Fundamentalism, Free Speech & The Jihadist

Colleen LaRose, aka Jihad Janehttp://bit.ly/9p1RGr

Trapped at MuslimConverts.com

Ironically, I’m held hostage — metaphorically-speaking — at the MuslimConverts.com website, Google’s top choice for the search ‘Muslim converts+veil’.  Perhaps Google should serve up a better option than this one.

My arrival seeks to confirm my belief that disproportionate numbers of women who convert to Islam choose to wear full coverage clothing. This possibility came up in July 2009 when Anne of Carversville first began its dialogue about burqas.

We heard from many Muslim women who wore niqab or burqa — often against the wishes of their Muslim husbands or his family. That dialogue was rich, fruitful, loving and I’ve remained friends with some of the women.

Subsequently, I read a couple articles saying that women converts to Islam tend to adopt the veil, and a desire to confirm that impression brought me to Google’s top pick MuslimConverts.com, which seemed like a good choice.

Converts and Terrorism

Admittedly, I’m preparing to write about Jihad Jane aka Colleen La Rose and performed my usual writing ritual of looking for opposing views of the same question. My only problem it that after taking a look around MuslimConverts.com, I cannot go without bookmarking the website.

On a website promoting the ‘liberating’ benefits of wearing niqab and burqas vs decadent, Western clothing I’m not allowed the freedom of leaving MuslimConverts.com without a bookmark. I read ‘Please Bookmark This Site’ but I can only answer ‘OK’. This option does not represent choice, even if the word ‘Please’ is in play.

Looking at the upper left-hand corner, I have no option to exist via the ‘red button’ choice. The website has overridden my ability to leave. My only option is force-quit my Firefox browser, a great inconvenience because I have a lot of work and windows open. Typically, this corralling of the reader is only done on porn sites.

Of course I will exercise my close Firefox choice. No website will make a hostage of me. Is the first stage of the Islamic recruiting process? Will I next get a message in my inbox?

MuslimConverts.com can write about all the freedoms that I lack as a Western woman, telling me how liberating life is under a burqa and niqab. But on a day when I’m writing about Jihad Jane, their web behavior tends to confirm the treacherous psychological terrain that lies waiting for women under burqas and people like me with inquisitive minds. 

My impression of Islam is that it doesn’t promote free thinking, just as Catholicism doesn’t, or the Southern Baptists or Orthodox Judaism. When one challenges loss of free thinking and exercises a right to free speech —  which absolutely exists in the Scandinavian countries — one dies at the hands of extremists in exercising rights.

Like US Rep Stupak, who says that his Catholic principles are above the laws of America and Supreme Court decisions, Muslim extremists and terrorists — and another American of great principles Jihad Jane — seek to protect higher principles, this time around the founder of Islam.

Irish police yesterday arrested seven people over an apparent plot to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, the same man sought by Philadelphia woman Jihad Jane. Converts to Islam are among those arrested in Ireland. The Irish Times reports that authorities believe La Rose traveled to Ireland last year to recruit the terror squad out to kill Vilks.

Vilks’s cartoon, drawn in 2007, prompted al-Qaida to place a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head and offer a 50% bonus to anyone who slit his throat to ensure he was “slaughtered like a lamb”.

At least three Swedish newspapers – Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Sydsvenska Dagbladet – published the cartoon today.

Lars Vilks is a Swedish art historian and aging enfant terrible professor. As a conceptual artist, he has spent decades poking fun at the establishment. I recently watched a program on his most famous incident (although perhaps not) which is a series of oversized deiftwood sculptures placed outdoors in the southern Swedish county of Skåne.

I will create separate story on Vilks, who’s only ax to grind with Islam is the dogma from extremists that says he must have his throat slit for a cartoon. If he produced such a cartoon about President Obama, he would be trashed in the press but not die. Among some Americans, he would be eulogized.

A key argument of most Fundamentalists, including Catholics who strongly objected to Purple Magazine’s recent photo of Lindsay Lohan on the cover, is that free speech doesn’t include any material they object to. Lars and many other artists and intellectuals are committed to challenging the perceived arrogance of sanctimonious, I’m more moral than you are’ people.

Much of the new scientific research around benevolent behavior and spirituality root it in human nature and not religion. Just this morning, we posted new findings. Scandinavians in particular — known as the most peaceful, kind, spiritually enlightened people in the world — reject religious dogma.

You can love the Scandinavians or not, but their actions make them the most generous, egalitarian, humanitarian people on the planet in percent to incomes — in spite of the demise of organized religion in their countries. Scandinavian countries are living proof of most of the new research on social behavior and benevolent communities.

Af for myself, I’m a social mutt but I proudly claim my one-quarter Swedish and one-quarter Danish heritage. The remainder, in case you’re interested, is one-quarter English and one-quarter German.

Pursuing Godly Principles

The principles in the arrest of Jihad Jane aren’t fundamentally different than those of Catholics in Congress. They both seek to curtain freedoms given to citizens by governments rather than religious authorities.

Colleen LaRose, who called herself Fatima LaRose online, joins two the arrest of a Chicago man accused of helping plot the 2008 Mumbai attacks and an Afghan immigrant living in Colorado who pleaded guilty to plotting a bomb attack on the New York subway system, further escalating concerns about homegrown Islamic terrorists being born and bred in America.

Left, Omar Hammami as a freshman in high school. Right, in a Shabab propaganda video released in March 2009. via NYTimesAdam Gadahn of Riverside, a spokesman and top propagandist for the Al Qaeda terrorist network, is a convert from Judaism.

Fundamentalism and freedom do not go together in any book. On all fronts, extremism is on the rise worldwide and especially — authorities worry — in America. Anne

More reading:

The Jihadist Next Door via NYTimes

France’s Purple Magazine Taunts America on Freedom of Speech and Wins Big

Future Jihad Attacks in America