James E. Hall Quotes
The facts will take us where the facts will take us.
The Egyptian pilot was an extreme Muslim fundamentalist who committed suicide while killing all the passengers. From the point of view of Osama bin Laden this was a test that a fanatic would kill “heathens” by flying an Airplane and killing himself also in the process. This was then used in designing the plan for 9-11. However, at the time of the investigation, our intelligence agencies never “connected the dots” while it was clear in retrospect. The cockpit voice recorder showed that the pilot kept repeating the traditional Islamic battle cry, “God is Great” over and over as he dove the plane into the sea.
James E. Hall, Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board, Statement to the press after the Egyptian Air crash of 1999
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Munir was a strong advocate for civilian control over the military and as exposed many military atrocities and disappearances. He was poisoned on a Garuda Airlines flight to Holland where he was exposing more of the human rights violations of the Indonesian Military.
There were many who disagreed about the commitment to non violence. For example, they advocate Sharia (Islamic) fundamentalist law where a Muslim who converts to another religion is executed and adulterers are stoned to death. So their ends are very violent and intolerant. In the past they have espoused and committed violence as a means. Many believe that recent claims of non violent means are just tactical deceptions which are authorized as a methodology in the Koran.
Over a century ago, modern Islamists were critical of the Wahhabi sect for their extremism. Unfortunately, the Saudi Arabian royal family whose absolute control of the kingdom could be threatened by an extremist religious movement, cut a deal with the Wahhabi that not only gave them control over all religious and legal interpretations of Sharia in the kingdom, but also gave them large amounts of money with which the Wahhabi expanded and exported their extremist brand of Islam to many other counties—including the United States. A large part of the Islamic terrorism of the end of the 20th century into the 21st was caused by fanatics who had been exposed to Wahhabi schools (madrassas), mosques or materials which are virulently anti-Christian and ant-Semitic. Muslim intellectuals like Muhammad Abduh had warned about extremism in general and Wahhabi extremism in particular.
Ibn al-Nafis was one of the great scientists of all time. He analyzed the human heart, lungs, and circulatory system. This quotation is often given by Muslim modernists and reformers to illustrate that Islam at one time was open to new knowledge, dissent, ideas of all kinds. A century later, Islam closed intellectually and later and even today, Muslims are killed for what became heresy. Truth became determined by the Koran and the words of The Prophet only, Christianity and the Church imposed a similar restrictive view of truth using the Bible and Jesus. However, the Reformation and modernity led Christianity to merge and adopt the more modern and scientific view with the exception of some Christian fundamentalists. Islam had the modern view and abandoned it causing the many educated Islamic reformers and modernists of today great difficulty in changing the culture and laws as a whole.
His views are a mix of modernism and fundamentalism. He favors democracy and elections but also favored the Taliban destroying the great ancient Buddha statues when he was called an idol worshipper for urging the preservation of art.
