But I'm sure Mr. Kay must be aware of that, or else he wouldn't have agreed to be part of this event.
Update: "Gain Peace works under the umbella" of ICNA.
Update: From a report last month on The Investigative Project site:
The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is leading a pro-Sharia public relations campaign, aimed at persuading Americans that these beliefs aren't something to fear or leading to domination.
As it does this, however, it continues to guide followers toward texts that go in a starkly contrasting direction. It has pushed underground a series of curricula detailing its adult radicalization program, but more extremist materials pop up in youth events, the group's bookstore, and elsewhere.
ICNA has long been involved in the radicalization of its members, with an indoctrination process into South Asian and Muslim Brotherhood extremist texts. Many of those titles disappeared from ICNA and the ICNA Sisters' web pages after a series of articles by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
That doesn't mean that ICNA has changed its tune. A recent investigation by the Toronto Sun revealed that the organization has marketed pro-violence and pro-Islamist texts, particularly by South Asian extremist Sayyid Abu 'Ala Maududi, through its Canadian bookstore. These texts, according to Canadian Muslim moderate Tarek Fatah, have a profound effect on the Muslim youth.I reiterate: for ICNA and like-minded true believers, "peace"=Islam calling the shots.
"This sort of literature lays the seeds into their minds that the West is the enemy, and they are the troopers who have to fight that enemy," Fatah told the Sun.
"Maududi, in his books, is asking for young Muslim men to wage war."
Required reading of some of Maududi's books is also still part of ICNA's membership process, especially for youth. This year's annual "Quiz Competition on Islamic Knowledge and Skills" tested 11th and 12th graders throughout the country on their knowledge of one of his masterpieces, Towards Understanding Islam.
"The greatest sacrifice made in the way of God is jihad. In it man sacrifices not only his own life and belongings, but destroys those of others as well," Maududi teaches in the text, which is posted on ICNA's youth website...
Update: BCF points out that Kay's co-panelist Dr. Jamal Badawi was a "person of interest" in the Holy Land terrorism conspiracy trial. Wouldn't it be great if that's how he was introduced on the 16th?
When I was a boy, sometime in the late 1950s, I read a short sequence of narrative panels--whose title I have forgotten; it was in Spanish, in any case--in a comic book, with a storyline that seems oddly appropriate to this "Message of Peace" post:
ReplyDeleteIt was set sometime in paleolithic times, the characters were realistically drawn early Cro-Magnon types, who are shown going about their troglodyte business at the beginning, until an elder/shaman calls them to a cave for what is obviously a religious ritual. Inside, a 20th century radio--don't ask me how it got back to paleolithic times, or how it was powered, possibly earlier issues of the comic book explained it all--emitted the anguished voice from, I guess, the mid-20th century, bemoaning the constant wars going on and repeatedly beseeching his fellow men to seek peace, a word that he repeatedly vocalizes . . . and whose sound strikes a chord with the troglodytes, who can't, of course, understand anything he is saying. The primitives then proceed to spill out of the cave en masse, shouting "peace," and with that word on their lips, they proceed to attack their neighbors across the river.
As I wrote at the beginning, that little vignette seems oddly appropriate to the theme of this post.