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the Message Continues i/54   -   Newsletter for  February  2006

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Muslims distance selves from rioting
VIOLENCE CONDEMNED IN OPEN FORUM
By Truong Phuoc Khánh

Distancing themselves from the bloody riots that have rocked cities around the Muslim world following the now-infamous Danish cartoon defamation of the Islamic prophet, moderate Muslims from the Bay Area held a forum on Sunday to reaffirm their faith's tenets: love and peace in the name of Allah.

The open house at the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara was aimed at educating Muslims and non-Muslims alike on ``how Muhammad would have responded through education and rejected violence,'' said Safaa Ibrahim, executive director of the Northern California chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The forum, called ``Explore the Life of Muhammad,'' drew a multiethnic crowd of several hundred people. It was sponsored by CAIR, the Muslim Community Association and American Muslim.

Organizers weren't naive about why their open-house attracted the public and media attention. ``It's not us,'' Ibrahim said. ``It's the controversy.''

The controversy was lit more than six months ago when a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in derogatory cartoons, with one depicting him wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

Dennis Fox of Willow Glen remembers seeing the images in the fall in the foreign press. Since then, the murder and mayhem that continues to spill forth from certain segments of the Islamic world has troubled him, Fox said.

``I strongly believe in freedom of the press; it's one of the most important tenets of a free society,'' said Fox, who also attended a community meeting sponsored by the Muslim Community Association after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He said he attends the forums ``to try to understand why they're so angry with the West,'' adding that he finds the cartoons ``reprehensible.''

``I understand the anger and the hurt,'' Fox, 43, said. ``But I don't understand the murders and violence.''

Unequivocal condemnation of the violence was the message of the day from Muslim community leaders.

``This is an issue that has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It's a question of intentional provocation,'' said Iman Zaid Shakir, of Hayward's Zaytuna Institute. ``As Muslims, we should understand that and not be provoked to responding. Let us take the high ground as our prophet did.''

Since January's republication of the cartoons by European newspapers, a small Danish political brouhaha escalated into an international crisis that has left at least 45 people dead. Tens of thousands of militant Muslims have taken to the streets of Cape Town, South Africa, Gaza and the West Bank. Last weekend in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, several hundred Islamist activists tried to storm the U.S. embassy.

Rashid Kaddoura, a Muslim from Santa Clara, said such extremist violence is driven by political motivation or ignorance. It is committed only by a small segment of the world's 1 billion Muslims, he said.

``We are a peaceful people; we live peacefully next to our neighbors,'' Kaddoura said. ``But some people try to instigate things. The violent reaction is wrong. We support peaceful protests.''

 

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