New Mexico Islamic community leader condemns attacks

This was an area I knew well for five years as the Paris bureau chief for The Washington Post, living nearby in the Marais district. Politicizing our Islam has virtually eviscerated Muslim moral credibility in the West. If people believed that we were truly a people of conscious and not a people of convenience, there would be no expectation of Muslims to condemn selected instances of violence, nor would we feel any compulsion to do so.

In Ireland, the Imam of the Al-Mustafa Islamic Centre and Chair of the Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council, offered prayers for the victims and dismissed terrorist’s claims to Islam.

“This is not the act of a Muslim, but of rogues who claim to follow the faith”. It is evident that terrorism always either has a religion or a nationalistic ideology behind it. When you subscribe to the idea of dying and killing for something, it is up to you to choose how far you will go to make this happen. They want to bring this about through jihad.

Yes, there are geopolitical aspects that must be considered.

“We ask the world to unite against this menace and to work to eliminate all forms of extremism”.

But this does not detract from the fact that we should not sweep the aspects of a violent ideology under the carpet.

ISIS, Alquaida, etc, they are not the same thing as Muslim, they are terrorists and they wish to destroy the peaceful notion of Islam with their own extreme agenda. Think of it like fundamentalist Christians, the groups that become White Supremacists and kill for their “religion”. It is their job to rectify this. Why are so many Muslims joining terrorists? Insisting on repeatedly bombarding the world with one verse is disingenuous.

“We are shocked by this new manifestation of maddening, terrorist violence and hatred which we condemn in the most radical way together with the pope and all those who love peace”, said Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman said in a statement.

As demonstrators gathered in the city of Lille to show their solidarity with the people of Paris, a group of protestors who have been linked to the “identitarian” movement joined them, lighting flares and holding a banner saying “Expel the Islamists”.

“[The attackers purposely] chose Friday night, and they chose this place full of young French people”, Valdeperez said, gesturing toward the pizza place where people were killed. This is the state that many European Muslims have to accept and dread, anticipating throughout the year. The community needs to realise that they can not live in an alternate world and have to move ahead with the rest of the world.

A classic argument used to justify the stereotype of the community, is that though all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims.

The former secretary of state’s blunt talk is fairly rare for Obama administration-linked power players in Washington, D.C., many of whom – even off the record – are extremely careful about how they discuss countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. I may be an Indian but I must be answerable for every act of beheading committed in the Middle East by ISIS, for every persecution committed in Muslim majority nations, from Saudi Arabia to Iran, and I must speak out at all times against every terror group operating in the name of Islam, lest it be assumed that my silence is my endorsement of their inhuman actions.

A day after ISIS took responsibility for the ghastly attacks on Paris, ordinary Muslims feared a backlash, fueled by Islamophobia and misinformation.