It's become a pattern now. Every time September comes around, our society pulls the bandages off our collective wounds and insists on poking sticks in it. The self-torture has come to the point where some news outlets are broadcasting their original footage from that fateful morning, uncut, in order to ensure that everyone relives the horror at the same time. Surveys of all kinds show that each year, hope for a normal life diminishes, and anger at "the other" continues to grow. Far from being healed, the wound is infected, and threatens to spread to areas previously healthy.

Some of us want to forget the nightmare and move on. Others indulge themselves, wanting to recharge the batteries of anger in order to prepare for another year of war, whether virtual, verbal, or very much real. As Muslims, we've been caught in the middle for five years now - unable to escape responsibility for actions of people far away who claim to share our faith, and incapable of stemming a tide of increasing hatred being directed at our community. When I look into the eyes of my non-Muslim friends, I see honest people trying very hard to separate what they see and read about from the person standing before them. I can only wonder what goes through the mind of those who don't have the benefit of having a Muslim friend to create some restraint against the natural impulse to blame a collective enemy.

I'm naturally an optimistic person. Each year, I think to myself that I've seen the worst of it. And each year, I recall events from the past 12 months that tell me otherwise. Muslim extremists emerge from the shadows, poking around our defenses for an unreinforced soft spot. Anti-Muslim extremists, fresh from mining our religion and history for any piece of information that can be used to defame and incite, grow bolder in their calls for the removal of Muslims from their midst. This year, I saw a first: a call for an all-out war on Islam and Muslims, even if millions of innocents die in the process. I'm reminded of the history of European Jews and Rwandan Tutsis, of how entire populations were desensitized in advance of genocide using similar campaigns. Could it happen again?

Five years later, jihad-minded Muslims such as al-Qaida still have the nerve to think of themselves as some sort of vanguard of defense for Muslims. In fact, their actions have done more to bring curses upon the Prophet and hatred toward our faith than anything in the history of the religion. It is a powerful form of anti-dawah, something for which I pray they will be held accountable for in this life and the next. The central problem for Muslims is that some of the disaffected among us are unable to express dissent in a constructive, nonviolent, and lawful manner. As small a group as they might be, they have caused, and continue to cause, incalculable damage.

Still I hear the refrains: "Where are the moderate Muslims? Where is the condemnation of terrorism?" I and many other Muslims involved in public service feel like we've been screaming in the middle of the ocean. How are we expected to compete with 24-hour TV news and a blogosphere that gives Muslim malcontents a magnitude of PR that money can't buy? How are we supposed to respond when a community of 25 million Muslims in the West is served by institutions that have a relative handful of full-time advocates, most still trying to learn how to defend themselves against a media onslaught? One example of our inability to properly respond to the trauma inflicted upon the American psyche was the way the "Islam is a religion of peace" refrain, so common among Muslim spokespeople in the days after 9/11, was chewed up and spit back in our faces. We needed to address very real fears of Islam, but could only offer up only simplistic platitudes.

None of this is to say that the decline is irreversible. There is still hope that we can stem this decline. Recent surveys suggest that even though hostility towards Muslims has increased since the days of 9/11, those numbers drop significantly for those Americans who count Muslims among their friends. Rather than funding multi-million dollar public relations campaigns, a grassroots effort, it seems, is in order. If everyone in America had a Muslim friend, the poll numbers and attitudes towards Islam would be very different than they are now. And we need friends now, more than ever.

The recent involvement of Muslims in the West in directly stopping planned terror attacks should be an example for those who continue to think that mainstream Muslims do not care about our collective safety. We should be emboldened by this. We can be self-critical and vigilant about extremism without falling into the trap of apologetics or being ashamed of who we are. I believe that non-Muslims are very interested in seeing that we are acknowledging and working on our problems, which counters the impression that we are thoughtless automatons following orders from beyond. Perhaps in traditional Muslim countries, airing of internal issues and problems is seen as a sign of weakness. In the West, it is seen as a strength. Muslims living here should take note of that.

Next year, we will might find ourselves again wringing our hands about the escalation of tensions between the West and the Muslim world. It's also possible that we may finally decide to leave the bandage on the wound so that the real healing can begin. Our actions between now and then will determine that outcome.

you people? are you okay? who are you talking to?

Abu, he's lost. He wants definitions of what an Islamist is because I've told him I won't here, mostly because its too long for a comment, and also because giving in to lunatics is itself lunacy. I suspect he rejects such a term because of his inability to distinguish a political ideology from a religion. Good thing Zaid shaker wrote about the danger of confusing the two on zaidshakir.com...

I have written about it elsewhere including my definition of it, but I want to see if he is dedicated enough to find it and is capable of doing more than simply hurling drive-by insults at people. While we're waiting for him to discover Google (that's [url=http://www.google.com]http://www.google.com,[/url] BTW), maybe he can offer a definition of neo-con...

2 log-ins do not an IP make Gomer.

>he wants definitions of what an Islamist is because I've told him I won't here<

Why not, yellow streak?

>mostly because its too long for a comment, and also because giving in to lunatics is itself lunacy<

You can put it in multiple posts. What are you so afraid of?

>I have written about it elsewhere including my definition of it<

Why not post it here then?

>but I want to see if he is dedicated enough to find it<

Evasive as ever. You just cant do it can you? You're like a shiver looking for a spine to run under. You're cowardice is merely a reflection of your lack of character and inability to mask your right wing extremism and pretend to be a member of the Muslim community at the same time. What a shallow pathetic munafiq. No google, No games, no tricks...come on, I'll be gentle, tell us what the big bad Islamist is.






Well, I think we ought to let him hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.
- John Ehrlichman

>>and pretend to be a member of the Muslim community at the same time. What a shallow pathetic munafiq.

Its not for you to say who's Muslim or not, especially since you only know me from the web. Tell us from where you arrogate this authority...the world wonders. I know your type, which is exactly why I won't give in. If you want to know my definition, you're going to have to blink first; consider this an exercise in ego reduction and a lesson about manners.

As for searching, come on, show us those mad skills, you doyen of political science!

I'll take that as another refusal on your part to answer a very straight forward question. A cop out. Its not everyday one gets to see a butterfly metamorphasize back into a slug. Virtually every post of yours is peppered with Islamist-this, Islamist-that, so I'm calling you out. So be a man and spare yourself any further humiliation and tell us the meaning of these undefined terms which only you use here are.

>since you only know me from the web.<

Which is all the more reason to question your supposed status as a member of the Muslim community given your anti-Muslim script.

>consider this an exercise in ego reduction and a lesson about manners.<

So far this has been an excercise in abject cowardice on your part. Arent you a little too old to play hide and seek? If you're so petrified of being put on the spot go curl back up in your corner, and continue chewing on your toenails. Mad skills indeed.




Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

You can call out all you want, but no one is answering because speaking to you is like speaking to a brick wall, so in the end no one cares about what you think or say because all you manage to do is turn people off to you. I'm not going to play your power game. Poor work. I'll use whatever terminology I want and your adherence to political litmus tests for determining who is a good Muslim or not only highlites the dangers of such thinking, not to mention your extremely poor manners which I think places you firmly in the Islam-as-ideology camp which, as I mentioned several times before, Zaid Shakir has well demonstrated in his article. You can find it easily as well, unless of course you're desperately avoiding for seeing your mistakes brought to light...

Methinks the neocon troll doth protest too much. There you have it folks. All this other unrelated mishmashed canard about litmus testing, powerplays, Imam Shakir, blah blah blah but Gomer will NOT answer the simple question : What is an Islamist? Look at him, he throws undefined labels at Muslims and runs off with his tail between his legs when asked for a simple clarification
Why wont he answer? Simple really, he's a munafiq and a coward who knows that the jig is up. I've seen more spine in a jellyfish.




You're a mouse studying to be a rat.
- Wilson Mizner

everyone. there is no such thing as an Islamist. Dr.M is correct. please why won't we listen to his guiding hand. Dr.M is the islamisc scholar we should all follow. we love you Dr.M.

oh, geez, cool it you two.

Thanks for the love "Abu Al-Amriki", now how about those answers? No tricks, No games, No BS...its a straight forward question.I'll ask you again : What is an Islamist?




He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.
- Henry James

"DrM" you obviously don't believe Islamists exist. You want me to give you list of items, lay them out for you before you launch into some faugely, funny ad hominem attack. But since you want some red meat, here you go:

Islamist: A person who believes that Islam is the ideal basis for not only religious organization, but also for social, political and economic organization within a given society govern by Sharia law.

Have fun with that one.

You guys are making me dizzy. One would think that an "Islamist" was one who practiced or followed Islam,just as a zionist is one who believes in "Zion". This would technically make me and Islamist.
Funny how no one puts such negative labels on Christians and Jews.

>Islamist: A person who believes that Islam is the ideal basis for not only religious organization, but also for social, political and economic organization within a given society govern by Sharia law.<

Hmmm, considering that Islam is a way of life...sounds like a Muslim to me, so why the need to use the term "Islamist" then? Where did you get this definition from? Why dont you switch back to your other identity and really tell what you really mean. Come now Gomer, come clean and stop playing games.





If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead already?
- Cynthia Heimel

>>lay them out for you before you launch into some faugely, funny ad hominem attack. But since you want some red meat,

Yup, that's exactly what he seems to hope for...

>>Hmmm, considering that Islam is a way of life

Really? Define Islam as a way of life, then! How many Islamic ways of life are there? Many or just one? Is it even possible to reduce all of human existance to the Quran and Hadith? Shall we abuse God's creation and say that God's diversity was a mistake and that one prescription fits all? Can we abuse the Quran and say that its purpose was to provide you with a way of life in a box? I doubt it.

I tire quickly of people asserting Islam as a way of life, with the implication of there being the *only one* way of life that is legitimately Islamic but then leave it almost completely undefined!

Where does the Quran lay out an economic ideology? Does it prefer Socialism, Capitalism or a mixture? Do you have to refer to Shariati's works or Qutb's works to find the answer or can you do it only from the original texts? What about government administration: Direct Democracy, Parliamentarism, Monarchy, Dictatorship? Which, then? Any choice of any of these means interpreting the Quran and Hadith since none of them say how to do it, only that it should be done by keeping God in mind and in a way to benefit people. That's pretty broad.

Islam as a way of life sounds alot more like an emotional proposition than something that can be formulated and made to work in the real world.

In America, we have a secular public sphere which protects us from the depradations of atheists and Christian Fundamentalists and who knows whatever else. Tell me, wWhich takes precedence in America to you: the secular public sphere or the Islamist way of life, which basically demands the replacement of the secular public sphere with Fiqh? Muslims criticize Israel as a Zionist state that was established on the basis of a religion (or nationality; the line is pretty blurry in that case and in this one, too). Yet, some Muslims think that a government based on what is only yet another ideology clothed in seemingly righteous clothes can do better than a Zionist regime, or that they can do better than the Iranian, Sudanese ot Talibanist regimes. I think not!

As for your assertion, I don't pull "Napoleans"; I don't need to. More people than you think disagree with both your goals and tactics. This is America and not an Islamic Republic; get used to it.

I hate to say this publicly, but I have no way to contact you. I really wish you wouldn't post, DrM. You do everyone a disservice by attacking your fellow Muslims the way you do.

Note: attacking Muslims, not the points they present.

>As for your assertion, I don't pull "Napoleans"<

Lets see if Shahed can check the respective IPs to see whos playing games "Abu-Al-Amriki." If Napo is reading this I encourage him to post, if anything it should make your public paranoia and mental breakdown all the more amusing.

>This is America and not an Islamic Republic; get used to it.<

Neither is it Trail-Parkistan where you make up fake terms and hide behind the neocon outhouse when asked for a clarification. I wonder how many munafiqs here support war crimes, rape of 14 year olds and claim to be members of the Muslim community.

>More people than you think disagree with both your goals and tactics.<

. Most repair manuals are far more interesting than you, and far less turgid to read. What "goals" would those be? Asking a simple question and watching you bobbing and weaving around it? Cmon gumby tell us what an Islamist is.....




Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
- Oscar Wilde

Ah "DrM". Silly, silly boy.

>Ah "DrM". Silly, silly boy.<

You're right on schedule. Predictable as ever. Tool.






He is useless on top of the ground; he aught to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.
- Mark Twain

"DrM" where you hugged enough as a child? May God's blessings be with you.

Ha, troll! Shame for trying to paint me as a supporter of the Mahmudiya incident when I called for thier execution if found guilt several times here and you know it.

Now, I asked many questions above that any reasonable theory and practice of "Islam as a singular way of life" would have to answer. I had hoped that you, as a proponent of this, would be able to answer at least some of them since you seem to know so much... are you up to it? Its OK if you tell us you want to defer to sheikh so and so or maulana so and so; I'll understand that you're not up to the challenge. But, don't send up red herrings and try to distract us with false attributions and pseudo-takfir. It just doesn't work.