The other day I wrote an article in response to one in the Sunday Telegraph of 19th October, quoting at length an official in the Church of England from Bradford who claimed that the Tablighi Jama’at, the missionary arm of the group he had signed some sort of agreement with in Bradford, citing “many examples of Christian and Muslim leaders working in partnership”, in fact did not engage and promoted an “us and them” mentality, among other things. As so often when a right-wing British paper wants to slander the Tablighi Jama’at, they called on the so-called Centre for Islamic Pluralism, whose British spokesman, Irfan al-Alawi, obliged. I pointed out that the CIP’s leader, Stephen Schwartz, “is notorious for cosying up to American Jewish and fundamentalist Christian bigots (i.e. those who run Front Page Magazine, where most of his writings seem to appear) and telling the Muslims’ enemies what they want to hear by denouncing prominent Muslims as extremists”. Schwartz responded by calling me “obviously illiterate and dishonest”, alleged that the only prominent Muslims he had denounced were extremists — “name an exception” — and threatening to sue me.
On finding that comment, I posted a question to the DeenPort forum, knowing that that site has also been an object of Schwartz’s slander in the past, asking for who might like to testify in case he did sue me, knowing that there would be plenty of people willing to testify to the good character of some of those he had slandered. Schwartz, after unleashing another barrage of slander against me and against two prominent (non-scholar) defenders of traditional Islam, told me:
I said you deserve to be called to account, and you cried like a little girl. That’s satisfaction enough for me.
And it would have to be, because in the face of so much evidence that some of those he had attacked as extremists in fact were not, and the multitude of people who could testify to their good character, he would have been humiliated in court, much like David Irving.
When I first came across Schwartz’s writings, it was still the 1990s and he was associated with Hisham al-Kabbani’s wing of Shaikh Nazim’s tariqa. After 9/11, I found an article by him on the front page of the Spectator, then and perhaps now the leading conservative political magazine in the UK (then, it had no real competition), blaming the 9/11 attacks on Wahhabism, and a similar article from him ([1], [2], [3]) appeared in the Telegraphh around the same time, i.e. September 2001. Even then, his writings included ridiculous hyperbole, such as in this piece on FrontPage Magazine in which he claims that “Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi death cult represent naked Islamofascism”. The term “death cult” is meaningless, sounding like it was extracted from a tabloid headline about the Heaven’s Gate incident, and does not describe Wahhabism, particularly Wahhabism as a whole. Wahhabism as it exists now diverges from mainstream Islam on certain matters of aqida, such as rejecting figurative interpretations of certain Qur’anic passages, rejecting the idea of following one of the four schools of thought in Islamic law, rejecting seeking intercession through the righteous or even Prophets, and rejecting Sufism. None of that makes it a “death cult”, particularly as their “mainstream” scholars reject suicide bombing and everything else connected with al-Qa’ida; none of it is a threat to non-Muslims; rather it is a doctrinal disagreement among Muslims and (given the behaviour of some of them) a matter of vexation to other Muslims.
Nor do they represent “naked Islamofascism”. Fascism is a European ideology, and common features of fascist states include personality cults (the Fuhrer, the Duce, and so on), and a totalitarian police state with a pervasive display of propaganda and a heavy government hand in the economy. In the Muslim world, this is best represented in some Arab nationalist socialist regimes; the only regime that could really be called Islamofascism is that of post-revolutionary Iran. Most of it offends against the Wahhabi sensibility; I am sure you would not see building-sized portraits of Osama bin Laden in places in Pakistan or Afghanistan sympathetic to him. Even if he allowed his picture to be taken, the government might not allow the pictures to be displayed.
Some of us were willing to excuse his association with FrontPage Magazine, a notoriously Islamophobic site with a heavy Jewish extremist neo-conservative presence, while he was attacking the Wahhabis. His attacks on Shaikh Hamza Yusuf are of another order entirely. We all thought he was a traditionalist Muslim who hated what is widely considered to be a force for the destruction of traditional Islam, and that Hisham al-Kabbani’s group were among its defenders, even if we disapproved of his speech to the US State Department. Their website, sunnah.org, still contains extracts from Shaikh Hamza’s speeches and writings, including an entire interview with him. The gist of his accusations is that, before 9/11, Shaikh Hamza had been a fiery anti-American orator, and afterwards, he transformed himself into a Sufi and claimed to have been an advisor to George W Bush.
A common accusation against Shaikh Hamza is that, at an ICNA conference at the University of Southern California, he gave “a classic oration” on the subject of “Why Jihad is the Only Way”. The accusation appeared in the Weekly Standard in Sept 2004: [1], [2]), but it has been repeated on a number of other websites (a search on Google reveals over 100 hits, but most of them are quotes of one or two of Schwartz’s articles). The trouble is that Schwartz has never furnished us with an actual quote from the speech, and no trace of it is available anywhere. The speech was given in 1991, at the same time that the Bosnian war was ongoing. Any time before about 1998, a speech to that effect could have been given in the west without eyebrows being raised. In fact, Schwartz had a poem published in The Muslim Magazine entitled The Ballad of Imam Shamil, intended to be sung to the tune of Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie, praising the Muslim jihadist who fought the Russians, at a time when Chechens were doing the same, with some success (and before the foreign extremists had ruined it).
Schwartz also accuses Hamza of making this claim:
I am a citizen of this country not by choice but by birth. I reside in this country not by choice but by conviction in attempting to spread the message of Islam in this country. I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights or any other element of this society that is held sacrosanct by the ill-informed peoples that make up this charade of a society. . . . [T]here should be no voting or debate . . . [W]e have no room for ayes or nays.
The reader will notice the short quotes from the middle of sentences interspersed with dots, a classic sign of words being taken out of context. Schwartz repeats the quote in this article (originally on Family Security Matters, a political website of much the same stripe as FrontPage), opining after it that “the final lines in this quotation reflect the standard radical Islamist contempt for all forms of democratic governance”. However, material I read in 2000, in a book containing both his and Shaikh Abdullah bin Bayyah’s writing, emphasises the importance of obeying the law and keeping agreements, particularly for immigrant Muslims. He stressed that they had an obligation to leave, and not stay indefinitely on tourist visas, which was common practice at that time.
In his article for the Spectator, he makes this accusation:
Hanson varies his message according to his audience: when he speaks before crowds where jihadists dominate, he proudly repudiates any questioning of radical Islam and shouts his hope that others will also ‘fail the test’ of moderate belief.
This refers unmistakeably to Shaikh Hamza’s announcement that Daniel Pipes had set a test of moderation and that he had failed it and hoped others would as well. Parts of it include uncontroversial demands to condemn named extremist groups, to which most American Muslims have no connection whatsoever (like the Algerian GIA), but others demand rejection of aspects of Islamic law which disagree with western norms. So, Schwartz’s claim is dishonest: Shaikh Hamza did not talk of failing any generic test of Muslim moderation, but one specific loaded test, posited in the Jerusalem Post in 2003, by a man with a record of hostility to Muslims.
Before and after 9/11, Shaikh Hamza has been foremost in promoting Islamic learning among Muslims in an attempt to keep traditional scholarship alive, against the pressures of modernism and Wahhabism. This is why he opened the Zaytuna Institute and why he ran the Deen Intensive courses, and it has been an inspiration for other such efforts, such as the SunniPath website and distance learning institution. Without people like Shaikh Hamza, Islamic learning on the four madhhabs would be restricted to Urdu-based teaching by Indian and Pakistani scholars, and the Deobandi-Bareilawi barrier might have been stronger among the youth than it is. That Shaikh Hamza promoted Sufi practices before 2001 is not in dispute; for example, he wrote the foreword to this collection of litanies (awraad) by Imams al-Haddad and al-Nawawi, published by Starlatch, and his association with scholars like Shaikh Nuh Keller, an active Sufi shaikh of the Shadhili-Darqawi tariqa whose defences of Sufism against both perennialism and Wahhabism are well known (and they were originally published in writing on the website run by Mas’ud Ahmed Khan, to whom we will come later), and the shaikhs of Hadramaut. One would have thought that someone campaigning against Wahhabis imposing on traditional Muslims in Europe (such as here) and someone campaigning to keep classical Islamic scholarship, spirituality and religious culture alive in America and in western Europe would be on the same side.
While most Muslims would disagree with some of the statements made by Shaikh Hamza in his interviews in the post-9/11 period, much of what he said was in keeping with his stances in the years previously. He also identified, very early on, the conspiracy theories about 9/11 that some Muslims were inclined to believe. While there had always been those who rejected him simply because of the type of scholarship and religious practice he advocated, some condemned him outright for what he said in his post-9/11 interviews, in one case resorting to racism.
Not content with attacking Shaikh Hamza, Schwartz has also made those who have defended him targets of his vitriol. In this article, originally published at Family Security Matters, he attacks the DeenPort website:
The UK features an Islamic website, www.deenport.com, promoting the alleged benevolence of Hamza Yusuf Hanson and other “born-again moderates.” But deenport.com also exists to slander and intimidate. Monday had not ended when Fareena Alam, a semiliterate Muslim scribbler and deenport commissar living in Britain, went on the attack. Alam preens her success in inducing Newsweek International to publish a feeble defense of the Islamist veil. Now she asked, “Can someone who has hosted Irfan Alawi… please tell us what he is like in person?” She continued, “Why is he aligning himself to Stephen Schwartz?… This is not a good sign.”
The next commentator on the site reproached Alam for her lack of “good adab,” writing, “I think your post is extremely provocative and is likely to invite people to say negative things about Irfan Alawi on a public forum which would be slanderous. Especially from people in the Tablighi movement.”
This appeared in an article called A Dab of Adab, which alleged that the Islamic concept of adab (good manners) was commonly used among Muslims in the UK to “suppress dissent” and “can get in the way of good-hearted Muslims speaking out”. DeenPort is an excellent website, and is one of the few mainstream Sunni forums where men have to give full names (women can use a kunya, but must give a recognisable name), ensuring that no troublemaker can come on with a name like “Jihadi786” and start telling everyone they have to “kill the kuffar”; Deobandi-Bareilawi bickering is banned (even mentioning the names is discouraged) and, most importantly, adherence to the four schools and approval of traditional practices, including Sufism, is a given. It is, in short, a safe space for traditional Muslims, and it is rare for debates to get out of hand on that site (a contrast to some other forums, notably the old ASFA forum which had to be shut down because there was too much acrimonious arguing).
Also up for attack is Aftab Malik, founder of Amal Press, which has also published a number of titles on classical scholarship, including The Broken Chain, by Malik himself, and one volume of al-Hidayah, a popular textbook of Hanafi fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). After he wrote this article defending Shaikh Hamza against a defamatory sideswipe in the Spectator, Schwartz alleged that he is part of Shaikh Hamza’s entourage, a strange idea given that they live in two different countries, and also that he published a book by Harun Yahya (Islam Denounces Terrorism), which brings the author’s usual anti-Darwinist line into the subject, but the title pretty much says it all. Amal Press jumped at the chance to publish a colourful book denouncing terrorism (and mentioning the Najdi, i.e. Wahhabi, backdrop) which Muslims would read and non-Muslims would notice, amid a lot of other books promoting moderate mainstream Islam (and Harun Yahya’s other books were published in English by other publishers), and all Schwartz can do is complain and insult. In his recent comment here, Schwartz calls Aftab “another munafiq” (hypocrite, which can be a generally dishonest person but also someone who falsely pretends to be a Muslim), apparently without minding the enormous consequences of such accusations, particularly when they are without any basis whatsoever.
Schwartz also insulted Mas’ud Khan, who has been publishing the writings of Shaikh Nuh Keller and Abdul-Hakim Murad since the mid-1990s, as well as a host of other materials defending mainstream aqida against attacks from Wahhabis and others, as a “loudmouth slob”. The articles on his website include material written by the shaikh whose picture appears on each page of his “Islamic Pluralism” site - Shaikh Muhamamad bin ‘Alawi al-Maliki - and about the situation of Muslims in the Balkans which should be of interest to Schwartz. Surely this is someone else Schwartz should consider an ally. Does he care about Wahhabism in the west anymore? Did he ever?
Schwartz is perhaps the most egregious of a trend we have seen much of in the last few years: of Muslims, or at least self-proclaimed Muslims (as their target audience often does not care for the difference between a Muslim and, say, an Isma’ili), standing up and announcing that they are “telling things how they are”, and ripping into the community, often in front of a non-Muslim audience, and accusing its leaders of being terrorist sympathisers, extremists etc., and accusing anyone who disagrees with them of lying, being deluded, “drinking the Kool-Aid” or something similarly disparaging. Ed Husain and his friends are one example in the UK, we have seen Abdur-Rahman Muhammad (recent example) in the USA, but Schwartz’s hatred for a whole spectrum of Muslims, from Wahhabis to the CAIR leadership to Shaikh Hamza and Mas’ud Khan, is unfathomable from a Muslim. Is it all a vehicle for generating controversy to raise his own profile? Does he have a personal vendetta? (In the years I’ve been Muslim, I’ve met very few people with bad things to say about Shaikh Hamza.) Schwartz alleges that adab functions as a gagging device; in the past, I have personally faced censure for suggesting that certain “shaikhs” are not all that they are made out to be (such as that they are not in fact authorised, or are not as strict in their adherence to Islamic law as a shaikh should be), although none of this happened on DeenPort. I do not disagree with Schwartz on Shaikh Hamza because I am a fan-boy or afraid of censure; I disagree because Shaikh Hamza is a great teacher of Islam and a credit to the Muslims, and Schwartz’s claims are outrageous and ridiculous.
When we see someone who first claims to be a Sufi, who writes a poem praising a Sufi jihad leader, who attacks Wahhabis in the media, who then turns on one of the sect’s most vocal and effective intellectual and scholarly opponents, and does much of this in papers and magazines notorious for their hostility to Muslims, including one which allows someone to call for the nuclear bombing of Makkah, one which allows a serial slanderer of Muslims to allege, falsely, that Muslims sacralise public spaces in England by holding processions, and one which allows someone to come out of nowhere to liken Muslims to dogs, Janjaweed and Nazis, one must ask questions. If anyone is behaving like a hypocrite, it is certainly not Aftab Malik or Mas’ud Khan.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Lactose intolerance
- Aftab Malik on Schwartz’s defamations
- Spectator refuse my “poem”
- Britain’s “unique problem” according to Schwartz
- Schwartz on Sufism
The ‘ulema say, One of the signs of acceptance from Allah is the way the Ummah clasps onto that very thing. We see examples of this in the 4 Madhabs, the various Tariqah’s, Islamic texts like Imam al-Nawawi’s 40 Hadith, the Sahihayn and so on. We can also relate this to men of Allah. Shaykh Hamza (h) is a man of Allah. The work he has done for Muslims in the west, and the people he has inspired to go and become who they are, and benefit the Ummah with the way people have in the last 15 years - I seriously don’t think people can genuinely grasp this phenomenon! For a lot of us it is a blessing in itself to be living in these times just to witness how Allah (swt) has used and continues to use Shaykh Hamza as a vessel for spreading and reviving the deen in the west.
A few hundred years from now people will be talking about Shaykh Hamza just as they talk in our time of great scholars and their achievements from the last few centuries. They won’t be talking about Stephen, or is it Steven? Who? ;)
May Allah (swt) continue to bless Shaykh Hamza, and envelope him in His infinite mercy. Ameen!
So Comrade Sandalio (Stephen Schwartz) has decided to come after you too. It is not just major Muslim figures that he spends his days attacking but also antiwar conservative figures in the US. Justin Raimondo, Pat Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, the American Conservative magazine, and many others have been called “fascists” and other nasty names by Schwartz in his fits of rage.
For more on Schwartz see:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5226 http://www.lewrockwell.com/got.....ied79.html http://www.infoshop.org/myep/schwartz.html
Schwartz is truly a mad man, in a world of his own. But I can only see an emeny of Islam disguised as a so called Muslim. It is easy for anyone to say they are a ‘Muslim’ and think it is a permit to attack the Muslim community and its key individuals. I could even be inclined believe that the man and his aliases are bogus and that the name is just a front for neo-con agendas.
Well done and keep up the great work!
Salaams.
Wow. This was a really interesting piece. I think it is fair to say that the one thing behind any hateful rant is just that: HATE.
It is so funny to me how people like him, Pipes, Horowitz, etc, claim to be so desperately seeking “moderates” and then when they do actually find some “moderates” they proceed to stomp all over them and scream that they are not moderate enough. Yusuf, as hard as it is, don’t let these creeps get under your skin. THEY are the ones who are the extremists. They want nothing more than to play “thought police” to the Muslim masses and drain ever last bit of Islam out of our minds and souls.
Do you want to know what Dan’s original “moderate Muslim” test was? It was: 2+2=5.
These guys are the prime examples of modern day Inquisitors.
May Allah protect you and all the muslim brothers you have mentioned. They are all truly sincere muslims and do not deserve to be attacked by anyone and especially by one who claims to be muslim.
This is a clear case of the chicken coming home to roost. After 9/11 Hamza Yusuf and his followers went on one heck of an ego trip denouncing everyone and everything left and right, all forms of questionable political behavior post 9/11 was passed off as “dawah” and of “fighting extremism”.
Now that one of your own has done an Ed Husain job on you, you now scream “unfairness” or being “taken out of context” or “slander”. Where was all of this when your own “sheikh” and his groupies and fanboys were doing the same post 9/11?
Salaam Alaikum,
An excellent post, masha Allah.
A good response to his nasty rants.
If his reaction to a passing mention in the previous post was as bad as we all saw in the comments he made, I wonder what his response to this will be.
Stephen Schwartz is a truly disgusting character whose loyalties are to the enemies of Islaam so nothing that emanates from him is truly surprising. But I find it ridiculous that you are more bothered by Schwartz’ attack on Hamza Yusuf than by his colloboration with the enemies of Islaam and his inciting the kuffar against other Muslims, especially “Wahabis”. Where is the condemnation from these so-called “traditionals” against these Sufis who are engaging in the same behaviour as Schwartz such as Abdul-Hakim Murad, Irfan Alawi, Hisham Kabbani, etc.
Shaykh Hisham and Abdal Hakim Murad do not belong in the same category as Schwartz and Irfan al-Alawi, the former two are ulama, highly learned and do not go in for attacking and defaming individuals. They say it like it is. Schwartz is really what he accuses us all of, a jahil, a nobody, someone who thinks himself more important than he really is.
Wahhabism/Salafism needs to be countered, since it is a deviant ideology, but deranged diatribe from the likes of Irfan Alawi and Schwartz is not what is called for. More reasoned and nuanced arguments that are presented by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad and Shaykh Hisham Kabbani are what is needed. Not all those who follow this deviant ideology are terrorists or are inclined to terrorism. I think it very disingenuous of you to lump Shaykh AHM and Sh HK in the same category as Schwartz and Irfan al-Alawi. Mind you, I didn’t expect any different from someone who double-vowels.
I’ve never really understood what Islamic or political differences Schwartz had with Hamza Yusuf, especially since Schwartz’s spiritual guru, Hisham Kabbani and Hamza Yusuf seemed so comfortable together, this was a link from one of their many joint appearances:
http://www.sunnah.org/events/hamza/khatry.htm
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum Sameer,
Schwartz hasn’t been associated with Kabbani for some time; he left a comment to this effect on Umar Lee’s blog some time ago, but the page has been deleted.
I think we need to be honest here. Between the so-called “Wahhabis” and the so-called Sufis there is much polarization. There has been sectarian and theological differences for centuries. The problem is when one side goes to the kuffar to aid them in attacking the other side. Hisham Kabbani, who is generally avoided by mainstream traditional Muslims in the US, has associated with neo-conservative think tanks and figures on a consistent basis. It is Kabbani that figures like Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson cite to “prove” that an overwhelming masajid in the US are under the control of subversive “Wahhabis.” I think it easy to attack and demonize the other side (“Wahhabis” are khawarij, the Sufis are mushrikun, and other such extreme polemics), but each side needs to police its own ranks and disassociate themselves from those who would aid the kuffar against other Muslims. Sectarianism should not be allowed to be used as a tool for the kuffar to fight and divide the Muslims.
I concur that Abdul-Hakim Murad isn’t as bad as Stephen Schwartz or Irfan Alawi in regards to colloboration with the enemies of Islaam, but he still engages in the same behaviour as them such as inciting the kuffar against the “Wahabis”. As for Hisham Kabbani, he is just as bad as Schwartz and Alawi and he is one of the first who began this inciting with his testimony front of the American congress in the early 90’s and colloborating with the enemies of Islaam such as the Neocons. Stephen Schwartz also was a “mureed” of Kabbani and I have not heard of any condemnation of Schwartz by Kabbani. I think that Kabbani played a huge role in moulding Schwartz and this evident in Schwartzs’ writing and Kabbani bears some guilt in this regard. As for your spurious tazkiyyah for Kabbani and Murad as being “ulama”, then even by “traditional” standards, I doubt Murad would be considered a “scholar”. What is the benefit of this ‘ilm if you colloborate with the enemies of Islaam?! Kabbani is a court “scholar” who has a long history of colloborating with the enemies of Islaam, many of whom sing his praise and pump him up because of his defeatist and treacherous manhaj. Daniel Pipes, Stephen Emerson, Bernard Lewis, and many other enemies of Islaam have all praised Kabbani as their ideal Muslim. Kabbani is also courted by the American government and the secularist taghoot of Uzbekistan, “Islam!” Karimov. I’ll give two examples of Kabbani’s unIslaamic behaviour. When he was called out by some Muslims in the US for his testimony in the Congress, he cited the American Constitution, not the Qur’an and Sunnah to justify his behaviour. Another example is an article at his website where he attacks Shaykh Ali al-Hudayfi for making takfeer of the Jews and Christians in one of his khutbahs! As for Murad, just look at his appearance on “Dispatches”, inciting against the “Wahabis” which caused harm to the brothers who were profiled on the program or read Murad’s articles attacking the “Wahabis” many of which are filled with lies and ignorance of current affairs. As for your saying that “Wahabism/Salafism” needs to be countered”, then do you and your ilk counter it in the Western media by inciting the enemies of Islaam against “Wahabism” especially in the fundamentals of the deen. This shows the moral bankruptcy of the Sufis who engage in this behaviour. If these are your “scholars”, than hanee’an laqa! You being bothered by my writing in double vowels(even though there are Sufis who do the same thing) instead of the defeatist and treacherous manhaj of your shuyookh shows that you have your priorities messed up.
Good post Abu Umar, but it is overwhelmingly the Sufis who have been engaging in this behaviour in the West. Show me a Salafi equivalent of Stephen Schwartz, Irfan Alawi, Abdul-Hadi Palazzi, Hisham Kabbani, etc.
@Saarim,
I do know of self-proclaimed Salafis who have used the government to get their Deobandi opponents deported.
As for the Sufis, unfortunately they have moved very far from the legacy of Imam Shamyl, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri, ‘Umar Mukhtar, Uthman dan Fodio, etc.
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
Br. Abu Umar: was that in the west or in Saudi Arabia? I do remember reading some “salafis” boasting on one of their websites (either TROID or SPubs) that one of their activists had recommended that the Tablighi Jama’at not be allowed into the country. I also heard it alleged that “salafis” working for the US border service had tried to dissuade people coming to a “sufi” conference laid on by Hisham Kabbani from coming, on the grounds that it was a “kufr and shirk” conference.
However, I do think there is a place (sometimes) for involving the governments in tackling religious deviation, as long as it is done openly. When one is acting against a group one opposes on theological grounds, and pretends it’s about extremism and tells the authorities that Shaikh X once stood on a platform or sat in a committee with alleged extremist Shaikh Y, that is to be condemned, as with those who talk of extremism as a way of stopping the Abbey Mills mosque, when they really just want to stop a Tablighi centre being built.
Also, regarding the legacy of Imam Shamyl etc: the problem is that these were Muslim leaders responding to the situations of their time. In recent times, many Sufis have been involved in trying to keep Islamic teaching, or the practice of Islam itself, alive in difficult circumstances. This is particularly true of Sufis in the Soviet era, but also of some of those in the Arab world today, where there is the pressure of modernity, of modernism (including oppressive state modernism), of state interference (e.g. in Egypt, where there have been laws passed which insist that only sons of shaikhs can be made shaikhs), and of sectarianism and extremism. There are times when shaikhs have to tell people to have patience and that fighting is vain or just wrong, and some young people simply do not want to hear that.
wa ‘alaykum as-Salam,
It happened in the US, down in Florida if I recall correctly.
I am very much opposed to working with the US or British governments against other Muslims under the guise of fighting “extremism.” We both know that neither of these governments have any love for the Muslims and are always looking for ways to undermine our religion. Of course if one knows for a fact that there is someone planning some violent activity that will result in the deaths of innocent people, they should go to the police, but beyond that I see little justification for using the power of a non-Muslim state against other Muslim groups.
With this I agree, but unfortunately this is exactly what is happening. One can find numerous examples of various groups using the state or the non-Muslim (neocon) media to target their theological opponents. This is a dangerous path to traverse. We should be ready to rebuke anyone or any group that involves themselves in such activities.
I understand and agree more or less. What I was referring too was Western personalities that make comments that undermine the notion of military jihad and resistance. Unfortunately this a common habit among both Western Sufis and most Western Salafis.
Abu Umar, I didn’t deny that some Salafis(which they must be condemned for) might be engaging in this behaviour in the West, but it is still overwhelmingly the Sufis who are engaging in this behaviour. I don’t see any major condemnation by the “traditionals” of these actions.
Selamaleykum
So, the faker behind “Indigo Jo” now engages in more illiterate lies to project the hatred he feels on me and others. That would be absurd if it were not so revealing.
“Front Page Magazine, where most of his writings seem to appear.” My last article on Frontpage appeared on June 16, 2005. Since your clock is apparently as busted as your brain, that was more than three years ago. So you engaged in deliberate deception, masked by the hilarious use of the word “seem” — which we real journalists, as opposed to bloggers, call “weasel words.”
Your obvious illiteracy includes not knowing what the terms “slander” and “libel” mean. I did not “slander” or “libel” you because all my statements about you were opinion and made without exception in response to your pompous and absurd attacks on me. I never heard of you, that slob Mas’ud Khan, Fareena Alam, or Aftab Malik until you all attacked me. None of you are “prominent Muslims.” Nobody except you and your little circle of narcissists and puffers pays attention to you.
The repeat your intimation that only “enemies of the Muslims” oppose Tabligh i Jama’at. That is obviously lying propaganda from you. TJ has many serious opponents in the Muslim world, as you know well.
You, in your illiterate fashion, reject the term “Islamofascism” because fascism is, according to you, only a European ideology. Every serious scholar of the Islamic world recognizes the fascist influence in the Muslim Brotherhood. As for the definition of fascism as involving “personality cults (the Fuhrer, the Duce, and so on), and a totalitarian police state with a pervasive display of propaganda and a heavy government hand in the economy” since you were too busy with your narcissistic nonsense you apparently did not notice the role of TJ as a personality cult, the adulation of Bin Laden, and the nature of the Saudi kingdom as a totalitarian police state that engages in global propaganda and close control of its economy. Everyone else notices that. Your illiteracy extends to writing “Even if [OBL] allowed his picture to be taken, the government might not allow the pictures to be displayed.” OBL did various video interviews and issued videos, thus obviously allowing his picture to be taken, as the whole world knows; T-shirts of OBL and posters of him are for sale all over Pakistan. You seem to know nothing that goes on in the Muslim ummah except for your own twitches.
You were “willing to excuse” me? Who are you? You are nobody. Your excusing me means nothing to me.
I first published on the danger to Muslims in Bosnia in 1987, in a major American newspaper, and every informed Bosnian knows I have written more on this topic than almost any other Western writer. In reality, you silly jackass, the Bosnian war began in 1992, not in 1991. So you cannot put your filthy hands on Bosnia to justify Handsome Hanson’s miserable rhetoric.
You misrepresent my quote from Handsome Hanson’s extremist screeching, which you try to disclaim, by mentioning that it dropped some words. Here you are obviously bluffing. Most of the material dropped and replaced by a dieresis were: “F]undamentals of Islam are being compromised… [C]onvention resolutions are meaningless Masonic exersises (sic) devised by men who desire to engage people in forums that would insure nothing changes.” How does this slop change the extremist character of his speech? The outburst by Handsome Hanson was delivered in opposition to an ICNA resolution against the criminal burning of African American churches. Do you dare defend Handsome Hanson’s position on this?
When Hanson screamed, in his high-pitched voice, against Pipes’ definition of moderate Islam, he neither described the latter nor made any delicate distinctions such as you insert. He simply yelled his rejection of it. That speaks for itself.
Your cult adulation of Hanson is so absurd it is literally hallucinatory. You write, “Without people like Shaikh Hamza, Islamic learning on the four madhhabs would be restricted to Urdu-based teaching by Indian and Pakistani scholars.” So nobody in the Balkans, Turkey, Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, or southeast Asia, where nobody reads Urdu and almost nobody except marginal types like you ever heard of Hanson, knows about the mazahib? You write like a Scientologist expressing your illimitable, fawning crush on Handsome Hanson.
You question my reference to “Shaikh Hamza’s entourage, a strange idea given that they live in two different countries.” All of us except you have noticed that the Handsome Hanson circus is an international enterprise with gullible followers in many countries.
You write that I have expressed “hatred” for “a whole spectrum of Muslims, from Wahhabis to the CAIR leadership to Shaikh Hamza and Mas’ud Khan.” First, you should be clear on the difference between hatred and contempt. I have no hatred for these speculators and parasites. I have contempt for them. And the Wahhabis, CAIR, Handsome Hanson, and Mas’ud the Mouth are not much of a spectrum — in fact they and you are a small, marginal grouping that dedicate yourself to causes no sane Muslim should defend, including trying to prettify Wahhabism, distorting the statements on the record of Hanson, covering for Tabligh i Jamaat, and even offering excuses for the deranged conspiratorialist Harun Yahya. And since when does the latter get his books published by reputable Western publishers?
You are such a hysterical little nobody you cannot even get geography right. You mention “the situation of Muslims in the Baltic.” Get an atlas, moron. The Baltic is not the same as the Balkans. The Baltic includes Scandinavia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Lithuania has a fairly significant Tatar community which has existed for 400 years. These are obviously topics of which you know absolutely nothing,
It really comes down, as anyone can see from your incompetent, cowardly, and weak screed, to you having a perverse attachment to Handsome Hanson, to the point of promoting him as a kind of mahdi, and being angry at me for taking issue with his nifaq, which includes squirming between attacking the U.S. Constitution, kissing up to Bush, and pretending to be a Sufi. I have changed nothing in my writings. I defended Shamyl; I still defend the Chechens. I defended Bosnia; I still defend the Bosnians. I denounced Wahhabism as a death cult, which is how Saudi subjects who are oppressed by it, and its victims around the world, describe it; I still do so. How could a deviant sect which killed so many people be described otherwise? You really have no defense to offer for your obloquy except your shirk in devotion to Hanson; you and your admirers and enablers are pathetic nobodies. The idea that anybody will read anything Hanson has said or written in 100 years is ludicrous.
As for publishing in places that also publish things you and I might both disagree with, that is what freedom of the press, which you do not understand, means in the West. Media is like the underground; everybody rides on it and nobody is responsible for the opinions of other passengers.
Regarding the sewer comments by your supporters, everyone in America considers Dennis Raimondo, alias Justin, Pat Buchanan, and Paul Gottfried to have a strong tendency toward neofascism. Gottfried was exposed as fabricating lies about me, which The American Conservative was forced to acknowledge. And how is it that my past as a leftist 24 years ago is somehow relevant but Handsome Hanson cannot be called to account for his extremist speeches before 9/11?
Allah knows best.
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
Isn’t it odd that someone in the US pays so much attention to a little blog based in the UK?
Who is “everyone” (you and David Horowitz?) and what is your definition of fascism? Raimondo is a libertarian, so the militarism and the state intervention in the economy that are the pillars of fascism are not his cup of tea. He reads Murray Rothbard, not the Mein Kampf. Or is it that anyone who is an opponent of you is a fascist?
Your role as a Trotsky apologist in the National Review is quite a bit more recent than a quarter of a century ago.
It’s funny the reaction that you get out of Stephen Schwartz, he is obviously someone who has “issues”. We may all be nobodies at least we know and acknowledge that, the worst kind of nobody is the nobody who knows he’s a nobody but insists he is somebody. Every response from him is pitiful. It’s me, me, me, I this, I that.
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
I am not sure by what criteria you call me a “faker”. I have always made my identity clear, as you can see on my “about” page.
As for FPM, the fact is that dozens of your articles appeared there until 2005; after that, you transferred to Family Security Matters, which is of a similar political stripe. It was not “weasel words” or deception, rather, that appeared to be where most of your online writings from that time appeared. It is said that you can tell a man by the company he keeps, and writing article after article for someone’s magazine is more significant than appearing on a platform with him once or twice, something which is commonly used as an excuse to condemn someone. I am sure you choose these magazines because you know people will be only too pleased to hear what you have to say, and won’t see (or even look) through you.
I do know what slander and libel mean. I was not using them in a legal sense, but more in the sense of vituperating or “slagging him off”. Whether your comments were in the spirit of opinion or fact, that will not save you when you answer before Allah, because ghiba means much less than what you have done with your writings. Calling someone a slob is a gratuitous personal insult, unrelated to br. Mas’ud’s (very mild) writings against you (he has not personally insulted you, rather rebutted your hysterical rantings against shaikh Hamza).
As for Tablighi Jama’at: I appreciate that it has opponents among Muslims, the loudest among them being sectarians, namely Brelvis and Wahhabis who accuse them of shirk and all the other things they find wrong in “Sufis”. The point was that there are those who want to stop them having a centre in east London because they oppose them on the same theologicals and methodological grounds for which they have always opposed the TJ. I have never noticed a personality cult among the TJ, whatever other criticisms one might make about them. You connect the Saudi kingdom, the TJ and the global Wahhabi sect, when the TJ are not part of the Wahhabi sect; they are Hanafis with Maturidi aqida.
I do know about pictures of OBL and T-shirts with them on. What about those pictures of him on every other wall and on the sides of buildings? The only people who have received that “honour” are various presidents.
As for shaikh Hamza, the fact remains that you have used two quotes from him, one of them from as far back as 1991, to imply that his entire moderate stance in late 2001 was a fake. That just won’t do; it’s not proof. It only stands as evidence in the court of ignorant and prejudiced non-Muslims whose journals and webzines you write in. People do change in ten years. I am sure that if you had serious evidence of his having an extremist stance in 1999 or thereabouts, just before 9/11, you would have offered it, rather than recycling the same couple of quotes over and over again.
You accuse me of “shirk in devotion to Hanson” and still insist that I might be a blind devotee. I am not. I do not think anybody believes that he is one of the major ulama, let alone a mahdi; we regard him as a teacher of Islam, pure and simple, albeit one who has promoted the teaching and learning of traditional Islam in the USA with much success, ma sha Allah. Will anyone read his books in 100 years? I don’t know, but people in America and the UK might be reading the work of Imam Ghazali and Imam al-Haddad rather than Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Baz in that time, perhaps because one of his parents attended Shaikh Hamza’s lectures. One time I have heard him get heated while delivering a talk was when he was talking about people attacking Imam Ghazali.
And this is, so far, his main achievement: there is an English-based culture of traditional Islam in (parts of) the USA and UK, and it is not entirely his work but he is a big contributor to it (and I was talking about the USA and UK and not Bosnia). I wonder what you have done for this cause, apart from shouting about “the Wahhabi death cult” from the rooftops while denouncing one of its most effective and vocal opponents in the west.
Stephen Schwartz posted at Family Security Matters? Holy crap!
Isn’t that where genocidal maniac Phillip Atkinson posted his rants (see posts on Dunner’s blog here and here)?
Anyone who writes for FSM must be regarded as highly suspect. I’ve just looked at the homepage and the current articles are by a Who’s Who of US Islamophobes - Jeffrey Imm, Steve Emerson, Michelle Malkin etc.
Your responses are a ridiculous waste of ink and truly pathetic, Stephen Schwartz. What I find facetious is that when you write among Muslims you refer to yourself as “Suleyman” to give yourself credence as if Muslims are simpletons whose minds can be belittled by this childish behaviour. You can try out that tomfoolery at Fox “News”. I’ll respond to your “rebuttals” on FPM and Jama’at at-Tableegh 1. That you would even write at the despicable FrontPageMag, which has been at the forefront of attacking and inciting hatred against Islaam and Muslims in the United States, is enough for me to expose your treachery and alliance with the enemies of Islaam. That you stopped writing there in 2005 doesn’t mean a thing if you haven’t repudiated what you have written attacking Islaam under the guise of attacking “Wahabism” or “extremism” or your colloboration with the most virulent Islamophobes such as David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Stephen Emerson, etc. Here is the archive of your writings there where you wrote for 3 years!: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Ar.....970b8d7b3c I’m pretty sure if a Jew wrote in Der Sturmer for several years, you would consider him a kapo. How are you any different?! Many Neocons and their fellow travellers on the Right were and still are fond of you using the term “useful idiots” against those who opposed the imperial wars and policies of the American government and accusing them of allying with the “Islamofascists”. Your pal, David Horowitz, wrote a whole book on the subject accusing certain leftists of being in bed with “Radical Islam” even though opposition to the Neocon agenda runs the gamut across the political spectrum in the United States. That certain leftists’ opposition to the Neocon agenda coincides with Muslim opposition doesn’t mean that they are patsies for “Radical Islam”. They have their own reasons for their antiwar positions similar to conservatives who also share these positions. One of the biggest hypocrisies of the Neocons and many right-wingers is that they want to enforce group loyalty in the West towards their agenda and at the same time pump up token “Muslims” and Arabs who sing to their tune. The main difference between those who are deemed “useful idiots” by the Neocons and the “useful idiots” who colloborate with the enemies of Islaam is that many of the latter are largely in for it for the money and fame. While there is some leftists on the “Arab” payroll, they are nothing in comparison to the token “Muslims” and Arabs on the Neocon payroll such as Abdul-Hadi Palazzi, Nonie Darwish, Walid Shoebat, Brigitte Gabriel, etc. And you Schwartz are from among them though I think your main motivation is loyalty to your Jewish brethren and Zionism. Tell us who funds your so-called Centre for “Islamic” Pluralism which Islaam is innocent of. Is it not the the same wealthy Jews who support the Neocon media and thinktanks and the same people who bankrolled the distribution of purile drivel such as the film “Obsession”. And your attempts to disassociate yourself from FrontPageMag reminds me of the treacherous behaviour of your fellow Neocons such as David Frum and Richard Perle who tried to lay the blame of the Iraq War debacle wholly on Bush as if they played no part. 3. Your opposition to Jama’at at-Tableegh is I think based on their association with the Deobandis and that they are conservative Sunnis. I highly doubt that the “many serious opponents of TJ( can you name them?)” would stoop to the ridiculous behaviour of your buddy Irfan Alawi who appeared on the network of Pat Robertson, who is known for attacking Islaam and slandering the Prophet(SAWS), to incite against the mega-mosque: http://www.cbn.com/media/index.aspx?s=/vod/DHU26 in addition to your numerous appearances on CBN. It is you and Alawi who are Satanic by pandering to the enemies of Islaam. A man is known by the company he keeps and that doesn’t just apply to those who he physically interacts with, but also who he praises as you have praised Daniel Pipes, Stephen Emerson, Paul Wolfowitz, Islam Karimov, Irshad Manji, etc. You are nothing but a stooge for the Neocons, American government and right-wing Islamophobes who pump you up to give their agenda an Islaamic veneer. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee because you are someone who has no shame whatsoever. You should look at the Prophetic seerah and read about Ka’b al-Asharf and Huyayy ibn Akhtab and their actions towards the Muslims because I see no difference between what they did then and what you are doing now. This is a case of what we call in Arabic, “ma ashbah al-laylo bil baariha”, or history repeating itself and you are even worse than those who preceded you because you try to give your actions an “Islaamic” cover. This is from the attributes of the hypocrites. Your rebuttals expose you as a deranged character similar to other moonbats on the “Right” such as Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin. I think you are nothing but a Jewish racialist whose loyalty is to Zion, not Islaam.
No he isn’t wasting ink, just unnecessarily inconveniencing a rather large number of electrons. :)