Rand:Designs for Muslim World

Wow! What a report!

Beginning from the end of the article, “When the European nations began their long campaign to colonize and conquer the rest of the world for their own benefit, they brought their academic and missionary resources to help them with their task.”

This was the same pre-crusade tactic used by the European Kings, when they were threatened by the invading Arab Kings, they came out with a blue print to protect their kingdoms, that gave birth to the idea of Islamophobia:

1. To label the Invading Kings as Muslim, as that was one of the ways to get their subjects to stand behind them and fight for them.

2. To mis-translate the Qur'aan to inculcate animosity towards the invading people.

3. To paint the religion negatively and as a Mohammedan cult.

4. To reinforce this strategy they roped in the Pope to issue a fatwa approving crusades.

Their Blueprint worked well for them and the Arab Kings were pushed back and defeated.
http://quraan-today.blogspot.com/2008/03/islamophobia-and-quraan.html

I am surprised at the ease with which Abdul Sattar Ghazali writes this “The recent summit, termed the ³Secular Islam Conference,² in St. Petersburg, Florida, almost coincided with the release of the latest Rand Report. A small group of self-proclaimed secular Muslims from North America and elsewhere gathered in St. Petersburg for what they billed a new global movement to correct the assumed wrongs of Islam and call for an ³Islamic Reformation.²”

The intent of the conference was Muslim bashing feeding frenzy. http://religionandspirituality.com/islam/view.php?StoryID=20070313-014058-4963r#

Due to this fact, not one of the mainstream Muslims, including the progressive ones, chose to participate in the conference. – More at:
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2007/03/secular-islam-summit-update.html

“The report warned that moderate groups can lose credibility and therefore effectiveness if U.S. support is too obvious” It is not just US, funding by any government has a hook in it, if it is genuine goodness, it will pay off, but usually it is not.

I tend to agree with the statement “The report defines a moderate as a Muslim who supports democracy, gender equality, freedom of worship and opposition to terrorism.” I am glad it did not define like the Neocons, which is any Muslim who bashes Islam is a moderate Muslim to those shortsighted bigots.

These guys are always scheming and planning. If they just start living the live like the moderates, they can enjoy their lives too.

Mike Ghouse
http://www.worldmuslimcongress.com/

# # #
Rand Corp: New Designs for Muslim World

By TMO April 26, 2007
Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com

http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?p=946

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The semi-official U.S. think tank, Rand Corporation, suggests creation of
networks of the so-called moderate Muslims to promote US policy objectives
in the Muslim World.

In its latest report, Building Moderate Muslim Networks the Rand Corp
advocates that the building of moderate Muslim networks needs to become an
explicit goal of U.S. government policy, with an international database of
partners and a well-designed plan.

Just as it fought the spread of communism during the Cold War, the United
States must do more to develop and support networks of moderate Muslims who
are too often silenced by violent radical Islamists, according to the Rand
Corporation report issued on March 26, 2007.

The lead writer of the report, Angel Rabasa, says that the United States has
a critical role to play in aiding moderate Muslims, and can learn much from
the way it addressed the spread of communism during the Cold War.

³The efforts of the United States and its allies to build free and
democratic networks and institutions provided an organizational and
ideological counter force to communist groups seeking to come to power
through political groups, labor unions, youth and student organizations and
other groups.²

The report defines a moderate as a Muslim who supports democracy, gender
equality, freedom of worship and opposition to terrorism. This looks an
amplification on its two previous reports - ³Civil Democratic Islam:
Partners, Resources, and Strategies² (March 2004) and ³US strategy in the
Muslim World after 9/11² (December 2004) - which also suggested supporting
moderate Muslims and exploitation of inter-Muslim religious differences.
Interestingly, a novelist turned research scholar, Cheryl Benard, is the
author of Civil Democratic Islam and co-author of the Dec. 2004 and March
2007 reports.

In the December 2004 study, Rabasa had suggested to exploit Sunni, Shiite
and Arab, non-Arab divides to promote US policy objectives in the Muslim
world. Echoing this theme, the latest report recommends reaching out to
Muslim activists, leaders and intellectuals in non-Arab countries such as
Turkey as well as in Southeast Asia and Europe.

The report recommends targeting five groups as potential building blocks for
networks: liberal and secular Muslim academics and intellectuals; young
moderate religious scholars; community activists; women¹s groups engaged in
gender equality campaigns; and moderate journalists and scholars.

The report warned that moderate groups can lose credibilityand therefore
effectivenessif U.S. support is too obvious. Effective tactics that worked
during the Cold War include having the groups led by credible individuals
and having the United States maintain some distance from the organizations
it supports. ³This was done by not micro-managing the groups, but by giving
them enough autonomy,² Rabasa said. ³As long as certain guidelines were met,
they were free to pursue their own activities.²

To help start this initiative, the report recommends working toward an
international conference modeled in the Cold War-era Congress of Cultural
Freedom, and then developing a standing organization to combat what it
called radical Islamism.

The recent summit, termed the ³Secular Islam Conference,² in St. Petersburg,
Florida, almost coincided with the release of the latest Rand Report. A
small group of self-proclaimed secular Muslims from North America and
elsewhere gathered in St. Petersburg for what they billed a new global
movement to correct the assumed wrongs of Islam and call for an ³Islamic
Reformation.²

The St. Petersburg conference, held on the sidelines of the Intelligence
Summit, was carried live on (Islamophobe) Glenn Beck¹s CNN show. Some of the
organizers and speakers at the convention were well-known thanks to the
media spotlight: Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam, and Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian and author of Infidel were but a
few there claiming to have suffered personally at the hands of ³radical²
Islam.

One participant, Wafa Sultan, declared on Glenn Beck¹s show that she doesn¹t
³see any difference between radical Islam and regular Islam.² Other
participants were the now public ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq and self-proclaimed
ex-terrorist Tawfiq Hamid.

Surely, the ³moderate² Muslim agenda is promoted because these ideas reflect
a Western vision for the future of Islam. Since the Sept. 11 attacks,
everyone from high-ranking officials in the Bush administration to
anti-Islam authors have prescribed a preferred remedy for Islam: reform the
faith.

The Rand Reports about Islam appear to be part of a grand strategy to
³change the face of Islam² as revealed by US News and World Report on April
15, 2005. The report entitled Hearts, Minds, and Dollars: In an Unseen Front
in the War on Terrorism, America is Spending MillionsŠTo Change the Very
Face of Islamreads: ³From military psychological-operations teams and CIA
covert operatives to openly-funded media and think tanks, Washington is
plowing tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to influence not only
Muslim societies but Islam itself.²

According to the well-planned leaks to US News and World Report, this
strategy for the first time stated that the United States has a national
security interest in influencing what happens within Islam. The report also
confirmed that it is, in fact, the US which has been funding an American
version of Islam, called ³Moderate Islam.²

The Rand reports try to create a fictitious vision of Muslims and of Islam,
where it is antihuman, uncreative, authoritarian, and intrinsically against
Western societies. It is an ethnocentric view of Islam that dominates
current representations of Islam that are reductive, predominantly negative,
and encouraging a culture of Islamophobia.

The complexities of the so-called fundamentalism and extremism in the past
100 years or so, whether it be Christian, Hindu, Jewish or Muslim, need to
be understood in the context of modernization, the process of
secularization, the changing nature of religious institutions, the
post-colonial experience in developing countries, globalization, the divide
between wealthy and poor, contesting political power, and the impact of
totalitarian regimes on civil society.

What is not mentioned in the RAND reports is that the reason for the
alienation of Muslims from the West is the ³double standards² the West so
brazenly practices when dealing with Muslim nations. America already has a
very tarnished image in the Islamic world. It has already alienated a great
majority of Muslims throughout the world through its misguided foreign
policy. Who in their right mind will believe that this asinine assault on
Islam and Muslims will win America friends in the Islamic world?

Now a word about the Washington-based semi-official think tankthe RAND
Corporation. Among other government departments, the Rand Corp conducts
studies for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the
Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the Department of the Navy and the
U.S. intelligence community. Obviously, writers of the three reports on
Islam may be considered neo-Orientalists with clear intention to undermine
Islam.

When the European nations began their long campaign to colonize and conquer
the rest of the world for their own benefit, they brought their academic and
missionary resources to help them with their task. Orientalists and
missionaries, whose ranks often overlapped, were the servants of an
imperialist government who was using their services as a way to subdue or
weaken an enemy.

The academic study of the Oriental East by the Occidental West was often
motivated and often co-operated hand-in-hand with the imperialistic aims of
the European colonial powers. The foundations of Orientalism were in the
maxim ³Know thy enemy². This equally applies to the modern day Orientalists
of such semi-official think tanks as the Rand Corporation.

Secular Muslims

http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2008/06/secular-muslims.html

The following exchange is about secular Muslims; relevant updates will be added right below this response...

Just as Qur'aan is mis-translated and mis-interpreted by a few, every piece of literature is fraught with the same problem.

A secular Muslim is broadly outlines a Muslim, who believes that in the public square, where every faith is practiced, wearing neon-signs to signify separation between people by use of religion is not needed. Secular Muslims silently practice their faith of being caring and exemplary beings... and perhaps attract others to know about them rather than become a religious barricade.

Religion connects one with the divine and does not and should not divide people. Dr. Iqbal had said.." mazhab nahin sikhata, aapas my bair rakhna" Religion does not teach one to live in one's own shell. Indeed, Islam is universal, all encompassing and all embracing. It is not a cocoon. The word Secular, pluralistic Muslim denotes that idea.

Qur'aan, Surah 49:13: "O mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware."

To be a Muslim is to be a peacemaker, one who constantly seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for peaceful co-existence. God wants us to live in peace and harmony with his creation; life and mater. Indeed, that is the purpose of religion, any religion. Dr. Bandukwala's says this well below in his comment.

Mike Ghouse
______________________________________
More comments in the comment section below

AA,

Hasni,

May I make a small enhancement to your beautiful statement" Our beloved prophet Muhammad (pbuh) lifted pagans from jahiliya and gave great religion (Islam) to his people, which appreciates life's spiritual values and interpretation of life,it's origin,it's purpose,and its destiny."

Let's enhance it to read "" Our beloved prophet Muhammad (pbuh) lifted unrighteous people from jahiliya and gave great religion (Islam) to his people, which appreciates life's spiritual values and interpretation of life,it's origin,it's purpose,and its destiny.""

Islam is about ultimately creating a just society, justice is the core of Islam. Please ponder about the usage of the word Pagan in the above sentence, it implies Pagans are bad people, no group of people ever are bad, individuals are. And it simply defies one of the most "give respect and receive respect" Sura's of Qur'aan. Read the line, it does not condemn or call other belief as inferior, it puts oneself on par with the other.

109:1 SAY: "O you who deny the truth!
109:2 "I do not worship that which you worship,
109:3 and neither do you worship that which I worship!
109:4 "And I will not worship ~hat which you have [ever] worshipped,
109:5 and neither will you [ever] worship that which I worship.
109:6 Unto you, your moral law, and unto me, mine !"

Mike Ghouse

In a message dated 6/18/2008 4:31:52 P.M. Central Daylight Time, hasniessa@yahoo.com writes:

You are so right, brother Mike Ghouse,it's the individual, not his religion, who discredits it by his irreligious behavior.We just wonder, if men are so wicked with religion,what would they be without them.It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God,that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable.Our beloved prophet Muhammad (pbuh) lifted pagans from jahiliya and gave great religion (Islam) to his people, which appreciates life's spiritual values and interpretation of life,it's origin,it's purpose,and its destiny.It's hard then to understand why some of our own muslim brothers despise Islam when they know it's not religion but few religiously misinformed radicals who are trying to hijack Islam and use violence and killing innocent people for their own political end.

This brings us to the question of secularism.Another word for secularism is 'humanist', without being religious fundamentalist.Secularism is more about cultural and ideological diversity than it is about religion.As a legal concept, secularism means equality before the law, and no distinction between one citizen and another as far as the application of laws is concerned.It also means equality of opportunity and a refusal to classify citizens into first class citizens and second class citizens.A man with a secular outlook looks upon all persons as human beings,equally estimable or precious not only in the eye of the law, but in the eye of God.You do not think of a man as a Hindu,a Muslim or a Christian,but merely as human being.You are not conscious of the religion he professes.Secularism is
written into India's constitution in indelible lines.Religion should never be allowed to intrude into public affairs.

We must live and let live with all mankind, regardless of class and creed.We must recognize the infinite possibilities of human fallibility.Believe it or not, so many dogmas,once considered to be unshakable,have been thrown on the scrap-heap.Standards have changed from age to age and time to time.

If we truly go back in history, Fatimids enjoyed the best of arts,science and astronomy under both religious and secular studies at Al-Azhar University in Egypt.During Fatimid period, Al-Azhar was an essential part of the intellectual life.Al Azhar was the most secular university at the time.Unfortunately, radical religiosity, usually called 'fundamentalism' has erupted lately,which seem to be an intensely political form of faith that has caused grave danger to world and civic peace.Karen Armstrong writes in one of her books," Islam has become impotent before the West and it's triumphant secularism." ...

- Men who fight about religion have no religion to fight about.Since they do in the name of religion the thing which religion itself forbids.

A good religion is an attitude toward some Supreme Power other than self which results in progressive realization of truth,goodness and beauty in life.This is a definition which holds for all the great religions of the world, regardless of their creeds,historical background,civilization, theologies or philosophies.

Hasni Essa
Peace and Pluralism
___________________________________

From: Mohammad Asghar

[Religion connects one with the divine and does not and should not divide people]

I wished it were true, but it is not. Please see around yourself and what you see?

Religions have divided people and created animosity and hatred among them. This is true in respect of all religions, but Islam bears greater responsibility for it, as it is the latest religion.

Instead of uniting people, it has created many more problems that are non-existent in other religions. For example, Islam asks its followers to kill the Pagans and those who do not believe in it.

This does not mean that other religions are free from violence - far from it, but what was expected from Islam was the preaching of peace and harmony among the people of all beliefs. Islam has failed and hence the reputation it has earned for itself!

In short, all religions are bad and they are not good for mankind. They should have no place in our lives.

Mohammad Asghar

Moderator::

Dear Mohammad, look at every issue of the world, it is not the religion, it is always the individual. Be it 9/11, WWII or Invasion of Iraq, there was, and is an individual who is solely responsible for the crimes, he was the driving force.

Religion is never the problem, it is the individual. Shame on all of us to blame the religion for the acts of individuals. Also, justice can be served on individual and not the religion, blaming religion has not produced justice.

You write, " Islam asks its followers to kill the Pagans and those who do not believe in it." Please read the Qur'aan, it does not say that. It talks about those individual pagans, Christians or Jews who were aggressively harassing the Muslims. Never in the book it says to kill all Pagans, Jews or Christians as it has been used as a propaganda material against Muslims. It was the specific individuals. God and Qur'aan is about Justice to all humans on an equal footing, if not, it would not be justice, would it? Finding the truth is one's own responsibility.

Mike Ghouse

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In a message dated 6/17/2008 10:07:44 A.M. Central Daylight Time, bintwaleed@xxx writes:

“Secular Muslim” is an oxymoron term. These two words are complete antithesis to each other not only in content and meaning but they also inevitably bring forth totally different results.

Anyone claiming to be a secular Muslim is apparently ignorant of the meaning and implication of words “secular” and “Muslim”.
Bint Waleed
___________________________________

--- On Mon, 6/16/08, Farzana Hassan wrote:

I am a secular Muslim and do nothing of what you accuse secular Muslims of.

Secular Muslims are the most decent and moral people who are simply governed by a secular ideology which promotes pluralism in upholding universal human rights. That has nothing to do with the criminal activity you attribute to them.

Farzana.
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----- Original Message ----
ztminhas@xxxxxx.
Subject: "Secular" Muslims..

(Sentence Deleted by Moderator xxxxx) secular muslims are the source of most the problems. Secular "muslims" eat the money that is supposed to go to zakat, not real muslims, secular "muslims" are the ones who drink and contribute to alcoholic problems. Secular "muslims" are involved in the drug trade. Secular "muslims" are the ones that promise poor laborers their wages and give nothing. Secular "muslims" are the ones that are involved in trafficking of women and children. Secular "muslims"... could keep on going. No practicing muslim, one who believes in Allah's laws will ever do the above. Once the above or anything like that is done, that so-called "muslim" becomes "secular"

Z T
----- Original Message ----

ASA
Dont know about your argument .but secularism should not go to the point of banning islamic culture and introducing things against the islamic culture..like in turkey theyve banned the scarf.(because of their secular principles). ........although it is an order of the Prophet(PBUH) to wear it.
___________________________________

GeoIslam@xxxxxx
From: drbandukwala@ xxxxx
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:05:55 +0530
"Secular" Muslims..

This sarcastic note tries to make fun of secular Muslims. Janab Yusuf Khan should know that if there is a solution to the Muslim problem world wide, Inshallah it will be due to the role of secular Muslims. Do not use your pen to strike others, without understanding larger issues. You maybe harming the community far more.
J.S.bandukwala