Translate


Monday, October 18, 2010

Open Mosque Day in Orange County

This weekend, Southern California mosques held "Open Mosque Day", in which non-Muslims were invited to visit a local mosque. Here is the report from Brittany Levine of the Orange County Register.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/mosque-271564-open-muslims.html

It all seems very nice, and surely, some of these mosques have honorable intentions. I would note, however. the imam Muzammil Siddiqi, the head of the Garden Grove mosque, who is quoted here explaining who carried out 9-11 ("some groups") is not one I would place too much stock in. In the early 1990s, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports, Siddiqi hosted none other than the Blind Sheikh, Omar Rahman, at his mosque and interpreted as Rahman gave one of his stock sermons on violent Jihad . Here is the entry on Siddiqi from Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism:

http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/171

So I have a suggestion for Ms. Levine; do your homework.

* The OC Register link is especially interesting because it contains the comment thread from its readers. I emphasize that this is not a private blog but that of the OC Register. It is instructive to read the comments. It should also be alarming for truly peaceful and moderate Muslims.

1 comment:

Siarlys Jenkins said...

I suppose to adopt an American paraphrase, "Moderation in submission to God is no virtue."

I really find terms like "moderate" and "extremist" terribly uninformative. Four years ago, a Republican candidate for governor ran ads in which, among other things, his teen age daughters remarked "He's extremely embarrassing around my friends, but he's an extremely good dad." Not a bad tweak, really.

I don't expect Muslims to be "moderate" about their faith. I do expect Muslims to live up to Malcolm X's admonition, that Muslims believe in obeying the law of whatever country they are living in.