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Texas Imam Dr. Yasir Qadhi said in an October 13, 2023 sermon at the East Plano Islamic Center about the October 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel that the "brutal reality" in war is that civilians are targeted. He said that Muslims are being asked to condemn "one tactic" by "one group," but that the U.S. and Britain intentionally targeted civilians during World War II in Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
He warned that MEMRI, which he called the "Joseph Goebbels of our times," is going to take his words out of context and claim that he is calling for jihad, while he is actually calling for a war of perceptions. Qadhi added that Jews cannot "invoke the memory of the Holocaust to inflict another potential holocaust on innocent victims." The sermon was posted on Dr. Qadhi's YouTube channel.
Dr. Yasir Qahdi: "The entire narrative is constantly framed as a specific condemnation of one group and the tactics of one group and the recent events that one group has done.
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"If you want me to condemn one tactic, are you willing to condemn 80 years of thousands of tactics.
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"The targeting of innocents during times of war, during times of conflict, this is a brutal reality that happens across the globe, and the very people, the very organizations, the very countries that are pointing fingers are themselves guilty of far greater crimes in this exact same genre. Once again, I have to be super careful. Every word I say will be taken by Fox News and by MEMRI and by others and misquoted, so I must be careful.
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"War is brutal and sometimes things happen in war that nobody wants to happen. Our own country of America, which of course claims to follow international law, and usually says we should not kill innocent civilians. The United Kingdom – that is also signed on to these international treaties – during World War II they had to intentionally begin bombing civilian populations.
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"Both England and America began the intentional, direct, targeted killing of mass civilian populations in Germany – the cities of Cologne, of Hamburg, of Dresden were entirely decimated.
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"Wars – sometimes retaliation occurs that is beyond the laws of the land.
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"How did World War II come to an end? We all know this reality. Our country, with our tax-paying dollars, used the largest and the most effective and the most destructive weapons known to mankind, the atomic bomb, and intentionally targeted not the forces of the Germans, not the forces of the Japanese – they intentionally targeted two civilian cities, Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
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"But there is another war, a war of the minds, a war of the media, a war of perception.
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"MEMRI, which is the Joseph Goebbels of our times, will take this ten second clip and twist it and say I'm calling for war. So, I say clearly and unequivocally, the war that I am calling for is not a shari'a-based influence, this is not radical jihad, what I'm calling for is for us to stand up and be quintessentially American. Be a part of the democratic process, be a part of campaigning, be a part of media influencing.
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"Auschwitz and Dachau – I have visited the death camps. I have heard directly from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. I have seen a person take his hand and show me the tattoo that the Nazis have done – there's a picture of that in the New York Times – and I see what hate can do. But, I say loudly and clearly to my Jewish brethren, you cannot invoke the memory of the Holocaust to inflict another potential Holocaust on innocent victims."
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