July 9, 2005
Tomfoolery
Tom Friedman, in yesterday’s New York Times:
The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.
Wrong. Again. Juan Cole points out that many leading clerics have in fact done exactly that, including almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs; Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary and the leading moral authority for Sunni Muslims; the High Mufti of Russian Muslims; and even radical Muslim scholar Youssef Al-Qaradawi:
I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda!
I guess if you think the world is flat, you miss a lot of other nuances too.
Posted by Stephen at 1:33 AM in Media | Terrorism | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.disinterestedparty.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/306
