Jonah, one of the schools mentioned in that article, The al-Noor School, was at the center of a hand-wringing report on the 11:00 news last week here in NYC. The ABC affiliate did a piece on how the students at the school are worried that people will be mean to them now that America is at war with an Arab country. Good for the Daily News for going beyond the usual guilt-ridden, see-no-evil attitudes of the American media.
I have here on my desk a couple of books I bought two weeks ago on a shopping trip to Islamic bookstores here in Brooklyn. Here’s what one of them, “Legal Rulings of Importance to New Muslims,” says about a Muslim’s responsibility to non-Muslims:
There can be no brotherhood between Muslims and Christians, ever. …So itis not permissible for a Muslim to describe a disbeliever — whatever form of disbelief he has, whether Christianity, Judaism, Magianism, or atheism — as a brother, ever. So beware, O brother, from this expression. …It befits you to avoid constant mixing with non-Muslims, because constant mixing with them will obliterate the attitude of vigil and care for [Islam] from your heart, and may possibly lead you to love them.
I have here another book, “Jihad in the Qu’ran and Sunna,” which sternly advises all Muslims that Allah has commanded them never to give up fighting Jews, Christians and non-Muslims, until they have converted or subdued.
Both these books come from a Saudi publishing house. Of course there are Muslims who don’t agree with these teachings, but one can hardly be blamed for wondering just how widely this Wahhabi lunacy is embraced among Muslims here. As Sheikh Kabbani, the leader of American Sufis has testified, up to 80 percent of the mosques in the United States are under the leadership of Wahhabi imams. Will Wahhabism become normative for American Islam? Too many of our media are more concerned with doing stories about whether or not someone is going to give Muslims a dirty look, rather than looking into what Muslim institutions in this country actually proclaim and teach to children.