Detroit: Thousands mourn designated terrorist Hizballah cleric

[SF-TX]

Enemies foreign and domestic.


Detroit: Thousands mourn designated terrorist Hizballah cleric

In the words of his admirer, the Islamochristian and former CNN Mideast editor Octavia Nasr, Fadlallah "hated with a vengeance the United States government and Israel," "regularly praised the terror attacks that killed Israeli citizens," was a Holocaust denier, and was "designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department."

The mainstream media constantly demands of us that we assume, without examination, that most Muslims in the U.S. -- all but a few "wackos," such as are found in "any religious group" -- are loyal citizens who love Constitutional liberties, abhor jihad terrorism, and have no intention of bringing Sharia here, at any time or in any way, in whole or in part, now or in the future.

So why would "thousands" of Shi'ites in Detroit be mourning this cleric, who green-lighted the 1983 Hizballah attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241? Hizballah's founder Hassan Nasrallah has said, "If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." Wouldn't patriotic, pluralistic American Muslims oppose Fadlallah, and not engage in such a public display of mourning, simply as a matter of principle?

Or could it be that we've been sold a bill of goods about what Muslims in the U.S. really think, and need to examine that subject much more closely?

Meanwhile, the noble Niraj Warikoo of the Detroit Free Press tells his readers about this bloodthirsty jihadist is that he was "controversial." Yes, the U.S. government makes some claims about him, but the Muslim leaders mourning him in Detroit say those claims are inaccurate, and well now, that settles it, doesn't it?

More on this story. Tiny Minority of Extremists Update: "Popular, controversial Muslim cleric mourned," by Niraj Warikoo for the Detroit Free Press, July 10:

Thousands of Shia Muslims in metro Detroit are mourning the death of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a Lebanese cleric who was enormously popular locally but controversial to his critics. Six nights of memorial services at three Shia mosques conclude Sunday at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.

Fadlallah, 74, who had been ill, died Sunday. He was considered a top scholar in the Shia Muslim world, a grand ayatollah whose views had a great deal of influence on everything from marital relations to women to politics. In Dearborn, he was probably the most respected cleric among Lebanese-American Shia Muslims, according to experts and local leaders.

Speaking to hundreds this week inside the Islamic Institute of Knowledge in Dearborn, Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights said that Fadlallah was a "man of peace, man of justice ... a man of antiterrorism and antiviolence."

The U.S. government, however, considered Fadlallah to be a terrorism supporter and spiritual leader of Hizballah. It says he sanctioned the 1983 bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Fadlallah's supporters say those claims are inaccurate and that he often criticized terrorism.

To many, he was seen as a progressive who was a strong supporter of women's rights....

Yes, as a Sharia supporter, he no doubt strongly supported a woman's right to be beaten if disobedient (Qur'an 4:34), to be one of a stable of four women (plus slave girls) servicing a man (Qur'an 4:3), to have her testimony counted as half that of a man (Qur'an 2:282), etc. etc. etc.

Posted by Robert on July 10, 2010 5:22 AM

Link (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/detroit-thousands-mourn-designated-terrorist-hizballah-cleric.html)

[Green Light]

Affecting my best Ricky Ricardo accent:

Fadlallah, you got some splainin to dooooo.

Religion of peace? Don't think so.

Speaking to hundreds this week inside the Islamic Institute of Knowledge in Dearborn, Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights said that Fadlallah was a "man of peace, man of justice ... a man of antiterrorism and antiviolence."

Wow! Did he say it with a straight face and then bust out laughing?

[Saoirse]

And pretty soon, they will be lauded as war veterans and heroes (God forbid our government recognizes them as that, next they will get veterans benefits!). Because they are already misunderstood, controversial, misquoted, etc. The dhimmis continue to excuse them and their associations and actions. Next it will be "well, somebody stole my identity and now they think I am a terrorist" <shrug> :munchin

[Richard]

And so it goes...

Richard :munchin

Passing Of Shiite Cleric Fadlallah Spells Trouble For Lebanon
CSM, 9 July 2010

For Washington, the death this week of Lebanon’s most prominent and respected Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, was a bittersweet moment.

In 1983, Fadlallah, a vocal proponent of suicide bombings, reportedly blessed the bombers of the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut that killed over 240 Americans. More recently, Fadlallah’s purported dying wish was the destruction of Israel.

Yet his death now paves the way for a more militant, Iranian-influenced strain of Islamic ideology to gain ground in Lebanon.

Fadlallah represented the most credible moral, political, and theological alternative to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia.

Notwithstanding his fiery Friday sermons targeting Israel and the United States, the Iraqi-trained Fadlallah opposed the concept of velayat-e-faqih, which puts an Iranian mullah at the pinnacle of Shiite theology and politics. He also condemned Al Qaeda and so-called honor killings of Muslim women, stances that led many Westerners to see Fadlallah, a man Washington labelled a terrorist, as a kind of moderate.

To Hezbollah, the departure of Fadlallah is an opportunity to co-opt local Shiites – traditionally aligned with quietist Iraqi religious leaders – to the more militant ideology espoused by Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The effort to shift the orientation of the community will take time, but should Hezbollah succeed, it will strengthen Tehran and further erode Washington’s influence in the region.

Fadlallah was a marja, the most senior rank in the Shiite clerical hierarchy. When he declared himself a marja in 1995 – some thirty years into his career – virtually no one else in Lebanon held that status or questioned his credentials. Indeed, Fadlallah’s predecessor, the marja Seyyid Moshen al-Ameen, passed away in 1952, leaving a gap of 43 years. In the absence of a formal succession procedure, it’s unclear what will happen next.

By tradition, Shiites adopt a marja, or religious guide, whose interpretations and rulings inform the individual’s practice. Among Shiites in Lebanon, Fadlallah and the Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani – both trained in the Iraqi city of Najaf and opposed to velayat-e-faqih – have long been the most influential religious figures. With Fadlallah gone, and Sistani nearly 81, Iran and Hezbollah hope to nudge Lebanon’s Shiites toward Tehran and Khamenei.

But this is a long term project. In the short term, Hezbollah seems poised to elevate a sympathetic local cleric to fill the vacuum. Sheikh Afaf Nabulsi, a former student of Fadlallah who was among the founders of Hezbollah, is a leading contender in this scenario. Not only does Mr. Nabulsi have close ties to Tehran, he recently visited Damascus where he was feted by top Syrian intelligence official Muhammed Nassif. And Nabulsi is interested in becoming a marja; he has already submitted his obligatory theological treatise nominating himself for the honorific.

Nabulsi has also already demonstrated his bona fides to Hezbollah. Back in December 2005, when Hezbollah ministers bolted from the government cabinet to protest the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri – Hezbollah’s allies in Damascus were the leading suspects in the killing – the militia got concerned that the pro-West governing coalition would appoint non-Hezbollahis to fill the empty cabinet slots. At the behest of the Shiite militia, Nabulsi issued a successful fatwa, a religious edict prohibiting alternative Shiites from joining the government.

But even if no local marja emerges, in the absence of Fadlallah, Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons will benefit. Without a spiritual guide, religious Lebanese Shiites will choose between Sistani and Khamenei. And with Hezbollah as Khamenei’s local campaign manager, it is all but assured that Tehran will strengthen its foothold in Lebanon.

Perhaps an Iranian takeover of Lebanese Shiite religious institutions was inevitable. In recent years, the theocracy in Tehran has made an effort to repopulate Shiite religious institutions throughout the region with its own people. What’s happening in Lebanon is a sign of things to come. Since 2003, Iran has been cultivating Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, and when the octogenarian Sistani passes from the scene, it is all but assured that Tehran will try to install Sadr in his stead.

Admittedly, US policymakers have typically not been players in the arcane world of Shiite clerical politics. How ironic, though, that Fadlallah – a man who Washington labeled a terrorist in 1995 – stood as the last bulwark against near total Iranian hegemony in Lebanon.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0709/Passing-of-Shiite-cleric-Fadlallah-spells-trouble-for-Lebanon

[SF-TX]

Commentary from Robert Spencer in Human Events:

Detroit Muslims Mourn Terrorist Cleric
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)
Posted 07/13/2010 ET


Shi’ite Muslims in Detroit were in mourning last week for the Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a world-renowned Lebanese cleric who died on July 4.

Three Shi’ite mosques conducted memorial services for six nights, with thousands of area Muslims attending.

That ought to give law enforcement and government officials pause, since Fadlallah was a bloodthirsty jihadist cleric who hated America and Israel, and approved of the 1983 Hezbollah attacks on a U.S. Marine barracks and the American Embassy in Beirut that killed over 300.

If what the mainstream media constantly tells us about Islam and Muslims is true, wouldn’t thousands of Muslims in Detroit be denouncing Fadlallah, rather than mourning him? It is constantly demanded of us, on pain of charges of “Islamophobia” and bigotry, that we assume without examination that most Muslims in the U.S.—all but a few “wackos,” such as are found in “any religious group”—are loyal citizens who love constitutional liberties, abhor jihad terrorism, and have no intention of bringing Islamic law here, at any time or in any way, in whole or in part, now or in the future.

So why do so many Detroit-area Muslims love Fadlallah? Shouldn’t patriotic, pluralistic American Muslims oppose such a man, and not engage in such a public display of mourning, simply as a matter of principle? It certainly seems so from Fadlallah’s public record.

Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights last week called Fadlallah a “man of peace, man of justice ... a man of antiterrorism and antiviolence.” There are some very compelling indications, however, that Elahi’s characterization of Fadlallah was about as accurate as calling Barack Obama an advocate of the free market.

In the words of one the ayatollah’s most notorious admirers, former CNN Mideast editor Octavia Nasr (who lost her job after she lauded Fadlallah on Twitter after he died), Fadlallah “hated with a vengeance the United States government and Israel,” “regularly praised the terror attacks that killed Israeli citizens,” was a Holocaust denier, and was “designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department.”

None of that seemed to impress the mourners in Detroit. One Detroit Free Press story noted that area Muslim leaders disputed the accuracy of some of these claims about Fadlallah, but they didn’t explain how the false information gained so much currency as to hoodwink the Treasury Department and so many others.

In August 2006, Fadlallah encouraged Hezbollah jihadists who were fighting against Israel: “You are moving ... to reach a new victory for the nation and to defeat the American and Zionist political pride and all the enemies of freedom in the region and the world. You are the soldiers of the Arab and Islamic nation and your struggle will bring victory to Arabs, Muslims and the oppressed.” He characterized their fight as a “new battle of Khaibar.”

As I explain in my book The Truth About Muhammad, Khaibar was less a battle than a massacre: Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, suddenly appeared at the Arabian oasis of Khaibar, which was inhabited by Jews, and he and his men began killing in earnest. Thus when modern-day jihadists invoke Khaibar, they are recalling an aggressive, surprise raid by Muhammad, which resulted in the final eradication of the once considerable Jewish presence in Arabia. To the jihadists, Khaybar means the destruction of the Jews and the seizure of their property by the Muslims.

Not surprisingly, Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah eulogized Fadlallah as a “merciful father.” Also not surprisingly, Fadlallah was a dear friend of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of the Iranian revolution. Yet thousands of Muslims in the Detroit area turned out to pay final respects to this man.

Could it be that we’ve been sold a bill of goods about what Muslims in the U.S. really think, and need to examine that subject much more closely?

Could the knee-jerk assumption on the part of government, media and law enforcement that all Muslims in America are “moderates” who abhor jihad terrorism and work against it, be false. And could it be leading us to expose ourselves to unnecessary vulnerability? A great deal could be riding on the answer to that question.

Link (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38015)