Reminds me of Steven Levitt’s discussion in Freakonomics about how the supposed ‘experts’ use the cover of their ‘expertise’ to play on the ‘fear’ of people. Same thing has been done here, they just trumpeted the long held, deeply ingrained stereotypes. That’s all.

(Of course there are some who are extreme but by painting the entire body of practicing Muslims as ‘extreme’ they are only being counter productive).

And the assertions sound as silly as saying that a white man with blonde hair, blue eyes, a deep southern accent and a love for NASCAR, is ‘most probably’ a white-supermacist, ‘most likely’ prone to ‘violence’. It is unbelieveable.

I hope the MSAs around the nation take notice of this and petition/meet with the University officials to stop this hate-mongering. And if that doesn’t work, organize a counter “Islamic-awareness” week…collaborate with the Progressive/Democrat and anti-war groups to challenge their message in the SAME week.

I am not sure what exactly MSA-West has in plan as far as unified action, but if MSA-National wants to step in and really reach with other campuses for a unified event this event could be it.

Read this:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/15/daveed.godswarriors/index.html

Another thing I have noticed, one extreme takes person to another extreme….

Even though the article you linked claims that this apostate had joined “radical Islam,” what was quoted in the article as examples of “extremism” are pretty much agreed upon by all Sunni Muslims.

The article says:

… a young Gartenstein-Ross experimented with a radical form of Islam that eventually led him to shun music, reject women’s rights and even refuse to touch dogs because he believed this was “according to God’s will.”

“I began to pray for the mujahedeen, for these stateless warriors who were trying to topple secular governments,” he said.

Shunning music and refusing to touch dogs are not extreme. And I am fairly certain that the claim that he “reject[ed] women’s rights” is referring to him having viewed hijaab as fard, and other probably universally accepted Islamic rulings.

The article also quotes the apostate as saying:

“What I didn’t expect was that over time my ideas would fall into line with theirs,” he said. “I wasn’t to shake hands with women. I wasn’t to pet a dog. I wasn’t to wear shorts that came up above my knees. But conversely, my pants legs couldn’t be too long.”

Again, nothing really different from mainstream Sunnism here…

It seems that what this CNN article is referring to as “radical Islam” is simply mainstream Islam. Just another media attempt to paint practicing Muslims as “radical “and non-practicing Muslims as “mainstream.”

Perhaps the strangest part of the article is that after knowing about Islam, he left it for the shirk of the trinity. This shows that this guy either never really knew what tawheed was in the first place or never really believed in it.

Even though this guy seemed to be practicing mainstream Islam, perhaps he was just following the rules without knowing anything about tawheed… in which case, THAT is extremism.

Of course, seeing this guys backstabbing two-faced nature (turning on those brothers who supported him), I wouldn’t be surprised if he was just a govt spy the whole time…