Democrats Love Their Islamic Extremists

In case you don’t spend all your time following mundane political events, I’ll inform you that, this past weekend, congressional Democrats held their yearly retreat in Williamsburg, VA to discuss their policy agenda.  Highly publicized was President Bush’s concillatory appearance at the retreat. 

Apparently, the mainstream media didn’t find the fact that the retreat’s invocation was given by a terrorist-supporting Muslim extremist.  Most of what I’m quoting will come from this article.

So…who was this guy?  None other than Husham Al-Husainy, Imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, a Shi’ite mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. 

What did he say in this prayer?

In the name of God the most merciful, the most compassionate. We thank you, God, to bless us among your creations. We thank you, God, to make us as a great nation. We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed. Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us, God, to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation. Ameen.

I don’t know about you, but, given the context of the prayer, that all just seems a little off to me.  So, what did this guy mean by all that stuff?

A touching moment of ecumenical generosity and hope for peace? Not quite. In mentioning “Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed,” Al-Husainy no doubt sounded as if he was expansive, broad-minded, and not narrowly sectarian to the assembled Democrats. But in fact, he was almost certainly invoking them in their capacity as Muslim prophets: it is mainstream Islam that all of these were prophets who taught Islam, and that the followers of Moses and Jesus corrupted their teachings to create Judaism and Christianity. The Qur’an says that Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian, but a Muslim, and depicts Jesus denying his own divinity and this, of course, is the Imam’s frame of reference. So what seems to be a gesture of ecumenical generosity actually amounts to a declaration of religious supremacism and the delegitimization of other religions.

Interesting.  Here’s more:

In this, in any case, the Imam was echoing the Fatiha, the first sura of the Qur’an and most common prayer of Islam. It asks Allah: “Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favoured; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam — cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito’s book Islam: The Straight Path. The path of those who have earned Allah’s anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians. The classic Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that “the two paths He described here are both misguided,” and that those “two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians.”

Ibn Kathir’s understanding of this passage is not a lone “extremist” interpretation. In fact, most Muslim commentators believe that the Jews are those who have earned Allah’s wrath and the Christians are those who have gone astray. This is the view of Tabari, Zamakhshari, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, the Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Arabi, as well as Ibn Kathir. One contrasting, but not majority view, is that of Nisaburi, who says that “those who have incurred Allah’s wrath are the people of negligence, and those who have gone astray are the people of immoderation.”

Even if you find that description to be somewhat biased or heavy-handed, you have to admit there’s a problem here.  Imagine if the Republicans held a retreat in which a Christian minister gave an invocation asking for the group to not be led away by those who have been doomed by God or deceived by evil?  Can you imagine the liberal outrcries claiming intolerance?  Of course, in that context, they’d claim that the Christian was condemning homosexuals and secularists.  In the case of Al-Husainy, he was condemning Israel and the U.S., and, for Democrats, they’d be doing that anyway.  Of course, they typically wouldn’t include  references to God, unless you count Barbara Streisand or whatever force is punishing capitalism with global warming.

 So, what does a Muslim fundamentalist have to do to get such an invite from Congress’s majority party?  Surely he must have a stellar record of public service.

It was also noteworthy that the Democrats continued standing with heads bowed piously while Al-Husainy prayed for an end to “war and violence, and oppression and occupation.” Occupation? In Iraq and Israel, no doubt. After all, during the Israeli incursion into Lebanon last summer Al-Husainy led “almost-daily protests of thousands of Hezbollah supporters on the streets of Dearborn and Detroit, swarming with swastikas and anti-Semitic, anti-American signs.” He also “delivered hate-filled, anti-American rhetoric” at “an anti-Semitic rally of 3,000 Hezbollah supporters at Dearborn’s Bint Jebail Cultural Center.” In August 2004, “he led anti-Bush, anti-American rallies on the streets of Dearborn,” and at other times “he led a number of pro-HAMAS and pro-Arafat rallies in the area.” At a rally honoring Arafat, “he and his followers held signs featuring enlarged photos of Khomeini.” He also has a taste for conspiracy theories: in an interview, Al-Husainy said of Saddam Hussein that “I believe he is an agent of America, and attributed events in Iraqto the “Zionists”: “We also think some outsiders, with some Iraqis, and, by the way, I don’t want to exclude the Zionists. I think some extremists from the Mossad came in and took a chance to have some revenge, because we don’t know who killed [Imam Mohammed Bakr] Al-Hakim or Sergio Vieira De Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.”

They sure know how to pick ‘em, don’t they? 

The Democrats picking this guy to open their retreat is like the Republicans picking a Grand Dragon from the Klan, or one of those guys who leads the “God Hates Fags” protests at military funerals.  One has to think that, if that were to happen, we’d hear about it on the news.  Even if the Republicans picked Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, who are tame by comparison, we’d never hear the end about how this is indicative of the Republican agenda for intolerance and bigotry.  At the very least, we’d get a major story about it from a mainstream source. 

Oh…that liberal media. 

More information on this guy’s prayer and background here and here.  Video of the prayer can be seen here.