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JenniferMaxwell
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0 posted 2010-06-30 10:24 PM


It would be an understatement to say that Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, pleaded guilty last week. “I’m going to plead guilty a hundred times over,” Shahzad told the judge. Why so emphatic? Because Shahzad is proud of himself. “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim soldier,” he said.
...
Here is how Shahzad explained his role in the holy war: “It’s a war,” he said. “I am part of that. I am part of the answer of the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people, and on behalf of that, I’m revenging the attacks.”
...
Now, for a Muslim holy warrior to see his attacks as revenge runs counter to Pipes’s longstanding claim that Islamic holy war is about attack, not counterattack.

holy war could end if America would stop using military force. He said in court, “Until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops killing the Muslims and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.”

Should we really take this testimony seriously? It does, after all, have an air of self-dramatizing grandstanding. Then again, terrorism is a self-dramatizing, grandstanding business, and there’s no reason to think this particular piece of theater isn’t true to Shahzad’s interior monologue.

Indeed, it tracks the pitch of jihadist recruiters, notably Anwar Awlaki, the American sheik in Yemen who inspired not just Shahzad but the Fort Hood shooter and the thwarted underwear bomber. The core of the pitch is that America is at war with Islam, and the evidence cited includes Shahzad’s litany: Iraq, Afghanistan, drone strikes, etc.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/the-myth-of-modern-jihad/?ref=opinion

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Grinch
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Whoville
1 posted 2010-07-01 08:45 AM



quote:
Should we really take this testimony seriously?


You should Jen, after all the basis of his reasoning is exactly the same as the reasoning used by the US etc. to continue to do what he’s complaining about.

That’s the problem with vicious circles - everyone seems to have a legitimate excuse.

.

JenniferMaxwell
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2 posted 2010-07-01 09:39 AM


Yeah, I get it Grinch, unfortunately too many are willingly blind.

And that brings up questions about Mosab Hassan Yousef, at least for me. How can he possibly pass a background check if he’s a former member of a terrorist organization? Cat Stevens is on the no fly list but this guy gets asylum because he spied for Israel and then supposedly converted to Christianity? The right wingers refuse to believe Obama’s a Christian because he was the son of a Muslim, but now they’re cheering for a guy who’s the son of a Muslim terrorist and a former Hamas member himself. Just another example of their hypocrisy?


Grinch
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Whoville
3 posted 2010-07-01 11:46 AM



But to some people Jen Yousef is an example of someone who has recanted his evil ways, he’s a shining example to them that the battle can be won, that their perception of evil can be transformed into  a semblance of their perception of good.

The reality is that he’s the same person he’s always been, the difference is an illusion borne of perception and perspective.

Watch them recoil if he becomes a Muslim again.



JenniferMaxwell
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4 posted 2010-07-01 01:02 PM


If, according to the Ditto Heads and such, once a Muslim always a Muslim applies to Obama, then why doesn’t it apply to Yousef? Is it because he speaks against Islam, misrepresenting tenents of the faith? I haven’t read his book, can’t get it until the 16th, but after watching clips from interviews, plain to see he’s a liar. According to him there are no moderate Muslims, even my local grocer is a radical just waiting to yell Allahu Akbar and martyr himself. What absolute nonsense, there are moderate and radical Muslims just as there are moderate and radical Christians or Jews.


JenniferMaxwell
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5 posted 2010-07-01 09:44 PM


"Yousef was first arrested when he was ten, during the First Intifada, for throwing rocks at Israeli settlers."
-wiki

Well, there you go, proof the guy's a terrorist with a prison record. And that was only his first arrest!

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