These people need our support

No sooner do we hear of a different Muslim group, one that attacks extremism and feels that 9/11 is a date to be remembered with sadness, than the inevitable happens: the site has been attacked by extremists or, at least, people who do not wish to have alternative points of view put forward. For some reason I cannot find another link to the story. This one will have to do for the time being. If anything else appears, I shall update the posting.

UPDATE: The site is now back. Here is the London Declaration for Global Peace and Resistance against Extremism 2011. Obviously, I cannot agree with the calls for more aid and more money handed out to "poor countries" or, to be precise, their governments. Naturally, I would like it made clearer which groups have been mostly responsible for terrorism in the last few years but, clearly, it might be dangerous for the authors to be too outspoken. We shall see how it all develops. If this turns into another campaign to prove that all liberal ideas were first promoted by the Prophet, this blog will go into heavy attack.

YET MORE UPDATE: I think I showed some confusion as to which site had been attacked. It was this one and it is definitely up again.

Not nearly enough coverage

A friend sent me a link to this story in the Times of India.

Thousands of Muslims gathered together for a peace rally to commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11 attacks, expressing their condemnation of terrorism and extremism.

The Peace for Humanity conference has been organised by the Islamic group Minhaj-ul-Quran, which is also launching a campaign to get one million people to sign an online declaration of peace by 2012.

Islam is against terrorism, a leading Islamic scholar told the 12000-strong gathering at Wembley.

Islamic scholar Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri said the conference will send a message that 10 years of extremist activity should end.

Interesting, no? But there has not been a great deal of coverage of this. There is a story on the BBC website and a few other, mostly non-British outlets.

I notice that the conference also called for a move to democracy in the Arab world. Was that what prevented some of our media from writing about it? After all, they have long ago decided that the only problem the Middle East faces is Israel's reluctance to agree to a state whose avowed aim is to destroy it, set up on its border. Surely, there cannot be other problems, not with the Arab Spring and everything.