Former Muslims United (FMU) makes an interesting connection between Mogahed and Darsani. They both deny the human and civil rights of those who have left Islam by personal choice and did not abjure death Fatwas against apostates when presented with the opportunities to do so.
by Jerry Gordon, The Iconoclast, July 18, 2010
On July 24th, the Lamb of God Church in Fort Myers, Florida will show a film, Who speaks for Islam, What a Billion Muslims Really Think? based on the book co-authored by White House Advisory Council member, Dalia Mogahed and co-author, Dr. John Esposito. Both Mogahed and Esposito are colleagues at the Prince Alaweed bin Talal Muslim Christian Understanding Center at Georgetown University. Mogahed is a Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. In April, 2009, Mogahed was appointed by President Obama to the White House Advisory Council for Faith Based and Neighbor Partnerships. She is said to have influenced Obama’s outreach to the Muslim ummah exemplified by his June, 2009 speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo. The Mogahed-Esposito film has been criticized for not portraying what Muslims truly think and fiddling with polling data to present a predominately peaceful Islam that disavows terrorism. As we shall see, other polling data indicate the opposite. Hence, we consider the film presentation a dangerous form of taqiyyah – religious sanctioned dissimilitude –aimed at proselytizing unwary unbelievers.
Ironically, Muslims in the south west (SW) Florida ummah are at loggerheads disagreeing over the films showing.
Sheik Mohamed Al-Darsani of the Fort Myers, Florida Islamic PEACE Center is a self-styled ‘moderate’ Muslim who has been in the forefront of promoting the Mogahed – Esposito film to be shown at the Lamb of God Church. Sheik Darsani presented his view of Muslim interreligious dialogue in a in November 2008 New English Review article, “A Debate over Obsession”, at the showing of the film Obsession at the University of South Florida in Tampa by the Florida Security Council (FSC). We noted this comment by M. Zhudi Jasser of the American Forum for Islam and Democracy (AFID) during a debate he had with Darsani under FSC sponsorship in Naples, Florida:
Recently on February 23, 2008, while I was participating in a panel on radical Islam’s threat to the West in Naples, Florida, a local Imam, Mohamed Al-Darsani of the Islamic Center for Peace challenged my ideas and cast me out with little substantiation as being “outside the mainstream Muslim community.” The two-plus hour long debate covered a lot of ground. Most poignantly, it highlighted the great chasm between the corruption of Islamist apologetics and the struggle to renew the moral truth of spiritual Islam separated from Islamist demagoguery. A review of the debate demonstrates the wide abyss which separates so many faithful anti-Islamist Muslims from Imam Al-Darsani and other similar Islamist apologists. One has to give the Imam credit for showing up and having the courage of his convictions. Sadly, it is those very convictions which are the primary fuel for terrorism worldwide. Once we understand the relationship of political Islam and its various permutations from Wahhabism to Salafism to Deobandism to militant Islamism and its terror, we will be able to effectuate and progress a global anti-Islamist movement.
In the run up to the July 24th, 2010 showing of the Mogahed-Esposito film at the Lamb of God Church in Fort Myers, Sheik Darsani has figured in an embarrassing rift between himself and fellow Muslims over the film’s content. Dr. Rich Swier in a Red County article, “Muslim Brotherhood Rift in Florida” noted:
The Muslim Brothers appear to be going at each others’ throats in SW Florida. I have received a copy of an e-mail indicating a serious rift within the SW Florida Ummah (community) over the showing of the film Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. This is a film made by Muslim supporters about Muslims.
So what is the problem?Alaa Attia from the Tampa Ummah states, “According to a trusted Muslim Source, they adamantly are opposed to attending this Movie. The Muslim brothers that have seen it say:
· It degrades Islam & Muslim[s]
· It denotes extremist views about Islam where the spectators get confused thinking that what is shown is real Islam
· It is somber and depressing
· It doesn’t benefit the Da’wa Effort in America and Muslims should be against a showing of that sort that distorts the Deen
· It is violent and depicts Muslims as violent people.”
Mr. Attia was responding to an e-mail from Mohamed Al-Darsani, Imam and President of the Islamic Center for Peace in Fort Myers, Florida. Mohamed Al-Darsani is hosting a showing of Inside Islam at the Lamb of God Church on July 24, 2010.
What is the Da’wa Effort? The Da’wa effort according to the Organization of Islamic Conference’s Thirty-Seventh Session of Foreign Ministers held in the Republic of Tajikistan May 18-20, 2010 is:
[Providing] the required resources to support and coordinate Islamic Da’wa [propaganda] efforts and to improve educational curricula and training programmes as well as to disseminate the teachings of Islam throughout the world, within the framework of cooperation among States and in respect of their sovereignty, with a view to promoting Islamic values.
So a film made by Muslims that tells the truth about Muslim violence, extremism and religious fanaticism and the Tampa Ummah does not like it when the truth is told? Shouldn’t that be the purpose of the Islamic Da’wa, to tell the truth and reform their religion into a peaceful one?
Former Muslims United (FMU) makes an interesting connection between Mogahed and Darsani. They both deny the human and civil rights of those who have left Islam by personal choice and did not abjure death Fatwas against apostates when presented with the opportunities to do so.
FMU is a human and civil rights organization whose mission is to protect and defend those who have chosen to leave Islam and face threats to their lives and property under Fatwas or rulings from Muslim clerics and legal authorities both here in the United States and abroad.
In a July 19th news release, FMU noted, that President Obama’s appointee Dalia Mogahed is “overwhelmingly” silent on a pledge to stop threats against former Muslims’ human rights. Nonie Darwish, noted author, human rights activist and executive director of FMU said:
Dalia Mogahed, a prominent American Muslim appointed by President Obama to the White House Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, does not honor freedom to choose one’s beliefs as guaranteed under our First Amendment. That is the only conclusion we can draw from the overwhelming ‘silence’ and non-response to a Freedom Pledge letter sent on October 20, 2009 to Ms. Mogahed by our organization.
In a March 10th FMU news release, on the occasion of an FSC-organized protest of Florida Muslim Capitol Day in Tallahassee, the group noted a similar stony silent response from more than 47 Freedom Pledge letters sent to CAIR chapters and Muslim leaders in the sunshine state. Included among the FMU Florida Freedom Pledge letters was one sent to Sheik Darsani in Fort Meyers. There was no response.
Witness these criticisms, from an Investigative Project report, cited by FMU regarding both Mogahed’s outreach to Muslim Brotherhood Fronts in America and dispute over her trifling with polling data presented in the film:
Since joining the White House Advisory Council, Ms. Mogahed has engaged in outreach to Muslim Brotherhood front groups , identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Dallas Federal Holy Land Foundation Trial, such as the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Leaders of the Holy Land Foundation were convicted on charges of funneling $12 million to Hamas, a Palestinian group designated as terrorists by the federal government.
Dr. M. Zhudi Jasser, of the AFID, one of only two signatories of the FMU Freedom Pledge contends in a report by The Investigative Project that Ms. Mogahed’s outreach to radical Muslim groups does not help.
“The damage is immeasurable to Muslims seeking non-radical alternatives. They are going to say, why bother? The government has chosen sides in the conflict.”
Ms. Mogahed and co-author Dr. Esposito, have been criticized for distorting Muslim world opinions about support of ‘justified terrorism’ regarding 9/11, using data from the Gallup Center for Muslim studies surveys.In Who Speaks for Islam? , Mogahed and Esposito claim that approximately 91 million people, or 7 percent of Muslims worldwide (the percentage who believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified), can be referred to as “politically radicalized.”Robert Satloff [ of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy] found that the percentage justifying 9/11 was closer to 36 percent, or more than 450 million people, a third of the world’s Muslim population.The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed Muslims in the Palestinian territories and 15 countries . . . . According to the Pew survey, an average of 23.5 percent of Muslims supported suicide bombings in 2007.
Given the truth about Islamists disregard for human and civil rights of apostates and all unbelievers under Sharia, is it any wonder that disharmony among fellow Muslims, as well as anti-Sharia activists have given rise to protests against the Lamb of God Church presentation of the Mogahed -Esposito film promoted by Sheik Darsani in Fort Myers.
