Will Muhammad image ignite holy war?

Will Muhammad image ignite holy war?
'Why We Left Islam' 1st American book to picture 'prophet' on cover

WND is already being denounced as a hate site by radical Muslims in anticipation of its release next Tuesday of "Why We Left Islam," the first U.S. book ever to feature an image of Muhammad on the cover.

"This book is put out by WND Publishing (sic), which promotes hate every day on its extremist anti-Muslim hate site," Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the New York Daily News. "The editor is a guy who suggested air-dropping pig's blood over Afghanistan. There are 7 million American Muslims and over a billion worldwide who love Islam and practice it peaceably on a daily basis."

Joseph Farah, an Arab-American and the only person ever to serve as editor of WND, said, in response, he has never advocated air-dropping pig's blood over Afghanistan.

"CAIR can always be counted upon to make wildly untruthful and reckless claims about others, while maintaining a hypersensitivity about its own concerns," said Farah. "Here, for example, Hooper makes this claim that WND promotes anti-Muslim hate on its site every day, offering only one example – and that one is totally untrue. Why other responsible media outlets continue to offer CAIR a platform for making such outrageous statements is beyond me. How many CAIR staffers and officials need to be indicted and convicted before my colleagues recognize these people as the extremists they are?"

But it's not just the cover of the new book, which sports a 10th century mosaic image of Muhammad, that has the Islamist lobby apoplectic. "Why We Left Islam" also contains brutally honest testimonies from former Muslims who have left the religion despite the threat of death. "Why We Left Islam" shows the potentially ugly realities of living under the Islamic yoke.

The book is edited by British journalist Susan Crimp and Islam expert Joel Richardson, using a pseudonym because he already has had death threats against him.

"If Muslims rioted around the world after a Danish newspaper published a political cartoon making fun of Muhammad, what will they do in response to this?" wonders Farah, himself a former Middle East correspondent of Lebanese and Syrian ancestry.

The book is filled with first-person stories of former radicals who began to question the Quran and ultimately changed their lives.

Khaled Waleed, for instance, said he was indoctrinated with the same type of teaching as fellow Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden.

"Our teacher and other Islamic scholars told us that as Muslims, we are the best people in the world," he writes. "I listened to my imams and was disturbed when they used abusive language to describe non-Muslims as the grandsons of monkeys and pigs ... [they] told me that it was my duty to revile and ridicule non-Muslims."

Waleed says the attack on the World Trade Center changed him: "On Sept. 11, 2001, I saw the real face of Islam. I saw the happiness on the faces of our people because so many infidels were slaughtered so easily. I saw many people who started thanking Allah for this massacre."