Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most Of U.S.

WASHINGTON – Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can’t do is watch the network directly.

Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. – including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. – cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.

The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet’s website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.

Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers.

The objections from the cable companies have come for both political and commercial reasons, said Burman, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “In 2006, pre-Obama, the experience was a challenging one. Essentially this was a period when a lot of negative stereotypes were associated with Al Jazeera. The effort was a difficult one,” he said, citing the Bush administration’s public hostility to the network.

“There was reluctance from these companies to embark in a direction that would perhaps be opposed by the Bush administration. I think that’s changed. I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Burman said.

Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera. The Canadian experience, he said, should put those fears to rest. In Canada, national regulators can require cable companies to provide certain channels and Al Jazeera ran a successful campaign to encourage Canadians to push the government to intervene. There has been extremely little negative reaction over the past year as Canadians have been able to view the channel and decide for themselves. “We had a completely different process and result here in Canada — a grassroots campaign that was overwhelmingly successful,” said Avi Lewis, the former host of Al Jazeera’s Frontline USA. (He now freelances for Al Jazeera while working on a documentary project with his wife, Naomi Klein.)

Media critics have begun to push for Al Jazeera’s inclusion. “It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it,” wrote Jeff Jarvis on Sunday. “Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can.”

Al Jazeera follows a public broadcasting model similar to the BBC, CBC and NPR and is largely funded by the government of Qatar, which Burman said takes a completely hands-off approach to content. Al Jazeera is the scourge of authoritarian governments around the Middle East, which attempt to block it. The network, however, covers much more than the Middle East, and now has more bureaus in Latin America than CNN and the BBC, said Burman. “As proud as we are of our Middle Eastern coverage, we are in other places in the world that are never, never seen on television in American homes,” he said.

Burman said that he will use the experience with the Tunisia and Egyptian uprisings in upcoming meetings with cable providers as the network continues its push. Comcast did not respond to requests for comment.

“Why in the most vibrant democracy in the world, where engagement and knowledge of the world is probably the most important, why it’s not available is one of these things that would take a PhD scholar to understand,” Burman said.

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UPDATE I: A reader emails to say that Al Jazeera programming is also being carried by the satellite channel LinkTV, which can be found on channel 9410 on Dish Network and 375 on DirecTV.

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UPDATE II: Another reader emails to say that Al Jazeera broadcasts over some of the Pacifica stations, including WBAI (New York, 5-6 AM, 99.5 FM), KPFA (Berkeley, 6-7 AM, 94.1 FM) and KPFT (Houston, 5-6 AM, 90.1 FM).

Roger Stockham Arrested With Explosives Outside Major U.S. Mosque

DETROIT — A 63-year-old Southern California man who was traveling with explosives in his vehicle with the intention of blowing up one of the nation’s largest mosques where mourners had gathered for a funeral was arrested in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan authorities said Sunday.

Dearborn police said Roger Stockham was arraigned Wednesday on one count of making a false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possessing explosives with an unlawful intent. Stockham had a large but undisclosed quantity of class-C fireworks including M-80s, which are outlawed in Michigan, Chief Ronald Haddad said.

“I was comfortable with the fact that we had taken him off the street – he isn’t going anywhere,” Haddad told The Associated Press Sunday afternoon. “I think the society he wanted to impact is safe.”

Haddad said Stockham was arrested Monday evening without incident in the parking lot of Islamic Center of America, while a large group was gathered inside. He said police received a 911 call from a resident.

Haddad said authorities believe Stockham was acting alone but still take him “very seriously.” He said Stockham has “a long history of anti-government activities,” though he declined to elaborate.

The chief said he called the mosque leader, Imam Hassan al-Qazwini, early Tuesday to let him know of the arrest, and later met with Qazwini and mosque board members. He said members shared concerns about copycat crimes if the arrest was publicized, and Haddad said he understood.

“We never want to put something out there that gives someone the ‘how-to,’” Haddad said.

Qazwini informed worshippers about the incident during his sermon on Friday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter issued a news release Saturday night and the police followed Sunday morning.

Stockham remained jailed Sunday on a $500,000 bond. A preliminary examination is scheduled for Friday.

Police didn’t know whether Stockham had an attorney. A public records search did not turn up a listed number for Stockham, though Haddad said he lives in Imperial Beach, near San Diego.

Dearborn, located about 10 miles west of Detroit, is the capital of the Detroit area’s Arab-American community, which is one of the largest in the U.S.

Via the Huffington Post, an insightful and nuanced analyses from Haroon Moghul. Hopefully people will start to listen.

4 Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Not Islamic

The following is reprinted with permission from Religion Dispatches. You can sign up for their free daily newsletterhere.

Just as in the case of Tunisia, we’ve been caught off guard by the rapid pace of events in Egypt. Commentators are having a difficult time understanding the dynamics of the Arab world and especially the role of religion in this latest apparent revolution. Many wonder why this isn’t an Islamic Revolution, and are audibly breathing a sigh of relief that it isn’t — assuming that somehow Egypt would follow Iran’s rather unique trajectory in 1979 and thereafter.

So why isn’t Egypt’s revolution an Islamic one? And what sets Tunisia and Egypt apart from Iran? Due to the quickly shifting nature of events, I’ve recorded four reasons why Egypt’s uprising isn’t an explicitly Islamic one.

1) The political Islamism that ended up triumphing in Iran was a much more authoritarian interpretation of Islam. It specifically embraced political power and preached a narrative of resistance, though its victory in Iran paradoxically ended any chance of victory elsewhere. That’s because when elites and other, non-religious ideological forces in neighboring Muslim countries saw the purges of prior elites taking place in Iran, they immediately became skeptical of working alongside Islamists in their own country.

Islamic challenges to regimes in Tajikistan, Algeria and Tunisia, among others, were violently supressed even though they pursued their goals democratically. Most Islamists learned from this brutal experience and grew from it; Egypt’s most powerful Muslim group, the Muslim Brotherhood, was one such group. It’s probably safe to say that Iran was the only victory for this style of Islamism, and now, some 30-plus years later, its moment has largely passed. The geopolitical, economic and social reasons for its emergence have disappeared.

2) Iran’s Islamist opposition to the Shah was shaped by the peculiarities of Shi’a Islam and Iranian history. Shi’as have a more organized and powerful clergy than Sunnis, and Iran’s clergy, unlike Egypt’s, were much more independent of the state. In Egypt today, among the main trends in Islamic practice are a quietist Salafism, which seeks a rigorous but non-political personal morality, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

And while the Brotherhood is an incredibly large and powerful organization, it is today a product of years of suppression, torture, and intimidation. While it seeks to change society, it does not pursue an explicitly political agenda. Rather, it believes that an ideal politics will be achieved once society is Islamized — in other words, enough introduction of Muslim values into popular culture, and society will simply reform itself — and that includes the state. So while they have political ideals, they certainly don’t have an explicit political program.

That said, it’s no surprise that the Brotherhood weren’t out ahead in the recent protests: They’ve largely eschewed street politics (it ends with their members electrocuted in jails). It’s also worth considering, although this is still conjectural, whether the Brotherhood declined to play a more public role even after they caught up to events on the street precisely because they know a more prominent role for themselves could draw negative attention. I’m sure the Brotherhood knows that Mubarak would love to have Islamists to blame for the uprising. It would make our government support for his crackdown that much easier to obtain.

3) People who study Iran know how vexed the relationship is, and has been, between Persian cultural identity and Islam. While many Iranians before the revolution were religious in a non-political way, the country’s elite tended to see Islam and Persianness as mutually incompatible. On the other hand, Egypt is a proudly Arab society (hint: the Arab Republic of Egypt) which has never seen Islam as incompatible with their specific ethnic and national project.

Arabness and Islam are hard to pull apart, such that the late Michel Aflaq, the founder of the Arab nationalist Ba’ath Party — he was a Christian — praised Islam as an achievement of the Arab cultural genius. (Many Muslims wouldn’t take too kindly to such a reading, but there you have it.) That difference in dynamics between Egypt and Iran needs to be stressed.

While Iran’s Shah campaigned against Islam and sought to erase its role in Persian history and culture, Mubarak never attacked Islam with anywhere near the same vehemence. He’s far more concerned with preserving power for himself than he is with rewriting Egyptian history (unfortunately for his prospects of remaining in power, he’s concerned with himself–and not even for Egypt’s advancement, unlike other Third World dictatorships, which do emphasize and achieve real economic growth). And this brings us to the most important point…

4) Egypt’s revolution doesn’t have to be Islamic because Islam isn’t at the heart of the problem on the ground. In fact, the non-political Egyptian Islam of the last few decades has succeeded in deeply Islamizing Egyptian culture, making Muslim piety interwoven with the everyday rhythms of Egyptian life. We saw this in the protests after the Friday prayers today, in the spontaneous congregational prayers that took place in the heat of demonstrations–and we can see it in the number of Egyptian women who veil (though many don’t and still strongly identify with Islam, whether culturally or religiously, personally or publicly).

Egypt’s society is a deeply Muslim one, and the very success of this non-political religious project has negated the need for a confrontational Islam. Egyptians know their religious identity is not under threat. ElBaradei, for example, joined in Friday prayers today before going out into the streets. Whether Egyptians identify with political Islam or secular democracy, their Arabness and Islam tend to be mutually supportive, and certainly not incompatible.

Where there is a danger is that if the United States does not come out explicitly in favor of the people, subsequent events will become more confrontational, and may even see the introduction of a more cultural and civilizational rhetoric. The Shah monopolized power and sought to erase a culture. Mubarak, for all his brutality, has had no such grandiose presumption.

As an aside, I might also add that Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other. Egypt’s “secular” dictator, who didn’t meddle too far into his people’s religious life — he was no Shah, and no Ben Ali — hasn’t created a sharp cultural divide in his country (the economic one is something else altogether). So why would Egyptians need, want, or stress, an Islamic Revolution?

The blogger who still loves Mubarak

(Salon.com)

While some conservatives fancifully imagine that George W. Bush’s foreign policy misadventures led to these demonstrations in the Arab world, and while others acknowledge that Mubarak is awful but the rest of those Muslims are even worse, one prominent conservative blogger is openly rooting for the repressive Mubarak regime to survive: Pamela “Atlas Shrugs” Geller.

Last night, a classic Geller headline: “GOOD NEWS: EGYPT ARRESTS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LEADERS.”

In other words, members of the opposition were swept up and jailed in preparation for a day of demonstrations against the authoritatian government. And this opposition group was not even involved in the initial protests, though they joined in the ongoing demonstrations that began on Friday. “It’s a good preventative measure no matter who wins this power struggle,” Geller wrote.

But as the world became transfixed by the images out of Egypt today, Geller worried that Barack Obama might abandon our wonderful ally, Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak has been a US ally for decades. We send three billion dollars a year to Egypt. And Egypt made a peace deal with Israel. But knowing Obama, he will throw another ally under the bus.

Geller continued to demonstrate the limits of her simplistic, binary understanding of the world. “I am all for political freedom,” she wrote, except that she prefers Mubarak to, uh, political freedom.

Loonwatch, like many around the world has been glued to events in Egypt. Will it go the way of Tunisia, full blown revolution, or will brutal repression quell the revolt as happened in Iran?

Only time will tell. You can follow the live stream of what is happening in Egypt at AlJazeera’s Live Stream.

The governments of the West in general and the US in particular have given luke warm platitudes about their support for peace, rights etc. Hillary Clinton in the beginning stages of the protests this week left a sour taste in the mouths of the protestors when she essentially extended her support for the Mubarak regime,

I urge all people to exercise restraint. I support the fundamental right of expression, but our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people

This is realpolitik speak that translates to “we want the status quo” and the Egyptian people know it and they resent it because it exposes the hypocrisy of the so-called beacon of “democracy and freedom.”

Vice President Joe Biden blurted out some hours ago what perhaps may be the true sentiments/wishes of the US government:

Mubarak is no dictator, he shouldn’t step down…

How out of touch is Biden? Is he blind? Does he think we are children?

Today Hillary Clinton came out with a statement that on its surface seems to contradict Biden’s revelatory position,

“People in the Middle East, like people everywhere, are seeking a chance to contribute and have a role in decisions that will shape their lives…The Egyptian government needs to understand that violence will not make these grievances go away”

While these statements indicate an improvement in rhetoric they fall far short of a condemnation of the violence and repression perpetuated by the Mubarak regime.

The events in Tunisia and Egypt have all but thrown a wrench in the stereoptypes perpetuated by anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racists and Islamophobes.

It proves that regime change need not come at the point of a gun, and that Democracy can be born in the Middle East through organic change from the grass roots as opposed to the Bush Doctrine.

It proves that the stereotype that Arabs and Muslims are incapable of change unless it be either theocratic or despotic is a racist lie. These protests are for better living conditions, jobs and DEMOCRACY!

It also proves that despite attempts at enflaming sectarian division between Muslim and Christian Egyptians by extremists in both the extremist Muslim and anti-Muslim camps they are more united than ever. During protests Egyptian Copts protected their Muslim brethren as they prayed and vice versa!

It exposes quite clearly the hypocrisy and double standards of many in the West who give zero credit to the Arab and Muslim peoples, it also exposes their close link and dealings with decadent despotic regimes. We can’t help but notice the difference between the reaction to protests in Iran and these protests, can it be that denunciations are affected by how friendly or adverse one is to the regime in question?

The Egyptian people have tasted liberation, have tasted the idea that they can take destiny into their own hands and bring about –real change– that can lead to a brighter future, may they succeed in transitioning to Democracy.

Update #1: Tear gas canisters are…drum roll…MADE IN THE USA:

Update #2: From mp11,

“Spencer is having a hard time turning the protests in Tunisia and Egypt into a Jihad.

In his latest offering he tells his stupid readers that when Muslims call for democracy and freedom they are in fact calling for Shariah.

“Calls for democracy effectively amount to calls for Islamic rule.”

Update #3: Some 2,000-3,000 people thronged around a military vehicle near Cairo’s Tahrir square, a Reuters witness said. They climbed on it, shaking hands with the soldiers, and chanted: “The army and the people are united” and “The revolution has come”. (AlJazeera English)

Update #4: Mubarak breaks his silence, attempts to look defiant. Is he adding fuel to the fire?

Update #5: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia speaks, “No Arab and Muslim human being can bear that some infiltrators, in the name of freedom of expression, have infiltrated into the brotherly people of Egypt, to destabilize its security and stability and they have been exploited to spew out their hatred in destruction, intimidation, burning, looting and inciting a malicious sedition,’” the news agency said.

Some autocratic ally of ours is scared isn’t he?

Update #6: “‘Democracy is something beautiful,’ said Eli Shaked, who was Israel’s ambassador to Cairo from 2003 to 2005, in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. ‘Nevertheless, it is very much in the interests of Israel, the United States and Europe that Mubarak remains in power.‘”

Update #7: “Which would I rather have, the autocrat or the Islamic radical Democracy,? I don’t know, that’s a question that’ll keep me up at night” –Geraldo Rivera

Rivera should keep looking for Al Capone’s secret safe and not talk about things he has no knowledge of makes him sound really stupid.

Loon extraordinaire, Pamela Geller and likewise her bosom buddy Robert Spencer have been staying mum on Loonwatch as much as they can. After initially crying about us being some insidious plot of the famed George Soros (we’re still waiting for our check), or a Liberal-Islamist conspiracy, for the most part Pamela and Spencer have fled from debate or addressing any number of our fact-based refutations and exposes of their bigoted and shallow view of Islam and Muslims.

Occasionally they have been forced, due to LW being cited in the mainstream media or by activists challenging their assertions to spew their vitriolic ad hominem attacks at LW, and it is no different this time.

In a post carrying her usual hyperbolic style titled, “ONSLAUGHT OF ACADEMIC ISLAMIZATION: BROOKLYN COLLEGE HIRES PRO-HOMICIDE BOMBER PROFESSOR” Geller writes:

The onslaught of the islamization of our universities and the indoctrination of our most precious resource, America’s young minds, continues apace.

Everything Geller writes about is some sort of fantastical conspiracy theory, she is like some Alex Jones wannabe on steroids. In fact this is more projection by Geller, as in reality it is her, Spencer and Spencer’s boss David Horowitz who are truly attempting to indoctrinate the minds of America’s youth…(all be it not as successfully as Snookie from Jersey Shore.)

Horowitz for instance is the founder and president of Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), an Orwellian organization that aims to fire professors who he feels are too “liberal” or who don’t provide a Conservative view of things…perhaps like teaching Creationism  in Biology class?

Horowitz also is the founder of the anti-Muslim Islamo-fascism Awareness Week, which if viewed or attended is like a highlight reel of the most ardent anti-Muslim Islamophobes on the scene today.

Geller continues:

I am not talking about the Edward Said chairs, the oppression of Jewish students on campus, the historically inaccurate textbooks and whitewashing of Islam, the millions from the Saudis to Harvard, Georgetown et al, the blacklisting of former Muslims and Islamic scholars from speaking at universities and colleges, etc.

We are far beyond that. I am fielding questions from a student at OSU who is taking a class in “islamophobia.” I kid you not. And the University of Toronto is using the notorious libelous smear machine and hate site, Loonwatch, as a source. A source.

We are witnessing a virtual tsunami of propaganda, oppression of free speech and clampdown on the free exchange of ideas — in other words, we are witnessing the enforcing of Islamic law (sharia).

A little over the top there Pam? She informs us that the University of Toronto is using Loonwatch as a source. They are probably doing this because though we are a satirical site we are a fact based one that analyzes the broad and small of Islamophobia and and anti-Muslim bigotry.  She responds to this with horror and goes on to call us a “notorious libelous smear machine and hate site.” We have to remind Pamela that we are not the ones being sued for libel, that happens to be you at the moment.

Coming from Geller this is like a profound badge of honor because the slander with which she describes us is really a projection. Geller must know that she is a liar who invents things whole clothe and routinely borders on the insane with her (retracted) proclamation of Obama being the love child of Malcolm X or Campbell soup aiding in the secret stealth creeping Jihad take over of the United States.

Stephen Colbert

Colbert does it again. Hilarious!

How long til Roberta is posing with Pamela Geller?

Just when you think that the bizzaro world of Islamophobia could not get any more loopy than the Geller/Spencer alliance there springs yet another vitriolic figure to make the lives of peaceful citizens that tad bit more intolerable.

Roberta Moore, the newly appointed head of the UK branch of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a committed ally of the English Defence League (EDL).

How two such juxtaposing ideologies managed to align with each other is surprising but not difficult to comprehend. They have a common “enemy”: Islam and Muslims. The coalition aims to single out Muslims in Britain, scrutinize and suffocate their existence, and cause restless violence.

Little is known about Moore, but in an expose and interview with Israeli news giant Haaretz what is prominent are Moore’s hard-line Kahanist and radical Zionist views. She may not project Pam Geller’s ‘zombied-out fascist-loon star’ look, but hey, do not be fooled, the lady is Britain’s answer to Geller.

Roberta Moore is a Brazilian born Jew, who joined the Israeli Army at the Age of 18, and reportedly carved a business career for herself in Israel. She describes herself as a non-practicing Jew, but an ‘unrestrained Kahanist’, (follower of racist JDL founder Rabbi Meir Kahane), and believes in engaging in a racial war with the Muslim world, especially Palestinians, in order to reclaim the Holy land of Israel in the name of ‘Kahanism’.

So, let us analyse the many ramblings of the JDL priestess:

‘We believe that if we call the enemy by his name, we will be able to fight him. We single out organizations that discriminate against Jews and anti-Zionist organizations, and try to explain there is no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. We send them letters and wait for a response, and then we take action to expose them.”

Moore’s hatred of anything remotely Islamic is linked to her radical and neo-fascist beliefs. Roberta Moore really should not be quick to engage in Muslim bashing, seeming as though she herself has a very disputable agenda and political affiliations.

Let us delve deeper into the violent warmongering world of ‘Kahanism’.

‘Kahanism’ is a far-right, nationalist ideology, viewed by many as a radical, extremist fringe group. It is a fundamentalist theory that encourages acts of terrorism and violence against Muslims and Arabs.

Kahanism was the brain child of ultra-racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the USA Jewish Defence League (JDL). JDL is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States of America, where the group is described by the FBI as a ‘right-wing terrorist group’ plotting terrorist attacks in the US, and is cited as a hate group engaging in ‘anti-Arab terrorism’, by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Kahanist offshoot parties, ‘Kach’ and ‘Kahane Chai’, are also listed as terrorist groups by the USA, Israel, Canada, and the European Union.

The JDL/Kahanist ideology was also responsible for the murder of American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Regional Director, Alex Odeh in 1985, a plot to kill US Congressman Darrell Issa in 2001, and for the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre, where JDL member Baruch Goldstein, gunned and killed 29 Palestinian worshippers, and  left 125 wounded.

This act of murder was met with condemnation and support of Goldstein in the Jewish World.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, described Baruch Goldstein as, a ‘degenerate murderer’, and ‘a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism’.

The JDL maintained that the act of murder by Goldstein was ”a preventative measure against yet another Arab attack on Jews”.

Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba praised the massacre, “Goldstein could not continue to bear all the cases he was seeing as a doctor; he might have gone insane from all he went through” further adding “since Goldstein did what he did in God’s name, he is to be regarded as a Righteous Man” and asserted that Goldstein was “a martyr of God”; “His hands are innocent, and his heart is pure.’

Mike Guzofsky, a Jewish militant and spokesperson for Kahane Chai in New York praised Goldstein,”He wanted to stop the peace process dead. He couldn’t have picked a better day – Purim, when Jews fight back.”

Does this make Moore a terrorist or a terrorist supporter?

“We are not anti-Muslim,” Moore emphasizes. “We are anti-Islam, as everyone should be. Islam is not a religion, but a cult. It has all the features of a cult, like the religions of Jim Jones and David Koresh. It’s exactly the same. But people don’t understand that.”

Moore echoes Wilders here, stating that Islam is not a religion, that it should not be afforded the status of religion. How exactly does “anti-Islam” translate itself into a practical idea? When it comes from the mouths of bigots and not critics it is nothing less than hate speech.

The reality is that Kahanism is in fact a cult which deliberately recruits Jews, brainwashes them to commit violent acts, uses them as tools for political gain, and then praises the murders and massacres of innocents in the name of God, sound familiar?

Moore clearly is subjective and selective in her approach to Islam, only highlighting the extremist interpretation, whilst completely neglecting the moderate and peaceful majority. However, what is most disconcerting is Moore’s hatred and religious stereotyping, which is responsible for the misinformation and moral panic that is spread by her hate group.

Moore goes on to continue her Islamophobic speel:

“In Britain we are critical of the Muslims because they come here and get government support and then have the temerity to hurt the country and its citizens. They say, ‘We will attack you, we will inflict a holocaust on you’ – all that rubbish. Why should I be silent?’

Moore’s constant use of the term ‘they’, to refer to Muslims, only confirms her isolationist mentality of apartheid and colonisation towards Islam.

So what about all the tax paying, law abiding, peaceful Muslim citizens who contribute billions in revenue to the UK? Are they merely a fairy tale or a hologram? Moore’s hatred of Muslims leads her to repeat the well worn charges leveled at immigrants and those despised as the “other” that they are “leeches on the State.”

If Roberta Moore is so concerned about British society and its security, she should care to mention the need to tackle drug gangs, knife gangs and crime, sex trafficking, the UK arms trade, gang warfare, child abuse and paedophile gangs, the broken judicial system, and the list could continue.

According to Roberta Moore, only Muslims are paedophiles and drug addicts, and commit crimes, no one else.

Roberta Moore claims that Muslims want to kill, destroy her, and eradicate Israel by inflicting a Holocaust on the Jews. Must I remind her who was really responsible for the Holocaust, the Nazis, White Supremacists who still scathingly despise the Jews and many of their adherents are in the EDL, the group she has decided to ally with.

“There is no solution. We have to do what we did with the Nazis – fight back! They are harming and insulting us, and we have to become stronger, to fight and that’s all. Then there will be peace. It has to be made clear that anyone who touches Israel will be attacked in return: an eye for an eye. When that happens, we will no longer be in the situation in which we find ourselves today.’

It really irks me when radicals such as Moore compare Islam  and Muslims to Nazism and Nazis. The difference is that Muslims did not create Jewish suffering and murder six million Jews; the Nazis committed the heinous crime and unbelievably she is now in bed with the cretins who are the progeny of the hateful ideology of Hitler.

It makes as much sense as Barney and Friends getting the lead role in Saw 4.

Completely illogical.

That Nazi elements are prevalent in the EDL has been well documented by many news outlets, activists, and commentators.

The EDL leader Tommy Robinson is a former member of the British National Party (BNP) an extreme racist and violent political group in the UK, famous for its anti-Semitic views and Holocaust denial. Robinson also was convicted for the assault of an off-duty police officer, and served a 12 month prison term.

EDL-Stoke

Many of the EDL demonstrations have consisted of its supporters bearing Nazi salutes. Many of the EDL supporter hail from thug gangs and football hooliganism.

I wonder how long this EDL/JDL honeymoon alliance will last? I mean, when Kahanists and Nazis start working together, bad things are bound to happen.

In Early January, Rabbi Nekrich of Brandenburg, Germany, issued a warning to German Jews to stop wearing traditional Jewish clothing and symbols that would clearly identify them as Jews to fascists. This was due to the recent rise in Anti-Semitic attacks against Jews in Germany, and also from the Rabbi’s personal experience in a train, where he was harassed due to his identifiable clothing.

‘Formerly from Russia, Rabbi Nekrich said he had been accosted on a train in Brandenburg by drunks three years ago.

‘I’m not saying that they were neo-Nazis,’ he told a Berlin newspaper. ‘But they had very short hair.

‘I had started to read a prayer book when one of the men approached me, asked if it was written in Hebrew and then threw it on the ground.’ (Daily mail)

This proves that the neo-Nazis are still as dangerous and existential a threat to Jewish existence that they were in 1933, when the Holocaust began and instead of teaming up with them as Roberta Moore has done she should urge Jews and other concerned citizens to fight the threat they pose.

Roberta goes on to claim,

“I had a Muslim boyfriend for four years, but he wasn’t religious. He drank and ate pork like everyone else. I have many Muslim friends from Pakistan and Iraq, and also people with whom I have business connections. I get along with them very well because they do not try to impose anything. The problem is that they are being brainwashed and believe they are superior to everyone else. They have the right to think that, but don’t try to force your opinions on me and tell me the clothes I wear or the music I listen to are bad. Or that my beliefs are inferior and I must not do this or that. Why do we women have to cover anything?”

Roberta Moore is offering this revelation as a means of detracting from her racist ideologies. Her claims are a mass of contradictions.

She further claims that she has many friends from Muslim backgrounds, yet in her quotes she happily labels and stereotypes, referring to Muslims as ‘they’, criminals, Palestinians as her enemy, accusing all Muslims of being welfare scroungers, brainwashed, accusing all Muslims of wanting to kill her and spark a genocide, and some other really schizophrenic ramblings.

Why would any Muslim want to be her friend, when Roberta Moore views them as the scum on her shoe? It really defies basic human understanding.

In conclusion, Roberta Moore, an incredibly puzzled woman is a terrorist endorsing, media obsessed, attention seeking anti-Muslim Islamophobic sell-out, who is marred with fascist and xenophobic qualities, and has aligned with dangerous fringe extremist groups to further a warped agenda — a description that mirrors to a tee her American doppelgänger Pam Geller.

Sy Hersh has been one of the foremost investigative journalist in America for the past 25 years. This revelation is a whammy, imagine if the script were turned, and a Muslim nation’s army was being accused of being run by “Jihadists.” We would never hear the end of it. Can we now blame Christianity for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Seymour Hersh: Military Branch Being Run By ‘Crusaders’

The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh alleged in a speech in Qatar that key branches of the U.S. military are being led by Christian fundamentalist “crusaders” who are determined to “turn mosques into cathedrals.”

Hersh was speaking at the Doha campus of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service earlier this week. He made the comments while discussing a forthcoming book he is writing. A writer for Foreign Policy magazine attended the event and reported his remarks.

“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” Hersh said.

He said that the attitude that “pervades” a large portion of the Joint Special Operations Command, which is part of the military’s special forces branch and which has carried out secret missions to kill American targets, is one that supports “[changing] mosques into cathedrals.”

Hersh also said that Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before his tenure as the top general in Afghanistan, as well as his successor and many other JSOC members, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.” Blake Hounsell, the reporter for Foreign Policy, speculated that Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Catholic organization.

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh said. “They do see what they’re doing…it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

He also criticized President Obama, saying, “Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn’t get one.”

The Washington Post asked Hersh about his comments after getting a denial from McChrystal that he was a part of the Knights of Malta.

“I’m comfortable with the idea that there is a great deal of fundamentalism in JSOC,” Hersh said. “It’s growing and it’s empirical…there is an incredible strain of Christian fundamentalism, not just Catholic, that’s part of the military.” He said the “angry black man” comment was a joke which the audience laughed at.

The Post also talked to New Yorker editor David Remnick, who said, “Sy is one of the greatest reporters the country has ever known, and that is all I need to know about him.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s quite radical anti-Muslim statements are not only coming to light but people are realizing that she is really a neo-Con…finally! She supports the curtailing of our civil liberties and imperial adventures to “civilize” the Mooslims.

While Josh writes an excellent piece, he nonetheless shows that he was overcome by the same beliefs of Ayaan’s “oppression and victimization” before his post that many others have been duped into believing. Ayaan’s story has in large part been proved to be false. She never witnessed war in Somalia, she was never forced into a marriage with her cousin, nor was she threatened by her relatives with an honor killing.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali should not testify before Rep. Peter King

by Josh Rosenau

I started writing this post hoping to craft an argument that Ayaan Hirsi Ali – a Somali-born atheist (formerly Muslim), a former member of the Dutch Parliament, a screenwriter threatened with assassination for helpng Theo van Gogh (who was assassinated) criticize Islam’s treatment of women, a feminist critic of Islam who has won acclaim across the political spectrum in the US and Europe – ought to avoid testifying in forthcoming hearings on Islamic terrorism out of enlightened self-interest. The hearings have never been about anything but attacking Muslims in America, continuing the crusade against the Murfreesboro mosque and the lower Manhattan Muslim community center (not at Ground Zero, not a mosque), and committee chairman King is a widely-reviled bigot.

I wanted to observe that the noted feminist would be speaking at the behest of an opponent of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I wanted to argue that committee chairman Rep Peter King (R-NY) was a torture advocate, self-described as “most fervent fan” of the civil liberties-choking Patriot Act, and was so friendly to the IRA before they foreswore violence that he proudly called himself “the Ollie North of Ireland.” He told Politico in 2007: “We have – unfortunately – too many mosques in this country,” and surely she wouldn’t want to be associated with his regressive, repressive, illiberal agenda!

I wanted to say that no one who had survived the horrors of Somalia, who had been through enormous difficulties in escaping an arranged marriage and immigrating to a western democracy could want to support the reactionary, repressive, anti-immigrant buffoon who would be inviting her to testify. However nuanced and thoughtful her opposition to Islam, I wanted to argue, Hirsi Ali’s words would be twisted by the committee and by press coverage and used to justify scapegoating moderate American Muslims, including those who havehelped foil terrorist plots (which King denies ever happens). I wanted to push back againstThink Progress’s description of her as a reactionary on par with King.

I wanted to echo Christopher Hitchens’ summary of her views, and to say that Rep. King would not be interested in promoting this message:

Hirsi Ali calls for a pluralist democracy where all opinion is protected but where the law does not—in the name of some pseudo-tolerance—permit genital mutilation, “honor” killing, and forced marriage.

I wanted to say that King’s agenda is a monomaniacal crusade against Muslims, ignoring terrorist attacks like the bomb detected before detonation at Spokane’s Martin Luther King Day parade, the Glen Beck-inspired kooks who have launched multiple murderous attacks,anti-abortion terrorism, the attack on Rep. Giffords, Oklahoma City, the “Minutemen” vigilantes, and other decidedly non-Muslim terrorists. I wanted to say that Hirsi Ali would not possibly support such a distraction from real terrorist threats, and I wanted to note that someone who has lived in the US for longer, and has more experience with violent extremists here, would be a more effective messenger in that effort to broaden the hearing’s scope. I wanted to respect her as much as many of my favorite bloggers seem to do.

Alas, I made the mistake of researching Hirsi Ali before posting, and my lines about her nuanced and sophisticated take on the situation, my attempts to see the best in her view, were consistently foiled by her actual words. I simply cannot say that Hirsi Ali’s views would be twisted to match King’s, because I think they are already aligned.

Here, for instance, is an interview with libertarian magazine Reason‘s Rogier van Bakel:

Reason: Should we acknowledge that organized religion has sometimes sparked precisely the kinds of emancipation movements that could lift Islam into modern times? Slavery in the United States ended in part because of opposition by prominent church members and the communities they galvanized. The Polish Catholic Church helped defeat the Jaruzelski puppet regime. Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes? Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims. Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam? Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”? Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy. Reason: Militarily? Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

(All emphasis original.)

I don’t claim to fully understand the path she’s describing, in which Islam is defeated – all of it (but not really the peaceful moderate part that apparently doesn’t exist) – then some part that wasn’t entirely defeated comes back to reform Islam’s legacy. It’s weird and self-contradictory, but let’s ascribe this to the difficulty of laying out complex ideas on the fly. Regardless of details, though, her message is clear: Islam must be defeated, crushed, with muscle, with the military, as an idea, and in the minds and bodies of 1.5 billion Muslims.

We’ve talked a bit about violent rhetoric lately, and I have a hard time seeing how the already threatened Muslim populations in the US are going to be safer when – in a House committee with CSPAN cameras and other media crowded around – a woman who looks like part of their community says that Islam is America’s enemy, that it must be “crushed,” that “you” (America? Americans?) must “flex your muscles” and “you” say “this is a warning” to Islam and to all Muslims. I think a lot of American Muslims already see their neighbors flexing muscles at them and giving these sorts of ill-defined threats. I can only see harm to my friends and neighbors coming from such rhetoric, and I’m sure it’s exactly what Peter King will want to hear.

I think he’ll also want to hear her reactionary views on civil liberties:

Hirsi Ali: The Egyptian dictatorship would not allow many radical imams to preach in Cairo, but they’re free to preach in giant mosques in London. Why do we allow it?Reason: You’re in favor of civil liberties, but applied selectively?

Hirsi Ali: No. Asking whether radical preachers ought to be allowed to operate is not hostile to the idea of civil liberties; it’s an attempt to save civil liberties. A nation like this one is based on civil liberties, and we shouldn’t allow any serious threat to them. So Muslim schools in the West, some of which are institutions of fascism that teach innocent kids that Jews are pigs and monkeys—I would say in order to preserve civil liberties, don’t allow such schools.

Reason: In Holland, you wanted to introduce a special permit system for Islamic schools, correct?

Hirsi Ali: I wanted to get rid of them. …

Reason: Well, your proposal went against Article 23 of the Dutch Constitution, which guarantees that religious movements may teach children in religious schools and says the government must pay for this if minimum standards are met. So it couldn’t be done. Would you in fact advocate that again?

Hirsi Ali: Oh, yeah.

Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—

Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I’ve been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn’t allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with—what’s the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.

Reason: Do you believe that the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights—documents from more than 200 ago – ought to change?

Hirsi Ali: They’re not infallible. These Western constitutions are products of the Enlightenment. They’re products of reason, and reason dictates that you can only progress when you can analyze the circumstances and act accordingly. So now that we live under different conditions, the threat is different. Constitutions can be adapted, and they are, sometimes. The American Constitution has been amended a number of times. With the Dutch Constitution, I think the latest adaptation was in 1989. Constitutions are not like the Koran—nonnegotiable, never-changing.

Every reactionary movement and every anti-democratic demagogue through history has made claims like “we have to destroy the Constitution to save it” or “we must restrict civil liberties to preserve them.” And yeah, that includes Rep. King, as it includes his hero“Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy. I cannot take seriously anyone who would argue with a straight face: “Asking whether radical preachers ought to be allowed to operate is not hostile to the idea of civil liberties.” It’s the very archetypical attack on civil liberties!

Like Hitchens, I wanted to believe Hirsi Ali just wants “a pluralist democracy where all opinion is protected,” but she doesn’t. She wants a pluralistic democracy where opinions like her own are protected, and that’s a problem, because then it stops being a democracy, and it isn’t pluralistic. Her right to get up and speak in Washington can only exist when a radical imam can speak freely down the street. I wanted to believe her claim that she is not against Muslim people, but against Islam – especially against Islam as a political movement. I don’t believe that any more. Maybe she and King deserve each other.

Similarly, I wanted to believe that Hirsi Ali would not wish to lend her support to Peter King’s anti-immigrant agenda, since she herself has seen how hard it is to get refuge in the West from repressive regimes, and she shows how much an immigrant can achieve under such circumstances. And yet I find that she worked with a reactionary, anti-Muslim Dutch politician to restrict immigration from the Muslim world, and continues to advocate for restrictions on immigration.

I wanted to see the good in her that so many liberal secularists do, but I can’t.

I think she and Rep. Peter King deserve each other.

Miriam Smith Killed Dog For Chewing On Bible: Nephew’s Pit Bull Hanged From Tree, Burned To Death

(Huffington Post)

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Authorities have charged a South Carolina woman with felony animal cruelty, saying she hanged her nephew’s pit bull from a tree with an electrical cord and burned its body because the dog chewed on her Bible.

Animal control officers said Monday that 65-year-old Miriam Smith told them she killed a female dog named Diamond because it was a “devil dog” and she worried it could harm neighborhood children. Authorities said bond wasn’t immediately set for Smith, who remains jailed in Spartanburg County after her weekend arrest.

Officials said she didn’t have an attorney yet.

She faces 180 days to five years in prison if convicted.

Authorities say the remains of the dog were found under a pile of grass with part of an electrical cord around its neck.

It’s a daily barrage of explicit anti-Muslim messages over at David Horowitz’s NewsRealBlog. Not just extremist Muslims, but all Muslims (over 1 billion people) and Islam (over 1,400 years of tradition) itself. I recently called out Mr. Paul Cooper for his sweeping claims about women and Islam. Today, we find another Islamophobic underling spouting anti-Muslim talking points but whose knowledge of basic facts is, to be polite, somewhat limited.

Mrs. Lisa Graas, a self-proclaimed Catholic, is furious that Cardinal Sfeir of Lebanon is “suffering from an acute case of dhimmitude.” His crime? This single statement:

Islam is, of course, a religion that promotes worshipping the goodness in life, worshipping God and being fair to others.

Of course, what the Cardinal said is the largely accepted non-controversial stance of serious comparative religion scholars who aren’t indoctrinated with anti-Muslim libels and canards. The Quran says:

O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allah is more worthy of both. So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allah is ever, with what you do, acquainted. (4:135)

This call for justice is universal; that is, it is applied to both Muslims and non-Muslims, as is clear from the phrase, “even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives.” It is recorded in the practice (Sunnah) of the Prophet and his early companions:

Narrated Abdullah bin Amr: The Prophet said: “Whoever killed a person protected by a treaty shall not smell the fragrance of Paradise though its fragrance can be found at a distance of forty years (of traveling).”

[Sahih Bukhari, Book 83 Number 49]

Dr. Maher Hathout, a respected American Muslim scholar, writes about the precedent set by the first four Caliphs of equal treatment, Muslims and non-Muslims, before the law:

The Caliph Ali is noted to have said, concerning non-Muslims, “they only entered the covenant so that their lives and properties would be [protected] like our lives and properties.” This point is important because it highlights the underlying purpose of entering into a treaty with the ruler. The state has the ability to provide protection for its people and both Muslims and non-Muslims enter into a political contract with the state so that they are granted equal protection.

The equality with which all are to be treated before the law is illustrated when the Caliph lost his armor in the battle of Siffin. A few days later, he noticed a Christian wearing that armor. He referred the case to a judge, and both he and the Christian appeared before the judge, each arguing that it was his armor, but the Christian stated that his possession of it was proof of his ownership. Caliph Ali could not produce any witnesses to support his own claims to it. When the judge hesitated in pronouncing the verdict, given the Caliph’s status [as chief executive], he exhorted the judge to disregard any such considerations. The judgment was in the Christian’s favor, and the Caliph accepted it.

[Hathout, M., Jamil, U., Hathout, G., & Ali, N. (2006). In pursuit of justice: The jurisprudence of human rights in Islam. Los Angeles: Muslim Public Affairs Council. P. 212]

All three branches of the United States government have acknowledged this fact about Islam; such as the 96^th Congress, the United States Supreme Court, and many Presidents including Bush and Obama. In addition, Mrs. Lisa Graas, a self-described “experienced apologist for the Catholic faith,” has likewise either not read or has rejected the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions by Pope Paul VI:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Thus, in reality, Cardinal Sfeir is being faithful to what the Catholic Church has taught about these matters; an interfaith consensus of peaceful coexistence and respect built over many, many years of painful learning from the follies our collective intolerance. But that doesn’t stop Mrs. Graas from accusing the Cardinal of betraying his symbolic Christian blood oath and paving the road for non-Muslim enslavement, simply by stating what Islam and Christianity obviously have in common. Nay! For those indoctrinated in the Spencer-Horowitz closed information system (based on pretend information), anything uttered about Islam must be in terms of pure evil, otherwise it becomes part of the conspiracy. She fusses:

While Lebanon is not yet to the point of being a Muslim-majority country enslaving, abducting, or deporting Christians, it is important to point out that attitudes like Cardinal Sfeir’s are attitudes of contentment with dhimmitude that pave the way for the advancement of Islam which itself results consistently in more oppression of non-Muslim peoples.

Cardinal Sfeir tendered his resignation to the Vatican some time ago, but the Vatican has yet to accept it. Considering that Pope Benedict XVI has been consistent in every opportunity available to address the plight of Christians under Islam, emphasizing the need for divided Christians to unite and for Christians and Jews to work together, we can believe that a suitable replacement for Cardinal Sfeir is being sought by the Vatican, and one that will actually contend for the true peace offered by Christians, Jews and other peace-loving people rather than the false peace of dhimmitude.

Mrs. Graas relies on links to the closed information-propaganda system (based on pretend information) called discover the networks which features non-expert loons like Bat Ye’or and Andrew Bostom. She essentializes Islam as pure dhimmitude, the imaginary lust for persecution of non-Muslims that is the Islamic religious impulse. She has no need to refer to any contemporary realities concerning modern Muslim interpretations of classical rulings on dhimmi (“protected”) people and citizenship, such as the recent solidarity Egyptian Muslims showed to their Coptic Christian neighbors by serving as human shields against violent extremists. Nor does she need to refer to any fundamental documents that might shed light on attitudes about citizenship in Lebanon such as, perhaps, the Lebanese Constitution:

All Lebanese are equal before the law.  They equally enjoy civil and political rights and equally are bound by public obligations and duties without any distinction.

1.     The Chamber of Deputies is composed of elected members; their number and the method of their election is determined by the electoral laws in effect.  Until such time as the Chamber enacts new electoral laws on a non-confessional basis, the distribution of seats is according to the following principles:

a. Equal representation between Christians and Muslims.

b.    Proportional representation among the confessional groups within each religious community.

c.     Proportional representation among geographic regions.

2.     Exceptionally, and for one time only, the seats that are currently vacant, as well as the new seats that have been established by law, are to be filled by appointment, all at once, and by a majority of two thirds of the Government of National Unity.  This is to establish equality between Christians and Muslims as stipulated in the Document of National Accord [The Taif  Agreement].

Rather, for Graas, Islam is the essence of every evil the human mind can conceive; persecution, war, slavery, rape, abduction, misogyny (hatred of women), irrationality; and Cardinal Sfeir is a part of the problem because he won’t describe Islam for what it allegedly is. Perhaps she should read Danios’ enlightening article about how the medevial dhimmitude she essentializes to Islam was, although second-class by today’s standard, still far better than her own historical co-religionists. Yet, we know that loons have a strong allergy to information that contradicts their anti-Muslim ideology.

Mrs. Graas, take some anti-Islamophobia-hystamine by reading a balanced primer on Islam such as, say, Huston Smith’s World Religions. It’s great for undergraduate studies (where you seem to be).

Allen West is on a crusade, no doubt about it. The video for his interview with Shalom TV is insane, it seems as though he puts Israel first even ahead of America.

Allen West: Keith Ellison ‘The Antithesis Of Principles’ Upon Which Country Was Founded (VIDEO)

(Huffington Post)

Freshman Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) recently got personal in an attack on one of the House’s two Muslim representatives, declaring that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) represents “the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established.”

During an interview with “The Shalom Show,” West also said that he plans to “defeat” Ellison, an outspoken Democrat who “supports Islam,” according to host Richard Peritz, “intellectually in debate and discourse.”

As ThinkProgress notes, West has repeatedly sought to connect Islamic religious beliefs to supposedly anti-American views.

At a town hall meeting during his campaign, West claimed that people who display the popular “Coexist” bumper stickers, which use various religious symbols as font, are those who would “give away our country” and “our rights and freedoms and liberties because they are afraid to stand up and confront that which is the antithesis, anathema of who we are.”

If the connection between the bumper sticker and Islam wasn’t made clear by that statement, West went on to drive home his claim that Islam is a “very vile and very vicious enemy that we have allowed to come in this country because we ride around with bumper stickers that say ‘coexist.’”

For more on West’s controversial views of Islam, check out ThinkProgress’s report here.

Frank Gaffney

Even loyal Bush aides are not free from the Islamophobic machine. Suhail Khan debates Frank Gaffney on Anderson Cooper’s 360 and makes Gaffney look like a wacko.

Did Spencer sneak into the room or something?

NYPD’s Muslim Horror Flick Sparks Outcry

A major city Islamic organization is putting a few tough questions to the NYPD about how a loony Muslim-bashing movie came to be shown to city cops, as reported in this week’s Voice.

“Our nation’s battle against terrorism is only made more difficult whenever security officers are taught to view all Muslims, and the faith of Islam itself, with suspicion,” saidCouncil on American-Islamic Relations-New York Board President Zead Ramadan. “We call on Commissioner Kelly to order an internal probe of how this propaganda film came to be used and to put policies in place to ensure that NYPD training is not biased by agenda-driven materials — or trainers — targeting any religious or minority community.”

Ramadan said he has asked for a meeting with NYPD officials to find out how cops came to view “The Third Jihad” — a blood-splattered 72-minute feature suggesting that even moderate Muslims are engaged in a conspiracy to put America under radical Islamic rule. The Voice asked police officials the same question after a cop complained that he and others undergoing anti-terror training were made to sit through the film this month at a police training facility in Coney Island.

Deputy police commissioner Paul Browne initially said the film had never been shown to cops, but later confirmed that the movie was shown at least twice. The screenings were a mistake, Browne said.

Makers of the movie, a secretive right-wing nonprofit group called the Clarion Fund, are still ducking their own questions about how they got so lucky to get their flick screened by impressionable young law enforcement officers.

Islamophobia as a Form of Paranoid Politics

by Lawrence Davidson

I) The Historical Prevalence of Paranoid Thinking in America

It was forty six years ago, in the year 1964, that the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that “American politics has often been the arena of angry minds….Behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new….I call it the paranoid style because simply no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind” (Richard Hofstadter, “Paranoid Style in American Politics” Harpers Magazine, November, 1964).

In his essay Hofstadter recounts the almost continuous presence of the paranoid style of thinking in American politics from colonial times right into the modern period.  It is to be noted that Hofstadter covers only national or nearly national instances of American paranoia. Those local political “exaggerations, suspicions and conspiracy fantasies” must also certainly exist to complement the more widespread versions. Some of the instances Hofstadter covers, along with others I have added, include anti-Catholicism in the colonies and, in the first years of national independence, a fear of a French style political terror.  Fear of Free Masons came next. Then followed waves of hysteria over various immigrant groups: Chinese, Irish, German, Italian, etc. Then came the Red Scares of the 1920s, followed by concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.  After that there was fear of communism and McCarthyite persecution.  Then followed the paranoid reaction to the civil rights movement, and on it goes.  Every one of these episodes formed the basis for imagined enemies embedded in the homeland and seeking its ultimate destruction.

It would appear that people are most susceptible to these paranoid feelings and fears under conditions of cultural challenge and social uncertainty.  In turn, such uneasiness is subject to manipulation by assorted demagogues, the media and politicians in general.  This is particularly the case if outsiders are felt to be a source of trouble.  According to Hofstadter, the   claims that underlie paranoid politics are often cast in “apocalyptic terms….a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil.”   This being so, the enemy must be  “sinister, ubiquitous, cruel…seeking to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way.”  The espouser of such fantasies may or may not believe his or her own message. Nonetheless, they will surely present themselves as standing on the “barricades of civilization”  fending off the barbarians. Under the circumstances, compromise is quite out of the question.  “Total triumph” is what is called for.

II) Why Paranoid Politics May Be So Prevalent

There is something psychologically elemental about this situation. The tendency to fear outsiders, and to suspect that in the unknown lurks sinister dangers to one’s way of life as well as one’s person, seems to always to be a ready societal potential.  This may be a consequence of what I term natural localness.   That is, the natural preference of most human beings is to orient their lives locally and to be uneasy with that which is foreign.  This can even be thought of in Darwinian terms.  We know that in the course of its evolution the human mind became “equipped with faculties to master the local environment and outwit denizens” (Steven Pinker, How The Mind Works, 1997, 352).  Thus, we all pay particular attention to our local arena because it supplies us with knowledge necessary to make useful and usually successful decisions, secure sustenance and avoid danger. In other words, a concentration on the local environment has survival value.  There are nature and nurture components to this.  There are biological, hard wired imperatives that make us group oriented and fear and danger sensitive.  On the other hand, how we manifest these imperatives is a function of what we learn from our personal experiences which, in turn, usually takes place within a localized cultural context, and is dependent on the quality of information available to us.  In our immediate daily environment we can be responsible for gathering the necessary information. Beyond the horizon, however, the issue of information and its reliability becomes problematic.

Natural localness is not just a phenomenon experienced by the individual.  It is also a group orientation.  Culture is a community affair.  For most community members it forms a bounded paradigm that flows from the customs and traditions of local and regional venues.   Local culture (now customized so as to be compatible with national culture) not only defines acceptable behaviors but, to a large extent, the very parameters of thought.  Therefore, the community’s culture establishes perceptual limits for the average person’s outlook.  This happens in such a “natural” way that it is largely unconscious.  The process of maintaining culture prioritizes group solidarity and that means differentiating the inside from the outside.    If you will, our “global village” remains significantly segregated into self-centered neighborhoods.

While there are good reasons why most of us are this way, natural localness has its obvious shortcomings.  It means that most of us live largely in ignorance about what is going on beyond the proverbial next hill. This ignorance can reinforce feelings of exclusiveness that reflect themselves in a suspicion of and dislike of outsiders.  As the cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley has written, “Our [evolutionary] forebears had a tendency to treat members of out-groups…with contempt and sometimes murderous aggression” (Keith Oatley,  Emotions, A Brief History, 2004, 29).  This tendency has not disappeared.  In a country as diverse as the United States, localness has helped create the Hofstadter paranoia that is constantly manifesting itself in phobic reactions occurring in proportion to our ignorance of one and other.   In this environment accurate information about the lifestyle and intentions of our neighbors is important to the maintenance of inter-group peace.  Yet, most often, we do not have such information and so the proclivity for negative feelings is subject to manipulation by those who present themselves as knowledgeable on these matters.

III)  Islamophobia, The Latest Case of Hofstadter Paranoia

To understand popular susceptibility to Hofstadter’s paranoid style is one thing.  To have  actually done something about it is another.  No really adequate effort has been made by American society to wean the population off these cyclical bouts of destructive trauma.  Certainly the great potential of our educational system to deliver purposeful and consistent training in tolerance has not been realized.  However, some positive ground has been gained through the use of the law.  The legislation that brought us civil rights laws is a particularly bright example.  However, without a purposeful follow-up as would be the case with nationwide tolerance training, the psychological impact of forty years of civil rights efforts has probably been no more than superficial.  As the reaction to a range of subsequent events from busing policies to the election of President Obama has shown, there is a frighteningly high number of “angry minds” out there who have never reconciled themselves to the fact of differences, be they based on color, ethnicity or religion.

The cyclical nature of  our paranoid episodes suggests that the conditions that provoke paranoid politics from theory into practice are always just under the surface of our national affairs.  And so we now come face to face with the latest manifestation of American paranoia, the phenomenon of Islamophobia. The history of how American Muslims became the latest target of Hofstadter’s form of malicious politics is the story of peaceful citizens brought into an unwanted spotlight by circumstances over which they had no control.

Muslims have been in what is now the United States since colonial times. Many of them were brought here as African slaves.  It is estimated that between 15 and 30% of the men brought to British North America as slaves were Muslims (Edward Curtis, Muslims in America, 2009, chapter 1).  There were also free Muslims in residence and at least one of them fought on the American side during the War of Independence.  (http://www.middle-east-studies.net/?p=2755)

The presence of these early American Muslims was recognized by the inclusion of the religion of Islam in the discussion on religious freedom in the early years of the nation’s history.  John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin all mentioned Islam in their arguments supporting the broadest possible religious freedom and tolerance.  This was the position of almost all those supporting the adoption of the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation.  Thus, from the very founding of the nation, a friendly regard toward individual Muslims was part of the American outlook.

Light levels of Muslim immigration into the U.S. kept this minority under the radar screen of paranoid politics through the 19th century.  It was also the fact that Muslim immigration was ethnically varied:  Albanians, Arabs, Bosnians, Turks, Syrians and even Chinese Muslims were in the mix.  Thus, while ethnic associations might cause some of these immigrants problems, religion usually did not.

Immigration picked up after World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire.  After World War II and the breakup of the European Colonial Empires, another immigrant wave of Muslims took place.  This meant that as the end of the 20th century approached there was a small but noticeable Muslim minority in the United States of between five and seven million people. (Tom W. Smith, “Estimating the Muslim population in the United States,” The American Jewish Committee, 2001).

Most of this community was socially and politically conservative.  They lived quietly and were by any standards loyal and appreciative citizens.  Unfortunately,  their compatriots in the Middle East were suffering quite another side of the American experience.   U.S. foreign policy in that area consistently supported dictatorships, some of which were quite oppressive toward politically active Muslim organizations.  In Lebanon the U.S. supported Christians against Muslims and with its support of Israel, the United States has abetted the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.  This sort of behavior had gone on since 1945 right up to the present yet, being far from their local lives, it was largely unknown to the American public. It was omitted from the media news or distorted to appear something that it was not,  policies protecting the “free world.”

In the end, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was bound to result in an open conflict with indigenous Muslim groups seeking to reform the situation in their countries.  That in turn would change the perceptual landscape for most Americans in terms of Islam and Muslims.  This was because their ignorance of foreign policy opened the average American to the manipulation of a media and government that would now focus on the hostility of Muslims toward the U.S. while omitting mention of the American actions that brought that hostility forth.  If things turned bad enough American Muslims would become, in the eyes of their fellow citizens, guilty by association of anti-Americanism and thus candidates for Hofstadter’s paranoid politics.  On September 11, 2001 things got bad enough.

The September 11 attacks allowed those either prone to paranoid politics or possessing ulterior motives to imagine an Islamic conspiracy to subvert the United States.  Alleged Muslim intentions were seen as similar to communist aims during the Cold War.  Both groups were pictured as perpetrating vast conspiracies to take over the world.  Both were thought to have secret agents and sleeper cells in the U.S.  And both were pictured as hostile the American way of life.  Two particular groups in the U.S. quickly took advantage of this paranoid potential relative to Islam in order to push their agendas: American Zionists and American Christian fundamentalists.

The Zionists saw the potential of focusing paranoid politics on American Muslims as a way to marginalize a group that was often critical of Israel and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.  Thus, the Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has repeatedly called into question the loyalty of American Muslims and singled them out as somehow anti-American because, “a substantial” number of them “share with suicide hijackers a hatred of the United States.” (Paul Campos, A Dangerous Argument, Rocky Mountain News Jan. 4, 2005).  The Christian fundamentalists have a fear and loathing of Islam even older than that of the Zionists.  For the fundamentalists September 11 opened the door to a new crusade, to the renewal of the age old battle between Christendom and Islam now brought into the heartland of America.  Thus, Christian fundamentalist organizations in the state of Oklahoma, led by State Representative Rex Duncan, have pushed legislation that would prohibit the state’s courts from using Sharia law to decide any  cases. This nonsensical gesture (American courts are bound to use American law) was “passed overwhelmingly in both the house and senate” of Oklahoma. (Hailey Branson-Potts, OkGazette.com, “State Question 755,” October 6, 2010). At the foreign policy level, both groups lobbied for the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

All of this means bad times for America’s Muslim citizens and residents.  Take the case of Safaa Fathy, a physiotherapist by trade and mother of three. She is a  resident of the small town of Murfreesboro in Tennessee.  “There is something around the whole United States, something different” she says.  “I was here since 1982.  I have three kids here and I never had any trouble.  My kids, they go to the girl scouts, they play basketball, they did all the normal activities.  It just started this year.  It’s strange, because after 9/11 there was no problem.” (Chris McGreal, “Muslims in America Increasingly Alienated,” Guardian.co.uk, September 23, 2010).  So what is the present problem?  It happens that Safaa Fathy is on the board of the local Islamic center which rumor now says is a “front for Islamic Jihad.”  She is also accused of plotting to force Sharia law on her neighbors, thus “threatening the existence of Christianity in the state of Tennessee.”  Why the time delay from 9/11?  Perhaps the process was slowed by George Bush Jr. publicly separating al-Qaeda and Islam proper.  Perhaps it just took this long to turn attacks on Muslims and those who appeared Muslim (such as the Sikhs) into a full scale, nationwide hate campaign.  Perhaps the trigger was the recent announcement by the 250 Muslims in Murfreesboro that they planned to expand the size of their mosque.

Another more national focus of the present paranoid campaign against American Muslims is the proposed Islamic center to be placed in an abandoned clothing store two blocks from “ground zero” in Manhattan.  The opposition to the center has brought together all of the paranoid political minds of America.  Publicity seeking Quran burners and  Christian fundamentalist supporters of Israel now travel comfortably with right wing Republicans, Tea Party Democrats and extremist Jewish Zionists as they claim that the Manhattan project is really a “training facility” for Muslims who want to take over America.

A particularly colorful character in this paranoid campaign is the American Zionist Pamela Geller.  She is one of America’s up and coming purveyors of Islamophobia (Anne Barnard and Alan Feuer, “Outraged and Outrageous” New York Times, October 8, 2010).  Ms Geller has, almost single handedly,  turned the debate over the proposed New York Islamic center into a clash of civilizations. Along with air time on Fox News,  Geller accomplished this through her blogg,  Atlas Shrugs.  This achievement must stand as a milestone in web history, though not a particularly wholesome one.

Geller is also co-founder of the Freedom Defense Initiative which is dedicated to stopping “Islamic supremacist initiatives in American cities” and identifying “infiltrators of our federal agencies.” She is also a founder of the organizationStop Islamization of America which, in the finest Orwellian fashion, describes itself as a “human rights organization.” It recently raised enough money to place advertisements on the sides of New York City buses identifying the Islam with the 9/11 attacks. The organization’s motto is “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense.”  She is an ally of any number of right wing politicians known for their anti-Islamic positions such as Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Gary Berntsen, and the Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders.  And, she is a right-wing Zionist with connections to the West Bank settler movement.  This may be the real root of her anti-Islamic sentiments.

Geller is just the tip of the iceberg. There is much anti-Islamic rhetoric to be heard in the November 2010 political campaigning particularly in America’s Bible Belt, which U.S. fundamentalists describe as the center of America’s crusade against Islam.  That is why Lou Ann Zelnick, running for Congress in Tennessee as a Republican can claim that there is a secret conspiracy among Muslims to “fracture the moral and political foundations of middle Tennessee.” (Chris McGreal, Guardian.co.uk,).  After all, as her friend Lourie Cordoza-Moore, the founder of a group of Christian supporters of Israel explains, Tennessee is integral part of the Bible Belt and the Muslims see that area as the “capital of the crusades.”  (Chris McGreal,  Guardian.co.uk,)  It is a neat, if quite crazy, picture where all the parts seem to fit.

There are millions of Americans who find the Islamophobic message convincing (See Reza Aslan’s “America’s Anti-Islam Hysteria,” The Daily Beast, October 12, 2010). For example, most of the followers of Glenn Beck, Franklin Graham, Michael Evans, Rob Grant and the late Jerry Falwell are probably on the same page as Pamela Geller and Lou Ann Zelnick. Taken altogether they might account for about 10% of the adult American population (that is over 20 million people).  These are the sort of people who think that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim leading an Islamic plot to take over the country and institute Sharia law.   You may think that this notion is just too fantastic, but it probably helped cause the Texas State Board of Education to believe that there is a plot by Muslim Americans to take over the textbook publishing industry.   As a response to this fear, the Texas State Board is now proposing to “curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks” (April Castro, “Texas ed Board Considers Resolution Limiting Islam,” Associated Press, September 24, 2010).

IV) Conclusion

Ossama Bahloul, the imam of the Murfreesboro mosque, has grasped the historically cyclical nature of the problems that now confront him and his fellow Muslim Americans. He notes that  “others have been here before.  A generation ago in Tennessee black activists were burned out of their homes for fighting against segregation and civil rights….It’s a cycle of life.” (Chris McGreal, Guardian.co.uk,).

Well, it certainly is a cycle of American political life and, ironically, one completely opposed to the post civil rights era ideal of the American ethos.  That being so, we can properly describe as unAmerican those Christian fundamentalists, American Zionists and others who denigrate Muslims living in the United States.  They are the purveyors of paranoid politics and as such the least civilized of our citizens–the ones who omit “and justice for all” whenever they pledge allegiance to the flag.

So these hearings aren’t an anti-Islamic witch hunt? Funny way to show that King.

Just Before Hearings, King Will Appear On Anti-Muslim Group’s TV Show

(TPMuckracker)

Just before he holds hearings on the “radicalization” of Muslims in America, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will appear on the new TV show for a group that believes Muslims are the enemies of America.

In early February, King, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, will appear on the debut episode of a TV show produced by the group Act! For America. The group’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, believes that Muslims can’t be trusted to serve in the U.S. armed forces; that “tens of thousands of Islamic militants now reside in America … attending our colleges and universities, even infiltrating our government;” and that Americans must unite to “defeat radical Islam.”

Who counts as a radical Muslim to Gabriel?

“Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim,” she says.

King will be the first guest on Gabriel’s new cable show, according to a press release. Gabriel will be the host.

“We are especially grateful to Rep. King for appearing on our debut episode to discuss the kinds of issues Congress and America need to face if we are going to defeat the threat of radical Islam,” Gabriel said in the release. “I commend Rep. King for his decision to convene hearings on the issue of Muslim radicalization and the rising threat of homegrown terrorism.”

King’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Baroness Warsi says Muslim prejudice seen as normal

(BBC)
Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Tory Party, will warn against dividing Muslims into moderates and extremists.

The baroness, the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet, will say such labels fuel misunderstanding.

She will use a speech at Leicester University to accuse the media of superficial discussion of Islam.

Baroness Warsi will say anti-Muslim prejudice is now seen by many Britons as normal and uncontroversial, and she will use her position to fight an “ongoing battle against bigotry”.

In extracts of the speech, published in the Daily Telegraph, the peer blames “the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media”, for making Britain a less tolerant place for believers.

She is expected to reveal that she raised the issue of Islamophobia with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain last year, urging him to “create a better understanding between Europe and its Muslim citizens”.

‘Social rejection’
The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said Baroness Warsi is to say publicly what many Muslims privately complain about – that prejudice against them does not attract the social stigma attached to prejudice against other religious and ethnic groups.

“She told the 2009 Conservative Party conference that anti-Muslim hatred had become Britain’s last socially acceptable form of bigotry, and claimed in a magazine article last October that taking a pop at the Muslim community in the media sold papers and didn’t really matter.”

In her speech, she is expected to say the description of Muslims as either moderate or extremist encourages false assumptions.

“It’s not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of ‘moderate’ Muslims leads; in the factory, where they’ve just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: ‘Not to worry, he’s only fairly Muslim’,” she will say.

“In the school, the kids say: ‘The family next door are Muslim but they’re not too bad’.

“And in the road, as a woman walks past wearing a burka, the passers-by think: ‘That woman’s either oppressed or is making a political statement’.”

Baroness Warsi will say terror offences committed by a small number of Muslims should not be used to condemn all who follow Islam.

But she will also urge Muslim communities to be clearer about their rejection of those who resort to violent acts.

“Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law,” she will say.

“They also should face social rejection and alienation across society and their acts must not be used as an opportunity to tar all Muslims.”

Asked about Baroness Warsi’s speech, a No 10 spokesman said she was expressing the view that there needed to be a debate “about the issue of radicalisation in Great Britain and terrorism”.

Does it get anymore hick then Gomert?

Rep. Louie Gohmert: ‘I’m Going To Be Pushing…To Have Some Hearings’ On The Creeping Threat Of Sharia Law

When pollsters ask Americans what the most important issues facing the country are, “creeping Sharia law” barely competes with the margin of error (and only does so by generously grouping it with “other”). But this hasn’t prevented Republicans from tripping over themselves to make combating Sharia law a central focus of their legislative agenda.

In November, Oklahoma became the first state to ban the cipher threat of Sharia law. (Native American law may have been inadvertently affected as well.) Next month, Republicans will again target Muslims when Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, holds hearings on the threat posed by radical Islam. King, who has said that Muslims aren’t “American” when it comes to war, is already compiling a radical rightwitness list for the hearings, including Dutch critic Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who believes that “Islam is a cult,” that “there is no moderate Islam,” and that “we are at war with Islam.”

This week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined the growing chorus of Republicans clamoring for hearings to look into the threat of “creeping Sharia law.” Appearing on Frank Gaffney’s radio show (Gaffney is of course the chief architect of the “creeping Sharia” threat), Gohmert told the host he hoped they would “have some hearings” and that he would “be pushing for them”:

GOHMERT: The biggest shock out of all of this is that the women’s liberation groups have not just gone berserk over this creep into our society that diminishes women as it does.

GAFFNEY: This creep of Sharia law you’re talking about, Congressman Louie Gohmert. You’re absolutely right, they’re nowhere to be seen as this is such an affront to everything that they supposedly hold dear. It’s really extraordinary and it’s why we’re so delighted that you are in place in the United States Congress and that you will be holding forth I know as the Judiciary Committee begins its deliberations this session to look at the creep of Sharia law.

GOHMERT: I’m hoping we’re going to have some hearings because I’m going to be pushing for them. To discuss this issue because it does diminish the Constitution when you bring any law in that doesn’t allow women to be full equal citizens of the United States.

Listen here:

This is not idle banter. As chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Gohmert has the power to hold such hearings. Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, has also said that the 112th Congress should prioritize the threat of “infiltration of the Sharia practice” in the United States. Between King, Gohmert, and West, three separate House committees could decide to spend valuable congressional time combating a phantom threat. Unfortunately, this Muslim scapegoating will do nothing to make America a more free, secure, or just society.

Christopher Hitchens is a much loved public figure, his hard hitting and biting humor have made many of us laugh and he is great to watch in debate. Unfortunately, his image at times precedes actual facts and Haroon Moghul really slams him in a recent piece about Hitchens article on Tunisia and Islam.

Hitchens took a professor’s word that she had been sentenced to death by an Islamist by the name of Rachid Ghannouchi. He didn’t do his homework of course because if he did he would realize that Rachid Ghannouchi is one of the most liberal “Islamists” out there, akin to the AKP in Turkey.

Why Christopher Hitchens Writes About Things He Doesn’t Understand: Tunisia, Islam, and Sources

by Haroon Mughal

I’m not a fan of Christopher Hitchens. I found this absurdly decontextualized piece by Hitchens, written for Vanity Fair in 2007, all but fawning over the dictatorial delights of Tunisia–people can hold hands, so it’s okay if they can’t vote–and was especially amused by this passage:

Mongia Souaihi cheerfully explained to me the many reasons why the veil is not authorized by the Koran and why she is in danger for drawing this conclusion in print. “The fundamentalists from overseas have declared me to be kuffar—an unbeliever.” This I know to be dangerous, because a Muslim who has once been declared to be an apostate is also a person who can be sentenced to death. “Which fundamentalists? And from where overseas?” “Rachid Ghannouchi, from London.” Oh no, not again. If you saw my “Londonistan” essay, in the June Vanity Fair, you will know that fanatics who are unwelcome in Africa and Arabia are allowed an astonishing freedom in the United Kingdom.

Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda (Renaissance Party) has long been symbolized by Rachid Ghannouchi, among the most liberal Islamists in the world. His opinions would certainly not jive with those of hardline Islamists in places like Pakistan. Yet here is Hitchens, taking at face value the word of a professor who certainly serves at the pleasure of one of the most politically oppressive states in the world, talking smack about a religious figure who is identified as an enemy of the state.

Wouldn’t a good journalist at least try to investigate? I mean, why would you, for example, swallow, hook, line and sinker, the words of a hardline Iranian cleric about a dissident Iranian religious thinker in London? Isn’t it odd that she says the fundamentalists (plural) are after her, but then names only one, who might also be opposed to her because she is giving religious cover to tyranny?

But Hitchens is more concerned with satisfying his bias than with actually figuring out what’s going on. Or maybe we should believe everything Vladimir Putin’s appointees have to say about Putin’s enemies. All the more pathetic because Ben Ali came to power, in 1987, in part over regional concerns over Islamic parties, specifically including Ennahda. The extent of Hitchens’ effort is a pathetic, ‘Oh no, not again,’ which brings to mind the TV news journalist I heard a few days ago who, on hearing that 49 of 50 states were covered by snow for the first time ever, said, ‘Go figure.’

What does he get paid to do?

Hitchens also gets the causality wrong:

To the west lay the enormous country of Algeria, again artificially prosperous through oil and natural gas, but recently the scene of a heinous Islamist insurgency that—along with harsh and vigorous state repression—had killed perhaps 150,000 people.

The Islamist violence started after the state canceled elections. Why mention the Islamist violence as if it preceded, or precipitated, the state violence? The state didn’t repress the insurgency; the state was repressive, repressed the results of elections, which in turn led to a civil war, in which the state didn’t just repress an insurgency, but actively contributed to its prolonging by refusing to create any political space for dissent and debate.

The audacity of ideology.

Oh, and the word isn’t “kuffar,” it’s kafir. Kuffar is a plural form. I certainly hope Hitchens screwed that up. At least, I wouldn’t be surprised. (In his silly book ‘God is not Great,’ Hitchens proudly boasts how he knows the Arabic world ‘Al-’ means ‘The’).

CPAC is beset by anti-Muslim goons. Are we going to see a repeat of the Pamela Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s, “Jihad: The Third Rail” event with a cameo from Frank Gaffney?

Conservative Conference Beset By Accusations of Pro-Gay Takeover, Muslim Agenda

If the controversy over GOProud weren’t enough, another complaint gaining traction among right wing blogs is the charge that ACU board member and CPAC organizer Suhail Khan is connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S government, and is trying to inject some sort of “Islamic supremacy” into the event.

Critics like Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, Pamela Geller from the website Atlas Shrugs and Robert Spencer from Jihad Watch are among critics who accuse Americans for Tax Reform chief Grover Norquist, who is also on the CPAC board and an ally of Khan, of being too biased in favor of radical Muslim activists.

They say Norquist and Khan are unduly influencing the CPAC agenda, proving the organization is not serious about the threat of Muslim extremism.

“I have long been aware of the stealth Islamization of CPAC leadership, but held my events there in the hopes that we might snatch back leadership,” Geller recently wrote on her website. “David Keene has stacked the board with Islamic supremacists, and their chief diabolical Islamic apologist is none other than the infamous Grover Norquist.”

Norquist did not return calls or e-mails for comment, but Khan, a former White House staffer and Republican congressional aide, told FOXNews.com that he is used to the attacks. He said the unsubstantiated accusations against him first emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks when he was working in the Bush White House.

Khan is now a fellow at the Center for Global Engagement working on religious outreach. He said he is the only board member that was elected by the wider ACU membership and enjoys strong support from fellow conservatives.

“The (accusations) are completely false, there is no merit to them,” Khan said. “I’m just grateful that the vast majority of conservatives at-large know me as a life-long Reagan conservative who has dedicated his life to individual liberty, limited government and a strong defense. This has not been a controversy internally.”

According to CPAC organizers, at least one panel is scheduled on Islamic Sharia law and the debate over its creeping influence in Western societies, including the United States.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar delivers a sky hook on Islamophobia.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar On Islam: ‘Islamophobia Is On The Rise’

NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke over the phone with Katia Couric on Wednesday and told her that he believes Islamophobia is on the rise.

“I think Islamophobia is on the rise,” the former Los Angeles Laker said. “I think the best way to counter it is just communication, to let people who we are and what we believe in. It’s no mystery and it’s certainly nothing that we have to be fearful of.”

He went on to say that when we’re dealing with radical people who “want to have a war with us, that gets thrown into the mix. A whole lot of confusion ensues.”

He said the best way in countering that is through education.

Scroll down to watch the video (The portion about Islamophobia starts at the 3:22 mark)

David Horowitz

David Horowitz’s NewRealBlog is (like FrontPageMag) a lightning rod for people who want to justify their preconceived prejudices about Islam and Muslims. Today, we find an article by Paul Cooper, a pastor, which allegedly purports to expose the reality of women under Sharia law. Of course, we’ve come to expect the usual dose of anti-Muslim bias from David Horowitz’s cash for hate scheme which regularly dehumanizes Palestinians and inspires right-wing terrorists.

Mr. Cooper exposes the “left-leaning” (what most call mainstream moderate) journalists who refuse to describe Sharia law in terms of pure evil:

Every week new articles come out from left-leaning journalists about how great Sharia law is and how we have nothing to fear. Yet we at NewsReal have written on many sad cases of how children are treated under Sharia all over the world. You don’t hear the whole story of the dangers of Islamic law unless you see how it affects women. This past week in Pakistan, for example, two women were falsely accused of blasphemy and almost beaten to death.

Cooper follows classic far right-wing tactics by using Islam as a political wedge issue; that is, to divide Americans according to their position on Islam. I’ve written before about right-wing activists using Islam as a stick to bash the Left. One wonders if his primary target is his political enemies (Democrats), not necessarily Muslims themselves.

Historically, Muslims had done away with harsh blasphemy laws in 1839 during the Reformation of the Ottoman Empire, specifically by a decree known as the Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber. For Mr. Cooper, though, a small troublesome detail like that need not prevent him from claiming that such severe laws are essential Islamic traditions practiced all over the Muslim world.

Admittedly, there are problems with Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law. But Muslims have been voicing their criticism of the Pakistani government’s heavy hand for quite some time. Yursil Kidwai, in an excellent piece for the Huffington Post, describes how so-called Sharia laws are actually tactics used by corrupt governments to distract people from their endemic corruption:

It seems more than coincidental that these ‘Sharia’ incidents occur in states that are run by atheistic/communist dictators (i.e. Saddam Hussein) or ridiculously corrupt ‘Islamo-democratic’ governments.

In Pakistan’s case, the International Crisis Group provided a report last year stating:

“Decades of mismanagement, political manipulation and corruption have rendered Pakistan’s civil service incapable of providing effective governance and basic public services. In public perceptions, the country’s 2.4 million civil servants are widely seen as unresponsive and corrupt, and bureaucratic procedures cumbersome and exploitative. Bureaucratic dysfunction and low capacity undermine governance, providing opportunities to the military to subvert the democratic transition and to extremists to destabilize the state.”

Ridiculous distractions such as modern ‘Islamic’ states opinions on blasphemy, adultery, and theft allow Islamophobes to target their favorite religion, while allowing corruption and real problems to go under the radar. These laws today serve a purpose that they never had in what was the most authentic Islamic state (now only a memory): a means to prove a government’s religiosity in a midst of lies, deceit, money and total corruption which make up most of its actual administration.

Yursil is correct that the misguided policies of unelected dictators to enforce only the most harsh Sharia laws are nothing more than superficial attempts to legitimate illegitimate governments. Islamophobes like to focus on these irregular examples as a typical day of Sharia law. However, this belies the sophisticated Ottoman legal system which, using Sharia’s own internal mechanisms (such as ijtihad and istihsan), had done away with severe punishments like stoning and blasphemy. Yursil continues:

Islamic laws which reward charity, promote honesty, promote tolerance have been forgotten in these states, while a handful of ‘Shariah’ punishments were mixed in with brand-new torturous and oppressive policies and procedures.

Interestingly enough, these selected ‘Sharia’ punishments were frowned upon under the centuries of Ottoman rule and by its end had become completely unpracticed. In Ottoman lands where Sharia was the be-all, end-all official state law, these laws were unenforced as a matter of practice. This was not through denouncing or revising Islamic Law, but by putting into practice the complete and holistic set of checks and balances built into Islamic Sharia.

Of course, most Muslim law makers are following precedents similar to the Ottoman reforms. Yet, all this history and context is simply too much information to consider before David Horowitz and company declare Sharia law a threat to all women. After recounting in detail a single anecdote from Pakistan, Cooper concludes that such events are representative of the entire Muslim world (over 1 billion people):

Sadly such stories are common in many Islamic regions. Yet news agency [sic], women’s groups, and human rights organizations continue to turn a deaf ear. Despite their indifference, some of us are listening and committed to getting the word out on the true dangers of Sharia law.

We are left to believe that women everywhere in the Muslim world, without exception, are suffering every day under Sharia law. I am curious to see how Mr. Cooper explains the fact that Pakistan, allegedly under misogynist Sharia law, has twice elected a woman Prime Minister. But what do you expect from someone who links his article to Nonie Darwish, among others, as his “resource” for Sharia?

Mr. Cooper, perhaps those “news agencies, women’s groups, and human rights organizations continue to turn a deaf ear” because they don’t pay attention to exaggerated politically self-serving claims about women and Sharia law from non-experts like yourself.

Contrary to what many allege in the Islamophobe sphere, Muslims have been a part of America since the very beginning.

Muslims played role in nation’s history

Thomas Bonner (Herald Online)

Did Muslims fight on the Continental side in the Revolution? I do not know; however, it is possible. One veteran of the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill was a freed slave named Peter Salem, who is alleged by some historians to have been Muslim, based on his last name, which is similar to the Arabic name Saleem. Other Continental soldiers with Islamic names include Salem Poor, Yusuf Ben Ali, Bampett Muhamed, Francis Saba and Joseph Saba. In 1777, Morocco was the first nation to recognize our fledging country following the Declaration of Independence. In recognition of Morocco’s friendship, in 1790, South Carolina’s Legislature granted special legal protections to a group of Moroccans stranded in our state.

Did Muslims fight in the Civil War in order to end slavery? At least one is known to have done so. Muhammad Ali ibn Said (also known as Nicholas Said), formerly enslaved in the Middle East, immigrated to the U.S. in 1860 and enlisted in the famed all-African-American 55th Massachusetts Regiment in 1863, where he rose to the rank of sergeant before war’s end.

Gov. Bentley says only Christians can be his brothers and sisters.

New Alabama Governor: Only Christians Are My Brothers And Sisters

(TPM)

Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the very church where Dr. King once pastored, new Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley gave a speech in which he said that those who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior are not his “brothers.”

Bentley spoke at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery just minutes after taking the oath of office on Monday. The new governor, who has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, first said that though he ran as a Republican, once he took office he “became the governor of all the people.”

“I am color blind,” Bentley said, according toThe Birmingham News.

But Bentley then said that only those who are Christians and “saved” like he is are his brothers and sisters.

“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”

Bentley stopped just short of calling for non-Christians to accept Jesus Christ.

”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters,” he said. “So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”

Asked by The Birmingham News afterwords if his words where meant to insult other faiths, Bentley said, ”We’re not trying to insult anybody.”

”He is the governor of all the people, Christians, non-Christians alike,” Rebekah Caldwell Mason, Bentley’s communications director, told the News.

[TPM SLIDESHOW: America Celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day]

Dr. King was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church from 1954 to 1960. Early Civil Rights activity, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was directed by King from his office in the church. The church was designated a national historic landmark in 1974, and, in 1978, its name was changed to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.

TPM’s initial attempt to contact Bentley was unsuccessful.

(h/t Ben Smith)

In “Birmingham they love the Governor?”:

Randy_McDaniels

Looks like ACT has to get its act together.

State turns ACT! Jacksonville president’s debt to collections agency

Florida is facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, but, despite his sizeable debt to the state, bookkeepers should not expect Randy McDaniels to help fill that gap anytime soon.

The head of ACT! Jacksonville, a local chapter of a national anti-Islamist group, was fined $624,000, including collections fees, by the state between 2006 and 2008, related to his time as a contractor. Documents indicate he accepted $170,316 in partial, up-front payments for jobs he never started or didn’t finish to satisfaction. The state fined McDaniels, whose license was revoked, for 10 of those incidents, records show. His largest individual fine is $123,129.

McDaniels has yet to make any payments, and last week the matter was turned over to a third-party collections agency.

ACT! Jacksonville took a very public stance last year against University of North Florida professorParvez Ahmed’s nomination to the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission. The group’s efforts brought attention to what is usually a routine process, and helped persuade six City Council members to oppose Ahmed’s nomination to the volunteer commission.

In an e-mail to the Times-Union, McDaniels said his business went belly-up due to a bad economy, and he criticized the newspaper’s coverage of his group.

“I and thousands of other businesses in Florida failed … during the recent economic downturn,” he wrote. “Each story you run and attack you make while favoring Parvez Ahmed swells our membership and support in the city, thank you.”

The newspaper first reported McDaniels’ troubled past as a contractor in December, when a state official characterized the harm done to McDaniels’ customers as “quite significant.”

ACT! opposed Ahmed’s nomination because it says that the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the organization Ahmed chaired for three years, is a propaganda arm for Hamas, which the federal government has designated a terrorist organization. CAIR has denied those claims.

McDaniels, who characterized the Times-Union’s stories as a “witch hunt,” said the work was not fulfilled because his company folded after contracts were signed.

“It is regretful that some of our clients were hurt,” he wrote. “Regarding the fines, had I been more concerned with my personal position and that of the company and taken time and precious monies to hire an attorney and leave working projects, our violations and fines may have been lower.”

He gave no indication that he planned on paying the fines, and the state probably will not be able to force payment.

“There is a certain percentage of debtors who have no assets, and nothing to be gotten. At that point it’s a loss,” said Fran Landau, who has been a collections attorney for 31 years, and owns Accelerated Receivables Management. She was speaking in generalities, not specifically about McDaniels’ case.

She said a lot of letters will be sent, phone calls will be made, and, if payment is not made, it will hurt McDaniels’ credit rating.

“For some, credit rating matters, for others it really does not mean a whole lot,” Landau said.

Sandi Copes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, said if the state does not see the money it will have to write off the debt.

“This would be taken into consideration,” she said, “if Mr. McDaniels ever applied to reinstate his license.”

matt.dixon@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4174

A blast from the past. Around Christmas time 2008 a doll was being sold by Fisher Price that cooed and gaga’d but through the power of suggestion some started to believe that the doll was saying, “Islam is the light,” but if you listen closely you could make it out to say anything:

Spencer and other Islamophobes jumped on this at the time and put it forward as another instance of the insidious creeping Jihad. One of Texas’s finest, Pastor David Grice extrapolated that the doll was a sign of “us” being “under attack religiously,” strangely he also saw a foreign Chinese conspiracy involved as well:

Joe Kaufman

What did we expect from Joe “nuke the Mooslims” Kaufman? For years now the gum-shoe “investigative journalist” has been gathering his handful of protesters to demonstrate at the conferences, gatherings, festivals and events of American Muslim organizations or leaders.

By now most in the American Muslim community and otherwise view Kaufman and his handful of protesters as curious sideshow distractions, oddities, mere nuisances and objects of fitful laughter, kinda like the Westboro Baptist Church people or Pastor Terry Jones.

Kaufman’s crew recently had one such protest on Jan, 08, 2011 at an ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) event in his home state of Florida:

Here’s a sampling of some of the…”Interesting”…messages:

"What's Next, Fort Hood?" and "Don't Tread on Me" flag

Granma’s scared of Mooslims:

"No Islam" and "Obama evil Mooslim"

If they weren’t holding signs claiming that “Obama (the “b” is replaced to read Osama) chooses Muslim needs to show victory over Americans…” and other general wacky anti-Muslim conspiracy theories you’d think a group of senior citizens had gathered on the corner waiting to be picked up to go to their weekly bingo game.

This in it self would be comedic gold, but it doesn’t stop there, a source who wishes to stay anonymous informed us that Kaufman and his buddies are asking homeless people to join their protests in return for pizza and spare change.

"Red" is on the bike

After Kaufman’s most recent protest ended our source noticed that they left one of their fellow protesters behind, a local homeless man who goes by the name “Red.”

Red we are told is a very nice man, he told our source that he was “paid in pizza to help in the protest” and he was also given some “spare change.” He didn’t know what the protest was about, but he was hungry and wanted to eat. So he helped!

The source also mentioned homeless people in photos of previous protests that Joe Kaufman and Americans Against Hate held, such as the one at the Islamic Center In Pompano Beach. He was told by Muslim neighbors of the Center that the people at Joe Kaufman’s protest are local homeless people.

For Kaufman this may be a new low, trying to up his pathetically low numbered “protests” by paying homeless folk. I can’t say I am surprised at Kaufman’s sleazy antics, just astonished that there are even a handful wasting their retirement. I guess the moral of the story is if you’re ever hungry and near a Kaufman protest you can assure yourself some Dominoes pizza…but unlike the homeless individual who was truly hungry you might be selling your soul, and we all know how hard it is get your soul back once you sell it for yummy food:

Who is he?:

Joe Kaufman, has been on the Anti-Muslim scene for quite a while now and is dubbed by the far Right-Wing FrontPageMag as, you guessed it…another one of their ”Investigative Journalists.”  That he has been influenced by Meir Kahane and the Kahanist ideology is well documented, as is his love and angst for Kahane.

In the past he has been accused of contributing to the terrorist organization founded by Kahane known as JDL (Jewish Defense League) while others accuse Kaufman of at the very least holding views that parallel JDL positions.

Kaufman’s unsavory associations and views are quite real and they are only dangerous to America if you’re stupid enough to swallow his conspiracy theories but other than that he is simply a half-baked paranoid conspiracy theorist, some what along the lines of the “9/11 Truthers.”

In every nook and cranny there is a “Mooslim”…hiding and ready to get ya…so beware and be afraid. Be veryyyy afraid goes his story.

In this special LoonWatch series we will detail the exploits and punchlines that Krazy Kaufman throws out there and attempts to pass on as serious journalism, commentary and investigation.

A strange sort of hate crime in Missouri. Spencer is probably scratching his head, “Islamophobia, what Islamophobia?”

Vandalism at Islamic Center costly to clear

(News-Leader)

A spokesman for the Islamic Center of Springfield says removing the graffiti left on the group’s building late Friday or early Saturday could cost $1,000 to have sandblasted off.

Joseph Pollpeter said the graffiti was discovered on three outside walls when members showed up for the 6 a.m. prayer Saturday morning. Those who attended prayer Friday night did not see any.

Pollpeter said he contacted the Springfield police, as well as the FBI. He believes the messages constitute a hate crime.

He described graffiti left on the building at 2151 East Division St. as including: a phallic symbol near the door where women enter; phrases saying “gay insurrection,” “gay is ok” and a reference to Allah being gay; profane four-letter words; and the words “You bash us in Pakistan we bash you here;” a pentangle; and a Star of David.

“I don’t know if the people happened to be gay or bisexual or not, or if they were just using terms to be insulting,” said Pollpeter. “There is no one we have our fingers pointed at. We are on good terms with all our neighbors.”

I guess Muslims are actually putting their lives on the line to make America safer.

Gangster’s bullet hit a rising star deputy

Mohamed Ahmed was new to the streets. Nestor Torres was a far more familiar, some say infamous, presence when their lives collided at a dark East Los Angeles intersection.

Ahmed was a deputy in training, just a few weeks on the beat, learning the ropes in a rough stretch of the Eastside with a veteran deputy. A Somali immigrant, the 27-year-old Ahmed was seen as a promising young deputy in the department, and supported his six younger siblings and his mother with his salary.

Torres was well-known to deputies as a Lott Stoners gang shot-caller. He’d been arrested more than 20 times, prosecutors said, and in 2004 was convicted for his role in the shooting of two gang rivals in a liquor store after they complimented one of his many tattoos.

What began Tuesday night as a routine check on Floral Drive devolved into a shootout that left Torres dead and Ahmed in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the face.

“You have two very different extremes,” Sheriff Lee Baca said Wednesday, reflecting on the random encounter.

Baca said he saw Ahmed as a future leader in the Sheriff’s Department, noting that his Muslim background could help build bridges. He said Ahmed believed in the “American dream” and preached religious tolerance, volunteering his time at local Islamic community centers and doing outreach for the Sheriff’s Department with the Muslim community.

On Wednesday, doctors at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center were treating Ahmed’s wounds as investigators pieced together what happened at the intersection. Ahmed’s condition is not considered life-threatening, but doctors said he suffered a severe wound to one of his eyes and to other parts of his face.

When he awoke Wednesday morning, his mother told officials that he asked about the condition of his partner and the welfare of his brothers. He also asked when he could return to work.

A handful of deputies are typically wounded in shootings most years. But in 2010, only one was wounded.

Authorities said Ahmed and his training officer were on patrol near Floral Drive and North Brannick Avenue in a residential district of aging bungalows below the hills of City Terrace. They saw Torres and a woman inside a vehicle parked in a red zone.

Torres was recognized by the training officer. Knowing he was a parolee, the deputies decided to talk to him. As they got out of their cruiser, Torres got out too, pulling a gun and shooting Ahmed in the face, authorities said. Torres then turned the gun to the training officer’s chest, but before he could shoot the officer deflected the weapon and used his own gun to shoot and kill Torres, authorities said. Officials have declined to name the training officer.

For Torres, a reputed gang member who went by the monikers “Demon” and “Neto,” it was the last in a long history of run-ins with the law. Court records show that in 2004, he ran into two members of the rival gang Stoners 13 at a liquor store.

“I don’t think you should be talking to me,” he told the gang members when they complimented the “LOTT 13″ tattoo. He challenged the men to come outside and fight — an offer they refused, according to authorities, because they knew Torres and another gang member waiting outside were armed. Soon after, shots rang out, with Torres’ companion unloading his gun at the men still in the liquor store.

Torres was sentenced to seven years in state prison in that case.

Born in Somalia, Ahmed immigrated when he was 7. His father died last year, sheriff’s officials said, leaving Ahmed to support his mother and six younger siblings. The Orange County resident joined the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department in 2007. Most deputies must start their careers working in the county’s jail system. Such stints can last several years, but Ahmed was able to move to patrol work in only two years.

Colleagues held vigil along with Ahmed’s family at the hospital Wednesday. Capt. Mike Parker said colleagues swapped stories about his sense of humor and high energy.

“By all accounts, the deputy injured in the incident is an extraordinary young individual, the kind of deputy sheriff we all want to see serving Los Angeles County residents and businesses,” said Steve Remige, director of the L.A. County deputy’s union. “We’re hopeful of his quick recovery.”

Baca said people who worked with Ahmed were impressed by his work ethic and his willingness to volunteer his time to help with Muslim community outreach.

“He’s an ideal ambassador,” the sheriff said. “The thing we are proud of is he can serve as law enforcement, protecting people, defending people and putting himself at risk of his life, as this incident proves.”

Ahmed was scheduled to go into surgery Wednesday, and doctors were not sure whether he would lose sight in his injured eye. But no matter the outcome, Baca said he hopes Ahmed will still have a bright future with the department.

“I still see larger things for him and my hope for him is that he will come back to work. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”

No counsel even if you ask for one. Is this what it has come to and wasn’t this supposed end with the demise of the Bush era?

Lawyer: FBI Illegally Interrogating Gulet Mohamed

(Mother Jones)

FBI agents are taking advantage of an American teenager’s detention in Kuwait to illegally harass and interrogate him without counsel, the teen’s lawyer said Wednesday. Gulet Mohamed, a Somali-born American Muslim, says he was tortured and interrogated after he was detained by Kuwaiti security officials last month. He claims that Kuwaiti interrogators asked him questions about his travels, his past, and his family that he and his lawyer believe were fed to the Kuwaitis by US officials. Kuwait now reportedly wants Mohamed deported, but he’s been added to the no-fly list. Meanwhile, FBI interrogators are continuing to interrogate him in detention and ignoring his requests to have an attorney present, his lawyer, Gadeir Abbas, says.

FBI agents’ most recent visit to Mohamed began around 10:00 a.m Kuwaiti time Wednesday, Abbas told Mother Jones. Agents, he said, questioned Mohamed for several hours, and Mohamed’s uncle (who lives in Kuwait) and brother (who traveled there after Mohamed was detained) were present for part of the time. Mohamed repeatedly told the agents that he did not want to answer questions about his travels to Somalia and Yemen without his lawyer present, according to Abbas. (Mohamed, his family, and his lawyer say the teen was visiting family and learning about the heritage of his father, whom he never knew.)

Cathy Wright, an FBI spokeswoman, said she “cannot at this point verify that a meeting took place today or an interview took place today.”

Mohamed has made similar requests for counsel during previous FBI visits, Abbas said. US law and constitutional precedent generally require that interrogations cease once a suspect asks for his lawyer. The FBI has countered that under Kuwaiti law Mohamed doesn’t have the right to counsel while being interrogated, according to Abbas. That seems to be an agency line: after I called the bureau for comment on Abbas’ allegations, Wright urged me to ask the Kuwaitis about Mohamed’s right to counsel. After I noted that US law is generally understood to restrain FBI agents (even in foreign countries) from interrogating an American after he has asked for a lawyer, Wright acknowledged that the FBI is “subject to the rules of the FBI and the rules of the [Department of Justice] for criminal prosecution,” but added that the agency didn’t “want to be perceived as commenting on [Kuwaiti] rules or laws.”

At one point during Wednesday’s interrogation, Abbas said, the FBI agents performing the interrogation stood up and started shouting and physically crowding Mohamed. They also reached for his pockets—a move that Mohamed’s brother and uncle believe was an attempt to confiscate the cell phone Mohamed has been using to communicate with the press and his lawyer. At that point, Abbas says, “a Kuwaiti official came into the room and directed the FBI agents to sit down and calm down and told them not to treat Gulet like that.”

“In the absurd world that is represented in this case, Gulet’s torturers are intervening to protect Gulet from his own government,” Abbas said. “Not only is the FBI’s behavior grossly immoral and insensitive to the plight that Gulet Mohamed has endured and is currently facing, but the FBI’s opportunistic actions to leverage Gulet’s dire situation to pepper him with senseless questioning is illegal.”

[UPDATE: Late Wednesday, Abbas sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder outlining his allegations and asking Holder to launch "an immediate investigation into the conduct of the FBI agents involved." More on that here.]

Mohamed, his lawyer said, is a victim of “proxy detention,” where the US government asks a friendly foreign country to do the dirty work of harshly interrogating an American citizen it suspects of terrorism. Last Friday, in the wake of stories about Mohamed in theNew York Times, the Washington Post, and other major news outlets, the Obama administration finally commented on the story, via a State Department spokesman who denied that Mohamed had been detained “at the behest of the United States government” and promised that the teenager was being offered consular services.

Almost a week later, Mohamed remains in detention. He’s still on a no-fly list, and the White House won’t return calls asking for comment about his situation. It’s possible that the US government believes Mohamed is a terrorist. He recently traveled to Somalia and Yemen, two countries known for harboring Islamic extremists. The questions he says he was asked by Kuwaiti and FBI interrogators suggest that he may have been under surveillance while he was in the US. But being able to return to the United States and facing charges (if there are any) with the assistance of a lawyer are fundamental constitutional rights—rights that Mohamed is currently being denied. So what’s the reason the US claims it can’t help him? They’re desperate to protect his privacy, according to the State Department.

Agency public affairs officers have said that they cannot release information about Mohamed or reveal any suspicions the government might have about him because he has not signed a Privacy Act waiver. According to Abbas, Mohamed only recalls signing a document offered to him by US officials in late December, shortly before his family and Abbas became aware that Mohamed was being detained. The document was presented as a contact form, Abbas said. “They said you’re going to be leaving in 72 hours and we want to know who to contact, so Gulet listed his mother, his brother, and his sister,” and signed the form, not realizing that it would prevent the government from providing information about him to anyone else. Mohamed didn’t recall checking any of the yes/no boxes on a second page of the form (PDF), according to Abbas. On a privacy act waiver, those boxes determine whether or not it’s okay to contact the media, Congress, someone’s employer, and so on.

Mohamed is not the first American to be subjected to “proxy detention.” Last July, 26-year-old Yahya Wehelie, another American of Somali descent who traveled to Yemen, was finally allowed to return to the US after two months stranded abroad. He only received a no-fly list waiver to return after he had “spoken with the FBI 10 times and submitted to a polygraph test,” according to the Washington Post. Like Mohamed, Wehelie says he was visiting Yemen to learn Arabic (he was also hoping to find a bride, according to the Post). Like Mohamed, Wehelie says he was beaten while in the custody of a foreign government (Egypt, in his case) and asked questions that closely mirrored those later asked by the FBI. And like Mohamed, Wehelie has not been charged with a crime.

Human Rights First’s Daphne Eviatar has a good rundown of other people who have been subjected to “proxy detention,” which she calls “the Obama administration’s extraordinary rendition-lite.”

Nick Baumann covers national politics and civil liberties issues for Mother Jones’ DC Bureau. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on twitter. Email tips and insights to nbaumann [at] motherjones [dot] com. Get Nick Baumann’s RSS feed.

The more Geller gets attention, the more her looniness is exposed

The first piece from our newest Geller-watcher and EDL specialist Remora

America is experiencing a painful period of social disharmony and political discourse, yet the vomitous Islamophobic hatemonger, Pamela Geller is desperately finding amoral, unethical, and distasteful ways of keeping the spotlight firmly fixed on her fascist cause, by making false and ludicrous claims.

America is grieving, and Geller pounces on this opportunity to promote her usual anti-Islamic, extreme Zionist rhetoric, yet again blaming Muslims, but this time for the tragic Arizona Massacre.

Muslim Basher Pamela Geller, cannot make her mind up about the political leanings of the deranged sociopath who murdered so many, including a 9- year girl, so she has accused him of everything’ left-wing’ and ‘jihadist’ so far.

Geller is claiming that Arizona shooter, Jared Loughner was secretly a left wing, radical socialist, anti-Semitic, Hitler loving Muslim, who subscribed to communist manifestos and Hitler’s Mein Kampf book, and not to mention, his apparent link to white supremacist publication ‘American Renaissance’. Is it possible to be so many political extremist ideologies in one? Is that not usually referred to as schizophrenia?

Pointing out his mental health is interesting and paramount, since there have been widespread media reports detailing his mental/psychological decline.

Mein Kampf material is usually not a liberal trait, quite the opposite actually, Pamela. Where is the logic to state, that just because Loughner possessed books on the ideologies of Hitler, and communist manifesto’s, he is immediately a Taliban supporting extremist?

Dangerous, delusional misleadings, by a dangerous delusional woman. Pamela Geller is desperate to spark an Islamophobic race war.

Geller is smugly parading the controversial video ‘America: Your Last Memory in a Terrorist Country,’ on her blog, as evidence of victory over her claims of Loughner’s apparent ‘Muslim’ links.

The video does not outline any political convictions of the shooter; it is merely a product of Loughner’s anger at the political, judicial establishment, and his own general failure in life, a fact he blamed on external forces. If anything, Loughner’s political leanings appear coded, and ambiguous.

Let us analyse the grotesque and outlandish world of Jared Lee Loughner, which led him to engage in this heinous crime, and freeze a nation in state of horror.

‘Nihilistic Atheist’

Loughner, was a 22 year old drop out, described by former classmates as an ‘nihilistic atheist’. This would mean that he belonged to no religion, no beliefs, no cause and no God. He deemed human existence and living life as insignificant. This repudiates the claim of Geller that Loughner apparently demonstrated support for ‘Islamism’ in his flag burning video:

‘The friends’ comments paint a picture bolstered by other former classmates and Loughner’s own Internet postings: That of a social outcast with nihilistic, almost indecipherable beliefs steeped in mistrust and paranoia.’

There is much speculation about Loughner’s previous ‘liberal’ convictions that many right-wing institutions and figures such as Geller, have tried to use as a political means of exploitation to justify his actions.

Former classmates cite that Loughner was ‘very liberal’, as detailed by a former class fellow Caitie Parker. She recollects her memories of Loughner, and his then political leanings.

What is clear is that Loughner was never a character who favoured human interaction, and was a famed loner at his high school. His obsessions were an indication of his philosophy, which were anti-authoritarian, from the beginning.

‘@antderosa As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy. @antderosa he was a pot head & into rock like Hendrix,The Doors, Anti-Flag. I haven’t seen him in person since ’07 in a sign language class @antderosa He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was “stupid & unintelligent.’

It is also stated that Loughner mentioned his intense dislike for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.He labelled her ‘stupid’, and ‘unintelligent’.This is a classic case of a failure demeaning those in power, in order to make their own self worth appear relevant.

Washington Post reported that Loughner was a registered Independent voter in 2006, according to the Pima County Registrar of Voters. He also voted in 2006 and 2008 but did not vote in last November’s mid-term elections, which also is indicative of his political stance. The fact that he is not a registered Republican or Democrat suggests a clear breakdown of trust in the mainstream governmental system, seeking answers in alternative political elements, which can always be a cause for concern.

Pam Geller manages to mention that on Atlas Shrugs:

‘Loughner’s decision to affiliate as an independent rather than a Republican or Democrat would seem to affirm the sense that while he targeted Giffords in the attack, it was not a decision born of a set of deeply held political beliefs that fit neatly into either party.’

How very irresponsible of Pam Geller? Backtracking are we?? First she labels Loughner a ‘certified left wing nut’, and then she insinuates that Loughner has Islamist ties, and then she states that he was apolitical. It really would have been easier to just not say anything at all, but hey, who am I kidding, its Pam Geller, she thrives on spreading propaganda and lies.

Liberal or not, it is very possible for an individual to retract from their beliefs and adopt the opposite views, or engage in a 360 degree turn in terms of political ideology.

Ultra rightwing racist, extreme Zionist radio host, Michael Savage, is a famous case in point. Savage himself stated he was once a ‘liberal’, who shifted in his beliefs, due to disillusions with the welfare system when he was a social worker. Witnessing an incident, how he delivered checks to welfare recipients who were given funds to furnish their apartments, while his own abode was empty with nothing but card boxes, was the final nail in the coffin for him to convert. Savage went from partially sane to, spewing hatred against blacks, immigrants, gays, liberals, Muslims, and inciting murder and ethnic violence. Yup, it is possible.

Loughner simply converted to other extremist beliefs, possibly triggered by his lack of success in life, and a lack of answers in the mainstream. Again, there is no ‘Islamist’ connection. The attack was apparently not religiously motivated, but an attack based on the killers personal conflictions and demons.

Pam you got that?

Descent into madness:

Unemployed Loughner, was fired and dismissed from many jobs, due to erratic behavior and a refusal to take orders from the top of the hierarchy. This was also the time his mental health began to wither away.

It has also emerged that; the end of his relationship with his high school sweetheart may have snapped rationality within Loughner. Kelsey Hawkes stated that this love split may have caused Loughner to psychologically deteriorate:

‘The high school sweetheart of the Arizona gunman has said his descent into madness began after she broke up with him.

Kelsey Hawkes described how Jared Loughner, whom she dated for a year in 2005 when she was 15, turned from a normal person into a ‘psycho’ when she ended their relationship.

Many of the people who interacted and met Loughner, neighbors, classmates, and now former girlfriend, have stated that he was seemingly normal, and then turned into a crazed deviant.

Other factors also may have contributed to the insanity of Loughner.He tried to enlist in the Military in 2008, however, due to a failed drug test which is mandatory, he was rejected. This was evidently an unprecedented blow to his ego, and could possibly have been motivation, to rage against, and blame the upper governmental system,

Loughner was also suspended from Pima Community college, after a series of disruptive events:

‘Jared Loughner, the suspected gunman in a Tucson shooting rampage, had five run-ins with Pima Community College campus police and was placed on suspension for violating the student code of conduct, which later led to his withdrawal from the school.’

This included campus, classroom and library disruptions. All this behavior was not at any time sparked by religion or political beliefs. Those who knew Loughner state that he was averse to religion in all its forms.

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a leaked memo has stated that there may be a white supremacist connection in this case.

It is reported that Loughner may have had links to the extreme right wing publication ‘American Renaissance’, a white survivalist magazine that has argued in the past, that not all races have the same intelligence, and mental wavelength, and has described the recent success within the Republican Party as the ‘Great white wave.’ It has also been accused of Anti-Semitism.

This has been strongly denied by the founder of the magazine, Jared Taylor, who has denied any involvement with Loughner.

Paranoia, it seems also played its part. It is reported that Loughner believed that the US government was responsible for the 9/11 atrocities, believed in a New World Order, was obsessed with the 2012 Prophecy, believed that Banks and bankers were responsible for the war on terror, and was staunchly anti-government.

This is clearly a case of a mentally disturbed, discombobulated and disillusioned young man, unable to control his own life, and behavioral problems. Blaming the failures on the upper establishment was a means of justification to Loughner, reasoning for his deranged mental state.

The metamorphosis of Loughner would prove deadly.

Sinister Youtube rants:

The many blurred and philosophically vague video posts by Loughner, beg many to question the actions that occurred in the massacre.

In a series of YouTube posts, Loughner makes startling and sweeping statements that are still obscure, to say the least. Loughner emphasizes his distrust of the government and their ‘oppressive’ agenda.

The other videos also have an anti government, anti American undertone to them:

“This video is my introduction to you! My favorite activity is conscience dreaming; the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don’t dream – sadly.” “The majority of citizens in the united states of America [sic] have never read the United States of America’s constitution. You don’t have to accept the federalist laws,”

“In conclusion, reading the second United States constitution, I can’t trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver! No! I won’t trust in God!”

The bizarre rants do not have any political undertones, actually, what the rants and rebelling demonstrate is a lack of political convictions, anti-religion, anti-establishment, anti-currency, anti-constitution, it is pattern to reject the system that is handed to us as citizens, to assert individual power over the very institution that governs us. Loughner’s specific rant about the illiteracy rates, brainwashing and currency suggest that he was locked in a mental battle of fallacy and isolation.

Loughner’s emphasis on ‘conscience dreaming’, elaborates on his detachment and rejection of reality, and the formation of an alternative world, his own world, functioned by his own control and emotions.

Geller points out that Loughner in his last video, ‘America: Your Last Memory in a Terrorist Country’, is wearing a ‘Burka’ like outfit, and burning the American Flag, so BANG! He is a Mooslim!

Geller writes:

‘UPDATE: This is Jared’s “music video” — this flag burning madness. This is Jared, dressed as a terrorist in the video burning the flag. (FOX confirmed this is Jared in the burka-like get-up.)’

I will explain what I see. A psychopath, wearing a mask and a garbage bag to conceal his identity. Simple. How Geller interprets this as remotely ‘Islamic’ is a pure wonder.

Interpretation and Symbolism sure are not Geller’s strongest intellectual qualities, but thankfully they are mine.

Loughner intended this video to shock and perplex its viewers, and he employs tactics that would inflame the left and the right, from his preference for communist manifesto’s to his link with supremacy, and then eerie hidden video messages.

The video symbolizes barren land, which Loughner is trying to present as the USA, himself as the faceless skeleton, and the burning flag as his response to the concept of America and the Constitution. Flag burning is a very contentious issue, and it is a clear message from Loughner about his position. Flag burning is viewed As Un-American, disloyal, an absence of respect, and that is exactly what Loughner intended. The faceless, silent, skeleton is symbolic of the masses of Americans who abide by the Constitution and law, who do what they are told, and who trust in God and Government, in Capitalism and currency. It is a rejection of nationality, patriotism, and identity.

Shame on Pamela Geller:

The answer is simple: Jared Loughner encompasses a lack of humanity, possesses no moral conscience, and can be defined as a self entitled sociopath.

Loughner was frustrated with his failings in life, and lack of relevance to society, which led to deviance. He held a bitter grudge against Congresswoman Giffords, which translated into violence, a buildup of resentment, which was engineered towards the establishment. Giffords was attacked for being a powerful public figure, attacked for what she represented, not necessarily based on her Jewish faith, but a need for Loughner to exercise power and control.

Loughner is a terrorist. Not a “Jihadist,” or “Islamist,” “pro-medieval Sharia” supporting terrorist, but a crazed, vindictive, homegrown, terrorist. His obsession with Nazi and socialist material, frames his desperation to fit into an ideological mould, which proved to be ineffectual to him.

Geller is desperate to detract from Loughner’s ‘white’ American ethnicity, and somehow, in a weird and bigoted parallel universe, make him appear a ‘Muslim’, even though Islam has no correlation to Loughner, his irrationality, and the events that lead to the massacre. I have never crossed a right-wing nut so obsessed with Islam!

Terrorism comes in all forms, from all religious and political backgrounds, and Pam Geller is afraid that America will see that, it is not just Jihadists that create terrorism, America too can create terrorists.

Pamela Geller’s racist rhetoric and Islamophobic connotative tone, seeks to debase the situation at hand, the Arizona shootings, and promote her own violent agenda, making slanderous and gross assumptions, which are prejudiced and discriminatory. America’s pain, should not be Pam Geller’ gain.

It is appalling that during times of such national hardship, Geller is stirring the pot of fascism, in a typical self-serving manner.

Truly incorrigible.

The wacky alliance of skinhead EDL and Kahanist JDL continues, and remember this is a group that Spencer and his pal Pamela Geller openly support.

Jewish-British anti-Muslim event in Toronto draws protests, arrests

(Haaretz)

Dozens of anti-racist activists demonstrated in front of a Zionist community center in Toronto, Canada on Tuesday to protest a public event organized by Jewish and British anti-Muslims. Four protestors were arrested in the fracas, and at least one police officer suffered a broken rib, according to The Globe and Mail.

The local chapter of the Jewish Defense League, an extreme-right organization founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, broadcasted a live speech by English Defense League founder Stephen Lennon, otherwise known as Tommy Robinson, drawing the ire of demonstrators.

The two groups on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean have found common cause in nationalist pride and Islamophobic rhetoric. Both groups claim that they do not promote prejudice against others, only pride in their own respective ethnicities, but critics accuse them of spreading hate against Arabs and other Muslims.

One group of demonstrators maintained a vigil across the intersection from the Zionist building, while a separate group of demonstrators marched towards the community center to confront the JDL. Police on foot and on horseback intervened and corralled the protestors, The Globe and Mail reported.

Toronto police said that one of their officers was had been taken to hospital with a broken rib after he was hit with a flagpole. At the end of the demonstration, police noticed that one of their squad cars had been vandalized, its windows smashed.

Anti-Racist Action, which organized the second group of protestors, claim that police responded violently, kicking one demonstrator in the face. Officers confiscated the cameras of activists videotaping the arrests and wiped their memory cards clean, say the ARA.

The EDL website says that the group’s aims are to oppose what it calls the application of Sharia law in the U.K. “The root cause of the problem is the Koran, it’s Islam,” Lennon told the BBC in November. “And no one has got the balls to admit it and say it and talk about it. We will.”

“The EDL has organized violent street marches that target Arab and Muslim people,” read an open letter signed by the organizers of Tuesday’s protest. “They are part of an alarming rise in fascist, racist and neo-Nazi organizing in Europe over the last few years, including attacks on Muslims, immigrants and Roma people.”

“JDL supports the EDL,” says an announcement on the JDL Canadian website. “Now is the time to step forward and stop Political Islam. The British Establishment is following the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain,” it reads, a reference to the British prime minister who tried to placate Adolf Hitler, implying that Muslims represent a threat of Nazi proportions.

In Israel, the Kach political party established by JDL founder Rabbi Meir Kahane was banned from running for the Knesset in 1992, due to its racist platform, but in recent years Kahane’s followers have entered the Knesset under different names, and some of Kahane’s proposed policies are now unabashedly espoused by ministers in the current government.

Bernie Farber of the establishment Jewish organization Canadian Jewish Congress, said of the JDL on the CJN website, “As long as they maintain the peace, as long as they do not engage in racist language or hate or violate Canadian law, they have the right to exist.”

Farber said he was disappointed that the JDL would support the EDL because of its record of violence. But, he told the National Post, “Islamic fundamentalism is a real threat.”

Looks like Pastor Terry Jones is getting desperate for some attention once again. One wonders if he has ever bothered to read the Quran?

Gainesville pastor Terry Jones wants to put Quran on trial

GAINESVILLE —

The Gainesville pastor who ignited international outrage after announcing plans to burn the Quran now says he wants to put the holy book on trial.

Pastor Terry Jones wants to hold an event inside his Gainesville church and judge the Islamic holy book.

“My first reaction was, ‘Here we go again,’” said Imam Muhammad Musri, from the Islamic Society of Central Florida.

Musri played a big role in trying to help diffuse the dynamite Jones lit in September after announcing his plans for “International Burn a Quran Day.”

“What Terry Jones has done in the past, and is attempting to do again, is to incite violence,” said Musri.

It’s potential violence the Gainesville Police Department wants to be ready for, should the need arise.

A Gainesville police representative told News 13 they are “very aware” of Pastor Jones’ newest plans, and have sent officers to speak with him.

“He’s trying to stir a pot,” said Musri.

“The issue became a very political issue,” said Lawrence Walters, a First Amendment lawyer. “The media spotlight shined very brightly on Pastor Jones and his church.”

The media attention, according to Imam Musri, is what Jones wants the most.

Walters said it has perpetuated Jones’ actions.

“It’s caused a lot more people to pay attention to his speech, and has resulted in consequences and actions to the speech that otherwise would have never happened if the statements were not given the attention that the media provided,” he said.

“I think the media should deny him that attention, because there’s nothing good he’s trying to say,” said Musri. “He’s trying to create controversy.”

Musri said Jones’ freedom of speech comes with a high price: It hurts the U.S. image across the world.

In the News 13 newsroom, we have been engaged in extensive discussions on how to best cover Pastor Jones as we move forward.

As a media organization, we are certainly not in the business of censorship. But we are in the business of doing what’s responsible.

Ignoring what could become another event in Central Florida that ignites international outrage would not be responsible of us.

However, giving an open microphone to a religious leader whose views and actions advocate intolerance would not be responsible of us, either.

Islamophobia, what Islamophobia?

Hate-crime suspect arrested, placed on immigration hold

A Gresham man accused of harassing and threatening a local Muslim woman is behind bars for allegedly violating an anti-stalking order.

Gresham police arrested Martin Cervantes-Gracida, 30, of Gresham at his home in the 17400 block of Southeast Stark Street at 6:37 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 9.

He also is being held on a United States Immigration hold at the Multnomah County Inverness Jail.

The arrest comes a month after the alleged victim, a 52-year-old woman who lives in the same apartment complex, was granted a protective order against the man.

A Muslim advocacy organization – The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – also requested on Dec. 21 that the FBI investigate a series of alleged hate crimes that led to the anti-stalking order being issued.

FBI Special Agent Craig Mueller is investigating the case after the woman alleged local police did not take seriously her complaints of verbal threats and physical intimidation.

According to court documents, the threats began in early November when the suspect, Cervantes-Gracida, reportedly pushed the woman, trapping her with his body against a wall in their apartment complex’s laundry room.

Two weeks later, he allegedly threatened to shoot her dog and rape her “while you pray with your head on the ground,” the woman reported. He also reportedly confronted her in the parking lot and threatened to kill her, adding, “You snitch, called the cops on me.”

The woman had lived at the complex for a year without any problem until she converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf.

She also expressed concern that while police helped her, they did not arrest Cervantes-Gracida. She alleges that one police officer told her she should consider not wearing her religious headscarf to avoid angering the neighbor.

An insight into the convenient definitions of “terrorism” and the bold double standards it highlights.

Lone nuts and convenient definitions of “terrorism”

by Alex Pareene (Salon.com)

“Columbine” author Dave Cullen wrote yesterday that most media figures compulsively — and incorrectly – assign all killers to one of two binaries: Crazy or political. Right-wing commentators do the same thing, for the most part, though they tend to say killers are either crazy or terrorists. And while they’ll usually freely admit that Tim McVeigh counted as a terrorist, for the most part they reserve that term for Muslims who kill.

There is, for example, Charles Krauthammer’s classic column on Nidal Hasan,who killed 13 people at Fort Hood. Krauthammer is a former practicing psychologist — he’s also a former practicing liberal — and he used his considerable skill to argue that because he did not think Hasan was crazy, to call him crazy was dastardly political correctness. The correct diagnosis, according to Krauthammer, was that Hasan was a Muslim. He was driven to kill by Extremist Islamic rhetoric. He had, after all, e-mailed Anwar al-Awlaki, who sympathizes with al-Qaeda. He had even said frankly nutty things to his colleagues about nonbelievers having hot oil poured down their throats.

It’s not just that Krauthammer made a point of highlighting the influence of radical Islamism on Hasan’s crime — Krauthammer mocked those who thought there might be a psychological component to a formerly well-adjusted American suddenly falling under the sway of extremist rhetoric and shooting dozens of people.

Jared Loughner, though? He’s just nuts. Seriously, classic nutcase, end of story. It’s frankly irresponsible to speculate as to whether or not he had a political motivation when he attempted to assassinate a member of Congress.

Jonah Goldberg yesterday attempted to directly answer the question of why it’s “Islamic terrorism” when a Muslim does it and lone nuttery when a white American does it:

The difference is that most of the relevant Muslim mass-murderers in recent years have in fact either taken orders or meaningful encouragement from actual Jihadist organizations and individuals. The Times Square bomber did. The Fort Hood shooter did. The DC sniper didn’t, but he seems more of an exception than the rule.

First of all, “meaninful encouragement” is a wonderfully vague phrase that allows Goldberg to call people who never had any meaningful contact with terrorist groups “terrorists,” but even with that helpful bit of vague nonsense he is unable to justify the inclusion of one of his examples of terrorism, and is forced to consider it an “exception” to the rule he is in the process of inventing.

Did Hasan receive “meaningful encouragement” from al-Awlaki? Sure. But we have no idea whom Loughner may or may not have received “meaningful encouragement” from. We don’t have his e-mails. We don’t have his private conversations.

Goldberg goes on:

The “obvious” distinction is that there are a number of Islamist groups who are calling for violent attacks on America (which is why we are legally at war with them). Those that align with their cause are simply murderous traitors and terrorists. The Fort Hood shooter, we quickly learned, was in contact with Anwar al Awlaki. Loughner, we’ve quickly learned, was not in contact with Sarah Palin, had a grievance with Giffords that predates Palin’s prominence and the rise of the tea parties, and that he was simply out of his gourd.

It was nice of him to put “obvious” in scare quotes himself, thus saving me the trouble. But the fact is that there are plenty of extremist groups that are wholly American-grown and non-Islamic. (And if it’s only “terrorism” when we’re “legally at war” with the specific group who “meaningfully encouraged” the act, then very few things are terrorism anymore.)

But this paragraph, if you strip away the bit that’s clearly Goldberg thinking out loud, actually does explain the world-view succintly: It’s because thosekillers are Islamic. Yeah, Loughner wasn’t inspired by Sarah Palin’s Tweets. But Goldberg doesn’t say what he was inspired by. He was just “out of his gourd.” QED.

I don’t have a detailed psychological evaluation of either man, but based on the facts as we know them, it seems reasonable to argue that Nidal Hasan is a disturbed loner influenced to kill by extremist rhetoric that appeals to crazy people, and Jared Loughner is a disturbed loner possibly influenced to kill by extremist rhetoric that appeals to crazy people. The fact that Hasan was an increasingly devout Muslim meant that radical Islamic rhetoric appealed to him. The fact that Loughner was an increasingly disturbed young white American man meant that Ayn Rand and possibly David-Wynn: Miller and whatever else he got his hands on appealed to him. And any dangerous extremist supplements his bizarre beliefs with bad misreadings of non-extreme texts — the Koran, in Hasan’s case, and the various dystopian works of fiction on Loughner’s reading list.

The decision to murder innocent people is seldom one made by well men. If we’re going to argue that there’s something fundamental about Islam itselfthat causes it, when Muslims do it, it’s bald bigotry not to make the same argument when a non-Muslim commits a similarly incomprehensible crime.

If we define terrorism as violence committed by non-state actors aimed at achieving political goals, a case could be reasonably made for either, both, or neither or these men as terrorists. But when you start from the position that the Muslim is the “Terrorist” and the white guy is the “lone nut,” you’re have to work backwards to come up with a much more convoluted definition.

Schlussel's Gained a few pounds

Update on the eccentric has-been’s trademark infringement trial.

Blogger Schlussel renames organization after CAIR lawsuit

By DAVID ASHENFELTER
Free Press Staff Writer

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has won a partial victory in its trademark infringement lawsuit against lawyer and conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel.

During the weekend, Schlussel renamed the identically named organization she created last year to Council of American-Israel Relations to head off a legal battle with CAIR, the nation’s largest Islamic civil rights group.

Because of that, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn declined Monday to formally order Schlussel to stop using CAIR’s full name. He also refused to prevent her from using CAIR’s acronym in Internet domain names she created.

He said he would review that issue in the coming weeks if CAIR pursues it.

“We largely got what we wanted,” CAIR attorney Gadeir Abbas said after the hearing in federal court in Detroit. He said he would file court papers within 10 days in hopes of stopping Schlussel from using CAIR in her Internet domain names.

Schlussel’s lawyer also claimed victory.

“They didn’t get anything they wanted,” said attorney Andrew Kochanowski. “They wanted a restraining order and they didn’t get it.”

CAIR sued Schlussel last week, saying she stole the group’s name and trademark last year by creating identically named organizations in Michigan.

It accused her of using the name to cause confusion among CAIR supporters and to siphon off its charitable donations.

Schlussel countered that CAIR gave up its right to the name by failing since 2001 to file legally required reports with the State of Michigan.

Schlussel told one of her Web site followers that she registered CAIR’s name and named herself executive director “to drive the Muslims crazy.”

CAIR says Schlussel spews anti-Islamic hatred on her Web site, www.debbieschlussel.com . She says she exposes the intolerance of Islam and how it infringes on the American way of life.

Contact David Ashenfelter: dashenfelter@freepress.com

A thought provoking piece about the cartoon debacle by AlJazeera’s Imran Garda.

Never-ending cartoon chaos

by Imran Garda (AlJazeera)

At a meal of halal pasta at a Johannesburg restaurant in 2004 , I found myself defending my one-time work colleague, Graeme Joffe, at a table of young Muslim men, after a joke he had made on a local radio station.

“Even if he thinks he’s funny, this was insulting to us, and the brothers are right to launch a complaint,” said one.

“They should fire him. Do you even know what he said? ‘What do you call a Bangladeshi cricketer with a bacon sandwich on his head? Ham’head. And if he has two bacon sandwiches? Mo’Ham’head!’ Disgusting!”

I tried to interject diplomatically, “I know Graeme, he’s one of the most polite, least offending, self-deprecating people you can meet. It’s a light-hearted radio show, come on. I worked with him at Supersport; if anything they should fire him because the joke was so bad!”

“Garda, you don’t understand”, insisted the most annoyed. “No matter how harmless the intention” and, with the surest of conviction, he continued: “When it comes to the prophet, there are no jokes.”

Joffe and the radio station were censured after South Africa’s Broadcasting Complaints Commission saw his joke as “hate speech” that violated the constitution. And yes, it has been no joke since late 2005, when 12 cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten seemed to ignite frenetic flames of fury that just wouldn’t die down.

The very depiction of Prophet Muhammad was an affront to Muslims, who do not depict him for fear of idolatry, among numerous other theological reasons. He has been depicted before, to the annoyance of many Muslims, but not much more. What seemed to tip the saga into the epicly dangerous territory that it has occupied since is that a substantial number of the images of him had sometimes tacit, sometimes overt references to Muhammad and misogyny, Muhammad and violence, Muhammad and terrorism.

Manufacturing anger?

But was that it? Was there merely an impulsive, collective rising up, a synergy of the insulted? Had the outcry been devoid of any larger outside forces prodding, pricking, planning – manufacturing anger?

The recent WikiLeaks revelations suggest otherwise. They show that the US charge d’affaires in Damascus, Stephen Seche, believed that Syria actively encouraged violent protests in which the Danish and Norwegian embassies were attacked. The leak reminded me of another meal in another African country, Egypt, in 2008.

“Mashallah, you’re from South Africa? I do a lot of work there; we are training 600 da’ees (Muslim missionaries) to approach fans during the World Cup in 2010.”

Imam Fadel Soliman paused for another spoonful of molokhiyya, an Egyptian soup dish. He was hungry – he had been fasting all day. We shared our Ramadhan iftaar before recording an Inside Story programme later that night, where he appeared as one of our guests.

A big, friendly man, who seemed permanently out of breath, with an engaging presence, Imam Fadel was bursting with a faith he was keen to share; he later dished out DVDs on Islamic guidance to our film crew and producers, in multiple languages to boot. He was like an ambassador for Islam, but it was what he told me about another ambassador which was of infinite interest to me:

“Do you know our Egyptian ambassador to South Africa, Mona Attiah?” he asked as he wolfed down some more Iftaar.

“I can’t say I do.”

“Mashallah, she’s a good sister, has done a lot for Muslims. She doesn’t wear hijab, but she’s a good woman.”

He continued.

“Are you sure you don’t know her?”

“I’m sorry”, I said. I wasn’t sure whether it was my South African or Islamic credentials which were beginning to wane in his eyes.

“She was in Denmark before South Africa. She was the ONE ambassador who really stood up to the Danish government, and insisted on a meeting with them over those cartoons about our prophet sallalahu alayhi wasallam (peace be upon him). And when they said they didn’t want to meet and can’t stop ‘freedom of expression’, she stood firm! She was the one who got the other ambassadors on board to go the Arab League in Cairo together to show our united condemnation, that the cartoons were unacceptable! Mashallah.”

It was what he said next that I’ll never forget:

“If it wasn’t for her, we may never even have heard of those cartoons.”

Two Danish imams carried the cartoon “dossier” throughout the Middle East with some extra cartoons thrown into the mix – images that were never published in Jyllands-Posten. One wasn’t even a cartoon, but a photocopied photograph of a picture lifted off the internet of a man wearing a pig-snout.

Ever since the outbreak of the crisis, it has been noted that many usually undemocratic governments, often brutal in their suppression of mass protests which call for political reform, or rally against the price of bread – suddenly wholeheartedly embraced (and maybe even sponsored) the protest fever.

CCTV footage from the building that housed the Danish embassy in Beirut shown in Karsten Kjaer’s film Bloody Cartoons even suggests that the Lebanese army allowed protesters to converge on the building, Molotov cocktails in hand.

Does it come then as any surprise that years later, with over a hundred dead since the first spasm of violence, three men have recently been charged with plotting to mow down the staff of Jyllands-Posten with machine guns?

In early 2006 even mainstream scholars, like Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, hated by many hardliners for his liberal and forward-thinking opinions on issues of Islamic jurisprudence, called for a “day of anger” around the Muslim world in response to the cartoons. He said Muslims are not “donkeys to be ridden on” but “lions that roar”.

In context, seen along with his and other scholars’ calls for an economic boycott of Denmark and strong political lobbying against the country and the newspapers that published the cartoons, many would interpret his call to “roar” metaphorically. As a call for a stern but peaceful response against a provocation from Jyllands-Posten that smacks of goading, demeaning and ostracising Muslims.

But (and it’s a big but) an obvious, glaring problem is with the rise of the far-right in Europe, where issues of Muslims veils and minarets, anti-immigration and integration dominate the discourse: will every offended Muslim interpret the call that way? Much of the post-cartoon rhetoric left ample room for subjective interpretation. Are we not seeing the fallout continuing to unfold before our eyes?

Freedom of Expression

“Freedom of Expression” – it has a post-modern, sacrosanct, warm-fuzziness about it. But are those who claim it entirely consistent?

The editor responsible for the cartoons, Flemming Rose, pledged to Christiane Amanpour in an interview that Jyllands-Postenwas attempting to make contact with the Iranian newspaper that ran cartoons about the Holocaust, and hoped to publish them too. He reneged on his promise, and was put on a short “leave of absence” by the paper.

At the time, cat-eyed Anders Fogh Rasmussen was the Danish prime minister. His devotion to “Freedom of Expression” and “Freedom of the Press” in his country was indisputable and was tested from multiple corners, diplomatic and otherwise.

He cannot have been too impressed when he went from being the head of a friendly, isolated Scandinavian country to seeing effigies of himself burnt on the streets of Pakistan.

But now, as the secretary-general of NATO, the most powerful fighting force history has ever known, RSF (Reporters Without Borders) claims his NATO forces in Afghanistan have treated “journalists working in difficult provinces … like dangerous criminals”.

Afghan journalists, like Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammed Nader, have found themselves arrested and later released without charge, on suspicion of having links with the “enemy” because of alleged links to the Taliban and their spokespersons.

This dovetails with an Afghan government order in March 2010 banning all coverage of “insurgent attacks” in the country with the threat of prosecution of any journalist who does – an ominous message to journalists there.

Is the dedication of men like Flemming Rose and Anders Fogh Rasmussen to “Freedom of Expression” relative to an ideological worldview? Are they dedicated to a complete freedom of expression only of the “good guys” - but heaven forbid you let the “bad guys” express themselves.

As Noam Chomsky put it – “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

Blame

Who’s to blame? Jyllands-Posten? The Danish government? Global Islamophobia and its racist defenders or global Islamism and its idealogues? Or the governments who may have actively encouraged their citizens to get angry?

In the five-year long cartoon crisis, anger ebbs and flows, condemnation bursts and retreats and worldviews collide. Art meets politics, satire meets the sacred, and provocation cries crocodile tears when it meets a response it claims it never expected.

Maybe, just maybe, the seemingly never-ending cartoon chaos was epitomised by the guy who held up the banner at the cartoon protest rally in London, saying “Freedom of Expression Go To Hell!”

On point piece from Sarah Posner, another writer who was an extraordinary “anti-Loon” in 2010. It goes to show that despite all of Rep. King’s protestations that his hearings are innocent of bigotry his statements prove otherwise.

On Gaffney’s Radio Show, Rep. King Suggests Muslims Aren’t American

by Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches)

Lee Fang at Think Progress reports that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee who plans on holding hearings on the “radicalization” of American Muslims, said on Frank Gaffney’s radio program last week that Muslims aren’t real Americans in combatting terrorism:

Joining anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney on Gaffney’s radio program last week, King doubled down on his promise to launch a witch-hunt against Muslims. He repeated a falsehood that he stated earlier — that American Muslims never cooperate to combat terrorism. But in addition to this claim, King made the extraordinary smear that American Muslims aren’t “American” when it comes to war. “[W]hen a war begins,” King said, every ethnic and religious group unites as “Americans.” “But in this case,” King continued, referring to Muslims, “this is not the situation. … Whether it’s cultural tradition, whatever, the fact is the Muslim community does not cooperate anywhere near to the extent that it should.”

As I reported last week, Gaffney has disgusted some conservatives with his anti-Muslim bigotry; one Muslim conservative activist, Suhail Khan, told me that is why Gaffney has beenexcluded from next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Yet that doesn’t stop CPAC from including a group like the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which supportsFront Page magazine, which has promoted Gaffney’s work, including Gaffney’s smear of Khan.

As King’s willingness to appear on Gaffney’s radio show and affirm his notions that Muslims can’t be real Americans shows, Gaffney is not the pariah some in CPAC might contend he is. By way of another example, as I reported, Gaffney was appointed to the advisory board of the Clarion Fund, whose Islamophobic propaganda films have been promoted by current and former elected officials and the Republican Jewish Committee, and which plans to screen its latest documentary, Iranium, to lawmakers early next month.

Gaffney has been peddling the bogus claim that shari’ah law represents a real threat to the Constitution, and has called on Congress to “investigate” that as well. He employs someone who believes being Muslim should be criminalized. He brought that dog and pony show to Capitol Hill late last year for the benefit of House staffers, and spoke to a room of about 50 people. It surely is a deeply troubling development that King is cavorting with Gaffney and pontificating about the “Americanism” of American Muslims, in light of Gaffney’s agitation about fifth columns of shari’ah proponents bent on undermining the Constitution.

"Atheist Muslim reformer" Wafa Sultan with anti-Muslim loon Pamela Geller

Wafa Sultan or as she is better known Wafa Stalin was recently on Russia Today (RT) news network. We have previously linked to episodes from the Alyona Show, in which the host tore apart Pamela Geller. We also linked to an episode of Crosstalk in which Professor Norman Finkelstein debated an Israeli official and utterly pulverized him.

This time Wafa Sultan was on Crosstalk with Ibrahim Ramey to discuss the Quran, Muslims and foreign policy. Wafa may have had expectations that this video would also get the MEMRI treatment, thereby recapturing those 5 minutes of fame she procured previously, but Ibrahim Ramey wasn’t having it.

Ramey came across as the more cool, collected, comprehensible, reasoned, articulate and objective in this encounter, and Wafa…well…more Stalin-ish than ever.

One more thing, dear Asra Nomani, after watching this how can you still stand by your glorifying article of Sultan in TIME magazine? Asra, come to your senses, if not not on profiling Muslims at airports than at least on supporting anti-Muslim Islamophobic bigots.

We were also sent this video, which though a little annoying due to its tedious repetitions, captures Wafa in the midst of what can be deemed a bold faced lie or the kindest word perhaps “old lady dementia.”

Wafa Sultan Lies about her niece (hat tip: Yahya):

There were a spate of terrorist bombings from 2007 until 2009 on mainly Muslim targets that left hundreds of casualties in India, the incidences were quickly blamed on Muslims. Islamophobes at the time jumped on it and were happy that “at least they’re killing each other.”

Now the truth is coming out that these attacks were perpetrated by Hindu fundamentalists. Will the anti-Muslims revise their previous conclusions, or at the very least take down there hasty reports? (hat tip: All those who sent it in)

Hindu holy man reveals truth of terror attacks blamed on Muslims

(Independent)

By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi

India is being forced to confront disturbing evidence that increasingly suggests a secret Hindu terror network may have been responsible for a wave of deadly attacks previously blamed on radical Muslims.

Information contained in a confession given in court by a Hindu holy man, suggests that he and several others linked to a right-wing Hindu organisation, planned and carried out attacks on a train travelling to Pakistan, a Sufi shrine and a mosque as well as two assaults on Malegaon, a town in southern India with a large Muslim population.

He claimed the attacks were launched in response to the actions of Muslim militants. “I told everybody that we should answer bombs with bombs,” 59-year-old Swami Aseemanand, whose real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, told a magistrate during a closed hearing in Delhi. “I suggested that 80 per cent of the people of Malegaon were Muslims and we should explode the first bomb in Malegaon itself. I also said that during partition, the Nizam of Hyderabad had wanted to go with Pakistan so Hyderabad was also a fair target. Then I said that since Hindus also throng [a Sufi shrine in] Ajmer we should also explode a bomb in Ajmer which would deter the Hindus from going there. I also suggested the Aligarh Muslim University as a target.”

Police in India have suspected for some time that Hindus may have been responsible for the attacks carried out between 2006 and 2008, and in November of that year several arrests were made, including that of a serving military officer. But the confession of Swami Aseemanand, obtained by an Indian news magazine, is perhaps the most damning evidence yet that Hindu extremists were responsible. It also suggests those involved were senior members of a religious group that is the parent organisation of India’s main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“The evidence is not conclusive but people have to take notice of this,” said Bahukutumbi Raman, a former national security adviser and now a leading regional security analyst. “This could aggravate tensions between India’s [Hindu and Muslim] communities. It will create problems.”

The revelations in Tehelka magazine, bear added significance following the comments of Rahul Gandhi, widely expected to be a future prime minister, in which he said he believed the growth of Hindu extremists presented a greater threat to India than Muslim militants. According to a cable obtained by WikiLeaks, last year Mr Gandhi told the US ambassador to Delhi, Timothy Roemer: “Although there was evidence of some support for Laskar-e-Taiba among certain elements in India’s indigenous Muslim community, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community.”

At the time, Mr Gandhi’s comments were strongly condemned by the BJP. But the main opposition party has been pushed on to the back foot by the testimony of Swami Aseemanand, which suggests many of those involved in the bombing plots were members of religious organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The RSS is considered the BJP’s ideological parent. This week, the RSS’s leader, Mohan Bhagwat, claimed extremists had been forced out. “Elements nurturing extremist views have been asked to leave the organisation,” he said. “A majority of the people whom the government has accused… had left voluntarily and a few were told that this extremism will not work here.”

Among the incidents initially blamed on Muslim militants was a bomb attack in February 2007 on the Samjhauta Express, travelling between Delhi and Lahore. Of the 68 deaths, most were Pakistani citizens returning home. The attack took place a day before Pakistan’s Foreign Minister was due to arrive in India for peace talks.

Swami Aseemanand was arrested in Haridwar last November, having apparently been in hiding for more than two years. In his 42-page confession to the magistrate, he reportedly claimed he had been spurred into action by a series of Muslim attacks on Hindus, in particular the assault on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat 2002 that left at least 29 people dead. “This caused great concern and anger in me,” he said.

The attacks under scrutiny

Samjhauta Express

In February 2007, two firebombs exploded on the train commonly known as the ‘Friendship Express’ which travels across the Indo-Pakistani border. Most of the 68 victims and 50 injured were of Pakistani origin. Three further unexploded suitcase bombs were later found on the train.

Mecca Masjid

An attack on the Mecca Masjid mosque, which is in Hyderabad’s old city, left 14 people dead in May 2007 – with five apparently killed by police firing on a furious mob after the incident. Swami Aseemanand apparently said that the site was chosen because the local administrator wanted to be part of Pakistan during partition.

Ajmer

A famous Muslim shrine in the city of Ajmer in Rajasthan, about 350km south-west of Delhi, was targeted by bomb attacks in October later that year. Two people were killed and 17 injured near the scared shrine, which houses the tomb of a 13th-century Sufi saint. Swami Aseemanand said the blast was intended to deter Hindus from going there.

Malegaon

In September 2008, three bomb blasts killed 37 people in the Muslim-majority city of Malegaon, situated about 160 miles north-east of Maharashtra’s state capital, Mumbai. Muslims had been attending prayers when the bombs exploded in a sacred burial ground, also injuring more than 125 people.

Greeneye recently did a great piece on Pascal Bruckner, a (wanna-be) “philosopher” who made the very poor and contradictory case that the word Islamophobia was “invented” to silence critics of the Koran, while at the same time minimizing bigotry against Muslims.

Much to our delight Marty Peretz wanted to help make our case that Pascal Bruckner’s article was not only woefully anemic intellectually, but thoroughly Islamophobic. Peretz of “Muslim lives are cheap fame” latched onto Bruckner’s article hoping that in some way another fake liberal might exonerate him of his lewd beliefs and laughingstock position, in doing so he just made our point even stronger. Good company you are in Pascal!

Ahmed Rehab shreds Peretz (hat tip: John P.):

The Denial of Islamophobia

by Ahmed Rehab

Faux liberal and pro-occupation advocate, New Republic editor Martin Peretz is back at it again.

Last fall, he caused a firestorm with his racist comments that “Muslim life is cheap” in a piece lambasting the New York Times for speaking out against anti-Muslim prejudice and defending constitutionally-protected religious rights.

Sounding more like a slumlord than a former Harvard assistant professor, he wrote at the time:

I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Peretz, who was slated to be honored by Harvard prior to the controversy, was roundly rebuked for his offensive comments, with Harvard put under intense pressure for honoring a bigot. Harvard students rallied outside his ceremony which several professors and staff boycotted; disgusted alumni returned their certificates to the university. Though the ceremony took place, his acceptance speech was cancelled.

But that humiliation has not stopped Peretz from his downward spiral to kookdom. On Monday, he dished out some raw Islamophobia-denial in a gullible column entitled “The Invention of Islamophobia”:

Anyone who suggests that there is a war being waged by Muslims in their own lands and in the lands in which they have settled–these last, by the way, are the really aggressive “settlers”!–against rationalists and true liberals, traditional conservatives and Islamic dissenters, Christians and Jews is likely to be labeled an “Islamophobe.” I have been, and thousands of you out there, perhaps millions, have been so labeled…or almost. And, at dinner with friends, have anyone of you just raised questions about the tyranny of silence which the “politically so correct” are trying to impose on those who are fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs and then not found yourselves attacked as at least “intolerant” and perhaps even a bigot? Or, yes, even an Islamophobe.

He goes on to claim:

Islamophobia–that is, the word itself–is meant to silence you. It has already silenced President Obama, hasn’t it? He hasn’t even spoken up for his fellow Christians who in recent weeks have been victimized in Iraq (where maybe we still wave some sway), Egypt (our very expensive ally), Nigeria, Pakistan et al.

(Actually that’s a lie. “President Obama, in a statement, called the attack ‘barbaric and heinous,’” the AP reports. But that’s not our topic.)

Allow me to clarify a few things for the confused, self-victimizing Peretz.

Firstly, being “fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs” does not constitute Islamophobia.

In fact, most Muslims in the world would admit to being afraid of this admixture.

I understand that it is difficult for stereotype-minded individuals to understand that other people are largely just like their own – that is, with their share of some bad who do bad things and a good majority who fear bad things – but that is what makes them bigots.

Bigots, by definition, tend to not only fear the bad apples in “other” group – which would be understandable – but they tend to go further by propping them up as the headline for the entire group, even if the bad apples are a small percentage.

And so for a certified bigot, all Blacks are street criminals, all Latinos are gang bangers, all Jews are greedy, and all Muslims mix faith with bombs.

As such Islamophobia is just another form of bigotry – in this case, bigotry against Muslims. But here’s the point Mr. Peretz, like other forms of bigotry, it is not so much about criticizing something as negative (as you cheekily posit), but the generalization of what is negative to all members of the group (which you and others demonstrably indulge in).

So when Peretz talks of a war being waged by “Muslims in their own lands and in the lands in which they have settled … against rationalists and true liberals, traditional conservatives and Islamic dissenters, Christians and Jews” without context, scope or qualification – as if all 1.4 billion Muslims are waging a war against all the billions of liberals, conservatives, Christians and Jews in the world – then Peretz is engaging in simplistic and vitriolic generalizations against Muslims that certainly constitute Islamophobia.

There is another related indicator of Islamophobia: selectivity.

So when Peretz is “fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs” only when that faith is Islam, but not when that faith is Christianity, Hinduism, his native Judaism or some other faith, then chances are Peretz is mired in Islamophobia.

Funny enough, there is one more common indicator of Islamophobia: criticizing those who resist the trigger-happy generalizations of Muslims as supposedly “succumbing to political correctness.” In that warped world view, the bigoted are the courageous freedom fighting patriots, and those responsible souls who say “no thanks” to generalizations are the weak-kneed politically-correct liberals who are going to bring America down.

So no, Mr. Peretz, before you start crying victim and feeling sorry for yourself as someone who is ridiculed for daring to speak out against the evils of Islam and Muslims and against the oversensitivity of the poor old politically correct masses, perhaps you can explain to us how opposing an American Muslim mosque for the alleged transgressions of Muslims in medieval Muslim lands is not a double generalization across time and space for which you should rightly be ridiculed and dismissed?

Islamophobia – that is negative stereotyping, bigoted expressions, and rampant generalizations against Islam and Muslims – is not only a sad reality in America today but one that is hard to miss just reading through the news headlines in 2010, let alone the third page. Not coincidently, those who are leading the Islamophobic movement in this country are the same people now leading the Islamophobia-denial movement. And in truth, Martin Peretz, though a member of the club, is not at the top of the list.

Whether anti-semitism or Islamophobia, those who coined the phenomenon did not “invent” the phenomenon, they simply called it out. It is an insult to Harvard, that someone like Peretz does not possess the requisite intellectual fortitude to tell the difference.

Oh no, no Islamophobia here.

(hat tip: Ali Nihal)

New arson attack on mosque in German capital

BERLIN  — German police said an arson attack on a mosque in the country’s capital left has blackened its entrance door, but nobody was injured.

There have been more than 10 arson attacks on Islamic institutions in Berlin in the past year, and police said in a statement Saturday they are investigating whether this attack is linked to the previous ones.

The statement said a passer-by saw the fire early Saturday morning and alerted police. It said officers and the witness contained the small blaze with the police car’s fire-extinguishers. The fire caused only minor damage.

Police said a message was left next to the mosque’s door, but did not provide further details.

A good piece from Charles D. Ellison on the differing usages of the “terrorism” and the double standards it reveals.

(hat tip: Blue)

Why Aren’t We Calling Loughner a Terrorist?

by Charles D. Ellison (Huffington Post)

I can’t help but wonder why folks are so afraid to call the mass shooting in Tuscon, Arizona an act of terrorism.

The fear of the “T” word seems almost palpable in describing the gruesome events that took place this past Saturday. There is little explanation or reasoning for the omission, except that it’s very obvious what most Americans won’t call 22-year-old Jared Loughner. It goes without saying that the man is deranged. Fairly obvious that he’s unstable. But, tell us what we don’t know. Get straight to the core of the matter here. Let’s not fool ourselves and everyone else struggling to make sense out of it. Loughner is a terrorist, clearly fit within the strictest definition of the term.

While other top public officials tip-toed around it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton almost went there, just short of dropping the “T” word. Instead, she chose “extremist.” While clearly holding back, it was one of the braver rhetorical stands we’ve heard in the past few days. Her comparison to the Middle Eastern “extremism” we routinely see plastered on global headlines is sure to raise a few brows and ‘how-dare-she’ remarks back home, especially since she said it while in Abu Dhabi.

But, let’s keep it real. The “T” term gets quickly applied within every second a suicide bomber blasts a busy street corner in Pakistan or when a crowded European commuter train is vaporized. We find some sort of geopolitical logic, however violent and horrific, to explain the indiscriminate mass killings of innocent civilians in various corners of the world. Even before responsibility is investigated or admitted by some obscure political fringe group wanting their spot blown, we’re already using the “T” word.

When a “crazy” white guy with a gun, wound up on polarized talking points and manifestos, indiscriminately kills innocent Americans in broad daylight, it takes several days in the aftermath before the larger public will even accept a hint of premeditation. Typically, the collective American psyche will initially trivialize the event by calling the perpetrator “deranged” or “mentally unstable.” The social response script is fashioned to fake us into a false sense of security. It’s isolated, they say. Just one crazed nut with a gun.

That dude who flew his plane into an IRS building? Isolated. Or the cat who waited for, scoped, then killed three Pittsburgh police officers? Crazy. What about the man who shot at the Panama City school board then shot himself? Off the edge.

Brown skin man with bombs strapped to his torso? Oh, that’s a terrorist.

Yet, in every instance, the “isolated” or “crazed” Americans each expressed some form of political reasoning for committing the act. Loughner, whose elaborate musings are outlined in lengthy Internet entries on MySpace and YouTube, was apparently hanging with anti-government dudes who probably have posters of Sarah Palin in a bikini brandishing a semi-automatic prior to the attack.

So, what’s the difference between a mass political killing in Tuscon, Arizona and the same in Any Town, Middle East?

Part of it is that we don’t want to accept that Americans are actually capable of politically motivated destruction. Clearly, the level of invective in our political discourse has reached a feverish pitch in recent years, matched by the worrisome lack of civility and old fashioned decency we use to pride ourselves on. It’s another conversation, but we’re much meaner, much more hyper-competitive and much less compassionate — some can fairly argue with that assessment, especially after 400 years of slavery and institutional racism peppered by mass lynching. We don’t want to admit it, but we all talk about how foul our social attitude is these days.

But, as we enter this 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, we are afraid to accept the comparisons. While the North vs. South battle lines disappeared with every history lesson, we can see a scary repeat of similar passions which led to the first cannon shots at Fort Sumter in 1861. Congress, in the 1850s, was also a scene of unadulterated political mayhem, Members beating each other senseless on the House floor and Senators drawing guns on one another. While it’s not that bad today, we are seeing an alarming deficit of decorum in the House chamber which, if left unchecked, could lead to unbridled outbursts of ideology we’ll end up regretting one day.

We’d be irresponsible not to reassess our national discourse. There are serious consequences to the ideological bubbles we’ve created while we self-isolate ourselves in Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts, interacting only with those we agree with.

Disagreeing is our national legacy and right, but how we disagree is a national discipline we should embrace before Tuscon becomes the norm rather than the exception.

What if he were Muslim? Imagine if instead of the Israeli Special Forces he had been part of the Turkish Special Forces or Saudi Special Forces? Think of the horror that the right-wing would respond with if there were a Muslim patrol group?

Member of Jewish patrol group accused of striking teen in city

(Balitmore Sun)

by Justin Fenton

With matching jackets and radios and a hotline staffed around the clock, members of an Orthodox Jewish citizen patrol group in Northwest Baltimore view themselves as a necessary complement to city police to keep their neighborhood safe.

But one member may have recently taken the role too far. On Tuesday, a participant in the Shomrim patrol organization was arrested after allegedly striking a 15-year-old boy and telling him, “You don’t belong around here.”

Police arrested 23-year-old Eliyahu Eliezer Werdesheim, a former Israeli special forces soldier, and charged him with first-degree assault, reckless endangerment and false imprisonment in a Nov. 19 incident in the 3300 block of Fallstaff Road. According to court records, the teen’s wrist was broken in the scuffle and he suffered cuts to the back of his head.

“Shomrim has and continues to be a good partner in making the northwest community safer,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Wednesday. “However, this individual took the law into his own hands, and the Baltimore Police Department will not tolerate acts of vigilantism from any organization.”

It is wrong, it violates your religious liberty and you constitutional rights, but Asra Nomani would be happy to submit to it.

Civil Rights Groups: US Muslims’ Rights Violated at Border

(VOA)

Lawrence Ho is also a U.S. citizen, and a Muslim convert. He was stopped at a border crossing with Canada.

Ho says he was held for four hours and asked religious questions interrogation-style – in a closed room, by a special agent, with armed guards watching.

“They’re treating me like a suspect,” he says. “Like while I was in there, I just felt like I was a criminal. At a certain point they almost make you feel like you did something wrong.”

Civil liberties groups say U.S. border officials are violating the constitutional rights of American Muslims by asking about their religious beliefs and practices on their return from trips abroad.

Ho and Shibly’s testimony form part of a complaint to the government by two groups – the American Civil Liberties Union and Muslim Advocates.

It alleges that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, or CBP, has been questioning Muslims or people that appear to be Muslim about their religious and political beliefs, associations and activities.

Hina Shamsi is director of the ACLU’s National Security Project:

“Of course we all recognize that it is the government’s job to keep the country safe and secure, and we want it to do that,” she said. “But questioning innocent American Muslims about their religious and political beliefs does nothing to make us safer.”

She says it also violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees religious liberty.

Shamsi says U.S. citizens and residents may only be questioned in this way if there is a reasonable suspicion, based on credible evidence, that a person has engaged in criminal activity. And the faith-related questions have to be relevant, she says.

“It cannot be a dragnet set of questions,” she added. “That is simply impermissible and unconstitutional.”

(Published originally at Spencerwatch)

Egypt’s majority Muslim population spoke loudly against extremism and terrorism when they served as “human shields” in protection of their Christian neighbors on Christmas eve. “We either live together, or we die together,” was the slogan of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon. Indeed, it was a teachable moment: a ray of hope in a sectarian torn world. But fake scholar Robert Spencer is determined to squander any chance at peaceful interfaith coexistence.

Spencer notes that Al-Azhar University condemned the recent attacks on Egyptian Churches:

Al-Azhar is the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, and a case can be made from the Qur’an for what they say: “For had it not been for Allah’s repelling some men by means of others, cloisters and churches and oratories and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft mentioned, would assuredly have been pulled down.” — Qur’an 22:40

Of course, the citation of Quran 22:40 is black-and-white proof that Islam does not sanction attacks on houses of worship. However, Spencer as usual turns the Quran upside down:

Thus Muslims should not be among those who “pull down” churches, right? So why, then, would any jihadists target a church, given that they consistently proclaim themselves to be the true and pure Muslims, following scrupulously everything commanded in the Qur’an and Sunnah? Or have they really “hijacked” Islam, as is endlessly claimed?

Well, it is worth noting that ’Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), a manual of Islamic law that Al-Azhar certifies as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community,” contains a section (o9.10-o.9.15) entitled “Rules of Warfare” that says nothing about any prohibition on attacking a non-Muslim house of worship. And Islamic law generally takes a negative view of non-Muslim houses of worship, forbidding non-Muslims in Islamic states from building new houses of worship or repairing old ones.

Suggesting the Quran doesn’t mean what it says, Spencer cites as proof his favorite piece of evidence: Umdat al-Salik, a 14th century medieval Muslim law manual. Spencer assumes the certification of the translation into English by Al-Azhar means that Muslim legal thinking hasn’t moved beyond the 14th century. What he fails to disclose is that these manuals are studied in their historical contexts. Serious Egyptian religious intellectuals do not take the rules of warfare from Umdat al-Salik but from the Geneva Conventions and U.N. treaties, as stated clearly by Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Dr. Ali Gomaa:

“Fight in the way of God against those who wage war against you, but do not commit aggression – for, verily, God does not love aggressors,” (Quran, 2:190)

This verse summarizes everything that has been agreed upon concerning guidelines of warfare, including the first and second Geneva Conventions.

Nonetheless, reading in translation (since we know he is not proficient in Arabic), Spencer doesn’t find any suggestion in Umdat Al-Salik that houses of worship should be protected; therefore, he concludes Islamic law in its totality must not have any precedent about protecting houses of worship. What he failed to mention, even in the very piece of evidence he cited, is this:

09:11 It is unlawful to kill a non-Muslim to whom a Muslim has given his guarantee of protection.

[Ibn, al-Naqīb A. L, and Noah H. M. Keller. Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law ʻumdat Al-Salik. Beltsville, MD, U.S.A: Amana Publications, 1999. P. 603]

Most Muslims reinterpret such clauses in the modern sense of citizenship. The Christians are Egyptian citizens and therefore deserve the protection of the government. Hence, the overwhelming demonstration by Muslims in support of the Christian community. Of course, even in a time of warfare, Islamic law laid down strict rules of combat. Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, told his armies:

“I advise you ten things: Do not kill women or children or an aged, infirm person. Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees. Do not destroy an inhabited place. Do not slaughter sheep or camels except for food. Do not burn bees and do not scatter them. Do not steal from the booty, and do not be cowardly.”

[Muwatta, Book 21, Number 21.3.10:]

“Inhabited places” include houses of worship. But the Egyptian Christians aren’t combatants; they’re citizens. They’re even more deserving of scrupulous protection. In this regard, Muhammad himself sanctified the lives of those who made peace treaties with Muslims:

Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Amr: The Prophet said, “Whoever killed a Mu’ahid (a person who is granted the pledge of protection by the Muslims) shall not smell the fragrance of Paradise though its fragrance can be smelt at a distance of forty years (of traveling).”

[Sahih Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 83, Number 49]

Apparently, Spencer feels no need to check any Islamic sources other than Umdat al-Salik before he makes sweeping claims about Islamic law. In any case, Spencer would like us to think that Al-Qaeda, who bombs houses of worship, is acting in accordance with Islamic law better than the majority of Egyptian Muslims. He gives us his “expert” interpretation:

Also, it is likely that al-Qaeda understands Qur’an 22:40 as referring to churches that teach the true Christianity of Jesus the Muslim prophet as he is depicted in the Qur’an. Those Christians who consider Jesus divine — that is, virtually all of them — are “unbelievers” according to the Qur’an (5:17, 5:72), and the Qur’an commands Muslims to make war against those who associate partners with Allah (9:5), which Christians are explicitly accused of doing by proclaiming Jesus to be the Son of God (9:30). Thus they would likely believe that Qur’an 22:40 just doesn’t have anything to do with “pulling down” the assemblies of renegades such as those who were gathered in the church in Alexandria last night.

Notice that Spencer thinks it is “likely” al-Qaeda understand the verse exactly the way he does, although he can produce no such evidence. Maybe because he’s not too good at translating Arabic documents? He then cites his favorite handful of verses (out of context); for example, citing:

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)… (Quran 9:5)

But without citing the following verses (interpreted in Tafsir Jalalayn as follows):

“How can polytheists [that were treacherous and violated their treaties] have a covenant with Allah and His Messenger? Except for those with whom you entered covenants [i.e., the polytheists who did not break them and hence were not treacherous] in the Sacred Mosque. So as long as they are true to you [with their covenants and do not breach them] then be true to them [by also fulfilling your covenants]; verily, Allah loves those who fear Him [i.e., He loves those who fulfill covenants, since whoever fears Allah will fulfill his covenants, and the Prophet kept his word and upheld his side of the treaty until his enemies broke theirs].”

[Tafsir Jalalayn, Quran 9:7]

Spencer takes verses that refer specifically to a handful of Arab tribes who broke their peace treaties with Muhammad and extrapolates them out to apply to all Jews, Christians, and people everywhere. Spencer ignores key verses of the Quran that make clear distinctions between those who war against Muslims and those who make peace:

Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for Allah loves those who are just. Allah only forbids you, with regard to those who fight you for (your) Faith, and drive you out of your homes, and support (others) in driving you out, from turning to them (for friendship and protection). It is such as turn to them (in these circumstances), that do wrong. (Quran 60:8-9)

Finally, Spencer ends by repeating his keynote fallacy:

If Al-Azhar backs up this statement with consistent calls on Egyptian authorities to protect Egypt’s Christians, and consistent teaching against the Islamic texts and teachings that provide justification for attacks against them, we will be making real progress.

Spencer thinks we’ll “make progress” when Al-Azhar teaches against Islamic texts and teachings, while we have shown here that Al-Azhar’s condemnation of Al-Qaeda is not against Islamic texts and teachings, but is perfectly in line with them. Spencer pretends that only his spurious self-serving interpretation of Islam is correct and therefore Islam is the problem, rather than extremism fostered by military occupations. Would Spencer find it sensible for me to likewise demand Christians speak out against the Christian texts and teachings that justify terrorism?

As our country starts debating the violent political rhetoric in our nation’s discourse, let people know that fraudsters like Robert Spencer add fuel to the fire by pushing communities apart, dividing nations along religious lines, and hindering any hope of interfaith understanding. His anti-Muslim bigotry and rejection of Muslim/Christian harmony is poisonous to the best of American traditions: E pluribus unum.

Once on the opinion scene, Debbie Schlussel has spat and snorted her way into irrelevance. No one really cares about her over-the-top rantings anymore. Today, she’s widely seen as an irrelevant foul-mouthed hatemonger who thinks that she’s important just because she was on FOX a couple of times. Desperate for attention, Schlussel has become increasingly erratic and extreme hoping to shock her way into the realm of public attention. But like a flasher lurking in an overall at dark corners of the park, when she strikes, it’s only cause for more people to be turned off. So much for “shock” therapy.

Recently, she posted a diatribe applauding a terror attack against innocent Christian victims at an Alexandria church, saying she’s happy they were killed and that she hopes more of them get blown up. The reason for her raving mad commentary? That they are not pro-Israel enough for her liking.

Schlussel’s hatred and bitterness seems to be mostly driven by her personal inadequacies and insecurities. Jealous of Oprah’s success, the unsuccessful Schlussel routinely refers to her as HO-prah; jealous of Rima Fakih’s charm (Miss USA), the not-so-charming Schlussel refers to her as “Hezbollah’s Sharmuta” (whore), Elizabeth Hasselbeck gets called “hag,” and Kentucky Fried Chicken can’t escape her wrath getting labeled “Kentucky Fried Sleaze.” Even her old pal and now a frequent target of her ire, Pamela Geller is called Scamela Geller (not without merit in this case at least).

Recently, Schlussel’s actions have become more eccentric (bordering on delirium);

CAIR sues Debbie Schlussel over name

(Detroit Free Press)

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has sued controversial Southfield lawyer Debbie Schlussel in federal court for trademark infringement, saying Schlussel incorporated several similarly-named groups to confuse its donors.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, urges U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn, to stop her from using the names she incorporated.

“There are people in our community who contacted our office thinking she actually was named executive director of CAIR Michigan,” the group’s executive director, Dawud Walid, said today. He said he fears supporters of his group are making charitable contributions to Schlussel, believing she runs the real CAIR organization.

Schlussel countered that CAIR abandoned its name in Michigan by failing to file annual reports to the state of Michigan beginning in 2004. She said she filed articles of incorporation last year, at the behest of a client who she wouldn’t identify.

“They abandoned it,” Schlussel said. “The state of Michigan sent them notices, but they never once responded.”

Walid says Schlussel spews anti-Muslim hatred on her website. Schlussel counters that she seeks to point out the intolerance of Islam.

A hearing on the case is set for 9 a.m. Friday.

Schlussel’s blog piece on her latest lunatic move is a laughable cry of victimization, faux claim at free speech and most reprehensible of all asking for money to support it.

Schlussel Appointed Executive Director of CAIR Michigan; How You Can Help Our Efforts (to Expose Islam)

I have some important information to share with you. I was recently appointed the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Michigan a/k/a CAIR Michigan, Inc. CAIR Michigan is and will continue to be educating residents of Michigan–through various activities, in the courts, in the media, and everywhere you can imagine–about Islam and the true state of “American-Islamic relations.”  Check out our website, which is in development.  (Thanks to Fred Taub of Boycott Watch for his help in that endeavor.)  We have a lot of projects in store, in terms of educating the public about Islam in America and elsewhere.  We will be mixing things up.  We are applying for tax-deductible status and are in the process of filing all of the official paperwork to raise money as a non-profit.

Until that process is complete, you can help me in this and my other endeavors in exposing the real Islam and stopping it from further changing the American way of life by donating to these efforts.  Donating even just $5-$20/month can really add up to significant support in the ongoing operation and expansion of these activities. You can either use the yellow Paypal buttons on the upper left hand side of the site, or you can prevent the PayPal fees by going to PayPal and sending it directly to: writedebbie@gmail.com.  Any amount is appreciated, and we can really use your help to make a bang as the new year approaches.

My first official act as CAIR-Michigan Executive Director was the letter below to the Michigan Attorney General’s office in opposition to a federal appellate lawsuit filed by an imposter group of Muslims using our name to fight a Michigan judge who asked a woman, Raneen Al-Baghdady–to remove her Muslim headscarf in court. And a few weeks ago, the appeal lost. The judge was upheld in asking the woman to remove her Muslim headscarf.

Can it get any more creepy and pathetic than that?

Dawud Walid, the Executive Director of the real “CAIR-Michigan” has an excellent blog piece on this farce as well as some hilarious broadsides at the comedic and goofy character of Debbie Schlussel:

Schlussel makes classic ‘straw man’ argument today

For years, the Muslim community, its leaders including myself and the organization which I lead have been subjected to fallacious allegations, distortions and smears from “xenophobic loon” Deborah (Debbie) K. Schlussel. Despite her incessantly bigoted blogging, we have virtually ignored this “know-nothing nut”, and I haven’t really blogged about her over the years because she is frankly an irrelevant, fringe in my book.  In other words, she’s simply been a Class A, minor league annoyance unlike major league Islamophobes that can cause serious harm to civil liberties.

In regards to the current complaint that has been made against Schlussel for her commandeering the name Council on American-Islamic Relations – Michigan, she is trying to frame her bogus argument that the legal complaint against her is to silence her freedom to criticize Muslims.  This, however, is a classic straw man argument.  Our complaint against her, though it mentions that she is an anti-Muslim blogger in showing her motive, focuses on her attempt to represent herself as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the state of Michigan, an organization devoted to protecting the civil rights of Muslims and challenging Islamophobia.  This is the issue at hand, not her bigotry.

If Schlussel wishes to state that President Obama is an uncover Muslim who can’t be trusted, let her do so.  If she chooses to continue to mislabel Dearborn as “Dearbonistan” (Arabs, by the way, don’t use “stan” behind their lands; those are Central Asians  ), she is free to do so.  If she even chooses to state that Christian Arabs such as Coptics deserve to be bombed because of their “anti-Semitism” (Arabs are Semites too by the way  ), she can also say such.

It appears in this situation that her disdain for Muslims caused her to make some crucial lapses in her attempt to “drive the Muslims crazy.” (To DS: We have the entire blog saved, so no need in trying to erase the post now.  :))  And like any organization or business with a trademark and name recognition which has offices or stores in other regions, we signed an affiliation agreement to use the trademark with our national office kind of like how franchisees sign a contract with Burger King for instance with its corporate office to use the name Burger King.  Burger King would never allow its trademark to be used by a store that is strictly vegetarian and against selling hamburgers in America, nor would a civil rights organization such as CAIR allow an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot to use its name in any state, be it Alaska, Colorado or Michigan.  Even my 9 year old son grasps this simple logic.

Anyway, I have bigger fish to fry for now.  I have talks to give at area mosques today and tomorrow as well as have official business with government officials to conduct.  This will all work itself out in court.

Cut & paste below to view complaint filed against Schlussel:

http://www.4shared.com/document/4Ls80IjM/Final_Filing.html

Update: The website for Schlussel’s “CAIR-Michigan” no longer stands for “Council on American Islamic Relations” if you visit it now it reads “Council on American Israeli Relations.” A fitting description perhaps. Maybe Schlussel started feeling the heat?

Another case of, “All Muslims are Terrorist…no, wait.”

White Terrorism

by Juan Cole

Jared Lee Loughner,the assassin of Federal judge John M. Roll and five others and attempted assassin of Rep. Gabrielle Gifford (D-AZ), was clearly mentally unstable. But the political themes of his instability were those of the American far Right. Loughner was acting politically even if he is not all there. He is said to have called out the names of his victims, such as Roll and Gifford, as he fired. As usual, when white people do these things, the mass media doesn’t call it terrorism.

It is irrelevant that Loughner may (at this point we can only say “may”) have been a liberal years earlier in high school. If so, he changed. And among the concerns that came to dominate him as he moved to the Right was the illegitimacy of the “Second Constitution” (the 14th Amendment, which bestows citizenship on all those born in the US, a provision right-wingers in Arizona are trying to overturn at the state level). Loughner also thought that Federal funding for his own community college was unconstitutional, and he was thrown out for becoming violent over the issue. He obviously shared with the Arizona Right a fascination with firearms, and it is telling that a disturbed young man who had had brushes with the law was able to come by an automatic pistol. He is said to have used marijuana, which would be consistent with a form of anti-government, right-wing Libertarianism. I don’t think we can take too seriously the list of books he said he liked, as a guide to his political thinking. They could just have been randomly pulled off some list of great books on the Web, since there is no coherence to the choices.

The man who had most to do with Loughner after his arrest, Pima County Sherriff Clarence W. Dupnik, was clearly angered by what he heard from the assassin: “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry … it is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

When Gifford helped pass the Health Care bill, according to Suzy Khimm, “extremists subsequently encouraged the public to throw bricks through the windows of lawmakers.” Gifford had to call the police once before when an attendee at one of her events dropped a gun. Gifford had complained ‘ in an MSNBC interview that a Sarah Palin graphic had depicted her district in the crosshair of a gun sight. “They’ve got to realize there are consequences to that,” she said. “The rhetoric is incredibly heated.” ‘

The subtext of the angst over the shooting of Gifford is that in recent months Loughner was saying Tea-Party-like things about the Federal government. The violent language of “elimination,” “putting in the cross-hairs,” (as with Palin’s poster, above) “taking back,” “taking out,” to which members of that movement so often resort, has created a heated atmosphere that easily seeps into the unconscious of the mentally disturbed. That is Dupnik’s point.

There apparently is some indication that Loughner had an accomplice, and his arrest and identification will shed a great deal more light on the motivations behind this political massacre. Did Loughner have a Rasputin?

In some ways, the turn of Loughner to the themes of the American far right parallels what happened to Michael Enright, who slashed the throat of a Bangladeshi cab driver at the height of the campaign promoting hatred of Muslims launched last summer-fall by Rick Lazio and Rupert Murdoch. Everyone should have learned from that tragedy that heated rhetoric has consequences.

Those right-wing bloggers who want to dismiss Loughner as merely disturbed are being hypocritical, since they won’t similarly dismiss obviously unstable Muslims who, like the so-called “Patriots” of the McVeigh stripe, sometimes turn violent. (Zacharias Moussawi, for instance, isn’t playing with a full set of backgammon dominoes, and blaming Islam for him is bizarre). In fact, the right-wing Muslim crackpots and the right-wing American crackpots are haunted by similar anxieties, about a powerful government in Washington undermining their localistic ideas of the good life.

AP has video on the shootings, h/t LAT.

Among the last things Gifford did before she was shot was to reply to the Tea Party-inspired congressional reading of the Constitution by reading out the Bill of Rights. She obviously enjoyed pronouncing the words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” But where members of Congress encourage extreme rhetoric, and where Rupert Murdoch’s stable of demagogues use code to whip up racial hatred and violence, those rights can be withdrawn by vigilante and mob violence. Not the letter of the Constitution can protect us, but only its spirit, and then only when implemented in our daily lives.

We have detailed a lot of anti-Muslim bigotry on the religious right-wing, but lest anyone think the religious right has a monopoly on Islamophobia, rest assured that some people on the left-wing have their own reasons for stereotyping and scapegoating Muslims. This is what we find in the latest hit piece by Pascal Bruckner, one of the nouveaux (“new”) French philosophers who defends loons like Ayan Hirsi Ali.

A common talking-point ceaselessly echoed in the Islamophobic blogosphere is that the term “Islamophobia” is part of a draconian conspiracy to silence anti-Muslim whistle-blowing. For example, the vitriolic hate site BareNakedIslam has a catch phrase, “It isn’t Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you!” by which they imply that Islam and every Muslim wants to kill you. In this fashion, Bruckner begins with an incredibly sweeping claim:

Islamophobia was invented to silence those Muslims who question the Koran and who demand equality of the sexes.

At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term “Islamophobia” formed in analogy to “xenophobia”. The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world.

We imagine a dim room full of bearded Iranian clerics sinisterly plotting to introduce Islamophobia into the Western lexicon to advance their insidious totalitarian agenda. In reality, far from being “deliberately unspecific,” Islamophobia has been defined by Runnymede Trust as ”an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination.” It has been accepted by the United Nations and numerous government officials. Countless manifestations of Islamophobia are documented and recognized. But Bruckner dismisses all the stereotypes, prejudice, and hostility being thrown at Muslims as figments of our imagination. That is certainly shocking news to Columbia University Press and victims of the Bosnian Genocide.

Islamophobia was an important driving force behind the latest legally recognized genocide in Europe. According to Dr. Norman Cigar at the Strategic Studies Institute, the Serbians’ Islamophobic propaganda was necessary to justify the genocide:

In particular, these [Serbian] intellectuals have been instrumental in establishing and cementing an in-group/out-group dichotomy between the Muslims and the Serbs based on stereotypes, a fact which has been central to forming the environment and establishing the legitimacy for much of the violence that occurred.

[Qureshi, E., & Sells, M. A. (2003). The new crusades: Constructing the Muslim enemy. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 314]

It is precisely this “in-group/out-group” dichotomy promoted by Islamophobes, anti-Semites, racists, and other bigots that leads to so much civil strife and violence, including genocide. But despite this recent ugly European history, nowhere in his article does Bruckner acknowledge that bigotry against Muslims is a real issue. This is a classic example of Runnymede’s sixth point in their comprehensive definition of Islamophobia: criticism of the West made by Muslims is rejected out of hand.

Nevertheless, Bruckner wants us to believe that everyone who uses the term Islamophobia is simply an agent in the service of Ayatollah Khomeini. Perhaps Bruckner believes former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was secretly working for the Mullahs when he concisely summarized the issue:

When a new word enters the language, it is often the result of a scientific advance or a diverting fad. But when the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry, that is a sad and troubling development. Such is the case with Islamophobia.

In any case, Bruckner hinges his argument on the false premise that Islamophobia targets normal criticism of Islam rather than prejudice and hostility towards Islam. In fact, Muslims largely accept normal criticism of Islam as part of religious freedom. The Quran says:

There is no compulsion in religion. (2:256)

If it had been your Lord’s will, they would all have believed – all who are on earth. Will you then compel mankind, against their will, to believe? (10:99)

Certainly, people who choose not to practice Islam are not Islamophobic. Normal criticism of Islam is acceptable in a modern pluralistic society, as is normal criticism of any religion or ideology. Muslims, like Jews and Christians, have likewise debated and reformed traditional laws on apostasy. However, what is unacceptable in our pluralistic society is spreading hate, intolerance, discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice. Ignoring this important point, Bruckner pretends the term “Islamophobia” has nothing to do with anti-Muslim hate, anti-Muslim violence, or religious discrimination. He sums up his beef:

The term “Islamophobia” serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire. It follows that young girls are stigmatised for not wearing the veil, as are French, German or English citizens of Maghribi, Turkish, African or Algerian origin who demand the right to religious indifference, the right not to believe in God, the right not to fast during Ramadan. Fingers are pointed at these renegades, they are delivered up to the wrath of their religions communities in order to quash all hope of change among the followers of the Prophet.

Let me get the conspiracy theory straight: Islamophobia was invented by Iranian fundamentalists to wage the Eurabia stealth jihad (“Islamic offensive”) and attack secularism, but “above all,” wants to silence any criticism of Islam and prevent any Islamic reform. As we’ve already pointed out, this is completely fabricated nonsense; long on confident presumptuous claims, short on supporting evidence.

Furthermore, Bruckner cares so much about Muslim women being stigmatized for not wearing the veil, but this so-called liberal democrat curiously has no concern for the religious rights of Muslim women who choose to veil out of modesty. It seems the right of people to reject religion is very important to Bruckner, but the right of people to practice religion, not so much. Liberal democracy for you but not for them?

Even the French President has somehow been fooled by the treacherous hidden hand of the Mullahs. He says:

Did not the French president himself, never one to miss a blunder – not compare Islamophobia with Antisemitism? A tragic error.

Of course, the comparison between Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism is perfectly valid. Yet strangely Bruckner, allegedly an enlightened freedom-loving liberal democrat and champion of reason, believes dehumanization of Jews is wrong (and it definitely is) but dehumanization of Muslims is… well, nothing to be concerned about. Rather, we are told Islamophobia is a term meant to “quash all hope of change” instead of protect innocent people from the majority’s bigotry. He concludes:

“Islamophobia” is one of the words that we urgently need to delete from our vocabulary.

Mr. Bruckner, the enlightened liberal democracy I know stands by the human and religious rights of all people with the goal of building a tolerant, pluralistic, fair, and peaceful open society. However, the “enlightenment” you peddle is a poor intellectual articulation of nativist tribalistic (us-versus-them) in-group/out-group populism which thoroughly, and ironically, mirrors the rigid fundamentalism you claim to be against.

In my estimation, you belong in the category of self-serving pseudo-liberal loons like Bill Maher.

Don’t expect to see this news on Spencer’s blog.

Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields”

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

The attack has rocked a nation that is no stranger to acts of terror, against all of Muslims, Jews and Copts. In January of last year, on the eve of Coptic Christmas, a drive-by shooting in the southern town of Nag Hammadi killed eight Copts as they were leaving Church following mass. In 2004 and 2005, bombings in the Red Sea resorts of Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh claimed over 100 lives, and in the late 90’s, Islamic militants executed a series of bombings and massacres that left dozens dead.

This attack though comes after a series of more recent incidents that have left Egyptians feeling left out in the cold by a government meant to protect them.

Last summer, 28-year-old businessman Khaled Said was beaten to death by police, also in Alexandria, causing a local and international uproar. Around his death, there have been numerous other reports of police brutality, random arrests and torture.

Last year was also witness to a brutal parliamentary election process in which the government’s security apparatus and thugs seemed to spiral out of control. The result, aside from injuries and deaths, was a sweeping win by the ruling party thanks to its own carefully-orchestrated campaign that included vote-rigging, corruption and rife brutality. The opposition was essentially annihilated. And just days before the elections, Copts – who make up 10 percent of the population – were once again the subject of persecution, when a government moratorium on construction of a Christian community centre resulted in clashes between police and protestors. Two people were left dead and over 100 were detained, facing sentences of up to life in jail.

The economic woes of a country that favours the rich have only exacerbated the frustration of a population of 80 million whose majority struggle each day to survive. Accounts of thefts, drugs, and violence have surged in recent years, and the chorus of voices of discontent has continued to grow.

The terror attack that struck the country on New Year’s eve is in many ways a final straw – a breaking point, not just for the Coptic community, but for Muslims as well, who too feel marginalized, persecuted, and overlooked, by a government that fails to address their needs. On this Coptic Christmas eve, the solidarity was not just one of religion, but of a desperate and collective plea for a better life and a government with accountability.

Kenny Irwin Jr. helped Conan with some crazy, never before seen Christmas decorations. I don’t know if Kenny was just playing a part but this is hilarious. (hat tip: Jawad)

A report from the French website Oumma.com. (Hat tip: Abraham al-Ahmad). The report was originally in French, and so the translation is not the greatest, if anyone has a better translation send it over.

The gist is that Oumma sent one of their journalists to the “International Conference against Islamization” that was held in Paris. They learned about the developing cultural cross spectrum of Islamophobia and how it is a reflection of majority opinion in France.

The New Face of Islamophobia

They say they are Islamophobic and proud. Who are they really? Umma attended the “international conference against Islamization” that was recently held in Paris. Meeting with the organizers and supporters of the radical trend that is increasingly influential in public opinion.

Islam is a threat: a feeling that is now accepted by nearly all French people, according to a survey released by Le Monde . Beyond the necessary questions about the responsibilities-of-both sides for such a negative perception, the identification of the protagonists instrumentalizing this sentiment is already possible. Ummah will soon publish a lengthy multi-media investigation (written, audio and video) showing the emergence and manifestations of Islamophobia in France. The “international conference against Islamization,” held December 18 in Paris is just the tip of the iceberg behind this gathering, we come back, parallel to its description on the connections of this diverse movement with parliamentary right, left, feminist, right-wing ultra-Zionist but also, more surprisingly, with think-tanks and U.S. collaboration. In addition, we discuss how journalists, quietly sharing the same beliefs, prepared through their actions and their visual tests, the ideological terrain on which this motion was seconded.Finally, and most importantly, the investigation tells us how these Islamophobia propagandists claimed a position for themselves strategically for the presidential election through the next convention of the National Front and tactical support to Marine Le Pen.

As an illustration of the story that is soon to be posted by Umma, here’s a video clip, made at the end of the day Audience: This is my encounter with Christine Tasin , member of Riposte Lay and co-organizer of the gathering.The courtesy shown by those responsible for this event to the media in general and Muslim Ummah in particular, has not overshadowed so far, here or there, some tension in our discussions with the stakeholders.

After eight hours of speeches focused on Islam and the “grave danger” that it presents the spirits of the participants was particularly heated, as shown by this clip. If Christine Tasin kindly agreed to answer my questions, he did not fail at the end of our brief conversation, to speak to me as if I was the spokesman of the French Muslim Council, with recurrent expressions like “if you, in Islam, you change this or that ….” The most revealing of the atmosphere that will show to be ultimately deleterious was the unexpected crowd of true fans, applauding at the end of the interview. One of them, particularly vehement against me, apologized after filming the movie. Then he wanted to ask about the media for which I made my report, however, confusing and L’Humanite Ummah, man, from a “communist family”, refused later to give me his first name, because, he says, he “works in a ministry.”

Neither fascist nor brave

Since the “Aperitif sausage” of June 18 which I also attended to speak to various actors of this movement which was a huge ratings success on December 18, a cartoon double, including which fell many of my colleagues, seems pointless: the men and women who make up this emerging force in French politics are neither fascist nor clowns. There are amongst them some who are nostalgic for Benito Mussolini, visceral racists, or eccentric, however this would be a serious journalistic error to reduce all their activists, and especially their supporters to such a label. On this point, I have not so far shared the feeling that the journalist Elisabeth Levy, speaking off with colleagues, found that it was only “good people” at times, stigma obsessional contempt insidious cultural condescension returned regularly in the words of this speaker or that member of the public. But rather than demonize, like the radical Islamophobes, or dilute, the attempt by Ummah in the coming time will simply be to understand this phenomenon to better relate the dangers and challenges addressed, not only to French Muslims, but also to the national community as a whole.

An excellent report from Sheila Musaji at The American Muslim on Peter King’s “Muslimphobia.”

Rep. Peter King’s Muslim Phobia

by Sheila Musaji

Rep. Peter King plans to hold a Congressional inquiry into American Muslim “radicalization” in his new position as Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

This has been seen as a flashback to McCarthy’s witchhunt, and a witch trial.  Whether or not this inquiry would benefit anyone   has been debated by the right and the left.

As an American Muslim, when I look at Rep. King’s background and previous statements, it seems to me that Rep. King is an Islamophobe, and that what he is proposing is not an attack on radicals (of whatever persuasion) but an attack on American Muslims in general.  I am very concerned about where this might take us as a nation, and will follow this developing story and provide updates.

What makes this all the more concerning is a recent Washington Post article “Top Secret America” which includes the information that “‘Top Secret America’ includes hundreds of federal departments and agencies operating out of 1300 facilities around this country. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet-the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons.  Five miles southeast of the White House, the largest government site in 50 years is being built-at a cost of $3.4 billion-to house the largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs; the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.  With nearly 2,000 private companies that are sub contracted in all, there are now 850,000 Americans with top secret clearance.” The Department of Homeland Security to the extent that it is influenced by people like Rep. King may limit our civil rights.  As Javeed Akhter has pointed out:  Few are aware of the magnitude of this secret intel. It is legitimate worry that parts of an operation this large and diverse and secret may get out of hand and start affecting civil liberties of all Americans.  I am not aware of any congressional hearings on it.  Also no moral authority in or out of office has taken on the media for their reckless stereotyping of Muslim Americans.
KING’S BACKGROUND

Back in 2004 King said on the Sean Hannity program “I would say, you could say that 80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists…Those who are in control. The average Muslim, no, they are loyal, but they don’t work, they don’t come forward, they don’t tell the police.”

In our TAM article collection Islamophobia no longer questioned – even by our elected representatives, the entry on Rep. Peter King notes that

King said that there are “Too Many Mosques” in the U.S.”. King also made comments suggesting American Muslims don’t cooperate with authorities.  He said “85 percent of American Muslim community leaders are an enemy living amongst us” and that “no (American) Muslims cooperate in the war on terror”.  He is also a vocal opponent of the Cordoba House.  (Note:  as Robert Wright has pointed out “Representative King, who shares the Weekly Standard’s grave suspicions about Rauf, supported the Irish Republican Army back when it was killing lots of innocent civilians. He raised money for the I.R.A. and said it was “the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland” and praised the “brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry” and in various other ways backed this terrorist group. If Rauf’s past looked like King’s past, there would indeed be cause for concern.”)  King also said regarding Cordoba House “It’s a house of worship, but we are at war with Al Qaeda.” Unless you believe that all Muslims are somehow supportive of or connected with Al Qaeda, that is one colossal non sequitur.  Most Muslims are at war with Al Qaeda.  Rep. King also defended Pamela Geller and called her a “credible spokesperson”.  King’s new plan to open a McCarthy style witchhunt against American Muslims.

Regarding his past support for the IRA, as Justin Elliott notes in his article The Republican congressman who supported terrorism:  “If “IRA” were replaced with “Hamas,” the sort of fundraising King did would these days earn you a lengthy prison sentence for material support for terrorism.” Alex Massie points out ”… King presents himself as a hawk on security issues who, like so many so-called conservatives, is an enthusiastic supporter of torture and, should it prove necessary, nuclear weapons. Listening to King talk about al Qaeda, you could be forgiven for thinking that he’s the terrorists’ most implacable enemy.    Which would be funny if it weren’t such a sour joke. For years, King, who represents a chunk of New York’s Long Island, was in fact the terrorists’ best friend. King wasn’t merely an apologist for terrorism, he was an enthusiastic supporter of terrorism.    Of course it was Irish, not Islamic terrorism that King championed. So that’s different. Right? For decades, King was one of the keenest, most reliable American voices supporting the Irish Republican Army during its long and murderous campaign.  According to King, the terrorist movement was “the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland.”    In Northern Ireland, the conflict was drily referred to as “The Troubles.” But that understatement hides the brutal nature of an ugly, squalid conflict during which more than 3,600 people were killed. Republican terrorists were responsible for more than 2,000 of these deaths. The scale of the carnage was such that, on a per-capita basis, a comparable conflict in the United States would kill 700,000 Americans.    And King was at the heart of it: In the 1980s, he was a prominent fundraiser for Noraid, the Irish-American organization that raised money for the IRA and was suspected of running guns to Ulster, too. Indeed, King’s rise to prominence within the Irish-American movement was predicated upon his support for the IRA at a time when New Yorkers were softer on terrorism than they are now. Noraid helped win King his seat in Congress, making him, in some respects, the terrorists’ Man in Washington.

In 2004, King said:  “The fact is while the overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims, and that is our main enemy today.” This is a meanlingless comment.  Of course 100% of Muslim terrorists are Muslims.  The question is, what does King plan to do about the majority of terrorists who are not Muslims.

When the New York Times ran an article that criticized King’s planned hearings, King responded with:  “I’m absolutely delighted that The New York Times would attack me,” [New York Republican Congressman Peter King] said in an interview with The Hill. “I have nothing but contempt for them. They should be indicted under the Espionage Act. … “

When the Department of Homeland Security released a report in 2009 that warned of the rising threat of right-wing extremism, King responded negatively.  King told Joe Scarborough that, instead of discussing the threat of anti-government radicals, DHS should focus on the threat emanating from “Muslims” and “mosques” at home.  He said ”[Napolitano] has never put out a report talking about look out for mosques. Look out for Islamic terrorists in our country. Look out for the fact that very few Muslims come forward to cooperate with the police. If they sent out a report saying that, there would be hell to pay.”
King wants Wikileaks designated as a terrorist organization.

King supports torture of Guantanamo detainees.

M.J. Rosenberg has reported about Rep. King that In 1984, “the Secret Service listed him as a threat when President Reagan made a trip to Nassau County to watch a Special Olympics event.”
Claim that MUSLIMS DON’T SPEAK OUT AGAINST EXTREMISM AND TERRORISM is a lie

Actually many individuals who have been arrested for terrorist plots and activities were turned in by members of the Muslim community.  These include:  Craig Monteilh, Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, Times Square bomber, the Oregon jihadist, Lackawanna six, Paintball 11 in VA, Matin Siraj plot in NY , Daniel Boyd in NC, 5 Muslim men who went to Pakistan from VA, Farooque Ahmed subway plotter.  Muslims have also helped by infiltrating al Qaeda.

A cursory look at our TAM article collection on Responses to Islamophobia, Arabophobia, and Extremism will provide anyone who is interested with hundreds of articles and statements countering the claims of individuals or groups attempting to justify extremism in the name of Islam.

A cursory look at our many article collections under the heading MUSLIMS DENOUNCE TERRORISM which is readily avaible by simply clicking on this logo on the TAM homepage and which will take you to a lengthy collection of Muslim denunciations of terrorism, extremism, and violence will show that Muslims have spoken out often and loudly.  – Qur’an & Hadith against extremism (see also power point presentations)  – Part I Fatwas – Part II Statements by Organizations – Part III Statements and Articles by Individuals (see also power point presentations)  – Part IV A Few Quotes A-K, and A Few Quotes L-Z – Part V The Muslim Majority Who Don’t Get Publicity (see also power point presentation)  – Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. Military – Selective Hearing of Muslim Voices Against Extremism – Sunni Shia Unity Resource – collection of articles – Muslim Voices Promoting Islamic Non Violent Solutions
Claim that MOST TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIMS is simply a lie

TAM has a lengthy article collection Claim that all terrorists are Muslims ignores history This article lists studies, government reports, and other documentation, and incidents from the 1970’s to the present time.  Since 2000 alone here are some of the terrorist incidents involving non-Muslims

Former leader of the Texas Militia plot to attack the Federal Building in Houston, a Catholic priest drove his car into the Northern Illinois Health Clinic and pulled out an ax before being shot at by a security guard, JDL plot by Irv Rubin and Earl Krugel to blow up the King Fahd Mosque and the office of Congressman Darrell Issa in CA foiled, Anthrax attacks by Bruce Ivins kill five across the U.S. with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets, Clayton Waagner mailed hoax letters containing a white powder to 554 clinics, Robert Pickett discharged a number of shots from a weapon in the direction of the White House, Lucas John Helder rigged pipe bombs in private mailboxes to explode when the boxes were opened, white supremacists planned to bomb a series of institutions associated with the black and Jewish communities including the U.S.  Holocaust Memorial Museum, Two members of Project 7 are arrested plotting to kill judges and law enforcement officials in order to kick off a revolution, An Idaho Mountain Militia Boys plot to kill a judge an a police officer and break a friend out of jail is uncovered, William Krar is charged for his part in the Tyler poison gas plot, a white supremacist related plan, Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend on the Red Lake, MN Chippewa reservation, then went to Red Lake H.S. where he killed 7 people and wounded 5 others before committing suicide, Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe threw a Molotov cocktail at a clinic in Shreveport, LA, Two officers were killed at Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, Iraq by a deliberately placed mine,  Staff Sergeant Alberto B. Martinez was charged, but was acquitted in a court martial trial at Fort Bragg, NC, The Animal Liberation Front targets a UCLA professor with a firebomb due to her research on animals, Charles Carl Roberts IV went into an Amish school in Lancaster County, PA and killed 5 girls before committing suicide,  Dennis & Daniel Mahon send mail bombs to a diversity office in Scottsdale AZ that injure three, Demetrius Van Crocker a white supremacist from rural TN attempted to acquire Sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosives that he planned to use to destroy government buildings, A man rammed his car into a women’s clinic that he thought was an abortion clinic and set it ablaze in Davenport, Iowa, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded many others at Virginia Tech before committing suicide, Five members of a Birmingham, Alabama area anti-immigration militia were arrested for planning a machine gun attack on Mexicans, A bomb was left in a women’s clinic in Austin but failed to explode,  Jim D. Adkisson opened fire in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville TN killing two and injuring seven (a note found in his SUV indicated this was intended as a suicide attack and said the church was apparently targeted because of its support of liberal social policies), UC-Santa Cruz molecular biologist David Feldheim’s home was firebombed. A car belonging to another researcher from that University was destroyed by a firebomb in what is presumed to be related. FBI is investigating incidents as domestic terrorism related to animal rights groups, plot by two white power skinheads to target an African American High School and kill 88 blacks and decapitate 14 more (the numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic to white supremacists) and although expecting to fail try to assassinate Barack Obama, Jomar Falu Vives a Fort Carson, CO soldier and Iraq war veteran accused of killing 2 people and wounding another in drive-by shootings, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting by James Wenneker von Brunn, Assassination of Dr. George Tiller by Scott Roeder, bombing of a Starbucks in Manhattan’s Upper East Side by Kyle Shaw, shooting at Muslim home in Oregon by Vadim Ignatov, Keith Luke went on shooting spree in MA to kill as many non whites and Jews as possible, Three Pittsburgh police officers are fatally shot and a fourth wounded by Richard Andrew Poplawski, who had posted his racist and anti-Semitic views on white supremacist websites.  James Cummings dirty bomb plot.  Joseph Stack’s suicide flight into an IRS building.  Hutaree militia.  Justin Carl Moose plot to bomb abortion clinics.

Even before adding in shootings, bombings and arson attacks on mosques and violent attacks on individual Muslims or individuals perceived to be Muslim, it is glaringly obvious that attempting to defend the claim that most terrorist incidents involve Muslims can only result from ignorance or outright bigotry.

Rep. King might be interested to know that in 2010 there were at least 3 bombings carried out by the IRA in Ireland.  It would be very interesting to know what his current position is on the IRA.

In 2009, MPAC released a study of plots by Muslim and non-Muslim violent extremists against the United States since 9/11.  The the key findings of this report were:

•There were 77 total plots by domestic non-Muslim perpetrators against the United States since 9/11/01. In comparison, there have been 41 total plots by domestic and international Muslim perpetrators since 9/11/01.
•There are at least 5 incidents of non-Muslim domestic extremists possessing or attempting to possess Biological, Chemical or Radiological weapons. One of those occurred since Obama’s election. No such cases involving Muslim violent extremists have been reported since 9/11/01.
•Evidence clearly indicates a general rise in violent extremism across ideologies. Using Obama’s election as our measurement, since November 4, 2008 there have been 44 terror plots by non-Muslim domestic extremists. By comparison, there have been 20 plots by Muslim domestic and international extremists. Each of these categories constitutes close to 50% of all violent extremism cases since 9/11.
•Yet, there is little evidence of rising ideological extremism among American Muslims. We use Obama’s election as the start of a timeline for measurement. We found 14 out of the 19 post-election plots (74%) involved Muslim Americans engaging in ideological extremism before the vote. Only 2 out of 19 cases (10%) are individuals involved in extremist activities after Obama’s election. Al-Qaeda does not appear to be making new ideological gains into the Muslim American community. Instead, the data is pointing toward greater numbers of longstanding ideological extremists turning to violence.
•Muslim communities have stepped forward to help law enforcement foil over 1 out of every 3 Al Qaeda-related terror plots threatening America since 9/11. Muslim communities have help law enforcement prevent the last 7 out of 11 Al Qaeda related plots. This represents an important counter trend the recent spike of arrests. It also highlights the importance of law enforcement partnering with citizens through community-oriented policing.

Loonwatch has also published a must read article All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t which takes information from an FBI report, analyzes the list of incidents and creates an interesting pie chart that makes all the information come clearly into focus.  Loonwatch states: “According to this data, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7% vs 6%).  These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion.  These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.” A second report noted by Loonwatch discusses a Europol Report which shows that in Europe,  All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that Aren’t.
Has Rep. King noticed that just this past month, the FBI and Connecticut police found “improvised explosives” inside a New Haven home occupied by three “white men”.
Claim that AMERICAN MUSLIM’S HAVE NOT RESPONDED TO RADICALIZATION is a lie

MPAC published its first policy memo as the Counterterrorism Chronicles in 1993, and produced its first policy paper on counterterrorism policy in 1999. In September 2003, MPAC published its second counterterrorism policy paper entitled “A Review of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy: American Muslim Critique & Recommendations.” General Brent Scowcroft, former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, said, “MPAC’s Counterterrorism Policy Paper is a serious and thoughtful document that should be valuable to all policy-makers. Counterterrorism analysis from an American Muslim perspective is critical to the decision-making process. I found the paper to be serious and in-depth, and the recommendations should be reviewed by the policy-making community.”

MPAC has created campaigns to assist local Muslim communities in engaging with law enforcement and ensuring financial and ideological transparency at their mosques. One such program is our National Grassroots Campaign to Fight Terrorism, which was launched in 2004 and endorsed by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Department of Justice.  More recently, we released an eye opening policy paper entitled “Building Bridges to Strengthen America: Building an Effective Counterterrorism Enterprise between Muslim Americans and Law Enforcement.” Against the background of more than a dozen domestic terrorism plots uncovered in 2009, this paper discusses the current analysis of the “domestic radicalization” and proposes a blueprint for effective community-law enforcement engagement and partnership.

A Community Based Approach to Countering Radicalization: A Partnership for America was produced by the World Organization for Resource Development and Education in Washington, D.C.  The report was written by Muslims.

During a hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing & Terrorism Risk Assessment in 2008, Rep. Pascrell expressed strong disagreement with Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) remarks that Muslims are not doing enough to help law enforcement fight terrorism.  Pascrell said:  “America must view the Muslim community as a great asset to our homeland security effort and take real steps to engage them. We cannot risk becoming like Europe where Muslim citizens have been pushed to the margins of society and are looked at as objects of suspicion.”

In April of 2008 FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, stated before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee: “And every opportunity I have, I re-affirm the fact that 99.9 percent of Muslim-Americans or Sikh-Americans, Arab-Americans are every bit as patriotic as anybody else in this room, and that many of our cases are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States.”

According to the NY Times “A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.”
PERCENTAGE OF MOSQUES claims are a lie

This claim by Rep. King and others is based on nothing at all.  The first time it was stated was by Sheikh Hisham Kabbani in 1999.  It is a number taken from thin air.  There have been no studies or anything else to support such a baseless claim.

It is one of what I call “everyone knows” claims about Islam and Muslims that has no basis in fact.

There is a long list of bigoted propoganda stating some “fact” that “everyone knows” which are all, quite simply, not facts at all.  You can find responses to hundreds of such claims here.  The most commonly repeated claims about Muslims and Islam are that

“everyone knows” that most or all terrorists are Muslims, and there are no Christian and no Jewish terrorists (or terrorists of any other religious stripe), and that Muslims are inherently violent.  Everyone also knows that Muslims are not equivalent to real Americans, that they are the enemy within, and a fifth column,  that good Muslims can’t be good Americans, that they are not a part of our American heritage, that they are all militant,  that Islam makes Muslims “backward”, that Muslims have made no contribution to the West,  that Islam is “of the devil”, a Crescent menace, and an “evil encroaching on the United States”, and not a religion.  Everyone knows that this is a Christian nation, which everyone knows the Muslims are trying to take over, starting with getting an Eid stamp which is the first step towards shariah law which is a threat to America, and by purposefully having more children than others to increase their numbers.  Everyone knows that Muslims have no respect for the Constitution, and that they are opposed to freedom of speech, and don’t allow freedom of religion.  Everyone knows that Muslims are given a pass by the elite media.  It’s “us versus them”.  Their goal is world domination under a Caliphate, and the proposed Cordoba House in NYC is a a demonstration of supremacism and triumphalism.  They don’t speak out against extremism or terrorism, and even those Muslims who do speak up or seem moderate are simply lying or practicing taqiyyah.  Everyone knows the Qur’an is uniquely violent, that the Islamic concept of God doesn’t include God’s love, that Allah is a moon god.  The problem is that what “everyone knows” is wrong.  These self-righteous and incorrect statements are usually followed by a demand that the Muslim community do something about whatever is the false flag of the day or face the inevitable consequences.

REACTION TO REP. KING’S PROPOSED HEARINGS

As Eboo Patel points out there are ways that King’s inquiry might be beneficial.  For example it could ” …  shine a light on the role that the mainstream Muslim community has played in these attacks. By and large, it has been to help prevent them. Mainstream American Muslims have been vigilant against extremists in their communities – confronting their views, flushing them out and if need be reporting them to law enforcement.” And, he points out that The pattern of extremism amongst American Muslim is ‘self-radicalization’ online. Patel points out that if this inquiry focuses on this reality it might have beneficial consequences “King should help the country draw the obvious conclusion from these two points: let’s reduce the number of people who self-radicalize online, let’s lift up the good work of the mainstream American Muslim community and let’s strengthen our partnerships so we keep our nation safe. Doing anything else is bad for the country.

Rep. Keith Ellison said on “The Ed Show” that he told King he’d like to be involved in the proposed hearing but wanted it done “responsibly. . . . Let’s talk about how we’re going to make America safer, and enlist Muslim Americans to help safeguard our country and look at anybody who might get radicalized.”
Juan Cole has referred to these hearings as hating Muslims in America and said: Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the incoming chair of the House committee on Homeland Security has announced that he will hold hearings into the ‘radicalization’ of American Muslims. This, despite the fact that the Muslim Americans are pillars of the US community–disproportionately well-educated and well integrated into the country, and even though a third of tips forestalling radical Muslim operations come from the community itself. And, despite the fact that most terrorism in the US is committed by white supremacists. King’s obscene gesture of Kristallnacht-by-hearing does not come out of the representative’s own eccentricities, but is part of an organized conspiracy to demonize and marginalize Muslim Americans and Arab Americans. (Ironically, as we will likely hear more of from the Wikileaks cables, the British government considers King little more than a terrorist himself, given his vocal support for the Irish Republican Army, which regularly blew up London from the 1970s through the early 1990s).

As Larry Cohler-Esse and Nathan Gutman note It is King’s prescriptions for addressing this trend that cause controversy. The hearings, still in their formative stage, are likely to be shaped by King’s view of Muslims as a community to be intensively monitored and systematically infiltrated. That is at odds with other views, held by some in law enforcement and counter-terrorism, who see American Muslims quite differently: as willing partners, if sensitively cultivated and understood as individuals who want to stop terrorism — but who bristle at being targeted as a community and pressured to spy on their own congregations. They also point out that According to data compiled by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, one-third of terror plots in the United States linked to al-Qaeda or its affiliates since 9/11 were foiled thanks to cooperation from members of the Muslim community. Alejandro Beutel, the group’s government and policy analyst, said that these numbers were derived from government records and press reports tracked by the Congressional Research Service and the Heritage Foundation.    “The number clearly shows that there is cooperation with law enforcement agencies,” Beutel said, terming King’s claims “grossly inaccurate.”

Salam al-Marayati of MPAC said“He basically wants to treat the Muslim-American community as a suspect community”…  He added that Mr. King was potentially undermining the relationship that Muslim leaders had sought to build with law enforcement officials around the country. Tensions have occasionally erupted in recent years over counterterrorism measures that civil rights groups and others said had gone too far.

All of the premises that are the foundation for Rep. King’s belief that this inquiry is needed are false.  His motives are either ignorant or bigoted, and whether Rep. King is ignorant or bigoted, either possibility makes him a bad choice to be in charge of Homeland Security, or to lead a non-biased investigation.  I am concerned that the question for Rep. King might just be “Are you now, or have you ever been, a Muslim?”
I hope that he reads and re-reads the first amendment – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

——————————-

SEE ALSO:

ISLAMOPHOBIA – RESPONSES TO ISLAMOPHOBIA AND EXTREMISM
NOTE:  We have had as part of our Muslim Voices against Terrorism and Extremism resources a section on responses to Islamophobia.  This was in five parts:  – Responses to Claims Made ABOUT Islam and Muslims in General – Responses to Claims Made ABOUT Qur’an Verses, Arabic Terms, Prophet Muhammad – Responses to False Claims ABOUT Muslim Individuals & Organizations & Incidents Involving Muslims – Responses to Actual Extremist Statements & Incidents of Extremism or violence BY Muslims – Responses to Claims Made BY Specific Individuals and Organizations About Muslims.  Because of a restriction in the possible length of articles, we were unable to organize these in a more user-friendly manner.  Our webmaster has now resolved this problem, and we have combined all these five sections into one section.  The entries are alphabetical, and it should now be much easier to locate a response to a particular issue, incident, or individual.  In order to keep load time down for our readers, this single resource will still be divided into two sections:  A to L, and M to Z.  Sheila Musaji 3/5/2010.

ISLAMOPHOBIA

- ALARMING STATEMENTS Note, previously divided by year and now consolidated into one collection
- Alarming statements by elected officials and political organizations
- Claim That All Terrorists are Muslims Ignores History (sections on Christian extremism and terrorism and Jewish extremism and terrorism were divided 4/08)
- INCIDENTS OF ISLAMOPHOBIA – Prejudice, Racist, or Violent Incidents at MOSQUES – Incidents, hate crimes -  Tariq Ramadan incident – and Khalil Gibran Academy incident and Obsession film incident – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week incident
- Islamophobia: Real or imagined
- MEDIA, Propaganda & Perception
- Polls, statistics, and surveys relating to Islam and Muslims

- A Long History of Injustice Ignored
(see also power point presentations)

A Somali-born US citizen was tortured in Kuwait. Glenn Greenwald interviewed him through telephone, what he found out was quite disturbing. You can hear the whole interview by clicking on this link.

U.S. teenager tortured in Kuwait and barred re-entry into the U.S.

(Salon.com)

(updated below)

Gulet Mohamed is an 18-year-old American citizen whose family is Somalian.  His parents moved with him to the U.S. when he was 2 or 3 years old, and he has lived in the U.S. ever since.  In March, 2009, he went to study Arabic and Islam in Yemen (in Sana’a, the nation’s capital), and, after several weeks, left (at his mother’s urging) and went to visit his mother’s family in Somalia, staying with his uncle there for several months.  Roughly one year ago, he left Somalia and traveled to Kuwait to stay with other family members who live there.  Like many teenagers who reach early adulthood, he was motivated in his travels by a desire to see the world, to study, and to get to know his family’s ancestral homeland and his faraway relatives.

At all times, Mohamed traveled on an American passport and had valid visas for all the countries he visited.  He has never been arrested nor — until two weeks ago — was he ever involved with law enforcement in any way, including the entire time he lived in the U.S.

Approximately two weeks ago (on December 20), Mohamed went to the airport in Kuwait to have his visa renewed, as he had done every three months without incident for the last year.  This time, however, he was told by the visa officer that his name had been marked in the computer, and after waiting five hours, he was taken into a room and interrogated by officials who refused to identify themselves.  They then handcuffed and blindfolded him and drove him to some other locale.  That was the start of a two-week-long, still ongoing nightmare during which he was imprisoned for a week in an unknown location by unknown captors, relentlessly interrogated, and severely beaten and threatened with even worse forms of torture.

Frank Gaffney

More wackiness from Gaffney.

Conservatives claim anti-tax crusader secretly leading Muslim indoctrination

(RAWstory)

Are a growing cross-section of American conservatives really secret Muslims bent on destroying western civilization?

Answer: No.

But that’s not stopping right-wing activist Frank Gaffney from claiming the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had been infiltrated by radical Muslims because of the inclusion of Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist and former Bush staffer Suhail Khan.

American Conservative Union (ACU), the oldest conservative lobbying organization in the country which hosts CPAC, is involved in a “stealthy effort to bring Shariah” to the United States, according to Gaffney.

“This is a ticking time bomb for the conservative community,” he told the conservative conspiracy website WorldNetDaily. “An influence operation is contributing materially to the defeat of our country.”

Gaffney alleges that Norquist and Khan are secretly working for the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist group, and trying to influence conservative groups in a plot to “Islamize” America. Both Khan and Norquist are ACU board members.

Khan, a conservative activist who previously worked for the Bush administration, allegedly has ties to the radical Islamists from his time as consultant for The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He has also served on committees at the Islamic Society of North America, according to Gaffney.

Gaffney also claimed that Khan’s father was a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. In a report by Talking Points Memo, Khan called the allegation “laughable” and said his father was from India, noting that the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt.

He is now a senior fellow for Christian-Muslim Understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement.

Norquist, founder of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, was also accused of secretly providing the Muslim Brotherhood with access into the highest reaches of the conservative movement.

“Grover Norquist is credentialing the perpetrators of this Muslim Brotherhood influence operation,” Gaffney said. “This is part of tradecraft, to get people who have standing in a community to give it to people who lack it, so they can do what they’re assigned to do in terms of subversion. We are in a war, and he has been working with the enemy for over a decade.”

Gaffney is no stranger to making wildly unsubstantiated claims. He said in 2009 that there was mounting evidence that President Barack Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself.”

“The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich,” he added.

CPAC was facing a boycott from a number of conservative groups for inviting the conservative gay Republican group GOProud to the conference. The Family Research Council, Concerned Women For America, American Values, the American Principles Project, the Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and Liberty University have said they will not attend the conference in February.

Cliff May stirring up war and hatred.

Fox News allows guest to promote ‘holy war’ on Muslims

(RAWStory)

The year has just begun, and already Fox News’ Sean Hannity is telling the story of how Christians are being persecuted in the Arab world.

Hannity observed that a holy war may be “brewing” in the Middle East, as he reported on the New Year’s Eve bombing of a Christian church in Egypt.

Cliff May, a notorious neoconservative and creator of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, was a little more excited about the prediction than Hannity.

“In your intro you said a holy war is brewing,” May began. “It is not brewing, it is taking place.”

“Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities are being not just discriminated, but persecuted in Egypt and throughout the broader Middle East,” he added.

“Do you think we are headed for a modern day religious war in the Middle East?” Hannity asked.

“The war that is being fought now, the great global conflict in the world, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Gaza, this is one war and it is a religious war,” May explained. “Not because we want it to be, but because al Qaeda and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and various other radical Islamists and jihadists, they say it’s a religious war. That’s what a jihad means.”

“People forget jihad equals holy war,” Hannity concluded.

It was President George W. Bush who first invoked images of a holy war in the Middle East, when he suggested soon after Sept. 11, 2001 that the US was on a “crusade” in the region.

Years later, GQ magazine uncovered top-secret military briefings prepared by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for President George W. Bush that included Bible passages.

Trijicon Inc., a defense contractor, was discovered last Janurary to have been placing scriptural references on military gun sights used in Iraq and Afghanistan for years. The company was forced to provide the Pentagon with kits to remove the Bible codes.

This video is from Fox News’ Hannity, broadcast Jan. 3, 2010.

Watch this video on iPhone/iPad

Last time we visited the Gulen Movement they were being accused of being radicals who had training camps across America. Now they are being accused of being a CIA front.

Islamic group is CIA front, ex-Turkish intel chief says

By

Jeff Stein  | January 5, 2011; 5:08 PM ET

Categories:  Foreign policy, Intelligence | Tags:  Fethullah Gulen, Graham Fuller, Osman Nuri Gündeş, Robert Baer

Fathima Rifqa Bary

Pamela Geller made the Rifqa Bary case her raison d’etre in 2009, but it died out with a whimper. Now her ex-lawyer could face sanctions for his Islamophobic tirades.

Former lawyer for Rifqa Bary could face sanctions

The halal food hysteria continues to whip up irrational anxiety on the extreme right. You may remember the last debacle concerning Pam Geller’s embarrassing crusade against Campbell’s halal soups. This time Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network is continuing the fight with its latest smear attack on the Muslim community.

The headline begins by asking a leading question, “Muslim Halal food sales supporting terrorism?”

Muslim halal food is creeping into the food chain not only in France, but worldwide, including the United States.

CBN News visited a butcher shop in a Muslim area of Paris. But it was no ordinary butcher shop. Our camera operator was warned to stop taping.

Why would a butcher shop care if it was being photographed? One reason, according to an Islamic expert we consulted, may have been that our camera operator, who is not a Muslim, was unclean and this was a halal butcher shop.

Notice the use of the trademark Islamophobic phrase “creeping” sharia. We are given the ominous imaginary picture of a dark-skinned, hostile Arab shuffling the CBN camera crew out because, our anonymous Islamic expert tells us, Muslims (maybe) view all non-Muslims as “unclean.” This little anecdote nobody saw is enough to lead some readers to think that somehow Halal butchershops are threatening, menacing. In reality, it is far more likely that the Muslim shop owner didn’t want the camera crew of an anti-Muslim loon causing trouble in his shop. I guess we’ll just have to take CBN and their anonymous Islamic expert’s word for it. The article continues:

Leading the fight against Quick’s sale of halal food is Charles Aslangul, a 21-year old city councilman, college student, and president of the Republican Order.

“Islam is introducing sharia into our society and that’s not clear for people,” Alain Wagner, a French activist with the Alliance Against Sharia, said. “When you see halal food in shops you think, ‘Oh, it’s just a kind of food.’ No. it’s sharia.”

According to some experts, a portion of the proceeds from halal food sales in France go to groups tied to terrorism.

When a French consumer buys Halal food, part of the price paid goes as a fee to Halal Islamic experts. Some of those experts are certified by the UOIF, the Union of the Islamic Organizations in France, which the Simon Wiesenthal Center reports has strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational political organization that supports terrorism.

When French journalist and author Alexandre del Valle began investigating how the Muslims Brotherhood was attempting a mafia-style takeover of France’s Halal food industry, his life was threatened.

“Nearly 60 percent of halal food is controlled by organizations belonging to the Muslim brotherhood,” he explained.

Again, relying on dubious “experts” we are told that most Halal food sales are controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood supports terrorism, therefore Halal food supports terrorism. Nevermind that absolutely no concrete evidence at all is presented to substantiate the claim that these Halal food organizations have “strong ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood. But even if this completely made up figure of “nearly 60%” were true, that does not in any way mean these sales are supporting terrorism. The Brotherhood’s public position on political terrorist violence is well-known. The CFR website states:

At various times in its history, the group has used or supported violence and has been repeatedly banned in Egypt for attempting to overthrow Cairo’s secular government. Since the 1970s, however, the Egyptian Brotherhood has disavowed violence and sought to participate in Egyptian politics. The U.S. State Department does not include the group on its list of terrorist organizations. The Brotherhood denounced the April 7 bombing in Cairo by a previously unknown militant group, the Al-Ezz Islamic Brigades, calling it a “cowardly act,” The Associated Press reported.

Nevertheless, baseless speculation and smear by cynical innuendo seems to be the preferred CBN method of journalism instead of actually taking the time to research these things. The CBN article continues:

Journalist Del Valle said Halal food has been a brilliant political and business strategy for the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The food was two victories in one. We split people. We divide two societies inside a society. And we make money,” he said.

Some say halal food is no different than Kosher, but Wagner disagrees.

“No, it’s not like kosher food. Kosher-eating people are not preaching for the destruction of democracy. Halal is sharia. And we need to ban any sharia-related thing in our society,” he said.

This passage takes for granted the ignorance of CBN’s readership. The whole basis of fearing Halal soup has been its nefarious connection to the allegedly omnipresent terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood. However, in this passage, we are also told to associate “Halal” and “Sharia” with “destruction of democracy.” Yet, the Muslim Brotherhood has long been pushing for fairer and freer elections in Egypt. In contrast, it has been the U.S. allied ruling Mubarak regime that has suppressed the democratic opposition, not the Brotherhood. But again, CBN appears to rely on unidentified Islamic “experts” (who are they? where did they study Islam?) rather than mainstream sources. The truth is that those who say Halal is no different than Kosher are correct:

This day good foods have been made lawful, and the food of those who were given the Scripture (Jews and Christians) is lawful for you and your food is lawful for them. (Quran 5:5)

This verse of the Quran allows Muslims, Christians, and Jews to eat each other’s food because of their common belief in the same God (i.e. the God of Abraham). Instead of spreading unfounded fears about Halal food, perhaps the Christian Broadcasting Network should encourage their viewers to get to know their Muslim neighbors by sharing a meal.

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

Wouldn’t that be more Christian?

People wonder why there is Islamophobia in Europe?

Muslims seen as threat by 4 in 10 French, Germans

Four in 10 French and German people see Muslims living in their country as a “threat,” according to a poll published Tuesday by French newspaper Le Monde.

Forty-two percent of French people and 40 percent of Germans questioned by pollster IFOP said they considered the presence of a Muslim community in their country “a threat” to their national identity, Le Monde said.

The findings of the study “go beyond linking immigration with security or immigration with unemployment, to linking Islam with a threat to identity,” said Jerome Fourquet of IFOP, quoted by Le Monde.

Of the sample of people questioned for the survey in early December, 68 percent in France and 75 percent in Germany said they considered Muslims “not well integrated in society.”

Out of these, 61 percent of French and 67 percent of Germans blamed this perceived failure on “refusal” by Muslims to integrate.

Eighteen percent of those who said Muslims were not integrated in France and 15 percent in Germany blamed it on “racism and lack of openness by certain French and German people.”

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, estimated at about six million, originating largely from its former colonies in North Africa. It has passed a law banning the wearing of the face-covering Muslim veil in public.

Germany received vast numbers of migrant workers, most of them from Muslim Turkey, from the 1960s. German federal authorities estimate its current Muslim population at up to 4.3 million.

© 2010 AFP

An inspiring and heartening post by Ahmed Rehab on the bombing of the Coptic church. We were alerted to this late but this is certainly thus far one of the best posts on the subject. (hat tip: Ivan)

A Silver Lining to Egypt’s Dark Cloud

by Ahmed Rehab

The recent bombing outside a Coptic church in the Egyptian seaport of Alexandria that claimed 21 lives and 96 injuries sent shockwaves throughout Egypt and made headlines around the world.

Much of the global media has limited its interest in the story to the bombing itself and the subsequent angry street protests by Coptic youth; more savvy journalists included some discussion of government negligence and the context of sectarian strife that plagues Egypt today.

Still, an integral part of the story remains untold outside of Egypt: the strong response of everyday Egyptians – Muslims and Copts.

A popular storm of anger, defiance, and national unity is sweeping the country expressed by political leaders, members of the clergy, movie stars, students, and men and women on the street all reiterating one resounding theme: this is an attack against Egypt and all Egyptians.

While sectarian strife – even violence – is a serious problem in this mostly Muslim nation with a sizable Coptic population, Muslims and Copts generally live in peace side by side and have for many centuries.

Egyptians of all stripes seem to concur that the Alexandria bombing – the most serious act of terrorism in a decade – is an attack on the Egyptian way of life with the intent to drive a wedge between faith communities and push the nation into turmoil.

“This is not just an attack on Copts, this is an attack on me and you and all Egyptians, on Egypt and its history and its symbols, by terrorists who know no God, no patriotism, and no humanity,” said Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt.

“This cannot be classified as religious extremism, this can only be classified as religious apostasy,” said sheikh Khaled El Gendy a popular Muslim TV personality. “I do not offer my condolences to Christians, but to all Egyptians and to Egypt, All Copts are Egyptian and all Egyptians are Copts; their places of worship are national places of worship, a bomb that targets them bleeds us all.” A high ranking member of the Coptic clergy who sat beside him echoed his words.

“An act like this is wholly condemnable in Islam. Muslims are not only obligated not to harm Christians, but to protect and defend them and their places of worship,” said Imam Ahmed Al Tayeb the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Egypt’s seat of Orthodoxy.

“Let us hang black flags from our homes and black ribbons on our cars to mourn this cowardly attack against our brothers and sisters, let us send a symbolic message of defiance against those who are trying to divide us”, said a visibly enraged Adel Imam, Egypt’s most popular living actor, a Muslim, and a long time advocate for Coptic rights.

The message was not much different on Egypt’s most watched talk shows that were abuzz with Muslim and Coptic guests in the studios and on the streets, expressing their solidarity with each other and defiance against what they see as a common enemy trying to drive a wedge between Egyptians.

Muslim college students in Alexandria and Cairo have vowed to join Copts at their upcoming Christmas celebrations (January 7th for the Coptic Church). “We will be there with signs bearing the Crescent and the Cross, celebrating with them, standing with them, and falling with them if necessary,” said a young, veiled student leader surrounded by her colleagues.

As an Egyptian, I am as invigorated by the current mood in Egypt as I am distraught by the bombing. However, I pray that this welcome surge of unity and camaraderie is seized and eternalized. I hope that it becomes ingrained into our societal fabric and that it is leveraged to induce long needed reforms.

I agree that an attack such as this has the bearings of Al Qaeda and its imitation groups therefore taking us outside the realm of common sectarian strife and into one of national security; nonetheless, Egyptians should see the current atmosphere of empathy as an opportunity to address Coptic grievances and strive towards a more equal society.

We can no longer deny that since the rise of Muslim extremist ideology in the 1970′s, Egypt’s once exemplary Muslim-Coptic relations has deteriorated significantly.

My father tells me that growing up in the 50′s, he often did not know if one of his friends was a Muslim or Copt except by sheer coincidence, and then when he did it mattered little. This was not my experience growing up in Egypt where my religion teacher made sure to warn me against the “treachery” of my Coptic colleagues.

In the 40′s, no one seemed to care that Naguib El Rihany, Egypt’s then greatest comedian and a national treasure, was a Copt; he was simply Egyptian. Likewise, Copts did not bat an eyelid when Omar Sharif, a Christian, converted to Islam in the 50′s, at the height of his celebrity, a far cry from today’s intense reactions against conversions.

As far back as the 12th century, Egyptian Muslims and Copts fought side by side against the Crusaders, viewed then as a national security threat and not a religious war. Together, they stood tall against British colonialism – a lasting image of the period depicts Muslim sheikhs and Coptic priests marching together side by side and chanting “long live the crescent and the cross!”

One needs not look farther than the Alexandria Church itself to gain a glimpse of the sort of religious cohabitation that is uniquely Egyptian: the church is brightly lit up by flood lights perched up on a Mosque, only 30 feet across the street.

Egyptians are asking today privately and publicly, where has all this gone?

But we need to do more than ask and lament. We need to act.

The post-Alexandria solidarity between Muslims and Copts – the likes of which Egypt has not witnessed in decades – represents a silver lining in Egypt’s dark cloud of sectarian strife and mistrust.

We would be wrong not to acknowledge and applaud it, but equally wrong to settle for it; a silver lining never made for a brighter day.

We need to carry the momentum forward into the realm of real change:

When extremist religious discourse at Mosques (and in Coptic circles) is regularly and unequivocally condemned and countered with a proactive and effective discourse of respectful coexistence, it will be a brighter day.

When Egyptians no longer have to list their faith affiliation on their official government ID’s, it will be a brighter day.

When Copts no longer need a special government decree to build churches (or fix bathrooms in their churches), it will be a brighter day.

When I see talented young Coptic men playing on the Egyptian football national team at a rate proportional to the Coptic talent in my 6th grade class in Cairo, it will be a brighter day.

When the glass ceiling barring Copts from reaching the highest levels of government is shattered, it will be a brighter day.

When Egyptian law, prosecutors, officers, and judges treat Muslims and Copts as merely Egyptians – that is as equal citizens – with merit being the only qualifier, it will be a brighter day.

Given the candid conversations happening all over Egypt today, I believe that a brighter day is within reach. It is up to us “to change this tragedy into an opportunity,” to borrow the words of Sheikh Ali Gomaa.

Clearly, the immediate priority is security, but that must be followed – if not paralleled – with addressing Coptic civic grievances. For this to stand a realistic chance of success, the Coptic cause must become a national cause led and fought for by Muslims under a program of comprehensive civil rights reform.

Ahmed Rehab is a board member of the Egyptian American Society and a co-author and signatory of the Chicago Declaration, a practical document calling for equal treatment of Copts under the law, submitted to the Egyptian government in 2005.

From Molly Norris, one of the Anti-Loons of the Year

We reviewed the Year in Islamophobia, and it was a crazy year. However, we noted that at the end of the day there was “hope.” There were those willing to stand up, take a stand firmly against hate directed towards Muslims and Islam. Here we recount some of the best anti-loons of 2010. There are many more whom we may have omitted and who deserve equal attention and recognition.

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald published countless articles on Salon.com in which he took to task the complicity of the media in regard to Islamophobia, the double standards that exist when Muslims commit crimes as opposed to when non-Muslims do and the stark difference in coverage. He was outspoken on the root causes of terrorism and the willful neglect and negligence of our government and politicians when it comes to honestly discussing the causes of terrorism, namely — occupation. Greenwald’s colleagues Justin Elliot and Alex Pareene also contributed significantly to the discussion and had great coverage of the tidal wave of Islamophobiapalooza.

Jon Stewart

The Daily Show brought us plenty of laughs but also penetrating analysis and insight into the state of affairs in America today. Stewart’s mock news show was hailed for bringing more news to us than mainstream media. He was all over the coverage of the Park51 mosque controversy, and even before then he was seminal in covering and satirizing the rhetoric on Fox News, amongst Tea Partiers, as well hate crimes that were rising all over the country. His seminal “Rally to restore Sanity” which he co-hosted with Stephen Colbert was a watershed moment and though its detractors tried to minimize its importance, it frankly eclipsed Glenn Beck’s ghoulish “Rally to restore Honor.” His show also coined the word of the year, “Islamophboiapalooza.”

Stephen Colbert

The Colbert Report is a show that many are in love with, the host’s over the top adulation of himself combined with the incisive satire and biting sarcasm that no doubt turns Bill O’ Reilly and others in the Right-wing into a heaping pile of anger during the weekdays beamed onto our screens and left a residue of warmth and compassion. Colbert was everywhere, Capitol Hill for hearings on immigration, on the Mall for his “Rally to Restore Sanity and or March to Keep Fear Alive.” His commitment to justice led him to take on the pervasive atmosphere of anti-Muslim hysteria and in doing so he contributed to restoring sanity and dispelling fear.

Reza Aslan

Aslan is the man that Islamophobes love to hate. They can’t stand him. Robert Spencer published dozens of blog posts on him alone. Aslan has been vocal in the mainstream media about the anti-Muslim Islamophobia that swept America in 2010 and its main progenitors. He has delivered speeches, engaged in debates, written articles and books all towards attempting to foster understanding, and his implicit nod to Loonwatch on the Colbert Report was much appreciated.

Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal’s pieces on Pamela Geller, SIOA, video footage of rabid anti-Muslim rallies, and coverage of the Great Islamophobic crusade bring him into the spotlight as one of the leading anti-Loons of 2010. Blumenthal is also notable for being one of the first investigative journalists to quote and link to Loonwatch.

Lee Baca

Sheriff Lee Baca is a tough as nails LA County Sheriff who went toe-to-toe with a right-wing republican Representative over the politicians attempts to intimidate Muslims and cast Muslim leaders as affiliated with terrorist organizations.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) impugned Baca during a House Homeland Security subcommittee meeting, saying the sheriff had allied himself with a Muslim American group that engaged in “radical” speech by going to its fundraisers. Baca not only attacked that description of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but he also told Souder he would be fine with going to more fundraisers for the group.

“If he thinks I’m afraid of what he said, I will go to 10 fundraisers because he said it,” Baca declared Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours before a town hall meeting with the Muslim American community.

Actually, Baca said, he’s been to only two fundraisers for the organization in four years, but that, he added, is not the point. What rankled Baca — aside from what he took as Souder personally challenging the sheriff’s patriotism — was what he saw as the congressman’s inaccurate assessment of the group.

“In other words, he’s an amateur intelligence officer,” Baca said.

Several times a year, the Muslim American Homeland Security Congress — an independent group set up to advise Baca and forge a partnership between the department and Muslim Americans — and the Sheriff’s Department’s Muslim Community Affairs Unit hold forums to discuss issues. The one Tuesday night was scheduled before the dust-up in Washington offered a charged topic for discussion.

When Baca spoke at the Tuesday event, he was given a standing ovation by the 75 or so people at the Omar ibn Al-Khattab Foundation near USC.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg stood up at a crucial moment during the Park51 (Ground Zero Mosque) controversy and didn’t back down. He gave an impassioned defense of religious liberty and freedom in a historic speech during the firestorm and took a lot of heat for it from people in his party.

Honorable Mentions:

-Wajahat Ali

-Richard Silverstein

-Keith Olbermann

-Rachel Maddow

-Molly Norris

-Cenk Uygur

-Lesley Hazelton

Expect more bellicose rhetoric from Allen West and actual attempts to ban Sharia’ and Muslim religious rights.

From (ThinkProgress)

Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a newly-elected member who has loudly scapegoated Muslims and campaigned on a promise to oppose religious diversity, appeared on Frank Gaffney’s radio program last week. Gaffney, who routinely says that Obama is both a secret Muslim and a member of the “Muslim Brotherhood,” asked West about how the new Republican Congress plans to “take on Sharia as the enemy threat doctrine?”

West said that, although he has not spoken with all of the new members, he hoped that Congress would focus on the “infiltration of the Sharia practice into all of our operating systems in our country as well as across Western civilization.” He explained that targeting Sharia should be part of America’s “national security strategy” and that a response to Sharia would somehow include “tailor[ing]” American “security systems, our political systems, economic systems, our cultural and educational systems, so that we can thwart this”:

ALLEN WEST: So there are many different ways we need to understand this 21st century battlefield, how we can leverage all elements of our nation’s power against — and like I said we need to get away from this nation building focus. I think that is economically hurting us.

GAFFNEY: In terms of understanding our enemy, and I think you’ve done as much as any congressional candidate to help expand the awareness for not only your constituents but others. I count on you to be carrying that on in your new capacity. What is your sense of the willingness of this new Congress to take on Sharia as the enemy threat doctrine?

WEST: Well, I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down with all of the new members, giving all the new members of the freshmen class a phone call to talk to them. I think one of the critical things that we must come together is that there is an infiltration of the Sharia practice into all of our operating systems in our country as well as across Western civilization. So we must be willing to recognize that enemy. We cannot have a national security strategy that does not recognize it in specific and understand its goals and objectives. So once again, we can tailor you know our internal goals and objectives as far as our security systems, our political systems, economic systems, our cultural and educational systems, so that we can thwart this. And it comes back to one of those strategic goals that you mentioned, reducing the sphere of influence of this Sharia you know ideology that is tied into Islam. But I think that is our most threatening part, is the Sharia philosophy.

Listen here:

West also said that he would get rid of the “nation building” aspect of the ‘war on terror.’ Instead, he would prefer a focus on the type of ethnic and religious witch hunts against Muslims that Gaffney specializes in. Gaffney of course helped plan the protests against the Park51 community center in Manhattan and galvanized support for the anti-Sharia constitutional amendment in Oklahoma.

David Cole writes about reforming the material support laws.

Chewing Gum for Terrorists

By DAVID COLE

DID former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Tom Ridge, a former homeland security secretary, and Frances Townsend, a former national security adviser, all commit a federal crime last month in Paris when they spoke in support of the Mujahedeen Khalq at a conference organized by the Iranian opposition group’s advocates? Free speech, right? Not necessarily.

The problem is that the United States government has labeled the Mujahedeen Khalq a “foreign terrorist organization,” making it a crime to provide it, directly or indirectly, with any material support. And, according to the Justice Department under Mr. Mukasey himself, as well as under the current attorney general, Eric Holder, material support includes not only cash and other tangible aid, but also speech coordinated with a “foreign terrorist organization” for its benefit. It is therefore a felony, the government has argued, to file an amicus brief on behalf of a “terrorist” group, to engage in public advocacy to challenge a group’s “terrorist” designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe Mr. Mukasey and his compatriots had every right to say what they did. Indeed, I argued just that in the Supreme Court, on behalf of the Los Angeles-based Humanitarian Law Project, which fought for more than a decade in American courts for its right to teach the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey how to bring human rights claims before the United Nations, and to assist them in peace overtures to the Turkish government.

But in June, the Supreme Court ruled against us, stating that all such speech could be prohibited, because it might indirectly support the group’s terrorist activity. Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that a terrorist group might use human rights advocacy training to file harassing claims, that it might use peacemaking assistance as a cover while re-arming itself, and that such speech could contribute to the group’s “legitimacy,” and thus increase its ability to obtain support elsewhere that could be turned to terrorist ends. Under the court’s decision, former President Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring team could be prosecuted for meeting with and advising Hezbollah during the 2009 Lebanese elections.

The government has similarly argued that providing legitimate humanitarian aid to victims of war or natural disasters is a crime if provided to or coordinated with a group labeled as a “foreign terrorist organization” — even if there is no other way to get the aid to the region in need. Yet The Times recently reported that the Treasury Department, under a provision ostensibly intended for humanitarian aid, was secretly granting licenses to American businesses to sell billions of dollars worth of food and goods to the very countries we have blockaded for their support of terrorism. Some of the “humanitarian aid” exempted? Cigarettes, popcorn and chewing gum.

Under current law, it seems, the right to make profits is more sacrosanct than the right to petition for peace, and the need to placate American businesses more compelling than the need to provide food and shelter to earthquake victims and war refugees.

Congress should reform the laws governing material support of terrorism. It should make clear that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activities — as Michael Mukasey and Rudolph Giuliani did in Paris — is not a crime. The First Amendment protects even speech advocating criminal activity, unless it is intended and likely to incite imminent lawless conduct. The risk that speech advocating peace and human rights would further terrorism is so remote that it cannot outweigh the indispensable value of protecting dissent.

At the same time, Congress also needs to reform the humanitarian aid exemption. It should state clearly that corporate interests in making profits from cigarettes are not sufficient to warrant exemptions from sanctions on state sponsors of terrorism. But Congress should also protect the provision of legitimate humanitarian aid — food, water, medical aid and shelter — in response to wars or natural disasters. Genuine humanitarian aid and free speech can and should be preserved without undermining our interests in security.

We’ve known for a while that Islam is being used by the far right as a stick with which to bash their liberal enemies. Long-time career politician Gary Bauer makes that clear in his newest screed at Human Events, reproduced on the hate site JihadWatch.

Gary Bauer is an associate of firebrand evangelical John Hagee where they both serve together on the board of Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Much has been said about the looniness of CUFI and its wayward spiritual advisor, John Hagee, such as their eagerness to provoke the end times and their support of hardline Israeli policy. The special report from Jews on First about the CUFI conference records numerous strange and arguably dangerous beliefs including from Bauer himself. Needless to say, Bauer’s bias is evident in his latest editorial. He writes:

Few Americans would deny that Judeo-Christian beliefs and values informed the Founding of this country and that they continue to shape much of American life today. Nor would many of us deny that Americans who embrace Islamic values are a distinct minority here.

Implicit in this second sentence is the canard that “Americans who embrace Islamic values” are embracing values opposed to the Founding of this country. This is, of course, the message  people like Bauer, his friend Robert Spencer, and the anti-Muslim blogosphere are shouting everyday, explicitly or by innuendo. It flatly denies the historical reality that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so entwined in their common roots and the process of mutual cultural exchange that serious historians believe we should really speak of an Islamo-Christian civilization.

Nevertheless, Bauer continues:

I raise these two facts because of an emerging reality: that, in a variety of contexts, American Muslims are treated better than American Christians. That might seem like a bizarre assertion, so think about it in another way: What if the Christians were treated like Muslims in America, and Muslims like Christians?

This is the crux of Bauer’s argument: “in a variety of contexts, American Muslims are treated better than American Christians.” He bases this on a litany of liberal crimes; but of course, within the context he selectively constructs (and without the context he chooses to ignore). He says:

If Muslims were treated like Christians, Muslims would be mocked by late night TV talk show hosts and lampooned in crude cartoon parodies. If Christians were treated like Muslims, conspicuous Christianity would be celebrated by our elites as a sign of our diversity and open-mindedness, not disparaged as an embarrassment, a nuisance and a breach of the law.

Of course, it is wrong to mock and deride entire religious or ethnic groups, but to suggest that Muslims have not likewise been disparaged by TV stars, radio hosts, pundits, and politicians is willful ignorance (has Gary Bauer been paying attention to 2010?). What about Bill O Reilly, Bill Maher, South Park, Draw Muhammad Day, Brian Kilmeade, Pat Robertson, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, or numerous others? What about obstruction of mosques? As for crude cartoon parodies, did he read JihadWatch today? He continues:

If Christianity were treated like Islam, our students would be taught a white-washed version of Christian history, with the troubling bits miscast or omitted from textbooks and lesson plans.

By this I assume he is faulting the Texas State Board of Education, and similar institutions, of not including Islamophobic myths into their official curriculum. Bauer and company would like our textbooks to tell us how uniquely violent Islam and Muslims are.

His editorial continues by citing more cherry-picked and anecdotal “evidence” to conclude that the liberal “cultural elites” have sold Christianity up the river all the while Muslims get off the hook. We are left feeling that we should be incensed at those cultural elites who treat Islam better than Christianity. The reader has no more room for sympathy in his heart for those freeloading Muslims who have had it too good for too long. Not a shred of empathy for the challenges faced by his fellow American Muslim citizens. However, Bauer does end his piece with a noteworthy observation:

I’m not in favor of burning the Koran, and I don’t think insulting or defaming symbols of any religion constitutes art. At a time of the year when intolerance for public displays of Christianity is most acute, it is my Christmas wish that Muslims and Christians would be treated equally.

Good to know you are against burning the Quran, Mr. Bauer. That’s a step in the right direction. It is wrong to insult the holy symbols of different religions (a message we have repeated many times here at Loonwatch). As for intolerance of public displays of Christianity, it seems quite a stretch (considering the giant Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Centre, for example), but I do agree that Muslims and Christians should be treated equally. However, that will never happen until the far right (including you and your associates, Mr. Bauer) give up using Islam as a divisive wedge-issue just to score cheap political points. You cannot honestly complain about American Christians being treated worse than American Muslims while you do not give Muslims the same respect you are demanding for your self. Your arguments reek of tribalism and nativist populism.

Mr. Bauer, some day Muslims and Christians in America will be treated equal, but it will be no thanks to you or CUFI.

Mother Jones has an excellent time line on Islamophobia in 2010 that is worth checking out. The above picture also doubles as the picture of the year.

The Year in Islamophobia: Timeline

— By Tim Murphy

| Thu Dec. 30, 2010 11:00 AM PST

It’s never a good sign when you find yourself longing for the halcyon days of George W. Bush. But after a year in which right-wing activists and politicians identified America’s greatest threats as mosques and infants, you could be forgiven for feeling a bit nostalgic for the man who responded to the 9/11 attacks by emphasizing that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

So, is America Islamophobic? It depends. For the overwhelming majority of Muslims, America’s still a pretty sweet place to work and pray (just watch out for these fellas). And as conservatives like Jeff Jacoby are quick to point out, when it comes to reported hate crimes, Jewish Americans still have it worse. Much, much worse. But with precious few exceptions, anti-Semitism is confined to the paranoid fringe; you’d never see a slew of presidential candidates line up to, say, protest the construction of a synogogue.

2010 was the year Islamic fearmongering officially went mainstream. Here’s a quick look back at how the heck it happened. Enjoy.

The Year in Islamophobia Timeline