, where the organization’s “Manifesto” is set out. And here again, one is struck by the uncanny similarity between the agenda of this allegedly “Muslim” group, and that of American and European neo-nazi sites that claim to support “moderate” Muslims while actually trashing anything Islamic.
Among the elements of this “Muslim” “Manifesto” are such popular right wing talking points as “the Crusades were not unprovoked acts of aggression, but rather attempts to recapture formerly Christian lands controlled by Muslims”, and “We must remove evil passages from Islamic religious texts, so that future generations of Muslims will not be confused by conflicting messages.”
Which leads to the next fascinating section of the site. “Muslims Against Sharia” has gone through the Koran and removed every verse that they don’t believe came from Allah, and propose to publish this New Koran, with donations from their readership. What a great idea. I thought translating the Bible into Lolcatz was a bit silly, but I could get behind an initiative to go through the Holy Book and remove all those references to stoning, slaughtering and enslaving enemies of Israel, sexual misconduct on the part of the Biblical elders, God’s murder of the children who taunted Ezekiel…all that stuff that we’ve left behind.
Sorry. Silly digression. But I can’t really imagine any Christian, Muslim, or Jew launching an anonymous, web-based edit job to bowdlerize their own sacred texts, and expecting to be taken seriously by anyone. So…WHO are these people?
One gets a bit closer to the heart of “Muslims Against Sharia” by perusing their “blog”.
The first item in the “blog”, “Top Ten Central Ohio Terrorism-Related Stories of 2007″ is sourced to the “Intelligence Summit”, a project of the International Holocaust Education Centre founded by John Loftus. For those who don’t know John Loftus, he’s an extreme former Fox News commentator fired for broadcasting the address of a “terrorist suspect” who had long since moved, resulting in the harassment and vandalism of the building’s current occupants. The
The next item in the “blog” is a press release from Joe Kaufman, of “Americans Against Hate”. You remember them? Founded by a Republican media specialist, they sponsored the nauseating “Gore-Sharpton” ads that Bill O’Reilly condemned.
Then comes the Ezra Levant Saga, posted by “Louise” of “Puddle Jumping Redneck”.
If you dig deeper into the “blog”, you’ll find lavish praise for Ann Coulter and George Bush, articles by a lot of Fox pundits like Bill Gertz, extensive condemnation of Islam in ALL its forms, of Democrats, and of every Muslim country on the planet. In an hour of searching, I didn’t find a single entry…not one…that said anything positive about Muslims. I did find this entry, which actually argues that “moderate Muslims” pose a greater threat to mankind that Jihadists. What a strange argument for a site called “Muslims Against Sharia” to make.
In fact, the articles posted on the blog are once again completely indistinguishable from the sort of URQ Muslim-hatred one expects from the likes of Shaidle, McMillan, Sentinel, and the emerging neo-Nazis.
So…who EXACTLY are Ezra’s new little friends, these “Muslims Against Sharia”? We’ve figured out that they really like Republicans, don’t like Democrats, are single handedly rewriting the Koran, seem to rely on an awful lot of extreme right wing sources for their blog content, and don’t really seem to have much actual Muslim input at all. It’s hard to tell, of course, because, as noted above, they carefully give us NO governance, Board, management, corporate or membership information whatsoever.
Going to the blogger profile, however, one discovers a list of the folks who contribute to “Muslims Against Sharia”. They include:
“The Admiral”, male, from
“Atlas Shrugs“, (Pamela Geller), an extreme right wing blogger with a hate on for Islam that rivals Shaidle’s Ted Belman of IsraPundit, whose masthead features two Israeli flags, and proclaims “THERE IS NO DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION: THERE IS ONLY A MILITARY SOLUTION.”
Well, well, well. So these are the “Muslims Against Sharia”.
The world evidently contains readers so stupid that they actually believed Ezra’s theatrics and marketing were about more than trying to save a dying magazine by selling hate. Maybe those folks will believe that “Muslims Against Sharia” is anything more than an exceptionally cheap, poorly organized propaganda site for the peddling the same old hatred in a new and exceptionally deceitful package.
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Conclusions: Who is behind “Muslims Against Sharia”? Pam Geller (the shrieking harpie from NY), Ted Belman (Canadian member of a terrorist organization), and others that will be identified in future articles.
Joe Kaufman had previously been identified by multiple sources as part of MASh.
Joe Kaufman was offered the opportunity to disavow his affiliation with or participation in MASh when I sent him a very polite email offering him the opportunity to do so. I promised him that if he wished to make such a statement, I would include it in all of the MAS articles on the Chasing Evil site.
Mr. Kaufman did respond and stated: “I have never had anything to do with that organization.” (emphasis mine) Mr. Kaufman’s statement should be kept in mind when reading articles about his affiliation with Muslims Against Sharia.
Read about Pam Geller:
Read about Ted Belman:
http://www.stageleft.info/2008/01/15/quotes-from-the-scholars-at-muslims-against-sharia/ (WARNING: ADULT CONTENT)
Please note: There is nothing wrong with the Jewish people. However, as any psychologist or social scientist will tell you, in every large group of people with a common ideology (religious or political) there will be a small percentage who are extremists. There is a very small percentage of Jewish people who are extremists. Most are not even religious Jews, they are Jews only by heritage. Geller, Kaufman and Belman definitely fall into this category.
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