Rusty at The Jawa Report directs us to a profile in the current New York Times Magazine promoting Holocaust-denier Yasir Qadhi as the new face of “moderate” American Islam. Here are some of his statements on the Holocaust:
As Rusty notes, Qadhi has had a number of students convicted on terror charges, something the NY Times Mag points out:
Yet even as he has denounced Islamist violence — too late, some say — a handful of AlMaghrib’s former students have heeded the call. In addition to the underwear-bomb suspect [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab], the 36,000 current and former students of Qadhi’s institute include Daniel Maldonado, a New Hampshire convert who was convicted in 2007 of training with an Al Qaeda-linked militia in Somalia; Tarek Mehanna, a 28-year-old pharmacist arrested for conspiring to attack Americans; and two young Virginia men [Waqar Hussain Khan & Ahmed Abdullah Minni] held in Pakistan in 2009 for seeking to train with militants.
There is one other former Qadhi student that the NY Times Mag fails to identify – would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab. CNN reported that AbdulMutallab had attended a 16-day event sponsored by his organization, the AlMaghrib Institute, in Qadhi’s hometown of Houston. In addition, AbdulMutallab is known to have also attended two other AlMaghrib events.
In a August 8, 2006 article in the Houston Chronicle, Qadhi admitted that he too was on the terror watch list. Qadhi’s Houston-based media company, IlmQuest, also sold sold sets of CDs of Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar Awlaki — even after he had inspired the Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan — until The Jawa Report called them out on it. Qadhi has taken up the cause of several convicted terrorists, including Ali Al-Tammimi.
This, according to the NY Times Magazine, is what a moderate Muslim leader looks like. Shame on them.
For past articles on Yasir Qadhi here at PJM, go here and here.
read your own post a little closer and you will see Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab was identified.
You are correct.
Maybe he is the voice of “moderate” American Islam.
Maybe the NYT is trying to tell us something they can’t bring themselves to say.
I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps Qadhi is in fact the least radical Muslim cleric in the U.S. That is a pretty scary thought.
There are some false assumptions in this article – namely, that the NYT thinks Holocaust denial or terrorism are bad things. After all, they are already on board with pedophilic gang rape.
I did my part to defund NY Times years ago.
I agree with Rob Crawford. NYT is in a left hand way pointing out that what any sane person would consider a radical Islamic is considered a moderate as far as the followers of Islam and their fellow travelers are concerned, IE the MSM.
I think this guy is about as moderate as Islam gets. That’s why it should be run out of the west, the way it was in the 1400′s and 1500′s.
As usual, a Muslim is identified as “moderate” with no explanation as to how that term is defined. Despite this, there are two very interesting lines regarding Jihad that may help us understand what “moderate” means.
“Qadhi says that he is unable to compete with the message of militants like Awlaki, because he cannot speak freely about jihad, which he calls ‘the J word.’ He fears that engaging in a serious discussion of militant jihad would bring damaging media scrutiny, not to mention possible prosecution. ‘My hands are tied, and my tongue is silent,’ he said.”
Degrees of “moderation” in Islam are defined as how many actual dictates of Islam the Muslim chooses to ignore, or pretends to ignore.
As usual, a Muslim is identified as “moderate” with no explanation as to how that term is defined. Despite this, there are two very interesting lines regarding Jihad that may help us understand what “moderate” means.
“Qadhi says that he is unable to compete with the message of militants like Awlaki, because he cannot speak freely about jihad, which he calls ‘the J word.’ He fears that engaging in a serious discussion of militant jihad would bring damaging media scrutiny, not to mention possible prosecution. ‘My hands are tied, and my tongue is silent,’ he said.”
So, if this “moderate” says what he really thinks about militant Jihad, it will not look good in the media and he could still sound like a terrorist? From this, I guess we can conclude that he is not prepared to simply denounce militant Jihad as completely evil.
This conclusion is supported by another line in the story: “While Qadhi says that Muslims have the right to defend themselves, he believes that they are forbidden from attacking civilians.”
“Defend themselves.” From what? With what? Is it OK to use physical force to as a defense against verbal insults? Likewise, he doesn’t define the word civilians? Islamic terrorists are not part of a legitimate military force, so what is his basis for making a civilian/non-civilian distinction.
“He also says that ‘offensive jihad’ – the spread of the Islamic state by force – is not permitted given the absence of a caliph, or global Muslim ruler, in today’s world.”
This may really be the money quote. If this statement clearly reflects his views, then we see that he is not morally opposed to Islamic oppression. We can only conclude that, if there were a caliph, then Qadhi would accept the subjugation of non-Muslims by Muslims.
Once again, we see a so-called “moderate cleric” unable to simply say “All faiths have an equal right to exist and no one has the right to use force against another person because of religion.”
Sadly, he is a moderate. Surrounded by $10 whores, the high school slut looks chaste by comparison.
“This, according to the NY Times Magazine, is what a moderate Muslim leader looks like.”
They are absolutely correct. An Islamic moderate is a fanatical lunatic in the civilized world.
We trust them at our peril.
From reading the article, the good news is that the salafi movement in America has waned significantly since Saudi money was removed from promoting it. Our only choices according to the NY Times is between Qadhi and Anwar Awlaki – with Qadhi being the “moderate”.
As political satirist Mark Russell said three decades ago, during the Iranian hostage crisis:
The “moderates” are the ones who believe in taking hostages … but not eating them.
If a true moderate is blown off, he’ll just go back to his life and maybe complain a little. If a fake moderate is blown up.. well.. that will be a different story.
that would be “if a fake moderate is blown OFF.” Bad freudian slip there.
Although I take no position on this cleric, and whether or not he is truly moderate — the NYTimes story clearly suggests that he previously expressed anti-semitic and radical beliefs, but now has seen the error of his ways and preaches tolerance instead.
True? I don’t know. But a fair assessment of this story would point that out, so the post at this site fails on that count.
Why are you surprised. This is the same paper that reported on the
Holocaust on page 17. the Islamo-Fascists are nothing more than today’s
Nazis. They cooperated with Germany during WWII. The Jerusalem Mufti
visited with Hitler and was an admirer. Things haven’t changed much.
Not for the NYT nor for the Arabs (you know the people with a long list
of Nobel Prize winners and untold contributions to humanity).
David Waters (Faith Matters) and the staff of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis have also positioned the Imam as a moderate and community leader. He’s stays busy writing articles for the paper and speaking at Christian churches there.
Googling his name must be too hard — NOT!
Watching BBC’s Channel 4 “Dispatches” and then Yasir Qadhi’s breathless denial of the video’s contents makes an even more compelling argument against him!