Cruz On Garland: We Must Choose Between Free Speech And Political Correctness
Source: TPM
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Saturday weighed in on the shooting at a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, while discussing how President Obama is "unwilling" to used the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism."
"We saw the ugly face of islamic terrorism in my home state of Texas — in Garland, where two jihadists came to commit murder. Thankfully one police officer helped them meet their virgins," Cruz said. "But when given the choice between free speech and the political correctness of refusing to acknowledge radical Islamic terrorism, it is a time for choosing where we stand," he continued.
Two gunmen were killed last weekend when they opened fire on officers outside of the Muhammad cartoon contest organized by anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller.
Earlier in his speech, Cruz mentioned the religious freedom bills in Arkansas and Indiana, which were both modified after businesses expressed concern that the bills would permit discrimination against gays and lesbians. Cruz praised both states for standing up "to defend religious liberty."
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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-garland-free-speech
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They were far more radical and an off-brand sect that fought bloody campaigns for Saudi Arabia, capturing the holy sights which they actually bulldoze over. Jerusalem has been captured recaptured numerous times and has sustained damage but have more surviving holy sights than Mecca or Medina which the Century of Islam is further back than Muhammad's era
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina
Wahhabism (Arabic: وهابية, Wahhābiya(h)) or Wahhabi mission[1] (/wəˈhɑːbi, wɑː-/;[2] Arabic: ألدعوة ألوهابية, ad-Da'wa al-Wahhābiya(h) ) is a religious movement or branch of Sunni Islam.[3][4][5][6] It has been variously described as "orthodox", "ultraconservative",[7] "austere",[3] "fundamentalist",[8] "puritanical"[9] (or "puritan"
;[10] as an Islamic "reform movement" to restore "pure monotheistic worship" (tawhid), by scholars and advocates[11] and as an "extremist pseudo-Sunni movement" by opponents.[12] Adherents often object to the term Wahhabi or Wahhabism as derogatory, and prefer to be called Salafi or muwahhid.[13][14][15]
Wahhabism is named after an eighteenth century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792).[16] He started a revivalist movement in the remote, sparsely populated region of Najd,[17] advocating a purging of practices such as the popular "cult of saints", and shrine and tomb visitation, widespread among Muslims, but which he considered idolatry, impurities and innovations in Islam.[5][18] Eventually he formed a pact with a local leader Muhammad bin Saud offering political obedience and promising that protection and propagation of the Wahhabi movement would mean "power and glory" and rule of "lands and men."[19] The movement is centered on the principle of tawhid,[20] or the "uniqueness" and "unity" of God.[18]
The alliance between followers of ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud's successors (the House of Saud) proved to be a rather durable alliance. The house of bin Saud continued to maintain its politico-religious alliance with the Wahhabi sect through the waxing and waning of its own political fortunes over the next 150 years, through to its eventual proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, and then afterwards, on into modern times. Today Mohammed bin Abd Al-Wahhab's teachings are state-sponsored and are the official form of Sunni Islam[3][21] in 21st century Saudi Arabia.[22]
Estimates of the number of adherents to Wahhabism vary, with one source (Michael Izady) giving a figure of fewer than 5 million Wahhabis in the Persian Gulf region (compared to 28.5 million Sunnis and 89 million Shia).[22][23]
With the help of funding from petroleum exports[24] (and other factors[25]), the movement underwent "explosive growth" beginning in the 1970s and now has worldwide influence.[3] The movement is centered on the principle of Tawhid,[20] or the "uniqueness" and "unity" of God.[18] The movement also draws from the teachings of medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyyah and early jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal.[26]
Wahhabism has been accused of being "a source of global terrorism",[27][28] and for causing disunity in the Muslim community by labeling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates[29] (takfir), thus paving the way for their bloodshed.[30][31][32] It has also been criticized for the destruction of historic mazaars, mausoleums, and other Muslim and non-Muslim buildings and artifacts.[33][34][35] The "boundaries" of what make up Wahhabism have been called "difficult to pinpoint",[36] but in contemporary usage, the terms Wahhabi and Salafi are often used interchangeably, and considered to be movements with different roots that have merged since the 1960s.[37][38][39] But Wahhabism has also been called "a particular orientation within Salafism",[5] or an ultra-conservative, Saudi brand of Salafism.[40][41]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
Bringing Islam to the 21st Century -- a faith with 1.5 billion followers
Connection with the outside
Before Abdul-Aziz, during most of the second half of the 19th century, there was a strong aversion in Wahhabi lands to mixing with "idolaters" (which included most of the Muslim world). Voluntary contact was considered by Wahhabi clerics to be at least a sin, and if one enjoyed the company of idolaters, and "approved of their religion", an act of unbelief.[126] Travel outside the pale of Najd to the Ottoman lands "was tightly controlled, if not prohibited altogether".[127]
Over the course of its history, however, Wahhabism has become more accommodating towards the outside world.[128] In the late 1800s, Wahhabis found Muslims with at least similar beliefs—first with Ahl-i Hadith in India,[129] and later with Islamic revivalists in Arab states (one being Mahmud Sahiri al-Alusi in Baghdad).[130] The revivalists and Wahhabis shared a common interest in Ibn Taymiyya's thought, the permissibility of ijtihad, and the need to purify worship practices of innovation.[131] In the 1920s, Rashid Rida, a pioneer Salafist whose periodical al-Manar was widely read in the Muslim world, published an "anthology of Wahhabi treatises," and a work praising the Ibn Saud as "the savior of the Haramayn [the two holy cities] and a practitioner of authentic Islamic rule".[132][133]
In a bid "to join the Muslim mainstream and to erase the reputation of extreme sectarianism associated with the Ikhwan," in 1926 Ibn Saud convened a Muslim congress of representatives of Muslim governments and popular associations.[134] By the early 1950s, the "pressures" on Ibn Saud of controlling the regions of Hejaz and al-Hasa—"outside the Wahhabi heartland"—and of "navigating the currents of regional politics" "punctured the seal" between the Wahhabi heartland and the "land of idolatry" outside.[135][136]
A major current in regional politics at that time was secular nationalism, which, with Gamal Abdul Nasser, was sweeping the Arab world. To combat it, Wahhabi missionary outreach worked closely with Saudi foreign policy initiatives. In May 1962, a conference in Mecca organized by Saudis discussed ways to combat secularism and socialism. In its wake, the World Muslim League was established.[137] To propagate Islam and "repel inimical trends and dogmas", the League opened branch offices around the globe.[52] It developed closer association between Wahhabis and leading Salafis, and made common cause with the Islamic revivalist Muslim Brotherhood, Ahl al-Hadith and the Jamaat-i Islami, combating Sufism and "innovative" popular religious practices[137] and rejecting the West and Western "ways which were so deleterious of Muslim piety and values."[138] Missionaries were sent to West Africa, where the League funded schools, distributed religious literature, and gave scholarships to attend Saudi religious universities. One result was the Izala Society which fought Sufism in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon.[139]
An event that had a great effect on Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia[140] was the "infiltration of the transnationalist revival movement" in the form of thousands of pious, Islamist Arab Muslim Brotherhood refugees from Egypt following Nasser's clampdown on the brotherhood[141] (and also from similar nationalist clampdowns in Iraq[142] and Syria[143]), to help staff the new school system of (the largely illiterate) Kingdom.[144]
The Brotherhood's Islamist ideology differed from the more conservative Wahhabism which preached loyal obedience to the king. The Brotherhood dealt in what one author (Robert Lacey) called "change-promoting concepts" like social justice, and anticolonialism, and gave "a radical, but still apparently safe, religious twist" to the Wahhabi values Saudi students "had absorbed in childhood". With the Brotherhood's "hands-on, radical Islam", jihad became a "practical possibility today", not just part of history.[145]
The Brethren were ordered by the Saudi clergy and government not to attempt to proselytize or otherwise get involved in religious doctrinal matters within the Kingdom, but nonetheless "took control" of Saudi Arabia's intellectual life" by publishing books and participating in discussion circles and salons held by princes.[146] In time they took leading roles in key governmental ministries,[147] and had influence on education curriculum.[148] An Islamic university in Medina created in 1961 to train—mostly non-Saudi—proselytizers to Wahhabism, [149] became "a haven" for Muslim Brother refugees from Egypt.[150] The Brothers' ideas eventually spread throughout the kingdom and had great effect on Wahhabism—although observers differ as to whether this was by "undermining" it[140][151] or "blending" with it.[152][153]
Growth
In the 1950s and 60s within Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi ulama maintained their hold on religious law courts, presided over the creation of Islamic universities, and a public school system which gave students "a heavy dose of religious instruction".[154] Outside of Saudi the Wahhabi ulama became "less combative" toward the rest of the Muslim world. In confronting the challenge of the West, Wahhabi doctrine "served well" for many Muslims as a "platform" and "gained converts beyond the peninsula."[154][155]
A number of reasons have been given for this success. The growth in popularity and strength of both Arab nationalism (although Wahhabis opposed any form of nationalism as an ideology, Saudis were Arabs, and their enemy the Ottoman caliphate was ethnically Turkish),[25] and Islamic reform (specifically reform by following the example of those first three generations of Muslims known as the Salaf);[25] the destruction of the Ottoman Empire which sponsored their most effective critics;[156] the destruction of another rival, the Khilafa in Hejaz, in 1925.[25] Not least in importance was the money Saudi Arabia earned from exporting oil.[76]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism#Muhammad_ibn_Abd-al-Wahhab
International influence and propagation
Explanation for influence
Khaled Abou El Fadl attributed the appeal of Wahhabism to some Muslims as stemming from
Arab nationalism, which followed the Wahhabi attack on the Ottoman Empire
Reformism, which followed a return to Salaf (as-Salaf aṣ-Ṣāliḥ
Destruction of the Hejaz Khilafa in 1925;
Control of Mecca and Medina, which gave Wahhabis great influence on Muslim culture and thinking;
Oil, which after 1975 allowed Wahhabis to promote their interpretations of Islam using billions from oil export revenue.[298]
Scholar Gilles Kepel, agrees that the tripling in the price of oil in the mid-1970s and the progressive takeover of Saudi Aramco in the 1974–1980 period, provided the source of much influence of Wahhabism in the Islamic World.
... the financial clout of Saudi Arabia had been amply demonstrated during the oil embargo against the United States, following the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. This show of international power, along with the nation's astronomical increase in wealth, allowed Saudi Arabia's puritanical, conservative Wahhabite faction to attain a preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam. Saudi Arabia's impact on Muslims throughout the world was less visible than that of Khomeini's Iran, but the effect was deeper and more enduring. .... it reorganized the religious landscape by promoting those associations and ulemas who followed its lead, and then, by injecting substantial amounts of money into Islamic interests of all sorts, it won over many more converts. Above all, the Saudis raised a new standard -- the virtuous Islamic civilization -- as foil for the corrupting influence of the West.[76]
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To stop the spread of terrorism you start with the regime that owns Mecca & Medina. Stupid violence in the Quran? How do you explain his own violence?
During the August 2013 Egyptian raids, the Egyptian military under el-Sisi's command joined the national police in removing camps of Muslim Brotherhood supporters from sit-ins being held in Rabiaa and el-Nahda. This action resulted in rapidly escalating violence that eventually led to deaths of 638 people, of whom 595 were civilians and 43 police officers, with at least 3,994 injured in addition to several incidents in various cities including Minya and Kerdasa. Some liberal activists who had supported the ousting of Morsi publicly voiced their concerns: "I'm not happy when they use violence. And I'm worried about them using it again," said Gamal Eid, a well-known human rights activist.[36][37][38]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Fattah_el-Sisi
Arab World
Al-Jazeera reported in June 2014: "Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and its wealthy Gulf Arab partners Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have given more than $20bn to help Egypt since Morsi's overthrow, Sisi said last month, and are likely to pledge more."[111]
I see some very twisted logic when Islam comes up as if the actions of non-Muslims are somehow different. Wars fought over oil & for the financial interests of defense contractors bombing, killing, and maiming in favor of the oppressors who own the countries wealth with energy companies drilling through the human rights of the population. The US has historically opposed socialists or governments who simply nationalized oil production. The massacres in Mali & CAR are by Buddhists & Christians. Rwanda was predominantly Roman Catholics. Most Muslims live in Asia & Africa (many were brought here on slave ships with their religion suppressed). Somehow they are on the bridge to the 21st century because of brutal oppressors who actual create the environment that benefit their recruiting drives. Then there are polls showing American Muslims say civilians deaths are never justified with Athiests/agnostics polling second (they both also are least trusted by the American public) -- I could add more but I'll add 7 Muslim Majority countries have had a female head of state something the US hasn't done yet.
because to beat radical islam we have to use radicals. if we use such terms we lose. So Ted Cruz works for the radicals 
Oppression by Muslims = bad
Oppression by Christians = good
How about we just say all religious oppression is bad?
Oh yeah, that's "political correctness".
we dont have to choose between anything sir .
