Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston
CNN

Outside a Manhattan mosque where the imam preaches against terrorism, the brothers of the "Revolution Muslim" are spreading a different message.

Protected by the Constitution of the country they detest, radical Muslim converts like Yousef al-Khattab and Younes Abdullah Mohammed preach that the killing of U.S. troops overseas is justified. In their thinking, so were the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - and so are attacks on almost any American.

"Americans will always be a target - and a legitimate target - until America changes its nature in the international arena," Mohammed said in an interview to air on tonight's "AC 360."

Al-Khattab and Mohammed consider al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden their model.

"I love him like I can't begin to tell you, because he doesn't seem to have done anything wrong from the sharia," al-Khattab said, referring to Islamic law. "If you're asking me if I love him as a Muslim, I love him more than I love myself."

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Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com

Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com

Most of the world's 1.57 billion Muslims know that the Holy Quran states quite clearly that, "Anyone who kills a human being ... it shall be as though he has killed all of mankind. ... If anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he has saved the lives of all of mankind."

Accordingly, it should come as little surprise to any reasonable observer that when Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan recently committed his shocking acts of mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas, America's Muslim community of over 7 million felt an added sense of horror and sadness at this senseless attack against the brave men and women of the U.S. armed forces.

True to form, many conservative media pundits wasted little time in pointing to reports that Hasan had said "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is great") at the start of his murderous rampage. News coverage continuously showed the looping convenience store black-and-white videotape footage of Hasan wearing traditional white Islamic garb.

First of all, someone simply saying "Allahu Akbar" while committing an act of mass murder no more makes their criminal act "Islamic" than a Christian uttering the "Hail Mary" while murdering an abortion medical provider, or someone chanting "Onward, Christian Soldiers" while bombing a gay nightclub, would make their act "Christian" in nature.

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Doha, Qatar: A city skyline awash with cranes and towers powered by abundant oil and gas supplies.

Arsalan Iftikhar, creator of themuslimguy.com
CNN

From The Matrix to the Lord of the Rings to….a $150 million Hollywood biopic film about the Prophet Muhammad?

Yup, you read it correctly…

As reported recently by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, “[Academy Award-winning] producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the Oscar-winning American film-maker is set to embark on his most perilous quest to date: making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.”

With a whopping estimated budget of around $150 million, the blockbuster film will chart Muhammad’s life and examine his teachings.

Mr. Osborne recently told Reuters that he envisions the movie as “an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam.”

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In June, President Obama urged a new chapter in ties between the U.S. and Muslims in a speech in Cairo, Egypt.

Cynthia P. Schneider and Nadia Oweidat
RAND Corporation

“Where are the moderate voices from the Arab world?”

This common lament often leads to nostalgic evocations of the Golden Age of Islam, which stretched from the 7th to the 16th century. President Obama recently harked back to this period of Islamic enlightenment, innovation and tolerance in his Cairo speech, in which he attempted to redefine the relationship between Muslims and the United States.

Actually, there is no need to reach back 1,000 years to find Muslim advocates for tolerance and moderation. There is a need, however, to stop silencing the moderates alive today.

The Arab world is rich in literature - including a surge of new novels and non-fiction - that examines all aspects of Arab life and advocates a vision of a multi-cultural society that respects human rights. These works draw on the traditions of the medieval Golden Age, and of the Arab Renaissance of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Cairo was to the Arab world what Paris was to the West.

Eight decades ago, the seminal scholar Rifa’i Al-Tahtawi, once head of Al Azhar (Obama’s host in Cairo and the equivalent of the Vatican for Sunni Muslims), advocated tolerance towards non-Muslims and engaged in vibrant debates with contemporary European intellectuals. In his 1830 book An Imam in Paris, he argued for an open, moderate version of Islam. At a time when Egypt offered only religious education, he also urged the state to make modern, secular education accessible to all citizens.

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Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com

According to a recent September 2009 study completed by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly six-in-ten American adults (58 percent) say “that Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination in the United States; far more than say the same about Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons…”

In fact, of all the minority demographic groups discussed in the September 2009 Pew Forum study, only “gays and lesbians are seen as facing more discrimination in America than Muslims”, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of the American public saying there is a lot of discrimination against homosexuals in the United States today.

Some of the other key results below from the September 2009 Pew Forum Study revolve around average Americans asked to finish this statement “There is a lot of discrimination against…”

According to the Pew Forum study, the top 5 responses were (in descending order):

- Gays and lesbians (64%)
- Muslims (58%)
- Hispanics (52%)
- Blacks (49%) and
- Women (37%)

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Eboo Patel
For the Washington Post

Are young Muslims going to be bombs of destruction or bridges of cooperation? That's the central question asked in Christiane Amanpour's documentary Generation Islam, which aired on CNN Thursday night, and for which I was interviewed.

There are 780 million Muslims in the world under the age of 25 – over 11 percent of the world's population. The median age in Afghanistan is under 18; the median age in Iraq under 20. Too many of these young people grow up in poverty. And while poverty doesn't cause extremism, it does create conditions that extremist groups like the Taliban exploit.

The Taliban's strategy is simple: build schools in villages too poor (and too poorly served by their governments) to afford their own.

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President Obama, speaking in Cairo, Egypt, urges a new chapter in ties between the U.S. and the Muslim world.

Eboo Patel
For On Faith
washingtonpost.com

Whoever selects and assigns the books on Islam for the Sunday New York Times Book Review needs to widen his reading and add some new names to his rolodex.

Last week there was a rave review of Bruce Bawer's alarmist book Surrender (the subtitle says it all: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom).

This week, the cover of the Book Review has a picture of a group of fully covered Muslim women set against a crowd of 'normal-looking' mostly-white Europeans with the headline "Strangers in the Land".

The review betrays more about the opinions of the reviewer – the noted and controversial academic Fouad Ajami – than the book under consideration, Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe.

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Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Octavia Nasr
Middle East Affairs Editor

“Annihilate the rioters,” demanded one of Iran’s fundamentalist clerics during Friday prayer. He believes that the opposition “defied the orders” of Iran’s Supreme Leader, who “rules by God’s design.” Therefore, “they should be punished mercilessly." Either way, his words couldn’t be harsher or more extreme. Some would say those words couldn’t be more un-Islamic.

The word Islam means “surrender.” The entire religion is based on surrendering one’s self, speech, action and thoughts to god. When moderate Muslims hear what this Mullah has called for, they wonder which brand of Islam he is advocating.

The first pillar in Islamic faith is the declaration called “Shahda” that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet.

The first verse of every chapter in the holy Muslim book, the Quran, goes like this, “In the name of God, most merciful, most compassionate.” Devout Muslims start many of their activities or speech with these glorious words.

Where is the compassion in the Iranian mullah’s speech? Where is the Mercy?

He’s directing his wrath at his own people; their only crime was to ask for an honest vote and to insist that their votes counted in a timely presidential election. They are the ones who shouted from their rooftops every night since their demonstrations began, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar” –God is Great. They are the ones who were denied their legal right to demonstrate so they had to defy the regime and take to the streets anyway.

They are the Iranian opposition movement, young people, mostly students, many women who were kicked and beaten in the streets; they were shot at, detained and even killed. They were called traitors and terrorists. Despite all that, they kept going out for more show offs with Iranian police and a brutal volunteer militia known as the Basij.

The Iranian regime imposed a crackdown on foreign media which made the story impossible to cover freely. The world ended up with two views of on what’s going on: The government perspective came through the state media, radio, TV, newspapers and websites. The opposition turned itself into a media outlet where everyone with a cell phone became a correspondent. They uploaded their images to video-sharing websites and interacted with the world through social media. They provided raw, unedited picture to the entire world.

Now one cleric vowing to “teach them a lesson” is a sign of more brutality and more bloodshed to come. The only difference is that when it happens, if it happens, it will be behind closed doors. We can’t count on Iranians who turned their cell phones into newsgathering machines and became the story and journalists telling it at the same time.

What tomorrow will bring them is a mystery that no one is there to witness or report on.

President Obama states the importance he places on interfaith cooperation in Cairo

Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer

One might think that hiring an envoy to handle outreach to the Muslim world would be something the State Department would want to tout.

Instead, the move was apparently no news for diplomats at Foggy Bottom, who failed to make the appointment public.

This week Secretary of State Clinton tapped Farah Pandith, who previously worked on Muslim outreach in Europe, to the post, which will deal with the wider Muslim world.

But State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly only confirmed in Indian news reports - only after being asked – that Pandith, a Kashmiri-American, had been selected for the job.

"Yes," he said. "She's actually a friend of mine. I worked with her very closely in the European Bureau, Farah Pandith... The secretary has appointed her to more of a global role."

During his inaugural speech President Barack Obama pledged to seek a "new way forward" with the Muslim world "based on mutual interest and respect," after eight years of tense relations between Muslims and the Bush Administration. During his speech in Cairo earlier this month, Obama again said he would "seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

Still, Kelly was unclear on when Clinton tapped Pandith, saying he believed it was within the past few days. Asked why the post had not been made public, Kelly said an announcement was sent out to the "State Department community," but promised more information.