re: #755 Dark_Falcon

The reason is simple: He’s trying to straddle the fence. To most Arabs (and many other Muslims) Hamas is not a terrorist organization because it is fighting Israel, a nation they hate with passionate intensity. For Rauf to condemn Hamas would damn him in the eyes of those who see is Israel as evil, while to praise Hamas would be to damn himself in the eyes of most Americans. So he hems and haws and avoids taking a position.

Imam Raul is one of about 6 panelists on this forum from Jan 2006,
Davos Annual Meeting 2006 - Islam’s Challenge to Eradicate Extremism
His address begins at about 11:00. Among other things, he says call for the boycott of Isreal “distressed a lot of our attendees here”. He says also that “if we are going to achieve a reconciliation between the West and the Islamic world, we have to restrain ourselves from using condemnatory language, because the language of confrontation/condemnation doesn’t go that far.”