Islamic supremacism hits the pages of the Washington Post (again), as Genieve Abdo praises Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Siraj Wahaj, and mocks and derides the Secular Islam Summit: A More Islamic Islam.

Consider the facts: Islamic revivalism has spread across the globe in the past 30 years from the Middle East to parts of Africa. In Egypt, it is hard to find a woman on the street who does not wear a headscarf. Islamic political groups and movements are on the rise — from Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Even in the United States, more and more American Muslims, particularly the young, are embracing Islam and religious symbolism in ways their more secular, immigrant parents did not.

I traveled to Florida to serve as the keynote speaker at an annual convention hosted by CAIR. On my way to the event, I spoke with Imam Siraj Wahaj, a charismatic intellectual from the Masjid Al-Taqwa in Brooklyn who has thousands of followers here and abroad. His words summarized the aspirations of mainstream Muslims in the United States and around the globe: “What we need to do is borrow those attributes from the West that we admire and reject those that we don’t. That is the wave of the future.”

Already, signs support Imam Wahaj’s words. Muslims living in the West and those in the Islamic world are searching for this middle ground — one that fuses aspects of globalization with the Islamic tradition. For example, Muslim women have far greater access to higher education today than ever before. In Iran, there are more women than men in universities, a first in the country’s history. But as increasing numbers of Muslim women become more educated, majorities are becoming more religious while also taking part in what are called Islamic feminist movements, which stretch from Egypt to Turkey and Morocco.

These women, who often wear headscarves to express their religiosity, have found this gray area between modernity and traditionalism. They are fighting for more rights to participate in politics and greater equality in “personal status” laws — the right to gain custody of children or to initiate divorce — but also view Islam as their moral compass.

Similarly, the political future of the Arab world is likely to consist of Islamic parties that are far less tolerant of what has historically been the U.S. foreign policy agenda in the region and that domestically are far more committed to implementing sharia law in varying degrees.

UPDATE at 3/17/07 7:41:20 am:

Solomonia has much more information on the hate-spewing Islamic supremacist the Washington Post is calling a “charismatic intellectual.”

Wahaj, the imam of the Taqwa Mosque in Brooklyn, decried on TV the Sept. 11 attacks as “criminal” and “wrong.” But Wahaj also had invited convicted terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman to speak at his mosque, and even testified on his behalf. Before then, in 1991, speaking to the Islamic Association of North Texas, Wahaj called Operation Desert Storm “one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history,” and that the war was “part of a larger plan, to destroy the greatest challenge to the Western world, and that’s Islam.” Just as the USSR fell, so too will the U.S., Wahaj said, “unless America changes its course from the new world order and accepts the Islamic agenda.”

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I have a vision in America, Muslims owning property all over, Muslim businesses, factories, halal meat, supermarkets, all these buildings owned by Muslims. Can you see the vision, can you see the Newark International Airport and a John Kennedy Airport and La Guradia having Muslim fleets of planes, Muslim pilots. Can you see our trucks rolling down the highways, Muslim names. Can you imagine walking down the streets of Teaneck, [New Jersey]: three Muslim high schools, five Muslim junior-high schools, fifteen public schools. Can you see the vision, can you see young women walking down the street of Newark, New Jersey, with long flowing hijab and long dresses. Can you see the vision of an area … controlled by the Muslims?“

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Imam Siraj Wahaj, an African-American convert to Islam, and a prominent cleric and scholar of Islam in the United States was quoted as saying the following in 1992, in reference to the supposed opening of a gay mosque in Toronto: ”I would burn down the masjid (mosque) myself, if I could.“

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From the non-Muslim perspective the militancy in Kashmir is any thing but a freedom struggle. The People who are engaged in this insurrection came from about 3 dozen Muslim countries and so did their funds, trainers, organization and planners. This fully establishes the foreign connection of the so-called Jihad. The declared goal of these Jihadistsis to establish a caliphate; the Qauranic concept of a world government based on moral principles laid down in the Sunnah. They urge Muslims world wide to strive for caliphate, as, without it, Islam is incomplete. Even Siraj Wahaj, a U.S. black convert to Islam declared in the recent past that ”if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional govt. with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, he said, we would elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word if 8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.“

UPDATE at 3/17/07 12:17:03 pm: