Kevin Barrett's comments
As a co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, and lead editor of 9/11 and American Empire v.2: Christians, Jews and Muslims Speak Out, I have been in the forefront of efforts to build an interfaith dialogue on the facts and meaning of 9/11 and the "war on terror."
A strong Muslim majority holds that 9/11 was an inside job. Yet we Muslims are not allowed to argue this position in the bogus "interfaith dialogue" efforts set up by foundations-funded groups and universities. For example, I have proposed presentations on this issue at interfaith dialogue events sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, and have had those proposals rejected -- not due to any lack of credentials (I have a Ph.D. with an Arabic-Islamic Studies focus) but simply because the topic is off-limits.
Along with censoring any discussion of the truth behind 9/11 and the "war on terror," bogus "interfaith dialogue" events are framed in such a way as to try to force Muslims to accept Zionism. In short, only Uncle Tom Muslims are allowed to speak.
There can be no real interfaith dialogue unless the Muslim-majority opinion on these issues is permitted expression.
What is the Muslim-majority position?
* 9/11 was an inside job, as more and more architects, engineers, scientists, former high-level military and intelligence officials, and other experts are saying.
* Zionism is comparable to Nazism. (See Martillo's article below.) And Zionism (putting a Jewish state in Palestine) is just as insane and unsustainable as putting a white Episcopalian state in Peking, or an Arab Muslim state in Rome. The world's 1.5 billion Muslims will no more accept a Jewish state in Palestine than the Chinese would accept a white Episcopalian state in Peking, or Catholics would accept an Arab Muslim state in Rome.
We are prepared to defend these arguments through reasoned dialogue and empirical evidence. If Jews, Christians, or anyone else wants to try to show us why we are wrong, using reasoned dialogue and empirical evidence, we will be happy to listen. But if we are not permitted to pursue our case peacefully through reasoned argumentation, we will have no choice but to use other means, including military means, to defend ourselves against military attacks launched by Zionists and 9/11 Big Liars. That is why most Muslims support Hamas, Hezbullah, and other rational and effective Muslim self-defense organizations. Whatever your faith or worldview, here is why you should support them too.
Zionizing Muslims via Interfaith Dialogue
Joachim Martillo
Thursday, March 26, 2009,
My exchange with Rabbi Seltzer of the Interreligious Center for Public Life in More Jewish Bigotries at Interfaith Dialogue suggests that Jews do not view interfaith activities as a vehicle for achieving mutual respect and understanding among believers.
In order to obtain a better sense of Jewish interfaith goals, I read through the CJMR Interview: "Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia...Same Coin?", which was passed out at the ISBCC interfaith conference and which records a 2007 interview of Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal and Dr. Larry Lowenthal by the Center for Jewish Muslim Relations.
According to the web document Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal was former President of the Islamic Center of Boston at Wayland and former President of the Islamic Council of New England while Dr. Larry Lowenthal was Executive Director of the Greater Boston Chapter of the American Jewish Committee.
The first priority of interfaith activity for decent Jews and Muslims should have been a joint effort to expose both:
* the wealthy and politically connected Jews who are attempting to incite a virulent form of Islamophobia in order to marginalize American Muslims in the American political process and also
* the Jewish fraudsters, who use fake accusations of anti-Semitism to distract from Jewish anti-Muslim incitement.
Instead, the transcription of the interview indicates that the Center for Jewish-Muslim Relations works mostly to indoctrinate Muslims in Zio-speak and to colonize them mentally.
Here are the first question and the responses from the interviewees.
CJMR: What is Islamophobia/anti-Semitism and do local Muslims/Jews experience it?
Dr. Asmal:
"Islamophobia is a term that promotes the fear of Islam. In the process it generates hate against its adherents and permits a level of bigoted discourse that civil society would show zero tolerance toward if applied to any other racial, religious or nationalistic group. Since the nightmarish events of September 11th, orchestrated by a Muslim heretic and his small band of followers, all Muslims have had to listen to the refrain, "our enemies are Muslims." This message has been amplified since the "showdown with Saddam" transmuted into today's catastrophe in Iraq so that what we as Muslims now hear is that "the Muslims are our enemies." Thus on a daily basis with every news conference, with every talk show, with every political speech it has become an accepted part of our national discourse to accept Muslims as the "Other," demonize them with impunity, and see them as guilty until proven innocent. Though the evil attack on September 11thwas perpetrated by Muslim extremists, it provided the perfect pretext for the Neo-conservative movement to execute its preconceived so-called "global war on terror" to invade, occupy, and systematically dismantle a country that posed no threat to the US whatsoever. With each passing day of the uncontrollable horror in Iraq – viewed as a crusade by increasing numbers in the Muslim world – more mindless fanatics are driven to kill "the enemies of God" – i.e., all who disagree with their views, thus multiplying the real threat to Muslims and non-Muslims alike as they pour fuel on the flames of Islamophobia."
I have no clue what extremism means in today's political context. It is not merely extreme to believe that E. Europeans had the right to steal Palestine on the basis of an etymological relationship between the word Judea and the word Jew; the idea is psychotic. On the model of Zionist logic, I could argue that the Irish would have the right to steal and drive out the native Romans because most Irish are Roman Catholic and the word Roman is derivative from the word Rome.
The question of heresy is a red herring, for Islamism, Salafism and (for lack of a better term) Arab Jihadism are simply religiously-informed political ideologies, which Americans should understand in order to think rationally about international questions relating to the Arab and Muslim world.
Arab Jihadism was not founded by Bin-Ladin, who was basically the money guy/fundraiser, but by the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam and the Egyptian Kamil al-Sananiri. Azzam modeled his ideology on a somewhat mistaken understanding of Zionist history and politics with contributions from Sananiri's revision of Qutbism. The key point is a modernist reinterpretation of individual and collective obligation with regard to Jihad. Azzam claimed Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Baz approved Azzam's fatwa, but bin Baz never signed it.
In essence Azzam and Sananiri gave up on Qutb's ideas about overthrowing Muslim governments that were insufficiently Islamic and argued that every individual Muslim had an obligation to undertake personal jihad on behalf of oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Palestinian, Afghan, Kosovar, Bosnian, Thai, Filipino, Chechen or whatever.
Because Arab Jihadis had no interest in overthrowing "Muslim" governments and because there was considerable overlap of their program with that of the US government and even of the Neocons, they worked in an essentially frictionless environment of International Islamic Organizations mostly headquartered In Hijaz while they traveled effortlessly throughout the world from Peshawar to Hijaz, and thence to the USA (especially Boston). While the US and Saudi governments mostly ignored them, the Afghan Mujahidin were at best uninterested in Arab jihadi help and generally considered Azzam's group to be more trouble than it was worth.
The Taliban Organization, which succeeded the Mujahidin was more open to collaboration with Arab Jihadis even though Taliban ideology is probably closer to an anti-modernist Qutbism than to Arab Jihadism. In general Azzam rejected terrorist attacks on civilians and had reservations with regard to the ideas of people like Taqi Usmani about offensive Jihad, which is -- to be frank -- is far less radical a concept than the Bushite/Neocon policy of aggressive preventive war. Both Sananiri and Azzam were killed and left Bin-Ladin as the titular leader of the very informally or barely organized Arab Jihadi movement.
Bin-Ladin was less of a purist and seems gradually thanks to his power of the purse to have steered the "organization" in a new direction especially when he and his colleagues became more aware of American views of legitimate military targets during the NATO intervention in Bosnia.
Are Azzam, Sananiri and Bin-Ladin heretics? Only God knows for sure, but it is much easier to make the charge of heresy against Zionism from the standpoint of traditional Judaism, for I have a long list of late 19th and early 20th century Orthodox Rabbis who put Zionists in the category of the worst heretics.
In any case we can be quite certain
* that Arab Jihadism is more of a political than a religious movement and
*that the ideology clearly developed primarily as a response to Zionist criminality and genocidalism in Stolen and Occupied Palestine.
No one should be particularly surprised that members of Abdullah Azzam's family in Gaza are strong supporters of Hamas even though Hamas' ideology is probably best characterized as realist Qutbism. While the illegal US aggressive war and occupation of Iraq created a massive recruiting opportunity for Arab Jihadism throughout the Muslim world, Asmal's last sentence represents the complete internalization of the delusional Jewish-Zionist worldview. Iraqi suicide attacks were intended to liberate Iraq by making the occupation unworkable. If the USA had experienced an illegal aggressive war and occupation, a lot of Americans would probably choose to resist via suicide attacks just as
Iraqis have under US occupation.
Dr. Lowenthal:
"Extreme anti-Semitism is the belief that Jews by definition are a people empowered by a mystical unlimited power to do evil – similar to the beliefs of Hitler or those who believe and propagate the writings in the so-called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" – a fraudulent document that purports to be the records of a secret meeting by elder Rabbis with a purpose of world domination. Such beliefs are used to perpetuate stereotypes and misunderstandings of Jews. Local Jews experience anti-Semitism in Boston as vehement anti-Zionism. People must understand that the Jewish anxiety about Israel's security is a paramount issue, and can not be evaded. People are free to criticize any aspect of Israeli policy or government decision or Israeli behavior toward Palestinians, but Jews draw the line at the equation of Israelis with Nazis, or Prime Minister Sharon with Hitler, or the situation on the West Bank with Auschwitz. Such criticism, in our opinion, crosses the line between acceptable criticism of Israel to anti-Semitic ranting."
Yet Jewish and Zionist groups routinely use terms like Nazi, Fascist, or Hitler to describe Hamas, Fatah, Haniyeh, Abbas, or Ahmedinejad even though none of them have any connection with German Nazi ideology. Not only is the situation completely unfair, but it is also a pure historical political falsification, for there is only one important modern political ideology that has much similarity to German Nazism.
The late University of Wisconsin Professor George Mosse lectured at Hebrew University on the common völkisch racist currents of German Nazism and Zionism. I have read practically all the primary literature of both movements. With the obvious ethnic substitutions the ideologies are practically identical with allowances for internal factions. (For example Ben-Gurion and his followers are ideologically most similar tothe Straßer faction of the NSDAP.)
After Herzl there is probably no figure more important in Political/Congress Zionism than Max Nordau, whose ideas of national degeneracy through race mixing, national revival through racial purity and eugenics were at least as influential among German Nazis as they were among Zionists.
Vladimir Jabotinsky's form of Zionism initially was at the beginning a form of ethnic fundamentalism practically identical to Hitler's belief system, but by the 30s it had evolved into a form of political ethnic monism that was a good deal more extreme than mainstream German Nazism.
Because Jabotinskian Zionism is the dominant current of Zionism both among Neoconservatives and also in Israeli politics, properly understanding the true nature of Zionism and its relationship with German Nazism is particularly important from the standpoint of American politics.
Because Jabotinsky and his colleague Achimeir like some German Nazi ideologists believed in waging a sort of ethnonational financial warfare against non-Jews or non Aryans respectively, all Americans should be concerned that Milton Friedman's family were particularly extremely Jabotinskians and should worry that Jabotinskian ideology may have provided the core beliefs that form the basis of Friedman's economic theories.
Conclusion
At present Muslim-Jewish interfaith activities are simply a vehicle for Jews to manipulate Muslims for the sake of Israel. Muslims need to develop a strategy to render interfaith activities beneficial to Muslims and to Americans in general by identifying those Jews willing to collaborate within a framework of mutual respect and equality against Jewish-Zionist political intimidation and manipulation that no longer threatens only Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims but all Americans and the entire world.
Christians, Muslims, and Jews involved in interfaith activities need to pay more attention to the precepts of scripture.
Here is Leviticus 19:16-17 on the subject.
16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people; neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor: I am the LORD.
17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.
Then the Jewish participants will have the opportunity to make apologies that far too many of them have never offered but have owed to non-Jews for a very long time.
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