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I read an interview with him lately in a german news magazine, there he appeared to be modest & polite, although the danger with him is that he’s popular and he justified some extreme muslim positions like the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
being popular like he is, he should better be careful about what he says to not be mixed with those terrorists. maybe he’ll learn that from the incident
"Flying Cloud" wrote:maybe he’ll learn that from the incidentOh please, the problem was his arabic name, not that he has something to learn (he probably has, we all have, but that’s not the point). So, if you have an arabic name, change it. If you have an arabic look, change it. If you have arabic friends, cut them out of your life. Then maybe you’ll be able to visit the land of the free without the risk of being treated worse then a dog with rabies…
Unless of course you happen to be Iyad Allawi – the US hand picked prime minister of Iraq, coming to give Bush his support for the upcoming election – then the doors are wide open…
"maxini" wrote:"Flying Cloud" wrote:maybe he’ll learn that from the incidentOh please, the problem was his arabic name, not that he has something to learn (he probably has, we all have, but that’s not the point). So, if you have an arabic name, change it. If you have an arabic look, change it. If you have arabic friends, cut them out of your life. Then maybe you’ll be able to visit the land of the free without the risk of being treated worse then a dog with rabies…
I can’t imagine that they stop a plane with a random Muslim passenger, after they let him enter it with the name he has. I think they put him on this list conciously, maybe because of his opposion to the Iraq war or because of his general influence in the Muslim community. I think they knew who he is.
…so now I tried to look a bit closer onto Yusuf Islam’s role in the Rushdie affair.
We’re talking about the fatwa, where all wannabe assassins of the world were encouraged to take Rusdie’s life, for some fiction he wrote.
And all I knew about Yusuf Isalm’s role in it, is, that he placed some anti-Rushdie statements in public, which he never completey took back.here’s some quotes I found on the site http://www.fasote.org. I don’t know the site, or if it is reliable, but they say in their self-description that "Fasote is dedicated to proliferating truth in all forms." at least it doesn’t look like an extremist muslim site to me, but quite balanced in their sources.
so here is Yusuf Islam’s reflections on the Rushdie affair:
Quote:But at that time, and for years afterwards, I was too busy raising a family and establishing schools for Muslim children to stop and explain. I didn’t realise how vital communication with the public was. At that time most of the media didn’t seem very interested in my new life anyway; they were waiting for another sensational headline. That came ungraciously with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
Still a relatively new Muslim, but being a well-known personality, I was invited to join a letter campaign requesting the publishers of the controversial novel to think again. They ignored the plea.Suddenly the media tried linking me to supporting the latest fatwa issued from Iran. The fact is that I never supported the fatwa. Such is the irony. You wouldn’t ask a Christian to deny one of the Ten Commandments; equally, as a new Muslim, I couldn’t deny that the Koran – just like Leviticus in the Bible – forbade blasphemy and stated that if there is no repentance, it is a capital offence.
But what most people – and that includes many Muslims – fail to recognise is that the Koran repeatedly calls on believers to repent, to uphold the rule of civility and not to take the law into their own hands. So clerics and extremists who call for the assassination of civilians outside the recognised bounds of the Islamic state without due process are wholly out of line with the limits and spirit of Islam. The Koran again states: "And do not let your hatred of some people cause you to transgress [the law]."
I released a statement clarifying my position, but the press preferred to ignore it – perhaps for them it didn’t go far enough. I was still learning, ill-prepared and lacking in knowledge and confidence to speak out against forms of extremism. But time taught me to try to avoid making that same mistake again.
The Koran expressly declares: "If anyone kills a person, except (through due legal process) for murder or spreading discord on the earth, it will be as if he has killed the whole of humanity."
Today, I am aghast at the horror of recent events and feel it a duty to speak out. Not only did terrorists hijack planes and destroy life, they also hijacked the beautiful religion of Islam and split the brother-and-sisterhood of mankind, many of whom are still sorrowfully ignorant and unaware of each other. The targeting of unsuspecting civilians going about their daily work was energised by nothing but blind irreligious hatred. Yet we should remember that this kind of atrocity has been a common occurrence, year on year, in many lands. My personal experience of the prolonged suffering and death inflicted on Bosnia at the end of the last century is something that I will not easily forget.
well, I agree with you guys that tearing Yusuf Islam out of a plane and deny him to enter the US definitely won’t be a step ahead in the war against terrorism
and he seems to be willing to learn and reflect on his influence in public. I didn’t look into that close enough.but still, what he said to the Rushdie affair could make Muslim extremists think, that their position is justified. And his step backwards in that point still looks a bit weak to me.
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