They can go pound sand. They have lots of it in their countries of origin.
David
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it
costs when it's free."*---P. J. O'Rourke*
On 4/24/2014 5:59 PM, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical
Centrist Community wrote:
*Film at 9/11 Museum Sets Off Clash Over Reference to Islam*
Sharon Otterman ("The New York Times," April 23, 2014)
Past the towering tridents that survived the World Trade Center
collapse, adjacent to a gallery with photographs of the 19 hijackers,
a brief film at the soon-to-open National September 11 Memorial Museum
will seek to explain to visitors the historical roots of the attacks.
The film, āEURoeThe Rise of Al Qaeda,āEUR? refers to the terrorists as
Islamists who viewed their mission as a jihad. The NBC News anchor
Brian Williams, who narrates the film, speaks over images of terrorist
training camps and Qaeda attacks spanning decades. Interspersed are
explanations of the ideology of the terrorists, from video clips in
foreign-accented English translations.
The documentary is not even seven minutes long, the exhibit just a
small part of the museum. But it has over the last few weeks suddenly
become a flash point in what has long been one of the most highly
charged issues at the museum: how it should talk about Islam and Muslims.
With the museum opening on May 21, it has shown the film to several
groups, including an interfaith advisory group of clergy members.
Those on the panel overwhelmingly took strong exception to the film,
believing some of the terminology in it casts aspersions on all
Muslims, and requested changes. But the museum has declined. In March,
the sole imam in the group resigned to make clear that he could not
endorse its contents.
āEURoeThe screening of this film in its present state would greatly
offend our local Muslim believers as well as any foreign Muslim
visitor to the museum,āEUR? Sheikh Mostafa Elazabawy, the imam of
Masjid Manhattan, wrote in a letter to the museumāEUR^(TM)s director.
āEURoeUnsophisticated visitors who do not understand the difference
between Al Qaeda and Muslims may come away with a prejudiced view of
Islam, leading to antagonism and even confrontation toward Muslim
believers near the site.āEUR?
Museum officials are standing by the film, which they say was vetted
by several scholars of Islam and of terrorism. A museum spokesman and
panel members described the contents of the film, which was not made
available to The New York Times for viewing.
āEURoeFrom the very beginning, we had a very heavy responsibility to
be true to the facts, to be objective, and in no way smear an entire
religion when we are talking about a terrorist group,āEUR? said Joseph
C. Daniels, president and chief executive of the nonprofit foundation
that oversees the memorial and museum.
But the disagreement has been ricocheting through scholarly circles in
recent weeks. At issue is whether it is inflammatory for the museum to
use terms like āEURoeIslamistāEUR? and āEURoejihadāEUR? in conjunction
with the Sept. 11 attack, without making clear that the vast majority
of Muslims are peaceful. The panel has urged the use of more specific
language, such as āEURoeAl Qaeda-inspired terrorismāEUR? and doing
more to explain the meaning of jihad.
The terms āEURoeIslamistāEUR? and āEURoejihadistāEUR? are often used
to describe extremist Muslim ideologies. But the problem with using
such language in a museum designed to instruct people for generations
is that most visitors are āEURoesimply going to say Islamist means
Muslims, jihadist means Muslims,āEUR? said Akbar Ahmed, the chairman
of the Islamic studies department at American University in Washington.
āEURoeThe terrorists need to be condemned and remembered for what they
did,āEUR? Dr. Ahmed said. āEURoeBut when you associate their religion
with what they did, then you are automatically including, by
association, one and a half billion people who had nothing to do with
these actions and who ultimately the U.S. would not want to
unnecessarily alienate.āEUR?
The question of how to represent Islam in the museum has long been
fraught. It was among the first issues that came up when the museum
began asking for advice in about 2005 from a panel of mostly Lower
Manhattan clergy members who had been involved in recovery work after
the attacks.
Peter B. Gudaitis, who brought the group together as the chief
executive of New York Disaster Interfaith Services, said the museum
had rejected certain Islam-related suggestions from the panel, such as
telling the story of Mohammad Salman Hamdani, a Muslim cadet with the
New York Police Department who died in the attack and was initially
suspected as a perpetrator.
There was wide agreement, however, that the exhibit space should make
clear that Muslims were not just perpetrators, but also among the
attackāEUR^(TM)s victims, mourners and recovery workers āEUR" an
integral part of the fabric of American life.
A year ago, concerns about how the film might be viewed by Muslims
were raised at a screening by a select group of Sept. 11 family
members, law enforcement officials and others. As a result, several
months ago, museum officials invited the interfaith group to view the
film and tour the still unfinished exhibits.
The panel was pleased to see photographs of mourning Muslims included
in photo montages. The museum also includes stories of Muslim victims
and the reflections of Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of
Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress, on the effects of the
attacks on America, the museum said.
But then the group members screened the Qaeda film and grew alarmed at
what they felt was an inflammatory tone and use of the words
āEURoejihadāEUR? and āEURoeIslamistāEUR? without, they felt,
sufficient explanation.
āEURoeAs soon as it was over, everyone was just like, wow, you guys
have got to be kidding me,āEUR? Mr. Gudaitis said.
He and another member of the panel, the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive
director of the Interfaith Center of New York, began to organize a
response. On Monday, they sent the museumāEUR^(TM)s directors a formal
letter on behalf of the 11 members of the interfaith group who had
seen the film, asking for edits. Their concern was heightened by the
personal experience many on them have had with anti-Muslim sentiment,
including the national uproar over the construction of a mosque and
Muslim community center a few blocks from ground zero.
The response from the museum was immediate, though accidental:
Clifford Chanin, the education director, inadvertently sent the group
an email intended solely for the museumāEUR^(TM)s senior directors,
indicating he was not overly concerned.
āEURoeI donāEUR^(TM)t see this as difficult to respond to, if any
response is even needed,āEUR? he wrote.
The museum did remove the term āEURoeIslamic terrorismāEUR? from its
website earlier this month, after another activist, Todd Fine,
collected about 100 signatures of academics and scholars supporting
its deletion.
In interviews, several leading scholars of Islam said that the term
āEURoeIslamic terroristāEUR? was broadly rejected as unfairly
conflating Islam and terrorism, but the terms Islamist and jihadist
can be used, in the proper context, to refer to Al Qaeda, preferably
with additional qualifiers, like āEURoeradical,āEUR? or
āEURoemilitant.āEUR?
But for Mr. Elazabawy, and many other Muslims, the words
āEURoeIslamicāEUR? and āEURoeIslamistāEUR? are equally inappropriate
to apply to Al Qaeda, and the word āEURoejihadāEUR? refers to a
positive struggle against evil, the opposite of how they view the
terrorist attacks.
āEURoeDonāEUR^(TM)t tell me this is an Islamist or an Islamic group;
that means they are part of us,āEUR? he said in an interview. āEURoeWe
are all of us against that.āEUR?
For his part, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at
Princeton University, defended the film, whose script he vetted.
āEURoeThe critics who are going to say, āEUR~LetāEUR^(TM)s not talk
about it as an Islamic or Islamist movement,āEUR^(TM) could end up not
telling the story at all, or diluting it so much that you wonder where
Al Qaeda comes from,āEUR? Dr. Haykel said.
Michael Frazier, a museum spokesman, said the film would be shown in a
gallery that also had two large interpretive panels illustrating how
Al Qaeda was portrayed as āEURoea far fringe of Islam.āEUR? Museum
officials emphasized that Mr. Chanin and the rest of the museum took
the concerns very seriously.
āEURoeWhat helps me sleep at night is I believe that the average
visitor who comes through this museum will in no way leave this museum
with the belief that the religion of Islam is responsible for what
happened on 9/11,āEUR? said Mr. Daniels, the president of the museum
foundation. āEURoeWe have gone out of the way to tell the truth.āEUR?
--
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
an email to [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection
is active.
http://www.avast.com
--
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
