-Caveat Lector-
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: MEMRI: Muslim American Leaders:A Wave of Conversion to Islam in the
U.S.Following September 11
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 03:38:18 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MEMRI: Muslim American Leaders: A Wave of Conversion to Islam in the U.S.
Following September 11
Special Dispatch - Terror in America (26)
November 16, 2001
No. 301
Muslim American Leaders: A Wave of Conversion to Islam in
the U.S. Following September 11
Since September 11, 2001, many articles and reports have
appeared in the Arabic press claiming Muslim proselytizing
("Da'wa") in the U.S. has seen an upsurge in Americans'
converting. These reports claim messages of tolerance
promoted by the U.S. government and local authorities has
induced many to convert to Islam.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Sheikh Raid
Sallah, the head of the Islamic movement in Israel, called
on U.S. President George Bush to convert to Islam and thus
solve all problems. Recently, Sheikh Sallah reiterated his
call at a rally in the Arab town of Tamra (the Galilee):
"Oh, peoples of the West... We say to you: We are the
masters of the world and we are the repository of all good
[in the world], because we are the 'the best people,
delivered for mankind' [Koran, 3:111]. We do not hesitate,
Oh Bush and Blair; we invite you to Islam, enter Islam, you
and your peoples."(1)
Muslim American reports in the Arab press indicate that
Muslim proselytizing efforts have been unusually successful
since the September 11 attacks. 'Alaa Bayumi, Director of
Arab Affairs at the Council for American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), wrote in the London daily Al-Hayat that "non-Muslim
Americans are now interested in getting to know Islam.
There are a number of signs...: Libraries have run out of
books on Islam and the Middle East... English translations
of the Koran head the American best-seller list... The
Americans are showing increasing willingness to convert to
Islam since September 11...Thousands of non-Muslim
Americans have responded to invitations to visit mosques,
resembling the waves of the sea [crashing on the shore] one
after another... All this is happening in a political
atmosphere that, at least verbally, encourages non-Muslim
Americans' openness towards Muslims in America and in the
Islamic world, as the American president has said many
times in his speeches..."(2)
CAIR chairman Nihad Awad told the Saudi paper 'Ukaz that
"34,000 Americans have converted to Islam following the
events of September 11, and this is the highest rate
reached in the U.S. since Islam arrived there."(3)
According to Dr. Walid A. Fatihi, instructor of medicine at
Harvard Medical School, Boston has recently become a center
of Islamic proselytizing aimed at Christians. On September
22, 2001, Al-Fatihi sent a letter to the Egyptian weekly
Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, in which he described the unfolding of
events since September 11: "...From the first day, the
media began to insinuate that Muslim Arab hands were behind
this incident. At noon, the directors and administration of
the Islamic Center of Boston held an emergency meeting, and
I stayed on the line with them from my clinic. We decided
to hold a blood drive, and we set up a committee to contact
the Red Cross and organize it for us. We invited the media
to cover the event..."
"All of us tried to grab onto every scrap of information
that would indicate that Muslim Arab hands were not
involved in the loathsome crime. Yes, my brothers and
sisters, we tried to prove our humanity on the day we found
ourselves attacked from all sides. Our hearts bled and our
spokesman said that proselytizing in the name of Allah had
been set back 50 years in the U.S. and in the entire
world..."
"On Saturday, September 15, I went with my wife and
children to the biggest church in Boston, [Trinity Church
in] Copley Square, by official invitation of the Islamic
Society of Boston, to represent Islam by special invitation
of the senators of Boston. Present were the mayor of
Boston, his wife, and the heads of the universities. There
were more than 1,000 people there, with media coverage by
one of Boston's main television stations. We were received
like ambassadors. I sat with my wife and children in the
front row, next to the mayor's wife. In his sermon, the
priest defended Islam as a monotheistic religion, telling
the audience that I represented the Islamic Society of
Boston."
"After the sermon was over, he stood at my side as I read
an official statement issued by the leading Muslim clerics
condemning the incident [i.e. the attacks]. The statement
explained Islam's stance and principles, and its sublime
precepts. Afterwards, I read Koran verses translated into
English... These were moments that I will never forget,
because the entire church burst into tears upon hearing the
passages of the words of Allah!!"
"Emotion swept over us. One said to me: 'I do not
understand the Arabic language, but there is no doubt that
the things you said are the words of Allah.' As she left
the church weeping, a woman put a piece of paper in my
hand; on the paper was written: 'Forgive us for our past
and for our present. Keep proselytizing to us.' Another man
stood at the entrance of the church, his eyes teary, and
said, 'You are just like us; no, you are better than
us.'"
"On Sunday, September 16, the Islamic Society of Boston
issued an open invitation to the Islamic Center in
Cambridge, located between Harvard and MIT. We did not
expect more than 100 people, but to our surprise more than
1,000 people came, among them the neighbors, the university
lecturers, members of the clergy, and even the leaders of
the priests from the nearby churches, who invited us to
speak on Islam. All expressed solidarity with Muslims. Many
questions flowed to us. Everyone wanted to know about Islam
and to understand its precepts."
"Of all the questions, not a single one attacked me; on the
contrary, we saw [the people's] eyes filling with tears
when they heard about Islam and its sublime principles.
Many of them had never heard about Islam before. Well, they
had heard about Islam only through the biased media. That
same day, I was invited again to participate in a meeting
in the church, and again I saw the same things. On
Thursday, a delegation of 300 students and lecturers from
Harvard visited the center of the Islamic Society of
Boston, accompanied by the American Ambassador to Vienna.
They sat on the floor of the mosque, which was filled to
capacity. We explained to them the precepts of Islam, and
defended it from any suspicions [promulgated in the media].
I again read to them from the verses of Allah, and [their]
eyes filled with tears. The audience was moved, and many
asked to participate in the weekly lessons for non-Muslims
held by the Islamic Center..."
"On Friday, September 21, the Muslims participated in a
closed meeting with the governor of Massachusetts. In the
meeting, a discussion was held on introducing Islam into
the school curriculum, to inform the [American] people and
to fight racism against Muslims arising from the American
people's ignorance regarding the religion. With the
governor's support, measures to examine implementation of
this goal were agreed upon..."
"These are only some of the examples of what happened and
is happening in the city of Boston, and in many other
American cities, during these days. Proselytizing in the
name of Allah has not been undermined, and has not been set
back 50 years, as we thought in the first days after
September 11. On the contrary, the 11 days that have passed
are like 11 years in the history of proselytizing in the
name of Allah. I write to you today with the absolute
confidence that over the next few years, Islam will spread
in America and in the entire world, Allah willing, much
more quickly than it has spread in the past, because the
entire world is asking, 'What is Islam!'(4)
Fatihi's reports of American Christians' crying upon
hearing Koranic verses have an historical context. This
type of narrative is about part of the ethos of Islamic
proselytizing. It comes from the tradition of the Prophet
Muhammad's invitation to the Christian community of Najran,
located in what is today North Yemen, to visit the mosque.
When the Christians of Najran were exposed to the verses of
the Koran, the tradition says they burst into tears and
converted to Islam."(5)
Fatihi also published an article in the London daily
Al-Hayat in which he boasted of another success of the
Islamic movement, namely, damage to Christian-Jewish
relations in the U.S.:
"...Despite the attacks of distortion coordinated by the
Zionist lobby, to which it has recruited many of the
influential media, there are initial signs that the
intensive campaign of education about Islam has begun to
bear fruit. For example, the rate of converts to Islam
since September 11 has doubled... There is solidarity with
the Muslims on the part of many non-Muslims in American
universities. For example, dozens of non-Muslim American
women students at Wayne [State] University... have put on
veils as a symbol of identification with the Muslim women
students at the university and at the other universities of
America. For this reason, the Jewish institutions have
begun to contact Muslim institutions and have called on us
to hold dialogues with them and cooperate [with them]. They
are afraid of the outcome of the Islamic-Christian dialogue
through the churches, the mosques, and the universities..."
"There are many examples of the signs of change [for the
worse] in Christian-Jewish relations, as a result of the
openness towards Islam and the beginning of an
Islamic-Christian dialogue. NPR, for example, broadcasted
an evenhanded program on Palestine and the suffering of the
Palestinian people; as a result, Jewish (Zionist) donors in
the U.S. called for their donations to be withdrawn from
the station. This annoyed the station; in response, it
intensified its coverage of Muslim American affairs and the
Palestine problem..."
"One of the most important topics was an interview with
several young women at American universities who recently
converted to Islam through the Islamic Society of Boston.
They hold advanced degrees from universities in Boston,
such as Harvard, and they spoke of the power and the
greatness of Islam, of the elevated status of women in
Islam, and of why they converted to Islam. The program was
broadcast several times across the entire U.S..."
"Thus, the Muslim community in the U.S. in general, and in
Boston in particular, has begun to trouble the Zionist
lobby. The words of the Koran [3:113] on this matter are
true: 'They will be humiliated wherever they are found,
unless they are protected under a covenant with Allah, or a
covenant with another people. They have incurred Allah's
wrath and they have been afflicted with misery. That is
because they continuously rejected the Signs of Allah and
were after slaying the Prophets without just cause, and
this resulted from their disobedience and their habit of
transgression.'"
"The great Allah spoke words of truth. Their covenant with
America is the strongest possible in the U.S., but it is
weaker than they think, and one day their covenant with the
[American] people will be cut off."(6)
Endnotes:
(1) Saut Al-Haqq wa Al-Huriyya (Israel), October 26, 2001.
(2) Al-Hayat (London), November 11, 2001.
(3) Al-Ayyam (London), November 12, 2001.
(4) Al-Ahram Al-Arabi (Egypt), October 20, 2001.
(5) For more on this subject, see MEMRI Special Dispatch
No. 41, "Muslim-Christian Tensions in the Israeli Arab
Community," August 2, 1999.
(6) Al-Hayat (London), November 11, 2001.
************************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an
independent, non-profit organization that translates and
analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles
and documents cited, as well as background information, are
available on request.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.memri.org
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
For free regular subscription:
Subscribe at no charge: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For free daily digest subscription:
Subscribe at no charge: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For a copy of all reports distributed for a given day please send a
message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
