Remember the Muslim man who behead his wife? It was all over the news and Islamophobes made big hay out of it. Turning a tragic case of domestic violence into a Crusade against Islam. Bill Maher also attributed the act to Islam.

Now we have a case of a man named Bijendra Kumar, likely Sikh or Hindu who beheaded his girlfriend in front of her classmates. Will we blame Sikhism or Hinduism now? No, that would be wrongheaded and illogical but just imagine if he were Muslim!

hat tip: Daniel

Bijendra Kumar, India Beheading Suspect, Accused Of Cutting Girlfriend’s Head Off With Knife

(Huffington Post)

PATNA, India — Police say that a man armed with a large knife beheaded an 18-year-old woman at her school in front of her horrified classmates in eastern India.

The attacker later told police he was in love with the victim but her parents wouldn’t allow them to marry.

Police official Pravin Kumar Singh said Thursday that officers arrested Bijendra Kumar on suspicion of killing Khushbu, who uses only one name. He allegedly attacked her a ceremonial curved weapon called a khukri as she was leaving her classroom Wednesday in the eastern city of Ranchi.

Authorities say the blade sliced her head off and she died instantly. Kumar was quickly mobbed by the other students and handed over to the police. Singh says Kumar told the police that he had also intended to kill himself.

Can you imagine the ramifications if a Muslim had done this? These packages were designed to “maim and kill,” but for the haters out there only Muslims can be terrorists.

Celtic Manager Sent ‘Lethal’ Nail Bomb

(SkyNews)

Police are hunting a nail bomber who has sent several potentially lethal devices to prominent people connected with Celtic Football Club – including manager Neil Lennon.

The devices were addressed to the team boss, a high-profile lawyer and also to a member of the Scottish Parliament.

Fears former Labour minister and Celtic director Brian Wilson had also been targeted after he received a suspicious parcel proved to be a “false alarm”.

Strathclyde Police say the packages, sent through the post, were designed to “maim or kill”.

They contained a combination of nails and high explosives.

It is believed devices have been sent on at least three separate occasions.

It is understood that the package did reach the office and an employee raised the alarm when nails were seen protruding from it.

Mrs Godman is the outgoing Deputy Presiding Officer in the Scottish Parliament.

Recent media coverage told of how she had worn a Celtic top underneath her jacket whilst on duty during a recent sitting of the Scottish Parliament.

The latest incident was on April 15, when a device was sent to Paul McBride QC at the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh.

It was intercepted at a Royal Mail sorting office.

The high-profile barrister works for Celtic and has been an outspoken critic of the Scottish Football Association in its recent dealings with the club.

Although no-one was injured by the three devices, they were handed over to police and were the subject of controlled explosions.

Counter-terrorism officers have contacted public figures they believe could fall into the category of potential targets.

High-profile Catholics are also being warned to be vigilant, including the leader of Scotland’s Catholics, Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

SNP leader and First Minister Alex Salmond said he hoped Scotland would “unite to condemn those who abuse football with their pathetic and dangerous prejudices”.

“We will not tolerate this sort of criminality in Scotland,” he said.

“We’ve got to galvanise ourselves to eradicate this evil from attaching itself to the wonderful game of football.”

Officers are visiting the mail rooms of broadcasters in Scotland as a precaution, to advise staff on how to handle suspect packages.

The hunt for the nail bomber is being concentrated in Scotland.

Investigators are following a line of inquiry relating to the bomber being a rogue supporter of the rival Rangers team.

A spokesman for Strathclyde Police told Sky News: “We believe we are dealing with someone who is Scotland-based. There’s every chance someone from a Loyalist background is involved.”

Abhijit Pandya

Lovely lookin’ fella’ isn’t he? Maybe if he dyes his hair using peroxide he can try to be the British version of Geert Wilders?

I guess he was too Brown for the BNP. I wonder how the EDL folks who want “British to be about British” feel about this lad? Anybody will do who can save us from the dreaded  ”Muslamic ray guns.”

UKIP by-election candidate backs Geert Wilders, says Islam is ‘morally flawed and degenerate’

Abhijit Pandya, an Indian-origin candidate for the Leicester South byelection, has sparked fury by making critical remarks about Islam in his blog less than a week before the May 5 elections.

Pandya, 31, is the candidate for the UK Independence Party, which is opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union.

On his blog, Pandya called Islam “morally flawed and degenerate” and said he backed Geert Wilders, a controversial Dutch politician who allegedly called Islam a retarded ideology.

He wrote: “A theological system that fundamentally encourages discrimination between those who believe it and those who don’t, treating the latter as second-class citizens, is backward. A system that treats women as slaves without chains is morally flawed and degenerate.

“Cultural practices in many parts of the world which include child marriages and the death penalty for practising homosexuality are reminders that man is capable of going back to the dark ages very quickly.”

He goes on to ask: “Why should Britain, the country that fathered the modern world, put up with this, as Wilder’s [sic] put it, ‘retarded ideology’.”

Pandya wrote: “Islamic culture inherently rejects the Western way of life, more specifically the Protestant work ethic that has successfully built the economies of the West.

“It is also fundamentally socially intolerant, closing itself off to the rest of society and local communities and forming ghettos that are economically dysfunctional and ethically espouse, perhaps without realising it, intolerance that undermines both social and human capital”.

Deccan Herald, 27 April 2011

See also Leicester Mercury, 27 April 2011

In an article from April 18, 2011, titled Iran’s Thug in Chief blames West for Middle East Unrest, another one of Robert Spencer‘s outspoken Zombie-like followers calls for the West to destroy Muslim holy sites:

Melouis wrote:

All this underscores the need for the West to apply the lessons of WW2 to the Islamisist threat. The lesson was that when we destroyed the false gods of the Japanese Imperial fascists, and when we destroyed the false gods of the Germans and discredited their ideology, then and only then were millions of Japanese and millions of Germans capable of adopting a new world view. As a result, they are today, our allies and friends,(for the most part, we are not talking Utopia here)whereas before they were committed to our destruction.

We can achieve the same results by using overwhelming force to destroy the three holiest sites of Islam,(the Mosque in Mecca, Medina, and the Dome of the Rock), in one night with satellite guided missiles and then pose the question to the Moslems, “If Mohamed and Allah could not prevent the destruction of the three holiest sites of Islam, perhaps you should reconsider your world view. The five pillars of Islam would vanish and so would Jihad. (emphasis mine)

It is quite a fetish for anti-Muslims to dream of destroying Mecca, Medina and the Dome of the Rock. We’ve had looniest blogger Pamela Geller, Krazy Joe Kaufman, Michael “Weiner” Savage, someone named Bob Beers, Tom Trancredo, etc call for nuking or destroying Muslim countries and holy sites in the past. Robert Spencer himself says he is opposed to nuking Mecca, not out of any sort of principled stand (this is the guy who supports the Genocide of Turks after all) but because it wouldn’t be a good ‘tactical move’ –which makes you wonder if he is really against the idea?

The Nuclear Card option forwarded by the Spencerite is the wet-dream of all wacko Islamophobes, and is probably the reason that Robert Spencer didn’t moderate it and similar comments.

Update: It looks like the myth that Geller was pushing some months ago about Muslim hordes incinerating Nigerian Christians is resurfacing once again, this time on Facebook. Below is our post exposing the absurd falsity of attempting to pass the Congo gas tanker explosion as an example of Nigerian sectarianism.

******************

Professional hate blogger Pamela Geller is going to be exposed once again in the following article. She is going to be exposed pretty brutally.

We know about her vitriolic hate and twisting of truth quite well now. Her claims that Obama is the love child of Malcolm X, that he was born in Kenya, her calls to nuke Mecca, Medina, Tehran and to destroy the Golden Dome, her crusade against Campbell Soup’s “imminent Sharia’ take over,” etc.

We know her world is a twisted, vapid void in which honesty and intellect is frowned upon and viewed as frightening. Half the time I wonder if she isn’t asleep or on some hallucinogenic while typing away on her propaganda site, but this time she may have topped even her own crazy self.

Pamela is claiming in a blog titled, Nigeria: Muslim Hordes Mass Slaughter Christians that a gruesome picture is evidence of Muslim violence against Christians in Nigeria (be warned the picture is gruesome):

A terrible and horrifying picture indeed.

Pamela brags that she wrote about it “first” back on April 19, and then wonders “why” is America fighting in Libya to restore a “universal Caliphate?”

Huh??

It turns out however that the above picture is not evidence of some “Muslim rampage” in Nigeria! The charred bodies are a tragic result of a tanker explosion in the CONGO!! A whole other country the last time I checked! Here is the evidence from Afrik.com (I give you the Google translation since it was originally in French):

The explosion, on July 3, a tanker in the town of Sange, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has resulted in 235 deaths.

Here is the original French language report where you will also find more pictures: RDC : les images atroces du drame de Sange au Sud-Kivu

You will also see an interesting picture of Muslim UN soldiers, possibly from Pakistan helping to respond to the tragedy.

Here is a report from Reuters with some more pictures:

(Reuters) – At least 230 people were killed when a fuel tanker overturned and exploded in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, unleashing a fire ball that tore through homes and cinemas packed with people watching World Cup soccer.

Officials said on Saturday the explosion late on Friday also injured 196 people, adding that the death toll could rise.

They described scenes of devastation in the town of Sange, where houses were burned and bodies littered the streets. Some people died while trying to steal fuel leaking from the tanker, but most were killed at home or watching World Cup soccer in cinemas.

Many of the bodies were charred beyond recognition.

United Nations helicopters began airlifting injured people to hospital, while Congo’s army, which lost a number of men in the blast, has sent soldiers in to help with the rescue.

“Our latest numbers are 230 dead and 196 injured,” Madnodje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the U.N. mission, said. Congo’s government also gave the same number of dead.

Marcellin Cisambo, governor of South Kivu province, where the incident took place, said the blast occurred when the fuel truck overturned, leaked fuel and then later exploded.

It was not immediately clear what caused the initial accident or later blast, but local people said the truck, which was part of a convoy, stopped when the road seemed to crumble, toppling the vehicle and spilling fuel. Fire then erupted.

“It’s a terrible scene. There are lots of dead bodies on the streets. The population is in terrible shock — no one is crying or speaking,” Jean-Claude Kibala, South Kivu’s vice governor, said from Sange, which is between the towns of Bukavu and Uvira.

“We are trying to see how we can coordinate with (the U.N.) to manage the situation and how to take the wounded to hospital,” he added.

TANKER ACCIDENTS

Roads in the area are notoriously bad after years of war and neglect in the vast central African nation.

“Some people were killed trying to steal the fuel, but most of the deaths were of people who were indoors watching the (World Cup) match,” Cisambo said.

There have been numerous similar accidents across Africa, where crowds gather around fuel tankers involved in crashes, only for the tanker to explode.

Millions of football fans across Africa were watching Ghana, the continent’s last team in the World Cup, play Uruguay in the quarterfinals of the tournament on Friday evening.

For many, who have no electricity at home, makeshift cinema halls are the only option for watching the football.

“My children were watching the football match in the cinema and then they ran out to see the petrol,” said Kiza Ruvinira, who lost three children and his sister-in-law in the blast.

“I went out to see what happened and I found my three children’s bodies myself. I don’t know how to go on.”

Mubaya Mumasura also lost three family members: “I don’t know what to do with myself I am so sad. I want the government to assist all the victims and help us.”

Congo’s weak government has difficulty providing even the most basic services, so U.N. peacekeepers began airlifting some of the wounded to nearby hospitals and aid workers were called in to help with medical treatment.

“The national Red Cross is working on collecting the bodies and taking them to the morgue, but the priority is obviously to take the wounded to the hospital,” International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) coordinator Inah Kaloga told Reuters.”

Kaloga said aid workers were trying to identify bodies before they were buried, but many were completely charred.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said Captain Olivier Hamuli,” spokesman for Congo’s military operation in South Kivu, adding that 13 soldiers had been injured and another 10 were missing.

The Kenyan driver of the truck is being held by the police.

Alain Ilunga, deputy CEO of Congo’s storage and distribution company, which is already investigating the incident, said the truck was carrying 49,000 liters of petrol at the time.

(Writing by David Lewis; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Pamela Geller Fights On For Detroit Anti-Islam Bus Advertisements

Conservative activist Pamela Geller says the first amendment protects her right to run anti-Islam advertisements on Detroit buses. The local transit authority disagrees. Cue a year-long battle over free speech, with the ball now (temporarily) back in the hands of the bus company.

The saga of the bus banner ads began last May when Geller’s group, American Freedom Defense Initiative, submitted a request to the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) in Detroit to run a banner ad on their vehicles offering support for Muslims seeking to leave Islam.

The banner ad reads: “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers! RefugeFromIslam.com.” Visitors to the website are told not to tell friends or family about their plans to leave the faith and suggests they may be killed. “If you are thinking of leaving Islam, be wary, be careful,” it reads. “The Qur’an commands your death for leaving Islam… and Muhammad is explicit in a hadith: “If anyone changes his religion, kill him.”

While Geller has described the ads as a resource for Muslims, opponents criticize them as a little more than a vehicle for depicting Islam as a violent religion. The ads faced similar controversy when introduced to New York City and Miami.

SMART rejected Geller’s request on grounds that the bus company bars advertisements that are political in nature, or that are “likely to hold up to scorn or ridicule any person or group of persons.”

In response, Geller associate David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) filed a lawsuit against SMART on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, seeking to reverse the bus authority’s refusal to display the ads.

Continue reading: Pamela Geller Fights On For Detroit Anti-Islam Bus Advertisements

Islamophobes and birthers here is your evidence. Are you happy? I know you won’t stop here, but if this is what you want to see, here it is.

Obama Birth Certificate Released By White House (PHOTO)

WASHINGTON — Per his directive, the White Housereleased on Wednesday President Barack Obama’s “long form” birth certificate, the document whose absence has long been at the heart of the conspiracy-riddled discussion over Obama’s legitimacy to serve as the nation’s commander in chief.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTO OF BIRTH CERTIFICATE AND VIDEO OF OBAMA’S RESPONSE)

The move came as a surprise to the press corps, many of whom had not shown up for Wednesday’s early-morning White House briefing. By the time word had spread that Obama would be making a 9:45 a.m. statement on the matter, however, the top anchors at all the networks had scurried into the briefing room.

Once there, they received a presidential scolding for their concern with “silliness.” Obama began his five-minute statement with the complaint that he wouldn’t be able to get the networks to break into their regularly scheduled programming for a speech on policy proposals.

“I know that there is going to be a segment of people for which no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest,” Obama said. “But I am speaking for the vast majority of the American people as well as for the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.”

“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other … if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers,” the president declared earlier.

The document released by the White House differs from the one that Obama’s aides made public during the 2008 presidential campaign. Instead of a “certification” of live birth, this was a “certificate,” clearly recording that the president was born on Aug. 4, 1961 in the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.

For years, Obama’s circle of aides had resisted calls to make the latter form public, noting that a certification is legally sound and what any citizen of Hawaii receives upon requesting documents of birth. And indeed, for some time, that explanation — supported by a a wide swath of other contemporaneous evidence – seemed to suffice.

But some who challenged the president’s citizenship remained unsatisfied, and in recent weeks they found a high-profile megaphone for their cause: business tycoon and presidential flirt Donald Trump.

“This issue was resolved in 2008. It has not been an issue,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said during a morning briefing in which he and other officials took care not to mention Trump’s name. “None of you have asked about it, called about it or reported on it until the last few weeks … [not releasing it] would probably be good for the president politically. Despite that, the president said he was struck by how this was crowding out the debate.”

Last Friday, the president himself wrote Loretta J. Fuddy, the director of health at the State of Hawaii, requesting “two certified copies of my original certificate of live birth.” Fuddy complied. Shortly thereafter, the president’s counsel, Judith Corley of the firm Perkins Coie, flew to Hawaii to pick up two copies of the form. The trip was not taxpayer funded but, rather, paid out of the president’s personal account. Corley returned on Tuesday at roughly 4 p.m. with the copies. The White House announced a “morning gaggle” for reporters shortly thereafter. One aide explained that they did not want to “hold” on to the documents for release on a later date.

Many members of the press confessed to being “stunned” as it became clear what was about to be discussed. White House press assistants handed out a six-page stapled packet of photocopies showing the new and old birth certificates as well as the White House’s legal correspondence with Hawaii’s Department of Health.

And yet it was the press that played a large role in forcing the administration’s hand. CNN’s Ed Henry had pressed White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on the issue just one day earlier, despite the fact that his own network had done a thorough investigation debunking the claims of the conspiracy theorists.

“There will always be some selection of people who will believe something. That is not the issue,” Pfeiffer said when asked if Wednesday’s move would silence the doubters. “This issue is, this is not a discussion happening just among conspiracy theorists. It is happening here in this room, on all of the networks, and it is something that every major political figure of both parties — instead of talking about real issues — is being asked about this. So the president decided to release this.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Religious Animal Slaughter Ban Considered In Netherlands

AMSTERDAM — One of Europe’s first countries to allow Jews to practice their religion openly may soon pass a law banning centuries-old Jewish and Muslim traditions on the ritual slaughter of animals.

In the Netherlands, an unlikely alliance of an animal rights party and the xenophobic Freedom Party is spearheading support for the ban on kosher and halal slaughter methods that critics say inflict unacceptable suffering on animals.

The far right’s embrace of the bill, which is expected to go to a parliamentary vote this month, is based mostly on its strident hostility toward the Dutch Muslim population. The Party for the Animals, the world’s first such party to be elected to parliament, says humane treatment of animals trumps traditions of tolerance.

Jewish and Muslim groups call the initiative an affront to freedom of religion.

“I can speak for the Dutch Jewish Community and I think for the wider Jewish world, that this law raises grave concerns about infringements on religious freedom,” said Ruben Vis, spokesman for the Netherlands’ CJO, an umbrella of Jewish organizations.

Abdulfatteh Ali-Salah, director of Halal Correct, a certification body for Dutch halal meat, said he felt the debate made Muslims in the Netherlands feel Dutch society is more interested in animal welfare than fair treatment of its Muslim citizens.

“If the law goes through now there’s nothing else to do but protest,” he said. “And that’s what we’ll do.”

As in most western countries, Dutch law dictates that butchers must stun livestock – render it unconscious – before it can be slaughtered, to minimize the animals’ pain and fear. But an exception is made for meat that must be prepared under ancient Jewish and Muslim dietary laws and practices. These demand that animals be slaughtered while still awake, by swiftly cutting the main arteries of their necks with razor-sharp knives.

Most Dutch favor a ban, but many centrist parties feel the issue is a distraction from the more serious issue of abuses at regular slaughterhouses. One of the two parties in the Cabinet, the Christian Democrats, opposes the law out of fear for damage to the country’s international image as a haven of tolerance for religious minorities. The other, the pro-business VVD Party, has yet to say which way it will vote.

If the Netherlands does outlaw procedures that make meat kosher for Jews or halal for Muslims, it will be the first country outside New Zealand to do so in recent years. It will join the Scandinavian, Baltic countries and Switzerland, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism.

Holland has proud traditions of tolerance and was one of the first countries in Europe to allow Jews to live openly with their religion in the 17th Century.

After years of campaigning unsuccessfully, the Party for the Animals won a seat parliament in 2006, the first time an animal rights party had entered a national parliament. Around the same time, the anti-Islam Freedom Party of maverick politician Geert Wilders was gaining strength. It finished third in national elections last year on an anti-immigration platform.

The Muslim population, built on a wave of migration in the 1990s, is now about 1 million in a country of 16 million. Dutch Jews number an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 after 70 percent of their community died in Nazi concentration camps.

The two political parties pushing hardest for the ban make for an odd couple, falling at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

“Religious freedom isn’t unlimited,” said Party for the Animals leader Marianne Thieme in an interview. She said the law will be “good news for the two million animals that are slaughtered (without stunning) each year in our country. It’s not a small amount.”

Wilders first brought the issue forward in 2007, when he heard that halal meat was being served at a public school in Amsterdam. “Muslims at our schools must adjust to Dutch norms and values and not the other way around,” he wrote in a letter questioning government policy.

Wilders and the Freedom Party did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor have both spoken out against the proposed ban.

“What’s worse is that there is no conclusive scientific evidence that slaughter without stunning is more harmful or painful for animals,” Vis of the CJO said.

Science surrounding animal slaughter is contentious. A 2009 study in New Zealand that monitored calf brain waves during ritual slaughter concluded the animals probably were aware of their pain. That led the country to ban the practice in 2010.

However, noted American animal welfare expert Temple Grandin of Colorado State University has criticized flaws in the New Zealand study, remarking in particular that the knife used was probably too short.

“The special long knife used in kosher slaughter is important,” she wrote in a paper published on her website. In her experience “when the knife is used correctly on adult cattle, there was little or no behavioral reaction,” she wrote – indicating that the animals did not show signs of suffering before falling unconscious.

The Royal Dutch Veterinary Association has come out in favor of banning the practice.

The organization said in a position statement it believes that during “slaughter of cattle while conscious, and to a lesser extent that of sheep, the animals’ well-being is unacceptably damaged.”

Scientists, animal rights groups and religious groups disagree about the amount of pain and suffering animals experience during slaughter under regular conditions – though all say violations of current law are widespread.

Ali-Salah predicted an outright ban would fail not only due to Dutch domestic political considerations, but also because it is not workable in practice.

“How are one million people going to obtain halal meat from a new source?” he said. “They are certainty not going to stop eating meat overnight.”

In juxtaposition to those who would burn Korans, a Church in Utah is giving away free Korans.

Utah church offers free Korans in Easter gesture

By James Nelson

SALT LAKE CITY

(Reuters) – A Utah church is giving away free copies of the Koran in an Easter season ecumenical riposte to the recent burning of the Islamic holy book by a controversial Florida pastor.

The Wasatch Presbyterian Church has ordered 50 copies of the Koran to be distributed at a local bookstore starting on Monday.

“We’re not promoting Islam, we’re not saying the Koran is the Bible,” said Scott Dalgarno, the church’s pastor. “We’re just saying that if people are curious, if they want their consciences informed on this issue … then let them pick up a copy on us and read it and decide for themselves what to think.”

Dalgarno says each Koran, which the world’s nearly 1.6 billion Muslims believe is God’s final testament, will have a bookmark insert that reads: “This book was donated by the leaders of Wasatch Presbyterian Church who are not afraid of truth wherever it can be found.”

He said the giveaway was a response to Terry Jones, the leader of a fringe, fundamentalist church in Gainesville, Florida.

In a move that prompted riots in Afghanistan, Jones’ tiny church in northern Florida burned a Koran last month following a mock “trial” of the text.

“When we found out that Terry Jones had actually carried through on this and 20-plus people had died as a result we thought we can’t stay silent here,” said Dalgarno.

Jones was in court on Friday in Dearborn, Michigan — home of one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States — where he wants to hold a demonstration outside the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the country.

Dalgarno says he has received some negative feedback since word of the Koran giveaway was announced but that he would do the same thing for other faiths.

“If someone in Salt Lake burned a copy of the Book of Mormon, we’d probably do the same thing,” he said. “We’d buy copies of the Book of Mormon and say read it and inform your conscience.”

(Editing by James B. Kelleher and Peter Bohan)

Original post: Utah church offers free Korans in Easter gesture

Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, by Maria Rosa Menocal, ISBN-13: 978-0316566889

Maria Rosa Menocal published this gem of a book just before the events of September 11th, 2001, when a cadre of young Arab Muslim men driven by the politics of occupation, empire and rage combined their grievances with a religio-ideological veneer and flew out of a clear blue sky into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The infamous day was seared into our collective conscious just as deeply as the burning aftermath that smoldered into the earth at Ground Zero, and with it a whole new era was upon us. One in which our confidence, our ideas, our principles and our policies were shook in a seismic way.

How did we react as a society and as a nation?

We clamped down on civil liberties, expanded surveillance on citizens to unfathomable and previously unheard of levels. We compromised the Constitution, built and invested even more in the Military Industrial Complex and invaded two nations while outsourcing torture. We paid lip service to Democracy while compromising with despots and apartheid regimes.

Initially, politicians, including President George W. Bush made statements to the effect that “we aren’t at war with Islam” and “Islam is a religion of peace.” Despite these fluffy statements, Islamophobia increased and cynical politicians and organizations oiled the machinery that would churn out the new bogeymen: Islam and Muslims.

Fear-mongering, especially amongst the Right continued apace and was given a new impetus with the election of Barack Hussein Obama (the “secret Mooslim”). This past summer 2010 saw the greatest backlash against Muslims since 9/11, the scene once again was Ground Zero.

A group of Muslim developers led by Sharif El-Gamal and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf created a project that according to them would mirror all the best in Islamic values, while also being an inclusive space that welcomed all faiths. It would be designed to facilitate events, programs, lectures, debates, studies, and in theory would be quite similar to the 92nd StreetY– they named the project Cordoba House.

Cordoba House was the perfect name for a project with such lofty aims. It immediately evokes images of the beautiful palm-like arches of the Cordoba Mosque and stirs the memory of Andalusia.

Anti-Muslims opposed to the mosque raised hackles at the name Cordoba, and with their usual blustering ignorance and foolhardy arrogance put forward the bizarre and illogical lie, that, by using the name Cordoba for their project, the developers were trying to build a “triumphal mosque” to mark the conquest of Islam.

Such mendacity is dangerous because it seeks to alter reality by revisiting history and washing it of truth so as to fit a particular agenda. Cordoba was the capital of Andalus, a culture, in fact a civilization that stands as a beacon and a warning to humanity.

Menocal’s book deals with this subject, and in contradistinction to the Islamophobes, relates that Cordoba and Andalus was for a moment in history the epitome of tolerance, culture, civility and harmony.

The story of Andalus is about,

a genuine, foundational European cultural moment that qualifies as “first rate,” in the sense of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wonderful formula (laid out in his essay “The Crack-Up”)–namely, that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” (p.10-11)

Cordoba is therefore not separate from the West, it is not the “other” as some wish to cast it, but rather it is quintessentially Western.

Andalusian culture viewed contradictions within oneself and ones culture as having the possibility of being “positive and productive.” These contradictions consisted of differing religions, philosophies, languages, races, etc. Something which we take for granted in our societies but which is under pressure from fanatical and retrograde forces who mirror the forces that brought down the Andalusian civilization.

The founding stone of this culture was one of the last survivors of the Umayyad dynasty, Abd al-Rahman who traversed from Damascus to Muslim Spain “Aeneas-like,”  to become “the first, rather than the last, of his line.”

His arduous journey and homesickness for his native land were evident throughout his life. He wrote in verse his feelings of “exile”:

A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa,

Born in the West, far from the land of palms.

I said to it: How like me you are, far away in exile,

In long separation from family and friends.

You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger;

And I, like you, am far from home. (p.61)

Not for much longer were his descendants to feel like “strangers.” Andalus and its jewel, Cordoba became home to a glorious civilization in which everyone, Muslims, Jews and Christians alike took part:

It was there that the profoundly Arabized Jews rediscovered and reinvented Hebrew; there that Christians embraced nearly every aspect of Arabic style–not only while living in Islamic dominions but especially after wresting political control from them; there that men of unshakable faith, like Abelard and Maimonides and Averroes, saw no contradiction in pursuing the truth, whether philosophical or scientific or religious, across confessional lines. (p.11) (emphasis mine)

Andalus produced such prominent Jewish poets, military leaders, governmental leaders, philosophers, theologians, architects, and intellectuals as: Dunash Ben Labrat, Hasdai Ibn Sharput, Maimonides, Samuel the Nagid, Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses of Leon and a plethora of others. I cannot do justice to their contributions to humanity in this short review, for more on their works and lives read Menocal’s book.

These Arabized Jews ushered in a Jewish Golden Age and contributed to the redemption of Hebrew which had become a near dead language, relegated to the realm of liturgy,

The brilliance of the Golden Age came from Hebrew’s redemption from its profound exile, locked inside temples, never speaking about life itself. Maimonides, born in Cordoba just five years before Halevi left al-Andalus, described this post-exilic, pre-Andalusian state of things in his Laws on Prayer: ‘When anyone of them prayed in Hebrew, he was unable adequately to express his needs or recount the praises of God, without mixing Hebrew with other languages.’ It was not that Jews should speak other languages but that the Hebrew they spoke was no longer the language of true love, of complex emotion, of seemingly contrary ideas and feelings: maternal, erotic, spiritual, material, transcendent. Maimonides, Andalusian that he was, believed that God needed and wanted to be spoken to in a language alive with that whole range of possible emotions. It was an attitude that later allowed English to find its voice in the love sonnets of Shakespeare as well as in the prayers of the King James Bible. The prayers prove more satisfying, perhaps even more true, for being in the language of the love songs.

Hebrew’s redemption had come at the hands of writers who were masters of Arabic rhetoric, the Andalusian Jews, men as thoroughly and successfully a part of the cult of Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and style as any of their Muslim neighbors and associates. A century before Halevi took his final leave to find Jerusalem, Samuel the Nagid had first made Hebrew perform all the magic tricks that his native tongue, Arabic, could and did. He had been made vizier because his skill in writing letters and court documents in Arabic surpassed that of all others. He then went on to write poems in the new Hebrew style, among them verses recounting his glories leading his taifa’s armies to victory. In one fell swoop, Samuel’s Hebrew poetry, with its Arabic accents and prosody –the features essential to making alive for the Arabic-speaking Andalusian Jews–vindicated and completely exceeded all the small steps that others had taken in the centuries before him to revive the ancestral language, to reinvent it as a living tongue. Everyone, from Halevi to the nineteenth- century Germans who made the Andalusians into the noble heroes of Jewish history, knew that Hebrew had been redeemed from its exile thanks to the Andalusian Jews’ extraordinary secular successes, first during the several Umayyad centuries and then in the taifas. Because they had absorbed, mastered, and loved the principles that made Arabic easily able to sing to God and Beloved in the same language, they had been able to revive Hebrew so it could, once again, sing like the Hebrew of David’s songs, and Solomon’s songs. It was a great triumph…(p.161-62) (emphasis mine)

One of those whose story I found very intriguing was Judah Halevi who encapsulated all the contradictions and creativeness that was Andalusia. He was a profound poet, much admired by his peers and was considered one of the “greatest champions” of the Andalusian ethic. However, he transformed over time and turned his back on Andalusian culture, “he declared that it was all folly and inimical to Jewishness and had to be forsaken, in spirit certainly and — if possible, as he intended to do — physically. People were astonished, and some of them offended.”(p.163)

This sort of destructive change and move away from the Andalusian ethos afflicted Muslims and Christians as well.

[T]he first significant instances of cultural puritanism in the Iberian Peninsula were imported from places with little of the Andalusian experience. The Berber Muslims of North Africa never quite understood the Andalusian application of the dhimma, and they mostly disapproved of the syncretic culture that resulted from it. From the Berber sack of Cordoba at the beginning of the eleventh century on, a variety of “reform” movements swarming northward from across the Strait of Gibraltar always threatened to remake Andalusian politics and culture in their own image of Islam. At the same time, the Berber obtuseness was mirrored by the incomprehension with which the peninsula’s Christans were viewed by their coreligionists north of the Pyrenees. This was especially evident after Castile began to expand into territories that had been under Islamic rule for three and four centuries, and to incorporate their thoroughly Arabized populations, Muslims, Jews, and Mozarab Christians alike. An often stark difference in worldview separated the Roman Church as it had evolved outside the peninsula from the Christian communities within it. And these differences grew more profound in the decades and centuries that followed the Christian expansion southward…

During the second half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, more puritanical visions of these cultures converged in Iberia. The determinedly crusading forces from Latin Christendom and the equally fanatic Berber Almohads became influential parts of the landscape and inevitably met, head-on, on the plains between New Castile and old al-Andalus, at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, with disastrous results for the Almohads. The effects of the long-term presence of two expansive religious ideologies, each originally foreign to the Andalusian ethic, transformed the nature of the conflicts at hand. They made religious-ideological warfare a reality, cultural orthodoxy a real possibility, and monochromatic identity a realizable ideal.(267-68)

I have not recounted the amazing and spectacular contribution of Muslim scholars, philosophers, scientists, poets, musicians, theologians, architects, statesmen and leaders. This review would become very long if we recounted the lives of: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn Tufayl,  Ibn Hazm, Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Rahman III, Muhammad Ibn Abbad, Ibn Arabi, Ibn al-Khatib, al-Idrisi and the many others.

AlCazar, the Church on top of the hill

Nor have I recounted the glorious arabized Christian production and contribution in this period: the Alcazar, the syncretic identity of the Mozarabs, the development of Mudejar architecture, the “for hire” activities and sagas of ElCid, Peter of Castile, the Abbot of Cluny’s Qur’an, the translations by Christians of Arabic works into European languages and how it effected the diffusion of knowledge in Europe and the age of exploration.

How can I do all this justice, when even Menocal’s book seems to only give us a tantalizing glimpse and a thirst for more?

The dynamic, intellectual, creative, unique output in regards to language, literature, philosophy, theology, politics, and science serves as an ultimate rebuke to the concerted effort of Anti-Arabs and Islamophobes who claim that Muslim peoples accomplished nothing, were intellectually bereft, culturally barren and uncreative. The well worn talking point that makes frequent rounds in Islamophobic circles, the idea that ‘anything of value that Muslims created or invented was stolen’ is forever put to rest and quietly mocked by al-Andalus.

Menocal’s book on Andalusia gives us insight into the possibilities of various religions, ideas, identities to not only coexist but to exalt in differences and to view them positively. It also warns us against the insular, narrow view of nationalism, fanaticism, supremacism, both religious and cultural. It is a warning that we would do well to listen to and comprehend for our own time and place.

For our readers to savor a bit of the Andalusian experience, I provide two beautiful examples of Andalusian Music:

Ibn Arabi–”Her Words Bring Me Back to Life”:

Mozarabic Chant: “Alleluia” and Mauritanian Samaa:

That Sharia is pretty scary stuff, when it's written in creepy blood font

The right wing loons supporting the anti-Sharia bill probably view Coley as a stealth jihadi.

Mother Jones – Tennessee Sharia Bill Too Extreme For Tea Partiers by Tim Murphy

Today in Nashville lawmakers will hold hearings on SB 1028, a bill that makes it a felony in Tennessee to provide material support for terrorism. That’s already a federal crime, of course, but that’s hardly the point: The bill, introduced by State Sen. Bill Ketron and Rep. Judd Matheny, both Republicans, is the most radical of the more than two-dozen proposals nationwide to block the implementation of Islamic Sharia law on the unsuspecting citizenry. Now Ketron and Matheny are facing opposition from an unlikely source: the tea party.

According to William Coley, a member of the Knoxville Tea Party and a Muslim-American, his group will formally condemn the legislation at a press conference this morning, warning that the bill expands the powers of the police state while doing nothing to make Tennesseans any safer.

(Update: I’ve got a copy of the statement; it’s not a condemnation, but it’s hardly an endorsement either. Here’s the crux of it: “While the Knoxville Tea Party truly appreciates the sincere intentions behind SB1028, we do not feel that peaceful gatherings by ourselves, our friends, or neighbors is the problem, nor do we feel that increased surveillance by the State of Tennessee and intrusion into its citizens’ lives is the answer. The federal government already does far too much of that.”)

Last week, Coley says, he was thrown out of Rep. Matheny’s office, along with a coalition of Tennessee Muslim leaders, after a contentious exchange over the legislation. In his version of events, Coley told Matheny he and the Knoxville Tea Party would work to defeat the legislation. Matheny told him that if that happened, he’d simply introduce the bill again next year. That was too much for Coley: “I was just like, ‘Look, Bro, if you’re going to propose this bill again next year, this is just a waste of our time.’ This guy has forgotten he’s an elected official.’ I got up to leave and I said, ‘You don’t have job security and you will not be back again next year.’” (Coley does not live in Matheny’s district.)

According to Coley, Matheny was supported in the meeting by a representative of the Tennessee Eagle Forum, the local chapter of Phyllis Schlafly’s right-wing organization. It was the Eagle Forum that pushed for the Tennessee legislation originally, enlisting Arizona-based attorney David Yerushalmi’s help in drafting the bill. But Matheny’s argument that he has strong grassroots backing is misleading, Coley says, because the tea party is not fully on board. “Not the way Matheny is trying to make it look. Basically, when I told Matheny that, he told me he didn’t believe me. I told him ‘You can believe what you want; I’ve got the Knoxville Tea Party on speed dial—you can call them. I didn’t threaten him with bodily harm, I threatened him with removal from office.”

Coley’s opposition to the bill stemmed originally from its broad prohibition on adherence to Islamic law, which the text defined as fundamentally counter to the nation’s founding principles. As orginally written, the state could have punished observant Muslims like Coley with prison sentences for providing material support to any organization that supports Sharia—a local mosque, for instance. After the ensuing public outcry, the bill was modified substantially; previous references to Islam have been stricken, and the legislation now serves as a sort of replica of existing federal material support for terrorism statutes.

To the Knoxville Tea Party, that’s alarming for a totally new set of reasons. As Coley explains, ”It’s the Patriot Act for the State of Tennessee!” He and fellow activists are concerned that the law as written would apply not only to conventional Islamic terrorist networks, but tea party groups as well, by giving the state power to investigate right-wing groups. As proof, they cite the 2009 Department of Homeland Security memo warning of a possible uptick in right-wing extremism, particularly among disaffected veterans. That report, commissioned by George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security, has become a rallying cry on the right.

Still, it’s unclear just how widespread tea party opposition to the anti-Sharia legislation is. Nationally, anti-Muslim politicians like Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) have been embraced by the movement, and the Knoxville group’s closest neighbors, the Smoky Mountain Tea Party Patriots, have supported the Tennessee measure. Coley tried to encourage members of that group to attend an informational presentation on Islam that he conducted at a local library, but the response was decidely negative. Coley, for his part, dismisses them as “a bunch of crazy extremists.”

Coptic Orthodox Cross Reads: Jesus Christ, the Son of God

This is sad news, it will only lead to more sectarian tensions in Egypt. Killing anyone because of their conversion is horrendous.

Imagine if the scenario was flipped around: three Muslims killed their family for converting into Christianity, how would the world react? How many discussions of “shame,” or “honor killing” or “humiliation” would we be hearing?

Three Coptic brothers accused of killing sister, her husband and child for converting to Islam

Three Coptic brothers are arrested on suspicion of murdering their sister, her husband and five-year-old son, allegedly as punishment for her conversion to Islam.

Three Coptic brothers have been arrested on suspicion of murdering their sister, her husband and five year-old son in what seems to be a sectarian hate crime.

The couple’s six year-old daughter, Nada, was the only survivor, even though she sustained neck wounds. The outrageous murder took place in the Cairo district of Boulaq Al-Dakrour.

Salwa Atallah, 33, converted to Islam over six years ago and reportedly that’s the reason why her siblings decided to finish her off, according to initial investigations.

Over the past few years Atallah’s three brothers, two manual labourers and a driver, paid regular visits to their sister without showing any signs of hostility.

Husband, Khaled Ibrahim, was still alive when the police arrived on the crime scene. He was rushed to Boulaq Al-Dakrour Hospital where he was pronounced dead after succumbing to his fatal injuries.

However, police say he was able to give a testimony before his demise at 48.

Ibrahim said his late wife’s younger brother Momen, 22, paid them a visit and stayed till the crack of dawn, before the other two arrived to carry out their murders.

Police have given the following transcript of Ibrahim’s deathbed testimony:

“I was hesitant to open the door but he [Momen] told me ‘open it I am with you’” (meaning that he’s got his back) said Ibrahim.

“I went to the kitchen to bring a knife to defend myself… when I opened the door my wife started to scream.”

“Her elder brother followed her to the bedroom while Raafat [third broteher] punched me in the face and stabbed me many times.”

“Momen also snatched my knife to stabbed me… I lost control, I tried to get up more than once but I was bleeding heavily.”

“After killing my wife, Raafat brought a scarf and wrapped it around my son’s neck. He squeezed till he died.”

The three men reportedly confessed their crime upon being held captive by neighbours.

Atallah converted to Islam on 15 March, 2005.

The crime is expected to contribute to sectarian tensions, which have been rampant in the southern province of Qena since the appointment of Christian Emad Mikhail as governor.

Donald Trump is at again. First with Obama’s birth certificate, and now this.

Donald Trump Says Something in Koran Teaches a ‘Very Negative Vibe’

In an exclusive interview with The Brody File, Donald Trump expresses concern about the teachings of the Koran saying, “There’s something there that teaches some very negative vibe.”

Watch below. The transcription is below as well.

I spoke with Trump in New York a few days ago. My full six-minute piece aired across the country on “The 700 Club” this morning. If you missed it, you can watch it again tonight at 11 p.m. on the ABC Family Channel or here anytime of day.

Trump will also be the sole focus of this week’s 30-minute Brody File Show where you can see a lot more of the interview. (The show will be released Wednesday morning along with more, never-before-seen clips)

Transcription:

David Brody: Radical Islam: to Evangelicals, this is a bread and butter issue. You said there’s a Muslim problem in this country. What do you mean by that exactly?

Donald Trump: Bill O’Reilly asked me is there a Muslim problem? And I said absolutely, yes. In fact I went a step further. I said I didn’t see Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center. It was very interesting. I thought that was going to be a controversial statement and somebody, I think it was Dennis Miller introduced me, he was doing like an analysis of me, he said, I love it.

The guy said what the truth is. He didn’t mince his words. He didn’t say, ‘Oh, gee, no there’s not a Muslim problem, everybody’s wonderful.’ And by the way, many, many, most Muslims are wonderful people, but is there a Muslim problem? Look what’s happening. Look what happened right here in my city with the World Trade Center and lots of other places.

So I said it and I thought it was going to be very controversial but actually it was very well received. I think people want the truth. I think they’re tired of politicians. They’re tired of politically correct stuff.

I mean I could have said, ‘Oh absolutely not Bill, there’s no Muslim problem, everything is wonderful, just forget about the World Trade Center.’ But you have to speak the truth. We’re so politically correct that this country is falling apart.

Brody: With some evangelicals there are some problems with the teachings of the Koran. Do you have concerns about the Koran?”

Trump: Well, I’ll tell you what. The Koran is very interesting. A lot of people say it teaches love and there is a very big group of people who really understand the Koran far better than I do. I’m certainly not an expert, to put it mildly. But there’s something there that teaches some very negative vibe.

I mean things are happening, when you look at people blowing up all over the streets that are in some of the countries over in the Middle East, just blowing up a super market with not even soldiers, just people, when 250 people die in a super market that are shopping, where people die in a store or in a street. There’s a lot of hatred there that’s some place.

Now I don’t know if that’s from the Koran. I don’t know if that’s from some place else. But there’s tremendous hatred out there that I’ve never seen anything like it.

So, you have two views. You have the view that the Koran is all about love and then you have the view that the Koran is, that there’s a lot of hate in the Koran.

What the hell does this even mean?

Tom Coburn: Norquist is “chief cleric of sharia tax law.”

by David Safier

Wow. I repeat. Wow.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) is so pissed at No New Taxes guru Grover Norquist, Coburn called the guy the “chief cleric of sharia tax law.”

I thought they reserved that kind of language for Democrats.

Do I sense trouble in paradise? Are some conservatives, even those with impeccable credentials,feeling the constraints of the ideological straitjackets put on them by the farther-than-far Right?

Coburn wants to get rid of a $5 billion ethanol subsidy. Norquist says that’s only OK if there are $5 billion in tax cuts to keep it revenue neutral. Which prompted Coburn to call Norquist the “chief cleric of sharia tax law.”

Look at this list of some of the other “renegades” wanting to break free of the No New Taxes shackles.

These include stalwart conservatives such as Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. And on the ethanol issue, Coburn has drawn support from the Heritage Foundation.

Fight among yourselves,guys. Play “More conservative than thou.” Keep up the good work.

Spencer’s Hypocrisy With Election Violence

Robert Spencer, or “Police Blotter Bobby” as we have come to know him here, is completely hypocritical when it comes to Muslims and violence. His “IIT,” or “Islamophobe in Training,” Marisol blogged about theviolence in Northern Nigeria in the wake of the victory of the Christian candidate Goodluck Jonathan. Mr. Jonathan said that the violence was “not a spontaneous reaction,” and “I don’t want to accuse anybody but we believe that people must be behind this.” That can mean anything.

Marisol, however, translated that statement into this conclusion:

[...]

the inclination toward violence was already there, waiting for another excuse to make a show of force and abuse non-Muslims. And as with those “protests,” we have seen that even the flimsiest of pretexts will do. If it is not one excusedu jour, it might be the next day’s “provocation” or “humiliation.”

These incidents would not happen — and would not keep happening — if not for an able and willing populace, and pre-existing hatred and intolerance of non-Muslims.

Here, of course, there is another angle. It is quite reasonable for President Jonathan to surmise that many Muslims in the north were poised and ready to let loose once the votes were counted. The election results show the Muslim candidate didn’t stand a chance, but that didn’t matter: if the Muslims could win the election, Islamic law could advance that way. If they lost, they would attempt to advance Islamic law the old fashioned way, demanding concessions through violence and threats.

Complete nonsense and betrayal of the facts on the ground. According to an analysis on the very same BBC article Marisol cited, which was not in the post, said this:

Both the winner of Nigeria’s election, Goodluck Jonathan, and his main rival, Muhammadu Buhari, have called for calm following the post-poll riots in the north. But the tensions cannot be plastered over.

Most of those behind the rioting have been unemployed young men – uneducated and deprived. Often they are only remembered by politicians at elections, when they are sometimes paid to do their bidding. They could send any conflict out of control, because it provides them with an opportunity to loot and attack the people they perceive as their enemies.

Irrespective of political party and region, 12 years of civilian rule have brought little change to the lives of Nigerians. But the north is far behind the south in terms of development, education and the availability of economic opportunities. Good governance, not political platitudes from the elite, is what many say is needed for the future.

Nothing about Islam, violence, Islamic law, Sharia, etc. But, of course, the “scholars” at JihadWatch will never tell you this.

What’s more, they were completely silent about the election violence in nearby Ivory Coast. For over four months, violence has raged in that African nation after Alassane Ouattara defeated incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. But, Gbagbo refused to step down, and as a result, thousands were killed and millions displaced.

But, since this has nothing to do with Islam, they don’t seem to care at all. Can you really take Spencer seriously?

Non-existant Sharia is such a burden in America, riiiiight.

More idiocy on the anti-Sharia front.

Mother Jones: BREAKING – Anti-Sharia Bill Sponsors Are Kind of Clueless by Tim Murphy

On Wednesday, members of the North Carolina House debated HB 640, a bill to ban the use of Islamic Sharia law in state courts. This is nothing new: Since the beginning of 2009, two dozen states have considered such proposals, stemming from concerns that unless serious action is taken, American citizens will be forced to adhere to a draconian interpretation of Sharia. That’s the argument, at least, but through each of these bills, there’s been one nagging flaw—no one can explain, when pressed, why such legislation is necessary.

At this point, the drill is getting kind of familiar. How familiar? Well, here’s Laura Leslie, of Raleigh’s WRAL:

Rep. Verla Insko asked [State Rep. George] Cleveland twice for an example of a case that would show a need for the bill. “I do not have any specific examples off the top of my head,” Cleveland finally replied.

Hey, that sounds similar to the scene on Tuesday when the Missouri House voted on a bill to ban Islamic law from state courts:

[State Rep. Jamilah] Nasheed called on [State Rep. Paul] Curtman to provide a list of cases in which international law had been used in American courts but Curtman was unable to provide an example of such a case.

Missouri in March:

“I don’t have the specifics with me right now but if you go to—the web address kind of escapes my mind right now. Any Google search on international law used in the state courts in the U.S. is going to turn up some cases for you.”

Alabama last month:

[State Sen. Gerald] Allen could not readily define Shariah in an interview Thursday. “I don’t have my file in front of me,” he said.

Georgia in February:

[State Rep. Mike Jacobs] acknowledged that he was not aware of any instances in Georgia where a plaintiff or defendant asked the court to apply Sharia law but believes it has happened elsewhere.

Alaska in March:

In a hearing before the House State Affairs Committee, [State Rep. Carl] Gatto’s chief of staff, Karen Sawyer, said Sharia is an example of the type of transnational law that has appeared in family law, divorce and child custody cases nationally, though she knows of [no] instances of it appearing in Alaska courts.

South Carolina on Wednesday:

None of the senators nor Kevin A. Hall, a Columbia attorney who testified in support of the bill, were aware of any examples in South Carolina where courts upheld sharia law over the U.S. Constitution.

South Dakota in February:

[I]n testimony this week, proponents of a Sharia ban could not produce a single South Dakota case in which Islamic law had been a problem.”

Oklahoma last November:

Mr. Boughton acknowledged that he did not know of an instance in which Shariah law had been invoked by the courts.

Ok, I’ll stop. But maybe you’ve noticed a trend? America’s got some issues. If you’re looking for a way to doing something about them, you’re probably better off praying for rain.

This article is part 5 of LoonWatch’s Understanding Jihad Series. Please read my “disclaimer”, which explains my intentions behind writing this article: The Understanding Jihad Series: Is Islam More Likely Than Other Religions to Encourage Violence?

Anti-Muslim demagoguery relies on the demonization of the Prophet Muhammad, who is characterized as being especially violent and warlike.  This idea has certainly gained currency in the “Judeo-Christian West”.  When it is pointed out that the Biblical prophets–including Moses, Joshua, Samson, Saul, David, among many others–were far more violent and warlike (and even engaged in religiously sanctioned genocide), anti-Muslim pro-Christian ideologues will respond by disregarding or downplaying the Old Testament and will instead focus on the personality of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

Didn’t Jesus preach nonviolence and “loving one’s enemies”?  The anti-Muslim ideologues use this idea to assault the religion of Islam with.  For example, the Catholic apologist Robert Spencer compares Islam to Christianity by juxtaposing carefully selected quotes from Jesus to Islamic texts.  In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Spencer includes a “Muhammad vs Jesus” section.  He cites the following sayings of Jesus in the Bible:

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”

“Blessed are the peacemakers”

“Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy”

“But love your enemies, and do good”

These “peaceful” verses of the Bible are compared to select violent-sounding Quranic verses.  The violent verses of the Bible “don’t count” and are craftily excluded from the comparison (“that’s just the Old Testament!”).  To tighten the noose, peaceful verses of the Quran are also excluded from the heavily biased analysis: these “don’t count” since they are supposedly from when Muhammad was still in Mecca.

To understand the last point, one needs to have a basic understanding of the Prophet Muhammad’s biography: he first declared his prophethood in the city of Mecca.  Only a very small segment of society accepted him (mostly the weak and poor), whereas the masses–especially the powerful leaders of the city–not only rejected him but actively persecuted him.  The chapters of the Quran that were revealed during this period are known as the Meccan chapters.  Eventually, Muhammad fled to the city of Medina, whose people accepted him as their ruler.  He went from persecuted prophet to ruler and commander-in-chief of a fledgling city-state.

The anti-Muslim ideologues claim that the peaceful and tolerant verses of the Quran come from when Muhammad was weak and persecuted in Mecca.  These verses are “canceled”, they argue, by the violent-sounding verses in the Medinan chapters.  Robert Spencer writes in  his book:

Islamic theology divides the Qur’an into “Meccan” and “Medinan” suras [chapters]. The Meccan ones come from the first segment of Muhammad’s career as a prophet, when he simply called the Meccans to Islam.  Later, after he fled to Medina, his positions hardened.  The Medinan suras [are]…filled with matters of law and ritual–and exhortations to jihad warfare against unbelievers.  The relatively tolerant verses quoted above and others like them generally date from the Meccan period, while those with a more violent and intolerant edge are mostly from Medina. ^[1]

The Islamophobes portray Muhammad as opportunistic: when he was weak and under the rule of the pagans, he called for peace.  Without being in a position of authority, Muhammad was hardly in a position to do otherwise.  As soon as he came to power, however, he waged “jihad warfare” (what a strange phrase!) against them. This is why, they argue, the peaceful verses of the Quran simply “don’t count”.

The merits of Spencer’s claims about the Prophet Muhammad will be critiqued in a future article of this Series.  For now, however, we will demonstrate that, using such logic, it is equally possible to invalidate the “peaceful” sayings of Jesus Christ.  While he was a persecuted prophet, Jesus advocated nonviolence and peaceful resistance.  He was hardly in a position to do otherwise, right?  Once in power, however, this changes dramatically and violent warfare becomes the new modus operandi.

The Messiah

Just as Muhammad’s biography can be divided into a Meccan and Medinan period, so too can Jesus’s lifestory be divided into a First and Second Coming.  (Likewise can Moses’ lifestory be divided into pre- and post-Exodus: prior to Exodus, Moses was largely peaceful, but after Exodus, Moses became the leader of the emerging Jewish state–and subsequently engaged in holy wars and even genocide against other nations.)  In the First Coming of Christ, only a small segment of society (mostly from the weak and poor) accepted Jesus, whereas the leaders and authorities persecuted him.  During this time period, Jesus advised his followers to engage in nonviolent resistance only, perhaps even pacifism.  Jesus advised his followers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  According to the Bible, this didn’t stop his Jewish and Roman persecutors from crucifying him.

Yet, the Second Coming of Christ is a central theological belief of Christianity.  When Jesus returns to earth, the gloves will be off: no longer will he practice nonviolence or pacifism.  Enemies will be mercilessly killed, not loved.  In this manner, Jesus will fulfill the messianic prophecies found in the Bible–both in the Old and New Testaments.  To Christians, Jesus is the Messiah (the Greek word “Christ” has the same meaning as the Hebrew word “Messiah”)–the same Messiah that the Jews had been in anticipation of.

It is important to understand how the concept of Messiah developed.  According to the Bible, Moses and his followers fled persecution in Egypt to find refuge in the land of Canaan.  They believed that God had bequeathed this land to them, which would come to be known as Israel. Unfortunately, there were already peoples who lived in Canaan, a problem that Moses and his followers rectified via military might.  The native Canaanites were subsequently occupied, exterminated, or run off their ancestral lands.  When the natives fought back, the Israelites attributed this to their innate and infernal hatred of the Jewish people.

After ruling the “promised land” for a time, the Israelites were themselves conquered by outsiders.  The Babylonian Empire captured the Kingdom of Judah and expelled the Jews.  Though the Israelites felt no remorse over occupying, slaughtering, and running off the native inhabitants of Canaan, they were mortified when they received similar (albeit milder) treatment.  In exile, the Jews prayed for vengeance, as recorded in a divine prayer in the Bible:

Psalm 137:8 O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us.

137:9 Blessed is the one who grabs your babies and smashes them against a rock.

(We can hardly imagine the glee that an Islamophobe would feel had such a violent passage, one that blesses those who smash infidel babies against rocks, been found in the Quran instead of the Bible.)

It was during the time of exile that the Jewish concept of Messiah was first born.  Dutch historian Jona Lendering writes:

The word Messiah renders the Aramaic word mešîhâ’, which in turn renders the Hebrew mâšîah. In Antiquity, these words were usually translated into Greek as Christos and into Latin as Christus, hence the English word Christ. All these words mean simply ‘anointed one’, anointment being a way to show that a Jewish leader had received God’s personal help.

It was believed that the Messiah (the Anointed One) would receive God’s personal help against the enemies of Israel; the Messiah would defeat the Babylonians and reestablish the Jewish state of Israel.  Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, fulfilled this role by conquering Babylon and releasing the Jews from exile.  Israel Smith Clare writes:

After Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, had conquered Babylon, he issued an edict permitting the Jews to return to their own country and to rebuild the city and Temple of Jerusalem. ^[2]

Prof. Martin Bernal of Cornell University writes:

The first Messiah in the Bible was Cyrus, the king of Persia who released the Jews–at least those who wanted to leave–from Exile in Babylon. ^[3]

As for this passage in the Bible:

Psalm 137:8 O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us.

137:9 Blessed is the one who grabs your babies and smashes them against a rock.

Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible comments on this verse:

This was Cyrus, who was chosen of God to do this work, and is therefore called happy, as being God’s agent in its destruction.

The Jews thereby returned to the promised land and rebuilt their nation.  According to Jewish tradition, however, this did not last long: the Roman Empire conquered the land, destroyed the Temple, and exiled the Jews once again.  As a result, as Lendering puts it, “the old prophecies [about Messiah] became relevant again.”  Although in Jewish tradition there is a messiah for each generation, there is also the Messiah, which is what is commonly thought of when we hear the word.  The Messiah would fulfill the task of destroying all of Israel’s enemies.

JewFaq.org says of the Messiah, which they spell as mashiach (emphasis is ours):

The mashiach will be a great political leader descended from King David (Jeremiah 23:5). The mashiach is often referred to as “mashiach ben David” (mashiach, son of David). He will be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments (Isaiah 11:2-5). He will be a charismatic leader, inspiring others to follow his example. He will be a great military leader, who will win battles for Israel. He will be a great judge, who makes righteous decisions (Jeremiah 33:15).

KosherJudaism.org states:

The Messiah will defeat and conquer the enemies surrounding Israel.

The Second Coming of Christ

Around 4 B.C., a prophet by the name of Jesus was born.  He claimed to be the Messiah, and some Jews followed him.  The followers of Christ eventually split into numerous sects, and eventually one triumphed over all others.  These became what are today known as Christians.  As for the majority of Jews, they rejected Jesus.  Why? The Jews rejected (and continue to reject) Jesus because he did not fulfill the prophecies pertaining to the Messiah.  How could Jesus be the Messiah when he not only did not defeat or conquer Israel’s enemies, but he never even led an army into a single war?  On the contrary, didn’t Jesus preach nonviolence and “loving one’s enemies”?

Instead of rejecting these militaristic aspects of the Messiah, Christians attribute them to Jesus during his Second Coming.  No longer will Jesus be a weak and persecuted prophet.  Instead, he will hold governmental authority, and is depicted as powerful and mighty.  This Jesus will certainly not love his enemies or turn the other cheek to them. In fact, the Bible tells us that Jesus will wage violent warfare against his enemies, and he will mercilessly kill them all.

Many Christians talk about how Jesus Christ will bring peace to the world, once and for all.  But they often neglect to mention how this world “peace” is obtained.  It is only after slaughtering his opponents and subduing “the nations” (the entire world?) under the foot of the global Christian empire that the world will have “peace”.  Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible explains:

There shall be no more war; horses and chariots shall be no more used in a hostile way; but there shall be perfect peace, all enemies being destroyed, which agrees with Micah 2:3 Zechariah 9:10.

In other words, there will be peace for the simple reason that there will be nobody left to fight, all opponents having been slaughtered or subdued.   This world “peace” is the same “peace” that any conqueror dreams of: after utterly defeating and conquering all of one’s neighbors and enemies, what is there left but “peace”, insofar as the non-existence of violence?  In the accidentally insightful words of the Evangelist Wayne Blank: “Put another way, humans aren’t going to have anything left to fight about.”  Following conquest, a foreign occupier would obviously want the occupied peoples to be peaceful, as this would eliminate the nuisance of having to fight off freedom-fighters.  The absence of violence would allow the conquering force to effortlessly sustain its occupation.

The events of the Second Coming of Christ are found in the Bible, including the Book of Revelation–which is the last book in the New Testament.  Jesus will “judge and wage war” (Rev. 19:11), his robe will be “dipped in blood” (19:13), and he will be accompanied by “armies” (19:14) with which he will “strike down the nations” (19:15), including “the Gentiles” in general and “the nations that were opposed to him” in specific.  This will result in the “utter destruction of all his enemies”. Furthermore: “in his second coming[,] he will complete their destruction, when he shall put down all opposing rule, principality, and power.”

Once he conquers the infidels, Jesus “will rule them with an iron rod” (19:15).  Wayne Blank writes:

The good news is that The Return Of Jesus Christ is going to happen. The even better news is that this time He’s not coming to be sacrificed by the world, but to rule it, along with those who have been faithful and obedient to Him. The world is going to know true peace, and genuine justice, in a way that it has never known before…

How Will World Peace Happen?

…[This will] not [be] by pleading and debate, but with a rod of iron. Those who choose to love and obey Him will be loved, while those who choose to rebel and hate Him will know His wrath.

Jesus will “will release the fierce wrath of God” (19:15) on them, and “he shall execute the severest judgment on the opposers of his truth”.   Because of this, “every tribe on earth will mourn because of him” (Rev. 1:7), and they will “express the inward terror and horror of their minds, at his appearing; they will fear his resentment”.  Just as the people of Canaan were terrified by the Israelite war machine, so too would the unbelievers “look with trembling upon [Jesus]”.  This is repeated in the Gospels, that “the Son of man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn” (Matthew 24:30).  “All the nations of the world shall wail when he comes to judgment” and the enemies of Jesus “shall mourn at the great calamities coming upon them”.

Far from the meek prophet of the First Coming, Jesus on his return will command a very strong military force that will “destroy[] every ruler, authority, and power”.  Not only is this consistent with the legacy of conquests by the Biblical prophets, it is actually a fulfillment or completion of the task that Moses initiated: holy war and conquest in the name of God.  In First Corinthians (part of the New Testament) it is prophesied that instead of loving his enemies, Christ will subdue and humble them under his feet:

1 Corinthians 15:24 [Jesus] will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power.

15:25 For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet.

Pastor and Biblical scholar Ron Teed explains that Jesus Christ brought “comfort and salvation at His first coming” but will bring “vengeance on God’s enemies” during his Second Coming.  There are thus “two comings of Christ, the first to save, the second to judge”–yet in debates with Muslims it seems that Christians play up the First Coming and completely ignore the Second.  The popular Teed Commentaries explains how “vengeance” is for Christ’s enemies (the “unbelievers”) and “comfort” only for his followers (the believers):

The Messiah will bring both comfort and vengeance. He will take vengeance on God’s enemies and bring comfort to His people. This is a summary of the mission of Christ. He brought comfort and salvation at His first coming during His earthly ministry according to Luke…

However, He said nothing of taking vengeance on God’s enemies at that time, for that part of his mission will not be fulfilled till He returns triumphant…

[There are] two comings of Christ, the first to save, the second to judge.

In His First coming He did the things mentioned in Isaiah 61:1-2; in His Second Coming He will do the things in verses 2-3. When He returns He will bring judgment on unbelievers. This will be the day of God’s “vengeance.”

The ever popular Evangelical site GotQuestions.org sums it up nicely:

Jesus’ second coming will be exceedingly violent. Revelation 19:11-21 describes the ultimate war with Christ, the conquering commander who judges and makes war “with justice” (v. 11). It’s going to be bloody (v. 13) and gory. The birds will eat the flesh of all those who oppose Him (v. 17-18). He has no compassion upon His enemies, whom He will conquer completely and consign to a “fiery lake of burning sulfur” (v. 20).

It is an error to say that God never supports a war. Jesus is not a pacifist.

Will the Real Messiah Please Stand Up?

Whereas the Second Coming of Christ is curiously forgotten in debates with Muslims, it is conveniently remembered during debates with Jews.  One of the primary (if not the primary) functions of the promised messiah in the Judeo-Christian tradition is, after all, vengeance against Israel’s enemies and global dominance.  Indeed, the entire concept of Messiah emerged following the conquest of Jewish lands with the subjugation and exile of its inhabitants.  The Messiah stood as hope for the redemption of Israel as well as revenge against her enemies.

Jewish polemical tracts against Christians reveal to us how militarism is a fundamental characteristic of the Messiah.  The Christian response in turn reveal how Jesus Christ will indeed be militaristic (during his Second Coming).  David Klinghoffer, an Orthodox Jewish author, writes in his book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus:

There were certainly those among [Jesus'] followers who saw him as the promised Messiah.  This was natural.  The first century produced messiahs the way our own time produces movie stars.  There was always a hot new candidate for the role emerging from obscurity, whose glory faded either as he was slaughtered by the Romans or as his followers lost interest when he failed to produce the goods promised by the prophets. ^[4]

“The goods” refer to the military conquest of Israel’s enemies and world domination.  The fact that Jesus failed to produce these “goods” proves that he is not the promised messiah.  Klinghoffer continues:

Let him do what the “son of man,” the promised Messiah, had been advertised as being destined to do from Daniel back through Ezekiel and Isaiah and the rest of the prophets.  Let him rule as a monarch, his kingship extending over “all peoples, nations, and languages.”  Let him return the exiles and build the Temple and defeat the oppressors and establish universal peace, as the prophets also said…

Let Jesus come up with the real messianic goods–visible to all rather than requiring us to accept someone’s assurance that, for example, he was born in Bethlehem–and then we’ll take him seriously. ^[5]

This point is reiterated in his book numerous times:

Hearing Jesus preach, a Jew might reasonably have crossed his arms upon his chest and muttered, “Hm, intriguing, but let’s see what happens.”  After all, the scriptures themselves common-sensically defined a false prophet as someone whose prophecies fail to come true.  According to Deuteronomy, this was the chief test of a prophet. ^[6]

Klinghoffer writes elsewhere:

The Hebrew prophets describe the elements of a messianic scenario that could not easily be overlooked: an ingathering of the Jewish exiles, the reign of a messianic king, a new covenant with the Jews based on a restored commitment to observance of the commandments, a new Temple, the recognition of God by the world’s peoples.  The future Davidic king was expected to radically change the world. ^[7]

The “radical change” involves the “subjugation” of the nations:

The Messiah would be a military and political leader. Philo, whose views have sometimes been taken as foreshadowing Christian teachings, is clear on this: “For ‘there shall come forth a man’ (Num. 24:7), says the oracle, and leading his host of war he will subdue great and populous nations.”

The Gospel writers thus faced the challenge that Jesus never raised an army, fought the Romans, returned any Jewish exiles, ruled over any population, or did anything else a king messiah would do. ^[8]

The subjugated nations would then “prostrate” themselves to the Messiah and “serve” him (perpetual servitude?):

The promised royal scion of David, the Messiah, would surely inspire veneration and awe beyond that accorded even to David himself…The nations will “prostrate” themselves before God, says one psalm; but so will they “prostrate” themselves (same Hebrew verb) before the Davidic king, says another psalm…As Daniel puts it…“[The Messiah] was given dominion, honor, kingship, so that all peoples, nations, and languages would serve him.” ^[9]

Klinghoffer defines the Messiah as he “who conquers and rules the nations and liberates the Jews” and describes him as “a mighty warrior”.  He rhetorically asks:

Was there in Jewish tradition any room for a dead Messiah?  Didn’t Jesus’s death tend to cast doubt on his ability to accomplish all the world-transforming things the Messiah was supposed to do? ^[10]

Again, the “world-transforming things” include violent holy war against the heathen nations and their subjugation under his rule.  Klinghoffer answers his own question:

But was Jesus a ruler over Israel?  On the contrary, the younger Kimchi pointed out, “He did not govern Israel but they governed him.” ^[11]

Christians reply by arguing that Jesus will fulfill these prophecies, just during his Second Coming.  The Good News, a Christian magazine with a readership of nearly half a million subscribers, responds to the Jewish criticism by arguing that Jesus returns “a second time” as a “conquering King” who will “slay the great armies of those who opposed Him”.  Jesus will be “the promised Messiah whom the prophets claimed would rule all nations ‘with a rod of iron’” and “all nations would come under His rule”.

Klinghoffer, our Orthodox Jewish interlocutor, cries foul:

Christians respond by saying that “the famously unfulfilled prophecies (for instance, that the messianic era will be one of peace) apply to the second and final act in Jesus’s career, when he returns to earth.  This is a convenient and necessary dodge: The Bible itself never speaks of a two-act messianic drama. ^[11]

The interesting dynamic is thus established: Jews accuse Jesus of not being militaristic enough, and Christian apologists respond by eagerly proving the militaristic nature of Jesus during his Second Coming.

Christians Affirm Militant Old Testament Prophecies

Far from saying “it’s just the Old Testament!”, Christians routinely–and as a matter of accepted fundamental theology–use the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah to validate their belief in Jesus–prophecies that have militaristic overtones.  The Book of Isaiah, for example, has numerous prophecies in it that Christians routinely attribute to Jesus Christ.  For example:

Isaiah 35:4 Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.”

Matthew Henry’s commentary of this verse says:

Assurance is given of the approach of Messiah, to take vengeance on the powers of darkness, to recompense with abundant comforts those that mourn in Zion; He will come and save. He will come again at the end of time, to punish those who have troubled his people; and to give those who were troubled such rest as will be a full reward for all their troubles.

This will be “a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion’s cause” (34:8) against the “nations at enmity with the church” and “those found opposing the church of Christ”, which will result in “the destruction of [the church's] enemies.” Likewise do Christians claim that the Book of Micah foretells the Second Coming of Christ:

Micah 15:5 I will execute vengeance in anger and fury on the heathen, such as they have not heard.

One Biblical commentary helpfully explains this verse:

Christ will give his Son either the hearts or necks of his enemies, and make them either his friends or his footstool.

[NassirH, a reader of our website, astutely commented: I suppose this is what JihadWatch writer Roland Shirk meant when he said “Islam is a religion of fear and force, and its adherents can only be at your feet or at your throat.”]

Another Biblical commentary notes: “Here no mention is made of Mercy, but only of executing vengeance; and that, with wrath and fury.”  Yet another states that this is “a prophecy of the final overthrow of all the enemies of pure and undefiled religion” and that this is “a threatening of vengeance to the Heathens”.

When we published articles comparing the Judeo-Christian prophets of the Hebrew Bible to the Prophet Muhammad, an anti-Muslim bigot by the name of Percey (formerly known as Cassidy) claimed that the genocides of the Old Testament were “not supported by Christ’s teachings.”  This hardly seems the case, however, when we consider that Jesus will bring to a climax the holy war first initiated by Moses against the enemies of Israel.  Jesus will fulfill, not repudiate, Old Testament holy wars against Israel’s foes.  In fact, the war will be expanded to heathen nations in general, or at least those that reject Jesus.

Conclusion

We could reproduce violent Christian texts ad nauseum…What is clear is that the Christian conception of Jesus can very easily be characterized as violent.  Prof. Melancthon W. Jacobus writes in A Standard Bible Dictionary:

[Jesus] excluded from the Messiah’s character the main elements of the popular ideal, i.e. that of a conquering hero, who would exalt Israel above the heathen, and through such exclusion He seemed to fail to realize the older Scriptural conception.  The failure, however, was only apparent and temporary.  For in the second coming in glory He was to achieve this work. Accordingly, His disciples recognized a twofoldness in His Messiahship: (1) They saw realized in His past life the ideal Servant of Jehovah, the spiritual Messiah, the Christ who teaches and suffers for the people, and (2) they looked forward to the realization of the Davidic and conquering Messiah in His second coming in power and glory to conquer the nations and reign over them. ^[12]

How then do we reconcile the seemingly peaceful and pacifist sayings of Jesus with the violent and warlike Second Coming of Christ?  There are numerous ways to do this, but perhaps the most convincing is that Jesus’ peaceful and pacifist sayings were directed towards a resident’s personal and local enemies–usually (but not always) referring to fellow co-religionists.  It did not refer to a government’s foreign adversaries, certainly not to heathen nations.  Prof. Richard A. Horsley of the University of Massachusetts argues:

The cluster of sayings keynoted by “love your enemies” pertains neither to external, political enemies nor to the question of nonviolence or nonresistance…The content of nearly all the sayings indicates a context of local interaction with personal enemies, not of relations with foreign or political foes…

“Love your enemies” and the related sayings apparently were understood by [Jesus'] followers…to refer to local social-economic relations, largely within the village community, which was still probably coextensive with the religious community in most cases…[although sometimes referring] to persecutors outside the religious community but still in the local residential community—and certainly not the national or political enemies. ^[13]

This is consistent with the ruling given by the Evangelical site GotQuestions.org, which permits governments to wage war whilst forbidding individuals from “personal vendettas”:

God has allowed for just wars throughout the history of His people. From Abraham to Deborah to David, God’s people have fought as instruments of judgment from a righteous and holy God. Romans 13:1-4 tells us to submit ourselves to government authorities and that nations have the right to bear the sword against evildoers, both foreign and domestic.

Violence occurs, but we must recognize the difference between holy judgment on sin and our own personal vendettas against those we dislike, which is the inevitable outcome of pride (Psalm 73:6).

As for the “turning the other cheek” passage, it is known that the slap on the cheek that was being referred to here was in that particular culture understood as an insult, not as assault.  The passage itself has to do with a person responding to a personal insult, and has nothing to do with pacifism.  In any case, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary clarifies:  “Of course, He applied this to personal insults, not to groups or nations.” ^[14]

Some Christians maintain that fighting the enemies on the battlefield does not exclude loving them.  This begs the question: how absolutely irrelevant is this strange form of “love” for enemies that does not proscribe killing them?

Whatever the reason for the contradiction between loving enemies on the one hand and killing them on the other, the point is that the comparison between a supposedly peaceful Jesus and violent Muhammad is not just a vapid oversimplification but pure falsity.  It is only through a very selective and biased analysis–a carefully crafted comparison between the most peaceful sounding verses of the New Testament (a handful of quotes from Jesus that constitute a small fraction of the Bible overall) with the most violent sounding verses of the Quran (those too out of context, as we shall see in future parts of this Series).

Anything that doesn’t fit this agenda simply “doesn’t count” (and indeed, the anti-Muslim pro-Christian readers will furiously rack their brains to figure out ways to make the violent Jesus verses “not count”).  The Islamophobic logic is thus: If we exclude all violent verses from the Bible and all the peaceful verses from the Quran, then aha!  See how much more violent the Quran is compared to the Bible! Anti-Muslim Christians scoff at Islam and exalt their religion by informing Muslims of how Jesus, unlike Muhammad, loved his enemies.  Let the Muslims reply back ever so wryly: Jesus loved them so much that he kills them.

Addendum I:

Anti-Muslim Christians often chant “Muhammad was a prophet of war, whereas Jesus was the Prince of Peace”.  A few points about this are worthy of being mentioned: first, Muhammad never used the title “prophet of war” nor is this mentioned in the Quran or anywhere else.  In fact, one of the most common epithets used for Muhammad, one found in the Quran no less, was “A Mercy to All Humanity”.  (More on this in a later part of the Series.)  Jesus, on the other hand, will be a “Warrior King” and a “Conquering King.”  Should it then be “Muhammad is A Mercy to All Humanity, whereas Jesus is the Warrior King”?

As for Jesus being the Prince of Peace, this epithet comes from Isaiah 9:6:

Isaiah 9:6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

9:7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen.

One Christian website paraphrases this succinctly: “Israel’s enemies will be destroyed. Peace will flow to the four corners of the earth, as the Prince of Peace rules and reigns.”  Again, this is the “peace” that conquerers dream of.  Jesus is the Prince of Peace because he declares war, slaughters and subjugates all possible enemies to the point where nobody is left to fight, and voila! there is peace!

This brings us to the commonly quoted (and oft-debated) verse of the Bible, in which Jesus says:

Matthew 10:34 Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Most debates focus on whether or not the word “sword” here is metaphorical or not.  Leaving aside the fact that even if this is a metaphor it is certainly a very violent sounding one, it would actually behoove us to focus on the word “peace” in this verse.  Jesus told the Jews: “do not think I have come to bring peace on earth” as a way to explain his failure to produce “the goods”: “the Jews believed that when the Messiah comes, there would be a time of world peace.”  Naturally, this world “peace” would be brought about through war.  Of course, in his Second Coming will Jesus bring this “peace on earth” (and by “peace”, what is meant is war, slaughter, and subjugation).  As we can see, this verse confirms the militant nature of the Messiah (and thus Jesus), regardless of if it is metaphorical or not.

Addendum II:

Here is another hotly debated verse, in which Jesus says:

Luke 19:27 But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

Robert Spencer dismisses this verse, saying: “These are the words of a king in a parable.”  Yes, this was a parable that Jesus told his disciples.  But what was his intention in narrating this parable?  Gill’s Explanation to the Entire Bible explains that it was to explain what will happen to the Jews “when Christ shall come a second time”:  Jesus will “destroy the Jewish nation” for rejecting him “and then all other enemies will be slain and destroyed” as well.  Death and destruction will be the fate of whoever does not accept Jesus’ reign as Warrior King.

This was hardly an innocuous story.  It reminds us of a scene in the movie Gladiator when the evil Roman emperor Commodus tells his nephew a story about an “emperor” who was betrayed by his sister (“his own blood”) and how he “struck down” her son as revenge.  (Watch it here.)  The story was a thinly veiled threat, as was Jesus’ parable.

One can only hardly imagine how Islamophobes like Robert Spencer would react had it been the Prophet Muhammad who had used such a violent parable, threatening to return to earth in order to “slay” anyone who “did not want me to reign over them”!  This would certainly “count” since all violence in the Quran “counts” whereas whatever is peaceful in the Quran “doesn’t count”, and whatever is violent in the Bible “doesn’t count” and whatever is peaceful in the Bible “counts”.  Heads I win, tails you lose.

Footnotes

refer back to article 1. Spencer, Robert. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Washington, DC: Regnery Pub., 2005. 24. Print.

refer back to article 2. Clare, Israel S. The Centennial Universal History: A Clear and Concise History of All Nations. P. W. Ziegler, 1876. 33. Print.

refer back to article 3. Bernal, Martin. Black Athena. Vol. 1. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ., 1996. 125. Print.

refer back to article 4. Klinghoffer, David. Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: the Turning Point in Western History. New York: Three Leaves/Doubleday, 2006. 61. Print.

refer back to article 5. Ibid., p.71

refer back to article 6. Ibid., p.64

refer back to article 7. Ibid., p.62

refer back to article 8. Ibid., p.63

refer back to article 9. Ibid., p.69

refer back to article 10. Ibid., p.161

refer back to article 11. Ibid., p.204

refer back to article 12. Jacobus, Melancthon Williams., Edward E. Nourse, and Andrew C. Zenos. A Standard Bible Dictionary. New York & London, 1909. 543. Print.

refer back to article 13. Swartley, Willard M. “Ethics and Exegesis: ‘Love Your Enemies’ and the Doctrine of Nonviolence.” The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992. Print.

refer back to article 14. Wiersbe, Warren W. The Wiersbe Bible Commentary. Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2007. 21. Print.

I liked Chuck Norris. I really did. I can still remember the scene from Invasion USA where Chuck heroically saves a school bus of innocent children from a dastardly terrorist bomb plot. Oh, how we look up to our childhood heroes! How we admire their selfless bravery! But alas, the truth is stranger than fiction.

I once thought Mr. Norris was pretty level headed when I heard him challenge Steve Emerson on Fox News, saying:

Don’t you believe that only 2% of the Muslim world are extremists? That 98% of the Muslims want, believe that the Koran teaches a tolerance for other religions?

That’s my hero! So understandably I was quite surprised and disappointed when I saw Mr. Norris’recent article published on the notorious conspiracy mongering website, World Net Daily, a.k.a. the “biggest, dumbest wingnut site on the Web.” For those of you unaware of the site’s “journalistic standards,” WND editor and CEO Joseph Farah admits the site knowingly peddles misinformation if it supports their political goals. And this is the absurd context in which Chuck Norris has chosen to warn Americans about the alleged pernicious influence of American Muslims.

Chuck begins by paying homage to the uncontestable dogma of the anti-Muslim conspiracy movement:

There’s no mystery that radical Islamists intend to use the freedoms in our Constitution to expand the influence of Shariah law.

And what is Chuck’s smoking-gun-proof for sounding the alarm? None other than the completely paranoid and discredited book, Muslim Mafia, authored with the help of David Gaubutz, an anti-Muslim crazy who claimed in all seriousness that he found Saddam’s WMD, that President Obama is a “crack head,” and who belongs to an organization claiming White Christians deserve special distinction for creating America. Gaubatz is the former employee of the rabidly racist hate group, Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), who promoted blatant anti-Muslim bigotry on their website:

Whereas, adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US. [sic] Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari’a on the American People…It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.

So this is the inSANE man whose work Chuck recommends for reliable information on Sharia law. Not exactly befitting a Texas Ranger, I must say. But then Chuck has the brassiness to claim he welcomes Muslims:

First, let me categorically state that I’m not an Islamaphobe. I welcome the plurality of religions in America and am a firm believer in the First Amendment.

Chuck, you say you are not an Islamophobe, so why are you citing one? Why do you get your information from a racist Islamophobe? Why are you arguing that Americans should fear normal law-abiding Muslims? Honestly, I think (I hope!) Chuck means well in his heart of hearts, but it should be clear here that he has been thoroughly duped by WND’s orchestrated misinformation campaign, only a modest part of which are Islamophobic conspiracy theories.

Anyhow, after admitting that there is a plurality of interpretations of Sharia Law, from ultra-conservative to ultra-liberal, he then proceeds to contradict himself by essentializing (generalizing) about Sharia in the most negative way, saying:

The main point here is this: Where Muslim religion and culture has spread, Shariah law has shortly followed.

Of course, many Americans watch on video a Middle Eastern woman allegedly caught in adultery, buried in the ground up to her head and being stoned to death, and think, “That could never happen in America.” But they fail to see how Shariah law has already been enabled and subtly invoked in our country, and that any such induction like it is brought about by understated lukewarm changes, like a frog boiled in a kettle by a slow simmer.

Thus, Chuck thinks that we should be afraid of “Muslim religion and culture” because “Sharia law” will surely follow. According to him, the essence of Sharia law is stoning women, yet he seems not to realize that stoning laws are not found in the Quran (the primary source of Sharia law) but, ironically enough, stonings are explicitly and repeatedly endorsed in his own holy scriptures:

Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

[Deuteronomy 21:21]

(See also Leviticus 20:2, 20:27, 24:16, 24:23; Deuteronomy 13:10, 17:5, 21:21, 22:23-24; Numbers 15:36; Joshua 7:25; and 1 King 21:10)

That’s somewhat like the pot calling the kettle black, no?

Before you know it, the Moozlims will start stoning American girls left and right, up and down, all around the town! Back in reality, however, the truth is that if stonings ever take place in America, they are much more likely to be carried out by our own homegrown Christian dominionists.

So if America is on the brink of destruction due to Sharia law, what is the proof? Chuck cites three bogus examples, all of which are actually proofs against his argument. As Tim Murphy of Mother Jones explained:

Of course, each of these points has its self-refuting flaws. Judges turn cases over to pre-selected religious arbitrators all the time, for instance, and not just for Muslims. None of the state legislators in question have produced a single example of Sharia being forced upon their states. And as for the argument that Sharia has been “oversimplified,” I would just point you to the fact that a quasi-mulleted martial arts actor from the mid 1990s feels qualified to explain to a national audience what Sharia is.

It only makes sense if you give weight to the fanatic conspiracy theories at WND. Apparently, for an aging action star, kooky internet goons are better sources of information than peer-reviewed scholars who spend years actually studying these things under other peer-reviewed scholars. Regardless, Mr. Norris intends to publish more articles on this topic, most likely including the same misunderstanding of basic facts and logic. We’ll be looking forward to see what he comes up with.

What happened, Chuck? You were such an American hero. You were MY hero.

Why did you decide to jump kick it on the Loon Band Wagon?

The famously distasteful artwork by Andres Serrano titled “Piss Christ,” caused quite a stir when it was first shown. Now Christians protesting the artwork in Paris have slashed the painting. Imagine if they had been Muslim? Does this mean Christianity can’t live with offense? Does this mean that Christianity is opposed to free speech?

Serrano Piss Christ Slashed

Angelique Chrisafis, Paris

April 20, 2011

ANDRES Serrano’s Piss Christ has been destroyed by Christians who broke into a French gallery and slashed the photograph after weeks of protests.

The New York photographer’s controversial work shows a small crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine.

It outraged the US religious right in 1987, when it was first shown. It was vandalised in Melbourne in 1997, and neo-Nazis ransacked a Swedish show by the artist in 2007.

The work has previously been shown without incident in France, but for the past two weeks Catholic groups have campaigned against it, culminating in hundreds of people marching through Avignon on Saturday in protest.

On Sunday morning, four people in sunglasses entered the gallery. One took a hammer from his sock and threatened security staff. A guard restrained one man but the others managed to smash an acrylic screen and slash the photograph with what police believe was a screwdriver or ice pick.

Last week the gallery complained of ”extremist harassment” by Christians who wanted the image banned.

The Archbishop of Vaucluse, Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, called the work ”odious” and said he wanted ”this trash” taken off the gallery walls. Saturday’s street protest against the work gained the support of the far-right National Front.

The owner of the work, Yvon Lambert, had complained he was being ”persecuted” by religious extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of emails. He likened the atmosphere to the Middle Ages.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand condemned the vandalism as an attack on the fundamental freedoms of creation and expression.

The gallery’s director, Eric Mezil, said he would keep the exhibition open to the public with the destroyed work on show ”so people can see what barbarians can do”.

The Arab Revolutions are a unique moment in the history of the world for a number of reasons. Chief amongst these important reasons is the shattering of age old Orientalist myths that Arabs and Muslims are impervious to Democracy, the language of rights, etc. These talking points are usually further essentialized by the view that what is holding Arabs and Muslims back is the retrograde force of Islam.

Yet, there are attempts to steal these revolutions. Attempts to deny the indigenous, organic nature of the transformation happening before our eyes. “How could the natives rise against their dictatorships without our help,” the thinking goes.

Christopher Hitchens comes to mind. The militant atheist, morose humorist, man of letters, convert from the ranks of International Socialism to neo-Conservatism, who, terming the revolutions “Arab uprisings” believes they would never have happened if it weren’t for the Iraq War.

Hitchens was an early skeptic of the revolutions, he wrote that he “won’t be surprised” if the “exemplary courage and initiative of the citizens of Tahrir Square slowly ebb away.” The revolutions put him and others like him in a tough spot, he supported the Iraq War, claiming that Iraqis could only be freed from Saddam through Western intervention. He denied that the war was ever only about the threat of WMD’s, but rather about overthrowing a ruthless dictator.

He didn’t believe in the ability of Iraqi people, which is surprising considering the frequency with which Hitchens extols the founding fathers who wrote a document based on natural law that made the bold claim that liberty was an unalienable right for all mankind,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Either we believe that all mankind is equal and thirsts to realize its unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or we don’t. Either we believe that all mankind has the ability to throw off the shackles of oppression without dubious intervention, unending occupation or we don’t.

Hitchens writes,

Can anyone imagine how the Arab spring would have played out if a keystone Arab state, oil-rich and heavily armed with a track record of intervention in its neighbors’ affairs and a history of all-out mass repression against its own civilians, were still the private property of a sadistic crime family? As it is, to have had Iraq on the other scale from the outset has been an unnoticed and unacknowledged benefit whose extent is impossible to compute.

It is pitiful to see Hitchens try to cover his ass now. Such a great man of letters, reduced to writing like some glorified assistant to Donald Rumsfeld, justifying the unjustifiable.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died due to the conflict in Iraq. Many more lives have been upended, destroyed and ravaged, including the lives of many American soldiers.

Now, beaming onto our television and computer screens are the inspirational, brave, victorious people of Tunisia and Egypt, who proudly let it be known that they toppled their despots.

Instead of worrying about his legacy or what the obituary in the New York Times will read, can Hitchens overcome his hubris and polemical nature, and give credit where credit is due?

President Obama's father?

This hatred and rhetoric against Obama needs to stop. First, the questioning of his US citizenship. Second, branding him as a Muslim, which he is not though there would be nothing wrong with it if he were. And now, these images that prove nothing but stupidity and racism.

[UPDATED: KFI Radio To Get Davenport] Racist Orange County Republican Email: President Obama and His Parents Are Apes

​UPDATE, APRIL 20, 7:30 A.M.: KFI-AM 640′s John and Ken host Marilyn Davenport for a live interview this afternoon. Go HERE for details.

UPDATE, APRIL 18, 5:58 P.M.: Marilyn Davenport speaks! We have the exclusive interview here.

UPDATE, APRIL 17, 3:40 P.M.: Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh determined today that his group’s bylaws prevent a vote to remove Marilyn Davenport as an elected member even though she emailed a racist image of President Barack Obama to fellow Tea Baggers and Republicans.

The most drastic action the party can take is a censure, he said. Meanwhile, Davenport refuses to resign and Baugh continues to seek an apology and her voluntary resignation from the central committee.

UPDATE, APRIL 16, 5:55 P.M.: This afternoon, Marilyn Davenport sent an email to fellow Orange County Republican elected officials, apologizing if anyone was offended by her depicting President Barack Obama as an ape–while also blasting the “liberal media” for reporting the story.

“I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth,” Davenport wrote. “In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people [Scott Baugh, Orange County GOP boss, and this writer] tried to make this about race. . . . I received plenty of emails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like yet there was no ‘cry’ in the media about them.”

Davenport continued: “That being said, I will NOT resign my central committee position over this matter that the average person knows and agrees is much to do about nothing.”

(Davenport’s entire statement is at the end of this article.)

Tim Whitacre, a longtime conservative Orange County Republican activist in Santa Ana, defended Davenport: “Marilyn Davenport is a staunch, ethical Republican lady. There is nothing unethical about this from a party standpoint because it wasn’t sent out to the party at large with any racist statements and it wasn’t signed as a central committee member. As a private individual, she is just real big on Birther stuff. One of her passions that drives her is the president’s lack of forthrightness about where he was born. Marilyn believes that nobody knows where he was born and so this picture says a thousand words.”

Whitacre continued: “She is not a perfect lady, but she is no racist. She is a gentle person who would feed you, help you, be there for you if you were in trouble. She is known as a pleasant, loving person, and it kills me that she is being attacked by this non-story knowing her mindset.”

ORIGINAL POST, APRIL 15, 5 P.M.: Orange County might be a beautiful oceanfront locale, but it’s also home to Holocaust deniers, vicious anti-gay bigots and freakish big-haired televangelists.

OC Republican mayor's racist greeting in 2009 to newly elected President Obama.

Ironically, Obama reversed decades and decades of tradition by not getting trounced at the presidential election polls in Orange County, long known as Ronald “Reagan Country.” In fact, he won an impressive 48 percent of the vote in 2008. The last Democrat to win a decent showing here: Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Orange County is also home to Orly Taitz, the Soviet Union-born dentist who lives in Laguna Niguel and is one of the world’s leading proponents of claims that Obama is killing homosexuals tied to his old Chicago church, was born in Kenya, is personally funding Hamas terrorists and ordered a secret agent to break into her vehicle.

Alas, if you really want to be disturbed, read THIS RECENT RELATED STORY by my colleague Gustavo Arellano.

Just two percent of Orange County’s 3 million population is African American.

(This is a copy of Davenport’s entire 12:24 p.m. Saturday email to other OC Republican leaders: “I’m sorry if my email offended anyone. I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth. In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race. We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. I received plenty of emails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like yet there was no ‘cry’ in the media about them. One only has to go to Youtube or Google Images to see a plethora or lampooning videos and pictures of Obama, Bush and other politicians. That being said, I will NOT resign my central committee position over this matter that the average person knows and agrees is much to do about nothing. Again, for those select few who might be truly offended by viewing a copy of an email I sent to a select list of friends and acquaintances, unlike the liberal left when they do the same, I offer my sincere apologies to you–the email was not meant for you. For any of my friends or acquaintances who were the recipients of my email and were truly offended, please call me so I may offer a sincere verbal apology to you.”)
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly (rscottmoxley@ocweekly.com)

Read Moxley’s latest coverage of the controversial federal bankruptcy of the Crystal Cathedral’s Reverend Robert Schuller and his national “Hour of Power” broadcast HERE.

Follow us on Twitter @OCWeekly and become a fan on Facebook here!

Sheriff Lee Baca, a Republican,  made LoonWatch’s 2010 list of anti-Loons and is in one of the leaders for 2011. Here he is still doing a tremendous job.

In Muslim community, Baca wins support through conversation, not confrontation

The L.A. County sheriff, a Republican with a strong reputation as a crime fighter, believes in building trust within minority communities. He reads the Koran and shuns hard-line tactics.

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

April 19, 2011

Reporting from New York— Three young women, all wearing delicate hijabs, are gathered outside a TriBeCa lecture hall in eager anticipation. It’s not an actor or a pop star they’re waiting for. The object of their giddiness is Sheriff Lee Baca, in town for just one night.

It might be unusual for a lawman anywhere to have fans, let alone one a continent away from his jurisdiction. But such is the life of Los Angeles County’s chief law enforcement officer since his outspoken support of American Muslims vaulted him into the national spotlight.

“I just want to meet you and thank you,” one young woman blurts out after catching Baca outside a recent speaking engagement on Muslim outreach. “You gave us a voice.”

In an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China kind of way, Baca, a former Marine reservist and registered Republican, has been largely immune to the innuendo that has caused other politicians to distance themselves from Muslims post 9/11. He has bucked the hard-line law enforcement approach of security checks and surveillance in favor of outreach and cooperation.

His law-and-order credentials have made him an irresistible ally for Muslim advocates, earning him shout-outs on national TV shows, including “The Colbert Report” and invitations to the halls of Congress. On more than one occasion he’s been the only law enforcement official willing to mix it up with Republican lawmakers on the issue.

In New York, where Baca preached the benefits of Muslim outreach on a panel about national security, the sheriff seemed energized by his warm reception. “Did you see those girls? Do they look like terrorists to you?” he said of the gaggle of young Muslim women who greeted him. “They’re not terrorists. I know my public.”

Reading the Koran

The events of 9/11 quickly took Baca in an unusual direction. When many politicians chose an arms-length approach to Muslims, Baca chose the Koran — literally. In the black sedan that ferried him from one engagement to another, he pored over the book, reading it from front to back, memorizing passages.

Within days of the terrorist attack, Baca met with local Muslim leaders, promising them protection. Responding to reports that Pakistani store owners were being hassled, Baca ordered his deputies “to go by the 7-Elevens and offer support.”

His empathy for a persecuted minority, he says, isn’t rooted in any sort of shared experience as a Mexican American but in an unusual childhood.

The son of a seamstress who had to care for three children on her own, Baca was sent as a boy to live with his pensioner grandparents in East L.A. His developmentally challenged uncle, then in his 30s, still lived at the home.

“He was a pound and a half at birth,” Baca said. “Couldn’t read, write, speak sentences. My uncle had no faculty, no capacity.”

With no household car, 7-year-old Leroy, his uncle and his grandmother traversed the city by bus. Those rides had a lasting effect.

“People would sneer at my uncle, laugh at him, make fun of him, and I believe that’s wrong,” Baca recalled. “We’re not bothering anyone. So how about just leaving us alone? Is that asking too much?”

His affinity for minority communities had political benefits. A long-shot candidate for sheriff in 1998, Baca got creative in his campaigning, tapping ethnic groups other candidates ignored.

“I had to have other bases of support outside the traditional realms,” he said. Among them were Iranians, Lebanese and other groups with large Muslim populations.

But his decision to intensify those ties post 9/11, he says, wasn’t political. Lapses on the federal level exposed by the attacks put a newfound pressure on local law enforcement. “All of our lives have been changed by 9/11,” Baca said. “We’re the ones who will get slammed if something falls through the cracks.”

Thousands of tips flooded law enforcement agencies after 9/11. Even leads that seemed silly had to be followed. “The one you don’t follow will end up being the one that matters,” Baca said. In one instance, a local group of Muslim men frequenting paintball facilities were investigated as potential terrorist snipers. They turned out to be “a buncha guys who just liked paintballing,” Baca said. “What are you gonna do? Ignore it?”

To pinpoint legitimate concerns, Baca needed his deputies inside Muslim communities. His focus on homegrown terror grew after the 2005 London Underground bombings, when four men, all living and working in England for years, killed 52.

“I realized we didn’t have a strategy for homegrown terrorism,” Baca said. “Cops are not gonna be invited into an extremist plot. That’s rule No. 1…. But if you get people to tell you something that’s troubling them, that’s the first sign of success.”

To build enough trust to be tipped off to extremist plots, Baca needed his deputies to become hyper-responsive to the Muslim community’s more routine crime concerns.

Less upfront tactics have at times backfired on other agencies. In Orange County, the FBI is still suffering from the fallout of a 2006 operation in which a paid informant posing as a Muslim convert infiltrated mosques.

The mole, equipped with a microphone keychain and a hidden camera, was outed soon after his talk of violent jihad became so extreme that one mosque was granted a restraining order. Many Muslims still point to the incident as proof that they’re too often treated by law enforcement as suspects, not partners.

Baca is reluctant to criticize the FBI, but his disdain for its style of covert intelligence gathering shows.

“I think they learned on their own what the plusses and minuses are. I believe terror plots are more sophisticated. I’m more of a chess player,” he said. “There are so few Muslim extremists in America. You can’t burn all the hay to find the needle, because the people are the hay.”

After initial struggles to make inroads, Baca’s Muslim community affairs unit, which staffs two deputies fulltime, has well-attended community exchanges and receives regular calls from Muslims with concerns that are terrorism-related and other issues. Baca’s personal involvement has softened up many of the community’s older, more reluctant leaders. The department employs about a dozen Muslim deputies and half that many Arabic speakers.

“They want to be able to say ‘I know the sheriff,’” said Sgt. Mike Abdeen, who leads the unit. “They like to go back to the community and say I know so and so, I’m a man of influence.”

Baca has been quick to accept their invitations — and fully participates when he does. At a Pakistan Day celebration, he wore traditional garb. With Iranians, he’ll throw in some Farsi; with Pakistanis, a bit of Urdu. He keeps a Koran in his office and another at home and is known to quote passages from memory. Inside mosques, he removes his shoes and during prayers, he joins in, going to his knees and pressing his forehead to the ground.

“He might not understand what he’s doing,” said Deputy Sherif Morsi, the other officer in the unit. “But the point is he’s letting people know ‘I’m your sheriff, I support you.’”

That commitment has taken Baca to more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries since 9/11. The tangible benefits of the trips aren’t always clear, but Baca maintains they give him a unique window into Muslim cultures and to counterterrorism where the fight’s the fiercest.

In Saudi Arabia, he watched hundreds of police recruits march as he and other officials sat in “very elegant seats as if we were heads of state.” Afterwards, they sat on rugs in police headquarters and feasted on a barbequed lamb. “They ripped out the choicest pieces of meat for us with their hands,” Baca raved.

In Egypt, he chatted with the national police chief about his “surgical” approach to beating back the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sinai Peninsula. In Pakistan, then-President Pervez Musharraf agreed to have Baca briefed on two assassination attempts. In one, Pakistani authorities used an Israeli cellphone scrambler to halt a remote bomb detonation. When Baca returned home, the Sheriff’s Department purchased its own.

“I met the police chief of Mecca and I understand who he is. I’m on the street, you don’t learn these things in your office,” Baca said.

Baca’s effort has not been without criticism.

Far right-wing websites have derisively described Baca as an “international” lawman, and a “Hamas-affiliated CAIR” sheriff, referring to the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim group Baca defends. Last year, the innuendo followed Baca to Washington, D.C. One congressman seemed to surprise the sheriff by accusing him at a hearing of cozying up to CAIR despite the group’s “radical” speech. “You’ve been 10 times to [its] fundraisers,” the congressman said.

“And I’ll be there 10 more times,” Baca shouted back.

CAIR is generally considered a moderate, if aggressive, Muslim civil rights group. Attacks against it haven’t dissuaded Baca. Hussam Ayloush, director of CAIR’s regional branch, said Baca is one of the few public officials who have asked for his organization’s side of the story.

“Most politicians I’ve worked with would have avoided the headache. It’s not about the truth, it’s about perception, and they don’t want to touch it,” Ayloush said.

Naive? That’s OK

On a recent evening, Baca strolled along a seedy street in Manhattan’s Chinatown. It was his second East Coast trip in as many weeks, both times to speak on Muslim outreach.

Street vendors, unaware that the stick-thin man before them was a major law enforcement figure, tried one after another to sell him knock-off purses and wallets. “How are you?” Baca greeted them, smiling wide.

Pulling in close as if to share a secret, Baca said he knew his post-9/11 stance has been attacked. Even among friends he’s been warned of being naive. He’s OK with it.

“I’m not endorsing Muslim groups. I’m defending them. ‘Oh he’s a Muslim lover, he’s a Jew lover.’ I don’t pay attention to bigots.

“I know I’m a little naive. I know I am overly trusting. That’s who I choose to be. If you’re uncomfortable with others, you’re not in a position to lead. I’ve created somewhat of a palace in my mind because, if you don’t, this world is your prison…. I can take the attacks. Attack me! Am I going to change who I am? No. Because it works.”

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

The loon’s at it again.

Update: As’ad Abu Khalil mentions that the portion about the supposed death threat against Jones from Hizbollah is a fabrication:

Seeking fame and publicity, kooky pastor, Terry Jones said that Hizbullah put a bounty on his head.  It is made up.  There is no evidence of that whatsoever.  But then again: you can say anything about Muslim and Arab organizations and you don’t need proof, especially if those organizations are opposed to Israel.  Like if I say that Hamas stole my car here in California, the media would report that and would not even bother with asking me to provide evidence.

Quran-burning pastor, Terry Jones, still coming to mosque

DEARBORN — Pastor Terry Jones preaches the Gospel for a living, but the second holiest day in Christianity just slipped his mind.

The Quran-burning provocateur, who is expected to protest in Dearborn next week, said he didn’t realize before he committed to coming here that the protest is planned for Good Friday.

“This might be hard to believe,” Jones said, “but honestly we didn’t realize (it was Good Friday) or that Sunday was Easter.”

Oversight now recognized, Jones said he still plans on coming and that he would be traveling with about five associates for the protest, which tentatively is planned for outside the Islamic Center of America. The location, he said, was chosen because of its symbolism as one of the largest mosques in North America.

The protest originally was organized by a Port Huron militia group known as “Order of the Dragon,” but has very much become the Terry Jones-show since he announced his intention to join.

Asked whether he thinks Dearborn’s Muslim community is jihadist or wants to institute Sharia – Islamic law similar to Christianity’s Canon law – Jones said he is uncertain.

“I don’t know Dearborn’s Muslims so I can’t say,” said Jones, who acknowledges never having read the Quran. “But when you see what’s happening in Europe in Muslim-dominated countries, it wouldn’t surprise (me).”

Jones has said in press statements about the protest that he has no problem with Muslims or Islam; rather the extremist interpretation terrorist groups have embraced. He does, however, say he disagrees with Sharia, saying, “it discriminates against women.”

Jones’ small Gainesville, Florida-based church, Dove World Outreach Center, gained notoriety last fall for widely condemned plans to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Facing pressure to cancel the event coming from as high up as President Barack Obama, the plan was scrapped. But in late March Jones put the Quran “on trial.”

With his congregants as jury, the holiest book in Islam was found guilty and the sentence was burning.

While the media largely ignored the event, Jones and others released videos of the burning online. The imagery sparked widespread violence against Western forces in Afghanistan and numerous death threats against Jones, including a $2.4 million bounty issued by the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States government.

“We get the threats and we pass them along to the FBI,” he said.

As for the violence Jones’ stunt precipitated, he said he doesn’t bear responsibility.

“Yes, we were warned,” he said of the exhortations against burning the Quran for fear it might provoke violence.

“But there is no excuse for what happened in Afghanistan, and we do not believe we are responsible. People are responsible for their own actions. If anything this proves there is a radical element to Islam.”

Jones is aware his trip to Dearborn is being met mostly with opposition. Interfaith leaders from across Metropolitan Detroit have criticized his plans and at least six groups have formally requested permits for counterdemonstrations, Police Chief Ronald Haddad said.

“We know there will probably be a lot more people there against us than for us,” said Jones, who was unsure how many more people would join him aside from the group he is traveling with.

Also still unclear is whether the protest will even be granted the necessary permit. Haddad, who is responsible for determining whether a demonstration permit is granted or not, previously said he hoped to have a decision by Friday. But because of the numerous counter-protest permit requests and other new, undisclosed developments related to the event, Haddad said he now hopes to have his decision by early next week.

“There are some late developments that we need to take into consideration,” said Haddad. “My primary concern is security and making sure everyone is safe.”

Undoubtedly playing into Haddad’s decision is that Altar Road, where the Islamic Center is located, will be bustling with activity that day. In addition to the mosque, Altar Road is home to several Christian churches that will be holding Good Friday services.

J. Patrick Pepper covers public safety and politics in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights as well as Dearborn government affairs. He can be reached at (734) 246-2702 or at jpepper@heritage.com.

Islamophobes will say it means nothing.

Cartersville, Georgia: FBI investigating vandalism at mosque

Members of the Muslim community are concerned that their place of worship has been the target of an apparent hate crime for the second time in less than a month.

The Islamic Center of Cartersville was vandalized earlier this week, according to a Bartow County Sheriff’s Department incident report. Deputies were dispatched to 71 Maple Ridge Drive Tuesday morning shortly after Bilal Mahmood reported the damages.

Mahmood told the deputy he was the last person at the center Monday night and everything was intact.

When he returned Tuesday at 6:30, he saw three front glass entrance doors with large holes in them. He also saw one window pane on the front of the building with a large hole. ”Bilal allowed me to enter into the building where I retrieved four large rocks that were used to damage the window and doors,” the deputy wrote in the report.

Amjad Tausique worships at the mosque and helped start that location; he said he’s very concerned. ”We’ve been working and reaching out in the community for a long time,” he said. Tausique said Muslims have been in the city for close to 40 years. ”We are tax-paying, peaceful, law-abiding citizens,” he said. “It’s totally not right for someone to come and destroy the place of worship.”

The center was also vandalized in March, and BCSO investigator Jonathan Rogers said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is handling the case and have leads.

Besides the damages to the door and windows, Tausique said nothing was stolen. During the last vandalism, a stink bomb was thrown into the building, which Tausique said smelled for days. Meanwhile, security cameras were installed and an extra patrol in the area at nights was requested.

Tausique said they just want to be treated like everyone else in the community. “We have families like anyone else, kids in school, jobs and business,” he said. ”Just because we are Muslim and we worship one God, doesn’t mean we’re not American.”

Daily Tribune News, 15 April 2011

It was particularly gruesome: a gunman in Brazil enters his former elementary school and murders 12 schoolchildren. “Police Blotter Bob,” however, is so desperate to link every bad thing in the world to Islam, that he resorts to a desperate attempt to magically make the shooter, Wellington Oliveira, into a Muslim:

His letter contained “the words of a person who no longer believes in anything, full of sentences that made no sense and references to Islamic fundamentalism.”

And even though authorities have indicated that his actions have nothing to do with religion, Spencer dismisses this fact altogether:

Roselane de Oliveira, a sister of the attacker, told Rio de Janeiro radio station Band News that the young man ‘was very strange.’

‘He had no friends, and he spent all his time on the Internet,’ she said.

In recent months, she said, he appeared to have got closer to Islam.

Police stressed, however, that there was no concrete evidence that the attack had either a religious or a political motive.

“Of course”, was Spencer’s sarcastsic response.

In another post, he cites an article from Brazil that claimed that he started going to mosques and reading the Quran:

Wellington makes reference to what could be a group. He reports that he divides time between prayers and reflections about terrorism. “I’m outside of the group but I pray to God every day with my noon prayer, that is the recognition of God, and the other 5 are the dedication to God and four hours every day I spend reading the Koran. Not the book because it stayed with the group but parts that I’ve copied for myself. And the rest of the time I spend meditating about what I read, and sometimes meditating about September 11th.”

Poof! He is therefore a Muslim!

Never mind the fact that the shooter himself made several videos before his diabolical act, and according to the Wall Street Journal (no friend of Islam), there is no indication that his actions were “jihad-related”:

In one video distributed by police late Wednesday, the killer, Wellington Oliveira, sits on a couch, and in a monotonous, baritone voice promises to take “radical” actions to avenge those like him, who felt “humiliated, attacked and disrespected, especially in schools, just for being different.” Appearing with a shaved head and stubble growth of beard, he vows that “people will find out who I am in the most radical way.”

The article continued:

The video added to a picture of Mr. Oliveira emerging from interviews with family members and the bizarre suicide note he left at the scene as a friendless man who appeared to go into a free fall after the death of his adoptive mother about a year ago.

[...]

A transcript of his suicide note suggests a ritualistic spiritual longing he somehow expected to be fulfilled upon his death. In it, he asked that his body be cleaned by glove-wearing orderlies, buried next his adoptive mother and visited by a religious person so that his soul would be ready for the second coming of Jesus.

He had developed confused set of religious beliefs that appeared to combine aspects of Islam with evangelical Christianity, and family members said he was glued to his computer, where he obsessed on videos of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and played video games.

Muslim officials in Brazil said he was not a member of any mosque. Rio security officials say writings recovered include confusing mix of references to Islam, the Jehovah’s Witness branch of Christianity terrorist attacks and violent video games.

Clearly, the man was quite disturbed and was not some “Muslim warrior.” In fact, why couldn’t he have been a “Christian terrorist”? He did want his soul to be ready for “the second coming of Jesus,” according to the article. He did make references to Christianity, didn’t he?

But, facts don’t matter to Spencer. For “P0lice Blotter Bob,” his reference to Islam are enough to make him Muslim. In fact, the title of his original post read: “Brazil: Muslim who recently ‘got closer to Islam’ murders 11 at school.”

Wow. Bobby is really getting desperate…and pathetic.

Sue Myrick wrote the foreward for Muslim Mafia

Rep. Sue Myrick held her House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence hearing to examine the history, beliefs and positions of the Muslim Brotherhood internationally and in Egypt. It is the third hearing that in some measure has dealt with the American Muslim community and Islam. First it was Rep. Peter King and his McCarthyesque  hearings on “the Radicalization of the Muslim American community,” then New York State Senator Greg Ball held a hearing on “Security and preparedness since 9/11″ which included such anti-Muslim bigots as Nonie Darwish and Frank Gaffney.

Myrick’s hearing didn’t contain the high profile loons that the other two hearings did, but the theme or intent was still to cast a pall of suspicion over American Muslims. The witnesses consisted of Robert Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Lorenzo Vidino, a representative of the RAND corporation, Ahmed S. Mansour, a Quranist who claims to be a Muslim scholar, Tarek Masoud, an academic and assistant professor at Harvard University and Nathan Brown, a professor of Political Science.

The charge was leveled either implicitly or directly that some American Muslims may be a “fifth column” considering a 1991 memo written by a Muslim Brotherhood member from Egypt named Mohammed Akram. This is the same memo that Islamophobes and anti-Muslims such as Robert Spencer and co. often use to forward the idea that Muslims are trying to take over.

Tarek Masoud took this issue head on during questioning from the intrepid Rep. Luis Gutierrez,

Chairman Myrick, you mentioned this 1991 explanatory memorandum, Lorenzo mentioned it as well, this document that was written by this Brotherhood guy named Mohammed Akram. So I got it and I read it, it seemed to be a document where this Brotherhood member in the United States is writing to his people back home, trying to encourage them to try and make the United States a priority for proselytization, for political activism, for all kinds of things. And the page in that document that has caused the most controversy is the page that lists all of these organizations, that Lorenzo called Muslim Brotherhood front organizations. My question, if you look at the title of that page, it says “there are the organizations of us and our friends in America,” second line says in brackets “imagine if they all marched together,”and I thought to myself, what a really odd thing for an organization like the Muslim Brotherhood to be saying. If these were really the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood octupus then why would he need to whimsically think, “if only one day all these organizations could work together,” and this is important because it seems to me that that list is an aspirational list, it may include movements or groups that emerged out of the Brotherhood, I’m not making a factual statement, but based on interpreting that document, I am surprised that we jumped to saying that these are Muslim Brotherhood front organizations because it seemed to me to be a list of Muslim organizations that the Brotherhood would like to organize and coordinate. I would like to find out if there is some information there that some folks like me don’t have?

Gutierrez also asked a very interesting question to the panelists beforehand, “what are the intelligence gathering methods or apparatuses which you used? And do you fear that the government’s broad intelligence gathering efforts have been duped?” This question was a slap in the face of Sue Myrick who penned a forward to a book called “Muslim Mafia” which argued that nefarious Muslims have infiltrated our government through a network of spy interns. This belief was voted one of the “worst conspiracy theories” of 2009 by Newsweek.

Lorenzo Vidino, the RAND corp. representative said he wouldn’t use the word “duped” but instead that they have been “inconsistent.” Rep. Gutierrez told him, “inconsistency” is not the same as “fear,” and asked him whether or not we should “fear” that our security agencies have been compromised or “hoodwinked?” Vidino seemed to answer “no” to that question.

There were other highlights during the testimony, like the near incoherence of Ahmed S. Mansour who had the WTF comment of the Day: “Make America the biggest, most superpower of the war of ideas in the world” and something about “create an agency dealing with the war of ideas.” At times it seemed Mansour was trying to get America to back his sect of Islam by bringing up how “successful” his group has been in proselytizing to other Muslims.

At the end of the day the GOP is trying to use Islam/Muslims and buzzwords such as Sharia’ to further promote hatred and bigotry and their own twisted brand of populism. Fear-mongering about a looming Muslim threat feeds well into their base of support and also highlights the immense hypocrisy on the Right. In reality, the biggest threat today to our Constitution comes from the rabid Right-Wing, which is shot through and through with theocrats and theocratic sympathizers.

One only has to look at Rep. Myrick’s own shoddy associations to se what we mean,

Rep. Myrick supports the work of The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools whose goals are clearly in opposition to the first amendment of the U.S.

Rep. Myrick is listed as a sponsor on the website of Capitol Ministries, along with Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert,  Mike Pence, Tom Price, Lamar Smith, Joe Wilson and various others.  (Read more on Capitol Ministries here)

Rep. Myrick believes that Osama Bin Laden and his ilk – “are acting in accordance with Islam”.

Rep. Myrick and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan sent a letter that attacked the Justice Department for sending envoys to an ISNA convention because, the lawmakers said, the Islamic Society of North America was a group of “radical jihadists”

Rep. Myrick launched a YouTube video series. In the first video, called Beyond Terrorism: The Whole Story, she warns that extremists live in our midst, “even in positions in our government.” But the wide-eyed Myrick tells the camera: “You’re not being told the whole story… This is something that nobody ever tells you.”

Rep. Myrick supports Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT for America, and put out a letter enthusiastically endorsing them.  It was reported in February that Hal Weatherman, longtime chief of staff for Sue Myrick, is leaving to join the staff of ACT for America.  (Read about Brigitte Gabriel and ACT for America here.)

Rep. Myrick wrote the forward to Dave Gaubatz’ Muslim Mafia book.  (Read more about Gaubatz and this book here)

Rep. Myrick is reported as saying:  “I believe Hezbollah and the drug cartels may be operating as partners on our border.” That department’s spokesman replied that the U.S. “does not have any credible information on terrorist groups operating along the Southwest border.”  (Read more on this charge and responses to it here.)

Rep. Myrick and Rep. Peter King were among the lead sponsors of a bill introduced by Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA]  to create a panel of outside experts – fresh eyes – to help develop new strategies to combat the violent Islamic jihad as well as its stealth component.

"Well, I heard it on the radio, so, ya know..."

I cannot begin to fathom the shame some Texans are feeling right now…

ThinkProgress – Texas GOP Rep. Introduces Sharia Ban Because He Heard Sharia Is A Threat On The Radio, Asks “Isn’t That True?”

Texas is now joining over 15 states that have introduced bills to guard against the non-existent threat of Islamic Sharia law. In proposing legislation to ban state courts from considering foreign religious or cultural laws like Sharia, Texas state Rep. Leo Berman (R) — the bill sponsor — said, “We want to prevent it from ever happening in Texas.”

Berman insisted one U.S. city offered unquestionable proof of this supposed threat:Dearborn, MI. Dearborn is home to one of the largest Muslim populations and the largest mosque in North America. Therefore, according to Berman, Sharia law necessarily is being implemented there. “It’s being done in Dearborn, Mich., because of a large population of Middle Easterners,” Berman said, “and the judges in Dearborn are using and allowing to be used Sharia law.” He mentioned the city six times throughout his testimony. However, when pushed for details, the only actual evidence Berman could offer was, “I heard it on a radio station”:

Rep. Berman himself acknowledged knowing nothing about Dearborn.

“I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day,” Berman said Monday in an interview. “I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan but I heard it (Sharia is accepted law here) on the radio. Isn’t that true?“

No, says Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly (D), who must repeatedly debunk Islamophobic theories about the city. “These people know nothing of Dearborn and they just seek toprovoke and enflame their base for political gain,” he said. But such cultural ignorance doesn’t stop “Dearborn-Sharia theorists” from citing the city as proof of a Muslim threat. Likely GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich cited the arrest of four Christian missionaries during a Dearborn Arab festival as an example of “radical Islamism” to argue against the Islamic Center in New York City. Perpetual candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV) said Dearborn faces “militant terrorist situation” and is ruled by Sharia law.

But even Berman, who is no stranger to outlandish extremism, must realize “I heard it on a radio station” fails as evidence for anything. Unless, of course, he’s planning an anti-Martian bill in response to War of the Worlds.

Some What if she were Muslim comedy from Dr. Jalees?

Catholic Nun Forcibly Removed From Plane for Wearing “Muslim Garb”

By: Jalees Rehman, M.D.

April 5, 2011 DAYTON, OH – Sister Cora-Ann, a Catholic nun from the Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Dayton, Ohio got the surprise of her life yesterday, when she was asked to leave the plane she had just boarded at the Omaha International Airport. “I had just sat down in my seat, and started to thank God for our blessings and recite a prayer in Latin”, she recalled, when one of the passengers sitting next to me called the flight attendant. The passenger was Elizabeth Bennet, who later stated: “It is not that we were prejudiced, but she did seem very suspicious. She was dressed in Muslim garb and just before we were about to take off, she started mumbling something in an Arabian or Talibani-sounding language. What was I supposed to do?” Damien Thorn was a passenger seated in the adjacent row and said: “I knew there was something sinister about her, the moment she stepped into the plane. She was wearing those burqa clothes that you see the Iranian women wearing, and she only had a very small carry-on bag.” The flight attendant responded to the call and asked Sister Cora-Ann for her name, boarding pass and a photo ID.

Blanche Dubois was another passenger sitting close to Sister Cora-Ann and explained: “Once I heard that her name sounded like Koran, I got worried. That does not mean that there is anything wrong with me, does it? I just did not want to die. I was so scared, that I just yelled out her name to all passengers.” Mr. Okonkwo was a passenger seated a few rows behind and stated: “Once we all heard that the passenger’s name was Koran, things started falling apart.” Frodo Baggins, a frequent traveler, said he had heard that Muslims do not eat beef. “I did not think that she was Muslim, and to help her out, I took out some of my beef jerky and asked the lady to eat it to prove that she was not a Muslim.”

However, Sister Cora-Ann politely refused the beef jerky and reminded the other passengers that it was the time of Lent, during which Catholics often abstain from eating meat. The unrest in the plane kept growing, because most passengers were now convinced that Sister Cora-Ann was indeed Muslim and they demanded that Sister Cora-Ann leave the plane. “I did not want to cause my fellow humans any distress, so I left the plane”, she said.

“We were so happy that we could continue our journey”, said Frodo Baggins. “Once she de-boarded, it felt like a huge burden was lifted from us.” Apparently, there was indeed a Muslim on the plane, by the name of Abdullah Abdullah the 23rd, sitting in the last row. “Of course I knew that she was a Catholic nun and not a Muslim, because I went to a Catholic school and my favorite teachers were Catholic nuns.” Abdullah Abdullah went on to say “But let us face it: If you are a Muslim on a plane and someone else is being asked to leave the plane, the best thing is to be quiet and enjoy the show!”

What Pastor Terry Jones did was uncalled for, and what the people in Afghanistan did was uncalled for, but in no way can we equate one’s reaction as more barbaric as the other. Terry Jones is living in his little heaven up in Gainseville, Fla. compared to how the people in Afghanistan are living: facing a war, oppression, deep poverty, etc.

Burning the myths about Islam

The ‘Arab Spring’ shows that the Quran burning riot in Afghanistan had little to do with Islam itself.

by: Anas Altikriti, from AlJazeera

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The complete apathy of the 'Arab spring' in regards to the burning of a Quran reveals how anger-fuelled riots are borne from suppression of freedom, not the allegedly violent qualities of Islam [REUTERS

Extremists on all sides - whether in free, democratic America, or in corrupt, occupied Afghanistan - create havoc and chaos, demonstrating the danger brought about by a deadly cocktail of ignorance and idiocy. Ultimately, they cause the deaths of innocent people.

Some cite the difference between the two acts: one saw the burning of a book, while the other claimed human lives.

This is of course true, but what exactly did the mastermind of this foolish and hate-filled act expect, other than a reaction somewhere on the Muslim side?

His bark worse than his bite

Pastor Terry Jones, of the formerly obscure Dove World Outreach Church in Florida - a parish of no more than a few dozen weekly followers - has been enjoying fame and possibly even fortune since calling for a ‘Burn the Quran’ day last September.

He was dissuaded from carrying out his act following a worldwide outcry from Christians and denunciation from American political, religious and community leaders.

But it seems that Jones had an itch that simply had to be scratched, and in March, he and some of his comrades burnt a copy of the Quran.

Strangely though, whilst last year’s threat resulted in outrage throughout the Muslim world and mass protests in most Arab countries, the act itself – once carried out – brought almost no reaction from the streets of those same countries, apart from the ones in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of thousands hit the streets of Cairo, Damascus, Amman, Sanaa and many other Arab cities last summer denouncing Jones, burning effigies and flags and calling for a global campaign to ‘protect the Quran’.

I recall receiving hundreds of emails and texts messages expressing outrage, and calling for immediate action in protest against this heinous act.

Yet now that Jones has actually carried out his threat, not one single demonstration was held, no mass protest was called for, no texts or email messages criss-crossed the ether, and no days of anger were organised.

Recapturing a people’s dignity

One would have expected such protests to come easily to the masses already camping on the streets of Cairo, Tunis, Damascus, Sanaa and Benghazi. Logistically, the scene was set; all would have been ready for such action, but nothing of the sort came to light.

There is no suggestion that those masses revere the Quran any less, or that they see the act carried out by Jones as any less repugnant. So why the apparent inaction? Because the ‘Arab spring’ has elevated minds as well as aspirations, a trend absent still in the contexts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries where corruption is still riding a wave.

One cannot say for sure whether it was the upheavals in the region that had the Arab nations looking elsewhere to exert their collective energies, but it is without a shadow of a doubt that the absence of ‘anti-Terry Jones’ protests was not due to a lack of energy or of ability.

For several years, those studying the Arab world through the mobility and narrative of the masses have emphasised that the number one priority for the Arab people (and Muslims by extension) is the pursuit of freedom and the recapture of their long-lost dignity.

Manifestations of religious, ideological, and cultural extremist behaviour were essentially a reaction to stagnant political climates imposed by despotic regimes, lack of human rights and absence of any hope in a better future.

Thus those people – who considered it their ultimate objective a few months ago to demonstrate anger and outrage for the threat to burn the Quran - today were in no doubt whatsoever that today their priority was to remove those regimes that have ruled them so inhumanely for so long.

Defying political models

Therein lies an important message for those Westerners who make a living from counter-terrorism and eradicating extremism: Supporting despotic regimes and dictators for short-term political and economic gains begets extremism that takes shape in a religious, social, political, ideological or cultural format.

The claim that removing or compromising regimes, such as that of Mubarak, Ben Ali, Saleh, Gaddafi or Assad will inevitably bring an extremist element to government is baseless, as demonstrated by events unfolding before us.

In all of the examples of the nations that revolted against their tyrants, rather than witnessing violence, the world saw protesters insisting on peaceful means despite them being confronted hired thugs and armed security forces.

Those same nations exemplified the meaning of national unity in practise rather than words. Muslims and Christians protected each other, came to each other’s aid and guarded each others’ holy places of worship against the threat of arson and vandalism by elements who had an interest in anarchy and division breaking out.

As soon as the opportunity emerged, those who had lived their lives merely dreaming of living under a democracy someday turned out to be brilliant democrats in practise.

What remains to be seen is whether the West will adapt to the new terrain and change its ways too.

The mood for change

Travelling the region extensively and conversing with people from all walks of life, one cannot miss the the new air of confidence about the Arab citizen.

Whether in Egypt where the revolution is in full swing and some significant fruits have been borne, or in other countries where no mass protests have been reported, there is no doubt that the mood is one for change and transformation.

Conversations in the Arab street are much more bold, brazen and uncaring about who might be eavesdropping. It’s simply a matter of time, but change is certainly now a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.

Once free, the Arab and Muslim nations will not resort to violence, extremism and isolationist practises, as some would like the world to think.

Once free, those nations will see the act of Terry Jones as the petty and foolish gesture that it undoubtedly was, and will realise that it brings more damage upon him and his reputation than upon the object of his deranged hatred.

Anas Altikriti is president and founder of the Cordoba Foundation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

If you told someone that there was an American Muslim Cowboy Ambassador, they would laugh and not think for one second you were telling the truth, but there is, his name is Kareem Salama and he is being sponsored by the State Department for an “outreach” trip to the Middle East.

There are some points in the article below that may give us pause. Such as, why is America engaged in throwing so much money into the coffers of a PR campaign in the Muslim world to fix its image? Why doesn’t America extricate itself from the wars it is involved in, or review its policy of support for apartheid regimes and despots instead?

Salama says he doesn’t care too much about “politics” and attempts to avoid it, but is he undermining his cause, a noble one, to show that America is not a monolith by allowing himself to be bankrolled by the State Department?

Cynical Arabs and Muslims may view this as a mere PR stunt while bombs are being dropped on their heads despite the good intentions.

One cause of worry is encapsulated in this line,

Another $1.3 billion has been allocated to the Muslim World Outreach Program—this multi-year federal initiative, launched in 2003 by the National Security Council, aims to“transform Islam from within” by supporting secular, liberal Arab organizations as well as the work of secular, liberal Muslim scholars.

This rings like loud bells in the ears of Muslims and Arabs. Such a venture feeds into the narrative of extremists such as Anwar al-Awlaki who wish to say that America has an agenda when it comes to “Islam.” Instead of helping liberal or progressive Muslim and Arab thinkers and scholars it undermines and sabotages their work and smacks of the old imperial and colonial efforts.

To push the point further, this National Security Council effort should be reviewed in light of the recent “Arab Spring” and more attention should finally be paid to the clarion calls of Robert Pape, Scott Atran and others who tell us that our lowly image in the world is due to occupation, war and support for autocratic and corrupt regimes and movements that stifle freedom and progress.

America’s Muslim Cowboy Ambassador

How Oklahoma-born singer Kareem Salama became part of US diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.

— By Ashley Bates (Mother Jones)

When Andrew Mitchell, the cultural affairs officer at the US Embassy in Egypt, heard that a Muslim dude was making a go of it as a country star, he thought it was “the funniest thing I’d ever heard.”

So Mitchell began checking out Kareem Salama’s stuff—his two self-released albums, Generous Peace and This Life of Mine, and his 2007 hit song “Generous Peace,” whose video is as wholesome as an ABC After-School Special. “Gentlemen, I’m like incense; the more you burn me, the more I’m fragrant,” Salama sings, echoing the writings of the eight century Islamic scholar Muhammed Al-Shafi’ee.

“That is a concept,” Mitchell recalls thinking, “that if I could broadcast anything to this part of the world, that’s what I would say.”

Salama is an American, born of Egyptian parents—engineers both—who came to the US for college and ultimately settled down here. They raised Kareem and his three siblings in the rural town of Ponca City, Oklahoma. The town had no mosque, and only one other Muslim family lived there, but the children learned Islamic traditions at home. Salama, now 33, considers himself devout; he prays regularly, and doesn’t drink or date.

Culturally, though, he identifies as a rodeo-going, country music-loving southerner. “I grew up in a place where country music is kinda like crickets,” Salama explains in his heavy drawl. “You just hear it everywhere you go.”

The more Mitchell learned about Salama, the more excited he became about the stereotype-busting potential of his story. Egyptians (and Americans) tend to associate country music—and the American South—with conservatism. And they tend to associate conservatives with Islamophobia. Egyptians will say, “‘Oh, he’s a cowboy. He’s a conservative. He hates all Muslims,’” Mitchell says. “We can show them: Here’s an Oklahoma cowboy who not only doesn’t hate Muslims, he is a Muslim!”

In US diplomacy terms, Salama was a “total winner all around,” Mitchell says. So he pulled some strings. Last summer, Salama was invited to participate in a six-week, US government-sponsored tour of the Middle East. The program included both concerts and group discussions at schools and community centers. Salama jumped at the opportunity. “I like to focus on a message of reconciliation and bringing people together,” he says.

Everywhere he went—Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Morocco, Kuwait, and Syria—there were droves of people at his appearances, especially children. “A lot of times when we talked about things like respecting people who are different than you and being tolerant, it was clear that they had already discussed those things in school,” Salama recalls. (He included some tour footage in the video for his pop song, “Makes Me Crazy.”)

But Salama refused to engage Middle Easterners on controversial topics. If, for example, an audience member asked why the US government was sponsoring his tour while simultaneously providing billions of dollars in military aid to repressive Arab regimes, Salama dodged the question. “I’m not a politician and I don’t like to talk about politics,” he explains. “I told them that I don’t answer political questions. And the press corps was like: Why? And I said because, at the end of the day, I think it’s a waste of your time. Most of you have never voted in your lives or effected any change in the government whatsoever. And the intelligent person always focuses in their lives on the things that they can actually do something about.”

Sometimes, Salama would simply redirect the conversation. “There was a moment when we were in Jordan when a kid who was of Palestinian descent asked me something about America’s foreign policy. I looked at JJ [an American friend], and I put my hand on his shoulder, and I said, ‘Did JJ ever do anything to you?’ And his face completely changed. He softened in that moment and just goes, ‘No he hasn’t.’ And that was it.”

Salama’s songs can be spiritual, but they’re not overtly Islamic. Nor do his lyrics criticize American foreign policy. One song, “Baby I’m a Soldier,” tells the fictional story of two dying soldiers from opposing sides, emphasizing their common humanity—but it takes no jabs at US military actions.

In Bahrain, Salama performed at schools that primarily served the country’s more-affluent Sunni community. At the time, he was unaware of religious tensions in Bahrain, or that the Western-backed government, which has close ties with Saudi Arabia, systematically represses and discriminates against the country’s Shiite majority. “I’m pretty woefully ignorant of Bahrain in general,” Salama acknowledges.

But he did tell audiences in Bahrain and elsewhere about his idyllic childhood in Oklahoma. “I didn’t experience much” discrimination, he told me, adding that he even played the lead in his sixth-grade Christmas play. “There’s an old Arabic poem that says, ‘It’s sad to see a man who has 100 good days, and he always complains about the one bad day.’ Even if there was something bad that happened, I’ve had such a beautiful life and a beautiful experience growing up where I did.”

Salama is pretty patriotic. Even so, he sometimes encounters bigotry online. In 2007, after he appeared on Fox News to talk about racial profiling, some anonymous Fox commenters claimed he was a “terrorist hiding in the open,” and not a “real” American.

The 2010 tour was part of a larger “public diplomacy” program that costs US taxpayers more than $100 million each year in the Middle East alone, according to a State Department official. Every embassy in the world has a public diplomacy division that engages in various outreach activities, hoping to nurture person-to-person relationships between Americans and foreigners. That’s in addition to the Peace Corps, a federal program whose budget was $400 million last year. Another $1.3 billion has been allocated to the Muslim World Outreach Program—this multi-year federal initiative, launched in 2003 by the National Security Council, aims to“transform Islam from within” by supporting secular, liberal Arab organizations as well as the work of secular, liberal Muslim scholars.

Mitchell believes cultural-exchange programs help combat extremism, and implies that many Arab civilians are simply unaware that most Americans are decent human beings. He offers a hypothetical scenario where a kid meets Salama and is later approached by a jihadist who insists that America is “the Great Satan.” That kid, Mitchell says, “is going to say, ‘Wait a minute. I met an American. And he was a Muslim. And he was nice. They are not all the Great Satan.’”

In March, inspired by the revolutions sweeping the Middle East, Salama released a new song and video called “Be Free Now.” But out of respect for pro-democracy activists, he’s postponed the release of his latest album, City of Lights, until May 24. The new album is a mix of country-western and catchy pop tunes. “I guess it’s just a gut feeling,” he says of the postponement. Releasing it now “might appear like, ‘He’s over there in America busy with his music and stuff, and we are going through this much more important thing.’”

Here’s the “Generous Peace” video, which tackles bias against Muslims and advocates turning the other cheek…

I hope more and more women protest for their freedom of religion. Has anyone thought that maybe it isn’t face veils that are oppressive but the laws themselves that try to restrain people from practicing their religious beliefs?

On the heels of the French ban it looks like Canada may follow suit.  The piece below unfortunately cites the Muslim Canadian Congress, an organization founded by the loon Tarek Fateh, which has near no credibility amongst Canadian Muslims.

Should Canada ban Islamic face veils?

by: Wency Leung

France’s ban on Islamic face veils came into force today, and already, at least two veiled women have reportedly been detained for protesting the new law.

The ban, which carries a fine of 150 euros ($207), has reignited the debate over where to draw the line between protecting a nation’s values and ensuring individuals’ freedom of expression.

Those supporting the ban say the veils oppress women and don’t fall in line with the country’s values of gender equality. Under France’s new law, anyone who forces women to wear a veil can face up to a year in prison and a fine 30,000 of euros.

But others, including some women who wear the veils themselves, believe the ban infringes on their freedom of religion and smacks of anti-Islamic sentiment.

In Canada, calls to introduce a similar ban have also prompted heated debate. For years, the Muslim Canadian Congress has urged for an end to the practice of wearing face-concealing niqabs and burkas, arguing the veils aren’t required under Islam, but are rather symbols of religious extremism and misogyny.

Canadian women who say they choose to wear the veils, however, argue that far from oppressing them, the face coverings guard their modesty.

Here, as in France, those who actually wear the veils are few.

Should Canada consider following France’s lead? Or would doing so put unfair restrictions on a minority?

What does it mean to put yourself in someone “else’s shoes?” What happens when we do it? Does our perspective on the world change? Does it broaden? (hat tip: SK)

Even if you are the Prince of Wales and you want to promote dialogue between different faiths, you are going to get ridiculed.

Prince Charles ‘Abused’ on Faith Dialogue

(Daily Mail)

CAIRO – Britain’s Prince Charles has complained of abuse during his repeated attempts to promote dialogue among followers of different faiths, The Daily Mail reported on Thursday, April 7.

“I find a certain amount of ridicule has come my way,” the Prince of Wales said in a meeting with Muslim scholars at the Qarawiyyin University in Fez, Morocco.

He said he was met with ridicule for promoting diversity and accepting people of different faiths.

“One of the hardest things is to remind people of the great truth of traditional Christianity, not distorted Christianity,” said the heir of the British throne.

He said the problem lies in the behavior of some people who find it easier to focus on the negative.

“It’s the issue of stereotypes that is difficult,” he said.

“It’s so easy to concentrate on the negative and not the positive. But what I do is remind people of what we share in common.”

Prince Charles is known for his staunch support for the multi-faith dialogue and bridging the gap between followers of Islam and Christianity.

He has championed several initiatives to boost respect and understanding between followers of different faiths and improve inter-faith dialogue.

Through his several speeches on Muslims and the West, he has stressed the need for the two to live and work together.

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla arrived in Morocco earlier this week for talks on trade, environmental and multi-faith issues.

During his visit, he has been shown manuscripts dating from the 12th century, including an Arabic copy of the New Testament.

The Qarawiyyin University, founded in 859, is believed to be one of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world.

Religious Understanding

Prince Charles stressed the importance of religious exchanges in promoting understanding between followers of Islam and Christianity.

“…respecting other people’s cultures is the only way to achieve unity through diversity,” he said.

He said mutual visits from religious scholars from both faiths could give “a better chance in the future of ensuring better tolerance and understanding.”

Prince Charles believes that inter-faith dialogue would be much improved “if (Muslim) scholars can come to universities in Britain to study for a year or two, perhaps broaden their horizons, and people from Britain can come here and understand the context of Islam.”

The Prince of Wales himself is patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford.

“I’m one of those people who respects enormously diversity so I try to encourage the consultation of local people,” he said.

“Human society seems to function much better at a community level.”

The IRA, a terrorist organisation that Peter King supported financially and politically through the 80′s and recently in 2005, has been quite active in recent weeks. Imagine if the bomb that was found was left by a Muslim, we would not hear the end of it. The question one should ask is: why are Muslims being put on trial?

Peter King must be happy to hear about the Homeland Security hearing in Manhattan. King started something “revolutionary,” putting Muslim Americans and Islam on trial and now his minions are following.  But King felt it was important to give praise to one special minion, Greg Ball

Here is a good summary from AlJazeera on the IRA and their recent surge in activity.

Hat tip: Europeans Against Islamophobia

Army defuses N Ireland van bomb

(AlJazeera)

Police say device was likely set by dissident Republicans to cause disruption ahead of election campaign.

Army bomb-experts in Northern Ireland have defused a 225-kilogramme van bomb near the Irish border.

The bomb, hidden underneath a motorway bridge near the main Dublin-Belfast road, was rendered inactive on Saturday following an 18-hour operation.

Police said that the bomb had been set by dissident Republicans to cause “huge devastation” in the nearby town of Newry ahead of Northern Ireland’s election campaign.

They said that it had likely been abandoned short of its target and before it could be detonated.

Two warning calls were made to police about the bomb on Friday.

“In this case, this bomb may have been on its way to the centre of the town,” David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent for the UK’s Independent newspaper, told Al Jazeera.

“The security forces were successful in stopping that happneing, but at the same time they weren’t successful in preventing the making of the bomb and there were hold-ups, once the bomb was discovered, in clearling the area.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb, but police said a phone call to warn about the bomb used a code word previously used by dissident Republicans.

Impatient motorists

Police shut the road following the discovery of the bomb, but impatient motorists unwilling to take a diversion moved the traffic cones and “road closed” signs.

BBC Northern Ireland footage showed dozens of cars driving directly past the van before police reinforced the barriers.

The bomb was double the size of those used in a number of bombings last year by Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents, none of which caused serious injuries.

Recent weeks have seen a surge in activity by IRA dissident groups opposed to the 1998 peace agreement which largely ended three decades of violence that killed more than 3,600 people.

A week ago Ronan Kerr, a 25-year-old police constable, was killed when a bomb exploded under his car in Omagh, an attack police suspect was organised by IRA dissidents to scare Catholics from joining the north’s police force.

The killing prompted a public outcry in Ireland.

Detectives said they had detained a 33-year-old near Omagh on Friday night in the third arrest connected with the murder.

New York State Senator Gregory Ball speaks during a hearing on Homeland Security.

Peter King must be happy to hear about the Homeland Security hearing in Manhattan. King started something “revolutionary,” putting Muslim Americans and Islam on trial and now his minions are following.  But King felt it was important to give praise to one special minion, Greg Ball:

“This is a first rate hearing,” King said. “I hear some rumblings from people opposed to it. I just wish the Muslim community and the leadership would be much more cooperative on these hearings, not see everything as being an attack on them.”

The same old tired line, when is King going to stop with the baseless accusations of Muslim American non-cooperation, something contradicted by law enforcement, a group conspicuously absent (excepting Lee Baca) from King’s last hearing?

King of course is infamous for saying that 85% of mosques are run by radicals, and now he’s changing up the numbers:

Mr. King prefaced his comments by noting that “99 percent” of Muslims in the United States are “outstanding Americans” and not terrorists.

It seems he can’t make his mind up? Or maybe he realized that people were catching onto the fact that what he said was full of B.S.? At the end of the day watch him squirm and try to claim that he is right on both (contradictory) statements.

If you didn’t catch Loonwatch’s live tweets of the hearings, here is a decent summary:

Hearing on Terror Includes Heated Debate on Islam

In a local reprise of a polarizing Congressional hearing last month on the question of Islam and terror, state lawmakers warned in grave terms on Friday of the threats facing the New York area, while other lawmakers and interfaith groups criticized the proceedings as anti-Muslim and incendiary.

The hearing, which was convened by the State Senate’s homeland security committee, was something of a spectacle: Security was ramped up at the office building in Lower Manhattan where state legislators have work space, and television cameramen easily outnumbered lawmakers.

Adding to the theatrics, the hearing began to great fanfare with testimony from the lawmaker who convened the Congressional hearing, Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican, who has promised further federal inquiries into what he describes as the radicalization of American Muslims.

Mr. King prefaced his comments by noting that “99 percent” of Muslims in the United States are “outstanding Americans” and not terrorists.

“But the fact is: The enemy, or those being recruited by Al Qaeda, live within the Muslim community, and that’s the reality we have to face,” Mr. King said. “This is not to put a broad brush over a community, but you go where the threat is coming from, and that’s the reality today.”

Mr. King testified at the invitation of Senator Gregory R. Ball, a Putnam County Republican who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs. Mr. Ball was criticized by Muslim and interfaith groups as well as a group of Senate Democrats for his inclusion of Islamic law as one of the hearing’s topics; they accused him of exploiting the threat of terrorism to incite a fear of Muslims among the broader public.

But on Friday, as reporters crammed into a low-ceilinged meeting room for the daylong hearing, Mr. Ball defended the scope of the committee’s inquiry, saying that he asked lawmakers to propose other witnesses but received very little input.

“There are some who are more concerned about the front-page press than today,” Mr. Ball said. “I understand politics. But we cannot allow our homeland security to become a political football.”

Among the witnesses whose scheduled testimony provoked the most criticism was Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born American who is president of a group called Former Muslims United, and Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official who has often criticized Islam.

Ms. Darwish testified on Friday that young people in the Arab world are taught as children to hate America and to look favorably on terrorism. “The education of Arab children is to make killing of certain groups of people not only good,” she said. “It’s holy. It becomes holy in our culture.”

Her testimony was met with an angry rebuke from Senator Eric Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat, who held up a Koran and said that Ms. Darwish was “bringing hate and poison” to the hearing. Mr. Ball tried to quiet Mr. Adams, and their back-and-forth descended into a shouting match, with Mr. Adams suggesting that Mr. Ball was condoning bigotry and Mr. Ball accusing him of pandering to the news media.

“I’m glad that nobody is between those TV cameras and you, because that’s the most dangerous place in New York City right now,” Mr. Ball snapped.

In his testimony, Mr. Gaffney decried Sharia law as a threat to the United States and said that American efforts to prevent future acts of terrorism have been “hobbled, frankly, by what we consider to be politically correct blinders.”

He added that the Muslim community center and mosque proposed to be built near ground zero “fits the profile of triumphalist mosques built on sacred ground of defeated people elsewhere around the world.”

“I believe it should not be allowed to happen here,” Mr. Gaffney said.

While the testimony on Islam offered the most drama, the bulk of the hearing was spent discussing matters far less politically charged. A parade of law enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts offered what amounted to a verbal encyclopedia of terror threats, and legislators added their own possibilities, too.

Senator Martin J. Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, wondered whether someone could shoot down an airplane using a heat-seeking missile. Mr. Ball asked about the safety of the AirTrain system at Kennedy Airport. And Mr. King worried about an attack on the New York City subway system or the use of a dirty bomb.

“I would just say that as we approach the 10th anniversary, not for people to look upon Sept. 11 as just some historical moment like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor or Bunker Hill,” Mr. King said. “It was the first battle in a war which is still being waged.”

At times, however, those at the hearing seemed less than interested in the technical discussion that dominated most of the session. During the testimony of Richard Daddario, the New York Police Department’s top counterterrorism official, at least three people in the audience were fast asleep.

Wajahat Ali

Another great piece from Wajahat Ali.

Understanding Sharia Law

(Huffington Post)

In the past year, a group of conservative pundits and analysts have identified sharia, or Islamic religious law, as a growing threat to the United States. These pundits and analysts argue that the steady adoption of sharia’s tenets is a strategy extremists are using to transform the United States into an Islamic state.

A number of state and national politicians have adopted this interpretation and 13 states are now considering the adoption of legislation forbidding sharia. A bill in the Tennessee State Senate, for example, would make adherence to sharia punishable by 15 years in jail. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives and potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has called for “a federal law that says Sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States.”

The fullest articulation of this “sharia threat” argument, though, is in the September 2010 report, “Sharia: The Threat to America,” published by the conservative Center for Security Policy. The authors claim that their report is “concerned with the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time: the legal-political-military doctrine known within Islam as ‘Shariah.’” The report, according to its authors, is “designed to provide a comprehensive and articulate ‘second opinion’ on the official characterizations and assessments of this threat as put forth by the United States government.”

The report, and the broader argument, is plagued by a significant contradiction. In the CSP report’s introduction, the authors admit that Islamic moderates contest more conservative interpretations of sharia:

Sharia is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates … whose members embrace the Enlightenment’s veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms. On this side of the divide, Sharia is a reference point for a Muslim’s personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society.

The authors later assert, however, that there is “ultimately but one shariah. It is totalitarian in character, incompatible with our Constitution and a threat to freedom here and around the world.”

The initial concession that Muslims interpret sharia in different ways is accurate and of course contradicts the later assertion that sharia is totalitarian in nature.

But by defining sharia itself as the problem, and then asserting the authenticity of only the most extreme interpretations of sharia, the authors are effectively arguing that the internecine struggle within Islam should be ceded to extremists. They also cast suspicion upon all observant Muslims.

It’s important to understand that adopting such a flawed analysis would direct limited resources away from actual threats to the United States and bolster an anti-Muslim narrative that Islamist extremist groups find useful in recruiting.

It would also target and potentially alienate our best allies in the effort against radicalization: our fellow Americans who are Muslim. According to the “sharia threat” argument, all Muslims who practice any aspect of their faith are inherently suspect since sharia is primarily concerned with correct religious practice.

This brief will explain what sharia really is and demonstrate how a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of sharia — put forth in the CSP report and taken up by others — will both harm America’s national security interests and threaten our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

What is Sharia?

The CSP report defines sharia as a “legal-political-military doctrine.” But a Muslim would not recognize this definition — let alone a scholar of Islam and Muslim tradition. Muslim communities continue to internally debate how to practice Islam in the modern world even as they look to its general precepts as a guide to correct living and religious practice.

Most academics studying Islam and Muslim societies give a broad definition of sharia. This reflects Muslim scholars struggling for centuries over how best to understand and practice their faith.

But these specialists do agree on the following:

• Sharia is not static. Its interpretations and applications have changed and continue to change over time.
• There is no one thing called sharia. A variety of Muslim communities exist, and each understands sharia in its own way. No official document, such as the Ten Commandments, encapsulates sharia. It is the ideal law of God as interpreted by Muslim scholars over centuries aimed toward justice, fairness and mercy.
• Sharia is overwhelmingly concerned with personal religious observance such as prayer and fasting, and not with national laws.

Any observant Muslim would consider him or herself a sharia adherent. It is impossible to find a Muslim who practices any ritual and does not believe himself or herself to be complying with sharia. Defining sharia as a threat, therefore, is the same thing as saying that all observant Muslims are a threat.

The CSP report authors — none of whom has any credentials in the study of Islam — concede this point in several places. In the introduction they say, “Shariah is a reference point for a Muslim’s personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society.” Yet the rest of the report contradicts this point.

The authors, in attempting to show that sharia is a threat, construct a static, ahistorical and unscholarly interpretation of sharia that is divorced from traditional understandings and commentaries of the source texts.

The “sharia threat” argument is based on an extreme type of scripturalism where one pulls out verses from a sacred text and argues that believers will behave according to that text. But this argument ignores how believers themselves understand and interpret that text over time.

The equivalent would be saying that Jews stone disobedient sons to death (Deut. 21:18- 21) or that Christians slay all non-Christians (Luke 19:27). In a more secular context it is similar to arguing that the use of printed money in America is unconstitutional — ignoring the interpretative process of the Supreme Court.

In reality, sharia is personal religious law and moral guidance for the vast majority of Muslims. Muslim scholars historically agree on certain core values of sharia, which are theological and ethical and not political. Moreover, these core values are in harmony with the core values at the heart of America.

Muslims consider an interpretation of sharia to be valid so long as it protects and advocates for life, property, family, faith and intellect. Muslim tradition overwhelmingly accepts differences of opinion outside these core values, which is why sharia has survived for centuries as an ongoing series of conversations. Sharia has served Muslims who have lived in every society and in every corner of the planet, including many Americans who have lived in our country from before our independence down to the present day.

Recent statements from Muslim religious authorities, such as the 2004 Amman Message, show the dynamic, interpretive tradition of Islam in practice. In fact, the Amman Message is a sharia-based condemnation of violence. So if CSP wants Muslims to reject sharia they are effectively arguing Muslims should reject nonviolence.

The fact that the Amman Message is a sharia-based document shows the problem with the “sharia threat” argument: By criminalizing sharia they also criminalize the sharia-based message of nonviolence in the Amman document.

It is surprising that a group claiming to be invested in American national security would suggest that we make nonviolent engagement criminal.

Suspicion Based on Religious Misinterpretation

The CSP report’s contradictions can only be resolved through unconstitutional means. And the authors propose doing so with no sense of irony.

They argue that believing Muslims should have their free speech and freedom of religion rights restricted: “In keeping with Article VI of the Constitution, extend bans currently in effect that bar members of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan from holding positions of trust in federal, state, or local governments or the armed forces of the United States to those who espouse or support Shariah.”

The authors have already conceded that even mainstream Muslims espouse sharia. So by the report’s own analysis, CSP are recommending that even mainstream American Muslims, who follow sharia in their personal lives, be prohibited from serving in the government or the armed forces.

The authors cite Quran verses that “are interpreted under Sharia to mean that anyone who does not accept Islam is unacceptable in the eyes of Allah and that he will send them to Hell,” concluding, “When it is said that Sharia is a supremacist program, this is one of the bases for it.”

It is no secret that many Christians interpret their own faith to mean that non-Christians are destined for Hell. Is this too a form of supremacism?

Many advocates of the “sharia threat” also refer to taqiyya, an Arabic word that means concealing one’s faith out of fear of death, to mean religiously justified lying. Not all Muslims subscribe to the theological concept of taqiyya, however. In fact, it is a minority opinion.

The charge of “taqqiya” is often deployed by “sharia threat” advocates when confronted with evidence that refutes their thesis. Under this methodology one cannot trust any practicing Muslim. Even if a Muslim preaches and practices nonviolence the CSP authors would say that person is either not a true Muslim or is practicing taqiyya.

They have, in fact, used this tactic against Muslim-American leaders who advocate strong civic engagement. Responding to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s assertion that the proposed Park 51 Islamic Center in New York would be a venue for interfaith dialogue, CSP’s Frank Gaffney wrote in The Washington Times: “To be sure, Imam Rauf is a skilled practitioner of the Sharia tradition of taqqiya, deception for the faith.”

While providing a mechanism for critics to ignore any disconfirming evidence, adopting such an interpretation of taqiyya would almost certainly result in every observant Muslim being branded a liar.

The authors of the CSP report are clearly aware of this, and they try to temper their conclusions: “This is not an argument for trusting or mistrusting someone in any particular instance,” they write. “It is, though, an argument for professionals to be aware of these facts, to realize that they are dealing with an enemy whose doctrine allows — and at times even requires — them not to disclose fully all that they know and deliberately to misstate that which they know to be the truth.”

In other words, all Muslims are suspect simply by virtue of being Muslims.

Biased Premises Lead to Bad Policy

The CSP report’s premise is that sharia is the problem and that observance of sharia results in extremism. The authors do not acknowledge that sharia is something the extremists are attempting to claim.

This purposeful misconstruction of the security issues America faces ignores multiple data points and turns all Muslims into traitors. According to a report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 85 percent of all terrorist victims are Muslims. The Muslim community, therefore, has good reason to ally with American interests to defeat extremists. Those who assert the most extreme definition of sharia agree with the extremists’ definitions of Islam and help create an environment of alienation and distrust — which serves extremist interests, not American interests.

Adopting the CSP’s analysis — and the hysteria over the “sharia threat” that it is clearly intended to provoke — will prevent us from working with our natural allies and weaken our ability to protect ourselves. The war against extremism cannot be labeled as a war against Islam. Taking such a civilizational, apocalyptic view could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Further, we actually allow extremists to operate more freely without a clear identification of the threat and a consistent and constitutionally defensible system for recognizing and tracking extremists.

It is important to recognize that Muslims are in an ongoing conversation to define what their faith will look like. They have engaged in that conversation for centuries. But the challenge of faith and modernity is not unique to Muslims, and we cannot single them out for their beliefs.

Finally, it’s important to note that even if the most extreme interpretation of sharia were the correct one, there is no evidence that the U.S. legal system is in any danger of adopting tenets of sharia.

To put this in perspective, the extreme Christian right in America has been trying for decades to inscribe its view of America as a “Christian nation” into our laws. They have repeatedly failed in a country in which more than three-quarters of people identify as Christians.

It’s extremely unlikely that an extreme faction of American Muslims, a faith community that constitutes approximately 1 percent of the U.S. population, would have more success. We need to both respect constitutional freedoms and understand that the Constitution and our courts guarantee a separation between church and state.

The “sharia threat” argument is so irresponsible as to almost demand a comic response, were it not for the disastrous consequences of adopting it. It’s important that its claims be interrogated rigorously, in order to understand that they should not be taken seriously.

This article was co-written by Matthew Duss, National Security Editor at American Progress. It was first published at the Center for American Progress.

Matthew Duss is the National Security Editor at American Progress and Wajahat Ali is a Researcher for ThinkProgress.

Additional contributions from Hussein Rashid, associate editor, Religion Dispatches, and Haroon Moghul, executive director, The Maydan Institute.

Follow Wajahat Ali on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WajahatAli

Loon Lawyer David Yerushalmi is behind the surge of anti-Sharia bills

It might be a good idea for us LoonWatchers to begin to contact these state senators and representatives and provide them with information about the Loons who are behind these proposed anti-Sharia bills. Sure, they may not care, but at the very least I think it could lead some of these officials to reconsider sponsoring these bills once they find out that 1) there is no threat posed by Sharia to our legal system, and 2) that the people pushing these bills are wacked out crazies who foam at the mouth at the mentioning of Islam and Muslims (i.e. they’re bigots).

Salon.com – The sharia panic factory by Justin Elliot

One of the more striking things about the current anti-sharia craze is how often state legislators who introduce anti-sharia bills can’t answer basic questions about Islamic law or why they see it as a threat.

In Alabama, for example, when the state senator who sponsored an anti-sharia bill was asked by a reporter to simply define sharia, he responded: “I don’t have my file in front of me.” In Florida, anti-sharia bill sponsors couldn’t name a single case where Islamic or international law had been used in a troubling way in U.S. courts. When, on Wednesday, I interviewed a Nebraska state senator behind a similar bill, I asked him about what cases were causes of concern to him. He responded: “I’m not in my office to look them up.”

How could all these legislators be so uninformed about their own bills? A big part of the reason is that most of them did not actually write the legislation in question. Rather, many of the anti-sharia bills being considered around the country are either based on or directly copied from model legislation created by an obscure far-right Arizona attorney and activist named David Yerushalmi.

The Nebraska case is instructive. State Sen. Mark Christensen introduced a bill(.pdf) in January to bar the use of any foreign law in Nebraska courts. When I spoke to Christensen on Wednesday, he acknowledged he did not have a deep understanding of the issue, referring me back to his office when I asked him what cases involving sharia or foreign law were troubling to him.

He summed up his reason for sponsoring the bill: “This is America. We use America’s law.” (For more on what sharia actually is, see here and here.)

It turns out Christensen introduced the bill after his office was approached by the head of the local chapter of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America, Christensen aide Dan Wiles told me. ACT! for America is a Florida-based group led by Brigitte Gabriel. In a profile last month, the New York Times detailed Gabriel’s strategy of selectively quoting the Quran to paint most or all Muslims as violent extremists.

“They came and talked to several different senators, and Sen. Christensen decided to introduce the bill,” Wiles said, adding that he was presented with model legislation. “It pretty much was exactly what was drafted and introduced,” he said. “Everything substantive was the same.”

The model legislation in question originates with Yerushalmi, the Arizona lawyer who is associated with several organizations including the American Public Policy Alliance. The model anti-foreign law bill on the Public Policy Alliance’s website has been used in states including Florida, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri and South Dakota. It is called “American Laws for American Courts.”

Who is Yerushalmi? His background leaves little doubt that these anti-”foreign law” bills are designed to target sharia.

He has written, for example, that “The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.” A group he founded, the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), has reportedly advocated for a law making it a felony “punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.” The Anti-Defamation League has also called out Yerushalmi for his “anti-black bigotry.” (Mother Jones also has a good profile of Yerushalmi here.)

So next time the sponsor of an anti-sharia bill can’t answer basic questions about Islamic law, it’s a good sign Yerushalmi’s role deserves more scrutiny.

Geert Wilders, the racist, anti-Muslim, Islamophobic Dutch politician is upping the anti-Islam rhetoric in the face of his incitement to hate trial. Wilders and his supporters and patrons claim that Wilders is not a racist and that his trial is an attack on free speech. One thing for sure though is that Wilders is definitely a racist:

Recently, Wilders, in a bid to get more attention attacked the Prophet Muhammad in an article using tired and old Orientalist/Christian missionary arguments that Muhammad suffered from “schizophrenia” (Did Wilders travel back in time with a psychiatrist to evaluate Muhammad?), and other baseless claims that we have grown accustomed to from the anti-Muslim crowd.

The Telegraph (Conservative UK paper) reported on Geert Wilders’ increased anti-Islam rhetoric though they failed miserably in critiquing the haters Wilders cited in his Muhammad article, even calling them “academics”:

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The protester's banner reads 'the veil in front of your eyes is much more dangerous than the veil on my hair'

It is not enough to ban face veils and have that law implemented on April 11, 2001 but Islam as a religion has to be criticized and debated. (hat tip: Europeans Against Islamophobia)

France’s ruling party discusses Islam

UMP members hold criticised debate about Islam’s place in secular France, days before ban on face veils is implemented.

France’s conservative ruling party has held a controversial debate on the practice of Islam, rejecting charges of bigotry and saying that airing the issue could help stem the rising popularity of the far-right.

President Nicolas Sarkozy had called for Tuesday’s discussion on Islam and secularism to address fears that some overt displays of Muslim faith - including street prayer and full-face veils - were France’s secular identity.

The UMP party were considering 26 ideas officials said were aimed at bringing France’s stringent laws decreeing the separation of church from state into step with the times.

Even before it began, the debate had been tarnished by criticism from religious leaders, a boycott by France’s largest Muslim group, and the absence of Prime Minister Francois Fillon.

“For weeks, everything possible has been done to stop this meeting taking place … but we have not yielded to those pressures … because it is the French people who asked us for it,” Francois Cope, the secretary-general of the UMP party, said.

“One less problem is one less electoral argument for Marine Le Pen,” he said.

With his popularity at record lows a year before a presidential election, Sarkozy has been accused of seeking to woo back right-wing voters increasingly drawn to the National Front party under its new leader Marine Le Pen.

Controversial proposals

The proposals discussed on Tuesday include banning the wearing of religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves or prominent Christian crosses by day-care personnel and preventing Muslim mothers from wearing headscarves when accompanying school field trips.

Another proposal would prevent parents from taking their children out of mandatory subjects including gym and biology.

The debate could lead to a legislative bill in the National Assembly, where the UMP has a majority.

Under the ban, women who wear the face-shrouding veils risk a fine, special classes and a police record.The round-table came as a new law banning garments that hide the face is to take effect on April 11.

Islam is France’s second biggest religion after Roman Catholicism. Interior Minister Claude Gueant says there are five to six million Muslims in the country.

Tuesday’s discussion brought together several ministers, chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim and representatives of other religions, but no Muslim clerics.

Muslim groups have accused the conservative UMP of stigmatising their faith.

Critics from the opposition Socialist party contend the debate is an electoral ploy aimed at appealing to voters who could be swayed by the National Front.

Jean-Francois Cope, the UMP leader, insisted on Monday that France needs clearer rules about how Muslims should adapt their religious practices to French society.

“The practice of Islam in France is not the burqa. It is not prayers in the street,” he said.

‘Easing’ social tensions

In some neighbourhoods with large Muslim immigrant communities, the lack of mosques or prayer rooms means crowds gather on sidewalks and cobblestone streets at prayer times.

Cope tried to distance himself from the National Front. “They denounce [Muslim practices]. We are making proposals” to ease social tensions, he said.

The leaders of France’s main religions have expressed concern about the debate, saying it is not the right forum for such a discussion.

“We were not for this debate in the format that was presented,” France’s chief rabbi, Gilles Bernheim, told reporters. France has western Europe’s largest Jewish population.

Singh Ranjit, of the group Sikhs of France, said, “This concerns all of us because we all have difficulties as religious minorities when it comes to the relationship we have with the authorities.”

The debate has also taken on an international dimension.

A former foreign minister of the Comoros Islands, a largely Muslim nation in the Indian Ocean, said on the sidelines of the debate that France’s influence goes beyond its geographical limits.

“Unfortunately because of what they call quarrels within France, people don’t measure the impact that France has all over the world.”

Nonie giving a passionate anti-Muslim lecture

For years now, the U.S. government has left counter-terrorism training dangerously unregulated such that millions of dollars were spent on private contractors who present Islam as an inherently violent religion and all Muslims as suspects. This is no shock to Loonwatchers who’ve been watching fake scholars like Robert Spencer brag about their bogus presentations before government security agencies. Unfortunately, the problem still persists and officials continue to receive training in Islamophobic doctrine rather than real counter-terrorism skills, all courtesy of the U.S. tax-payers.

In the latest round of hate-for-hire, the New York State Senate will hold a hearing entitled, “Reviewing our Preparedness: An Examination of New York’s Public Protection Ten Years After 9/11” starring none other than loon-at-large, caught-in-a-pool-of-lies Nonie Darwish (Peter King will also make a cameo).

Like most in the anti-Muslim business, Nonie has a greatly exaggerated personal sob-story backed up by book deals and speaking engagements in all the typical “hating on Muslim” venues. She sells herself as a “human rights activist,” as do so many other virulent Muslim-bashers, though she doesn’t seem to care too much about the human rights of Muslims. This time, however, she will be using the pseudonym “Nahid Hyde,” perhaps as a not-so-clever way of avoiding government inquiry into her association with other bigots and white supremacists. Yet, even a cursory view of her ridiculous book titles should cause any serious security official to question her credibility as a fair and impartial witness.

The reviewer of her latest book, “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law,” (which sells for a whopping $28.99) stated:

In her estimation, Islam is a backward and authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century Bedouin life. For Darwish, Islam is a sinister force that must be resisted and contained.

It must be difficult to pack so many stereotypes into 272 pages, but Ms. Darwish has done it, making such bold generalizations and demonstrably false claims as:

Sharia is incompatible with any state that has as a foundational principle the equality of the sexes before the law.

Perhaps she should “educate” the Grand Mufti of Egypt, who recently remarked:

Egypt’s religious tradition is anchored in a moderate, tolerant view of Islam. We believe that Islamic law guarantees freedom of conscience and expression (within the bounds of common decency) and equal rights for women. And as head of Egypt’s agency of Islamic jurisprudence, I can assure you that the religious establishment is committed to the belief that government must be based on popular sovereignty.

But disclosing some enlightening and nuanced facts about contemporary Islam or the multivalent, non-monolithic view and relationship Muslims have with Islamic Law would ruin her book sales and speaking tours, wouldn’t it?

Like other Islamophobes, she is careful to make a distinction between Islam and Muslims, so as not to appear like the plain bigot she is:

Darwish is careful to distinguish between people and ideas: “The purpose of this book is not to spread hatred of a people but to tell the truth about the wickedness of Islamic Sharia law.”

Such distinctions are disingenuous, pro-forma statements that only fool the naïve into thinking she isn’t a professional hate-monger. (Right, just like how Pam Geller loves those Moozlims so much she wants to drop nuclear bombs on them, out of love, of course.)

Contrary to her assertion, Ms. Darwish regularly engages in dehumanizing rhetoric about all Muslims, not just extremists. She even told the New York Times:

A mosque is not just a place for worship. It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.

That was one of her tamer statements dressed up before a liberal audience. Such sweeping outright lies have been instrumental in the spread of anti-Muslim, anti-Sharia, and anti-Mosque hysteria in our country, materializing in over 800 documented cases of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination. When confronted about her lies, she will likely attempt to dismiss her critics as agents of the Mad Mullah Conspiracy, rather than owning up to the falsity of her claims.

So I don’t believe her for a second when she says she is not spreading hatred. She is spreading hatred, blatantly, and making a buck while doing it, this time at the expense of hardworking New Yorkers’ taxes. In less than a week she is going to tell the New York Senate that basically every Muslim is a suspect, thereby misdirecting valuable law enforcement resources away from violent extremists and onto the majority of peaceful, law-abiding American Muslim citizens. We will all be less safe as a result.

The citizens of New York deserve better than this. The American people deserve better. They have the right to know why the government is funding clearly biased, hateful individuals who have absolutely no credibility. For this reason, a coalition of civil rights and interfaith organizations will hold a news conference on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan to challenge this expected anti-Islam bias in the State Senate, Thursday, April 7^th, at 1pm.

The American people deserve testimony from impartial security experts, not this Islamophobic nonsense about stealth Jihad and Islamic boogeymen hiding under every bed. It’s time for the government to be held accountable and to stop playing these dangerous political games with our security.

Richard Silverstein takes David Yerushalmi to task. Yerushalmi threatened him with a lawsuit, it didn’t work out for old Yeru.

David Yerushalmi Threatens Defamation Lawsuit

by Richard Silverstein (TikkunOlam)

NOTE: I originally published this post in reply to a threat of a defamation lawsuit from David Yerushalmi.  I temporarily withdrew it in order to consult with counsel.  I post this now.

But before I do, since I wrote this, the Anti Defamation League, a group with whom I often disagree, has published a strong denunciation of Yerushalmi’s views under the headline “Extremism,” which is worth noting:

One of the driving forces behind Shari’a-related conspiracy theories and growing efforts to ban or restrict the use of Shari’a law in American courts is David Yerushalmi, an Arizona attorney with a record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.

…Yerushalmi has not only actively promoted his conspiratorial vision of Shari’a law, but has also sought to portray all Muslims as a threat. In one March 2006 article, for example, Yerushalmi even went so far as to claim that “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.”

That same year, Yerushalmi founded the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), a “think tank” that has published anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and anti-black materials, as well as New World Order-style conspiracy theories.

…Yerushalmi’s main instrument, SANE, is also openly hostile to undocumented migrants in the United States. It advocates somehow sealing all American borders and building “special criminal camps” to house undocumented migrants…

…Yerushalmi [has] defend[ed] people accused of anti-Semitism such as Mel Gibson and Pat Buchanan because they “have the potential to save the West from itself and from Islam.”

The statement doesn’t at all deal with Yerushalmi’s Kahane-like pro-settler views about Israel, which is understandable since the ADL’s difference with him on this subject might be more nuanced.  But such as it is, the statement should gain broad visibility and further reinforce Yerushalmi’s reputation as a far-right anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim bigot.

My original post follows:

A short time ago I published a post about David Yerushalmi’s leadership of various state campaigns to ban Sharia law.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years you’ll remember back to 2007 when I wrote several posts about Yerushalmi’s leadership role in the campaign against New York’s Khalil Gibran Academy and the accompanying demonization and forced removal of principal Debbie Almontaser (which was later found wrongful by an EEOC ruling).  I reviewed his then publicly-accessible website, Saneworks, for the overtly racist rhetoric it contained.  I called him then a “Jewish white supremacist.”

Mother Jones recently published its own profile of Yerushalmi’s efforts to ban Sharia law and called him simply a “white supremacist.”  Apparently, he didn’t like that.  Didn’t like it one bit.  As a result he sent Mother Jones a message saying that he was compiling a record of the magazine’s coverage of him as part of a legal brief.  Not exactly a threat of a lawsuit, but not far from one.

To me he was far more explicit.  He sent this to a lawyer representing me in my current libel suit which will be heard in Los Angeles in the coming days:

I am reluctantly forced to revisit the statements your client, Richard Silverstein, has made about me on his blog. When he first attacked me personally and stated that I was a fascist, racist, and Kahanist, I ignored them, even as others of his ilk provided these baseless statements “legs” allowing countless more “eyes” the opportunity to read what your client understood and represented to be carefully calculated factual statements about me.  These statements are demonstrably false and your client made them knowing they were false or acting recklessly in this regard.  This recklessness I believe was established in his deposition testimony in the Neuwirth case.

I ignored these publications because your client uses this kind of ad hominem invective on a regular basis and I was just one of many people he attacked personally without any real factual basis.

Unfortunately, your client has republished the original articles via links in a most recent piece stating that I am a white supremacist. I might still have ignored this except for the fact that it has now concretely and specifically injured me in my legal profession in Arizona. I have now lost an African American client who was prepared to retain my firm but for your clients defamatory publications, because he could not afford to be associated with someone accused of such beliefs even though he knows I do not hold these beliefs. Much of his business is in public relations and this charge by your client was for him too much to sustain.

My staff and family have prevailed upon me to sue your client for defamation. Again, I am reluctant given the First Amendment issues, but I believe there is a strong basis to assert that his wholly unfounded, false, and defamatory statements, which have now led to concrete damages that I can measure minimally in excess of $100,000 suggests to me that my staff and family have the better argument.

The suit will be brought in Arizona.  An interesting and related case is Yetman v. English, 168 Ariz. 71, 811 P.2d 323 (1991).

I certainly understand your client will raise the standard First Amendment defenses: opinion, hyperbole, no actual malice.  If we get past these, your client will have the opportunity to test “truth” as a defense. It is to that end and to that purpose I am now drafting my complaint.

Your client may avoid the suit by deleting all articles published on his blog or other forum that refer to me in the defamatory ways described.

I am providing this to you confidentially.  If you client chooses to make this public, and he certainly may, this settlement offer is rescinded.

Thank you.

David Yerushalmi

Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C.:

Washington, D.C., New York, California & Arizona

I’ve debated how to address this threat and of course I’ve engaged pro bono legal case in the event he follows through on it.  But I will not be cowed by a bully.  I stand by the posts I’ve written by him.  I will not remove them.  I will gladly meet him in court or anywhere in defense of both my right to speak and publish, and the truth of the statements I’ve written about him.

David Yerushalmi is a fraud.  His claims about Islam are false, as anyone with any real knowledge of the religion will tell you.  His game is political opportunism to advance a strident right-wing anti-Muslim agenda.  An earlier iteration of his anti-jihad campaign involved a colleague, Dave Gaubatz, who did a “James O’Keefe” and infiltrated Virginia mosques posing as a new member.  They published their supposedly shocking accounts of radical jihadist activity which turned out to be “sky is falling” nonsense.  Gaubatz, for those of you who may not remember, was recently successfully sued for arranging for his son to pose as a CAIR intern, whereupon he stole internal organization documents for the purposes of discrediting CAIR.  The court ordered Gaubatz to return the documents.

Even Yerushalmi’s name is fake.  His family birth name is Beychok, born of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to America.  To be clear, I’m not saying that Yerushalmi’s legal name isn’t that.  I’m talking about the underlying motivations regarding Jewish nationalist identity that are involved in such a name change.  Yerushalmi means “from Jerusalem.”  Yerushalmi is as much a resident of Jerusalem as I am.  He doesn’t live in Jerusalem nor do I.  Let me make clear that I have no problem with Jewisholim changing their name once they move to Israel, taking Hebrew names such as Yerushalmi.  But to do so when you live in America is pure preciousness.  He wants to tell you that he supports the settler concept of the eternal inviolability of Jerusalem as a Jewish city and capital.  He wants to tell you he believes in the whole nine yards of ultra-Orthodox extremism regarding God’s sacred gift of all of the Land of Israel to the entire Jewish people in perpetuity.

Yerushalmi denies he is a white Jewish supermacist, yet writes in his website and other online venues nonsense like this:

…Our constitutional republic was specifically designed to insulate our national leaders from the masses,democracy has seeped up through the cracks and corroded everything we once deemed sacred about our political order. Prior to the Civil War, the electorate, essentially white Christian men, had access to local government. It was here, where men shared an intimacy born of family ties, shared religious beliefs, and common cultural signposts, that representative government was meant to touch our daily lives. With the social and cultural revolution which followed the emancipation, man’s relationship to political order was radically nationalized and democratized.

And believe me, Yerushalmi doesn’t use the term “democratized” in a flattering way.  Here he clarifies that he isn’t opposed to the paternalistic democracy of the Founding Fathers in which selection of senators and even the president was not given directly to the people (or as he calls them, “the masses”):

The founding fathers themselves of course opposed “democracy” in its simple form and created a wonderfully elaborate system to shield government from mass democracy…

Here he expounds on the perniciousness of:

…Raw or radical democracy where all men and all ideas and all cultures are deemed equal and given equal voice. That is of course the agenda of the Left…

Yerushalmi of course opposes Israeli democracy as well, or at least the current version which accords rights to Israeli Palestinian citizens.  Larry Cohler Esses, in a series he wrote for Jewish Week on the Stop the Madrassa campaign led by Yerushalmi, noted that the latter called for Israel to “cast off the yoke of liberal democracy.”

It should be noted that Meir Kahane maintained precisely the same dismissive attitude toward Israeli democracy, saying that if given a choice between the latter and a Jewish state he would choose the latter.  In fact, Kahane was perfectly comfortable with a Jewish state that was not democratic.  It should come as no surprise that during a session in which he deposed me for the libel lawsuit I mentioned above, he revealingly referred to Kahane with the honorific, “the Rov” (or “Rabbi”), a traditional Jewish way by which yeshiva students refer to an honored teacher.

Cohler Esses also notes that Yerushalmi believes that left-wing Jews:

…Destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite…One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one. Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people.

Most Israelis are raging Leftists, and this includes the so-called nationalists who found a home in the ‘right-wing’ Likud political bloc or one of the other smaller and more marginal right wing parties.

What’s extraordinary here is that even the far-right secular nationalists of Likud come under withering condemnation.  The only true Jews and true Zionists can be the ultra-Orthodox like himself.

In a recent NPR interview, he either dissembles regarding his true views or he has radically reversed himself since he published earlier statements I’ve quoted previously in this blog.  Here are some of his earlier legislative proposals regarding Islam in American life:

…Islam requires all Muslims to actively and passively support the replacement of America’s constitutional republic with a political system based upon Shari’a.

…Adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari’a on the American People.

HEREFORE, IT IS RESOLVED THAT: It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Shari’a.

The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation.

He has clearly soft-pedaled such extremist views in order to win acceptance for them in the context of this current anti-Muslim national legislative campaign.  But compare the following claim about his legislation (from the NPR interview) with the above views and judge for yourself whether this leopard has changed its spots:

The law does not even criminalize the absolute practice of Shariah. In fact, you could go to Times Square and you could print out: I advocate Shariah, I even advocate, in theory, jihad against America and my statute does not touch you. The statute says the attorney general simply designates someone who practices a Shariah with terrorism component.

Given what I quoted above, you tell me whether or not the following statement from the interview is a lie:

Q:…Is your view of the measure [the anti-Sharia law bill] motivated in part by a view that Islam is inherently violent and that its adherents are inherently predisposed to violence because of their commitment to religious Islam?

Mr. YERUSHALMI: No.

And in this statement, he doesn’t exactly lie, but he deliberately deceives the listener into believing in his pro-Muslim altruism, which is in truth anything but:

I have represented pro bono Muslim-Americans.

He is indeed representing, as far as I know, three Muslim-Americans who were allegedly legal clients of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  They are suing CAIR.  David Yerushalmi is on a political jihad against CAIR, which he views inaccurately as a pro-jihadi Muslim extremist organizations.  So yes, he’s representing a grand total of three Muslim-Americans in a single case, but only because he believes it will advance his own anti-Muslim political agenda.

Let’s examine this statement too in light of what I quoted above:

I have stated on the record, the pietistic worship of the divine through Islamic worship, Jewish worship, Christian worship, atheistic worship or humanistic, is protected and absolutely sacrosanct in our system.

How can you claim the above, when you’ve also called for the U.S. Congress to declare war “on the Muslim nation?”  There may be a poorly drawn distinction he is trying to make here between Islam as a religion and what he considers radical Islam which professes, again according to him, Islam as a political system.  But you’d have to forgive most lay people for missing that distinction and believing he’s at war with all Islam.

In the interview he also makes the statement:

I…certainly can’t be a white supremacist, only because I’m an orthodox Jew…

That’s why I called him a “Jewish white supremacist” since that conveys that he isn’t the same as Richard Butler or the Aryan Nation.  Nevertheless, his views, especially those regarding Islam, are not that dissimilar.  Yes, he’s dressed up his ideology (or should I say, theology) with a certain level of intellectual rigor lacking in most white supremacists.  But the fact that he is a racist cannot be denied without doing violence to the truth.

Of course a Jew can be a white supremacist if he denounces “liberal democracy,” disdains minorities, and believes in waging “war against Islam,” as he has said.

Let me also make absolutely clear, my quarrel with David Yerushalmi is purely political.  It is a quarrel among Jews about the meaning of Jewish identity and the role of Israel in Jewish life.  It is a battle over ideas.  If he wants to have such a battle in a courtroom or any other venue, I’m prepared.  Of course, Yerushalmi prefers to hold the battle in the courtroom because he doesn’t trust the rude democracy of the blogs and internet.  He knows his ideas will lose in a free and fair debate as our founding fathers envisioned.  So he resorts to legal threats.  It’s really a reverse form of the term beloved by far-right pro-Israel advocates like Alan Dershowitz, lawfare.  That is, it’s a form of political harrassment through abuse of the legal system to bring purely political arguments which should be resolved in the traditional American way such things are resolved; and instead attempting to bankrupt or otherwise intimidate the victim into silence.

Some people also call these legal actions SLAPP (Strategic Limitation Against Public Participation) suits which are often used by companies and other well-heeled individuals to limit discussion of issues sensitive to them.

The anti-jihadi lawyer’s claim of damage or losing business is a twisted version of what he attempts to do to his enemies.  He knows how difficult it is for an individual blogger to retain pro bono legal counsel and take the years that such cases can involve.  So he holds this over one’s head as a cudgel to stifle free speech and debate.  Well, not this blogger.  Not now.  Not ever.

Finally, I have no personal malice whatsoever against Yerushalmi.  I don’t know him personally.  I don’t want to know him personally.

NOTE: Yerushalmi has withdrawn his lawsuit threat in a note he sent to my counsel.

Anti-Muslim bigots such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders and co. love to trot out the talking point that Muslims (due to Islam of course) are unique in harassing and oppressing women. According to them, anytime a Muslim man harasses or otherwise assaults a woman it is considered a result of Islam or somehow encouraged by “Islamic behavior.”

This belief, however, is not limited to anti-Muslim bigots but has also crept into the popular imagination and perception of the mainstream. This was evident during the Egyptian Revolution when reporters, pundits and opinion-makers latched onto the Lara Logan incident as a marker for Arab and Muslim societies, viewed as monoliths that are separately “unique” when it comes to the treatment of women.

Take for example Bill Maher, who took the incident as an opportunity to explain why “our culture” is better than “theirs” (Arabs, Muslims). We reported on Maher’s comments at the time:

On his last show Bill Maher went on a speel undermining the Democratic character of Revolutions sweeping across the Arab world. Amongst his ludicrous statements he claimed “women can’t vote in 19 of 22 Arab countries,” that “women who have dated an Arab man, the results aren’t good,” that “Arab men have a sense of “entitlement,” etc. He also went onto forward the argument that “we are better than them,” justifying it by implying he is not a “cultural relativist.”

Such statements not only defy facts and logic, not only are they racist but they serve to undermine the truth about the status of women in the world today. Maher’s all too typical tirade covers up the fact that what is at the heart of the problem is not a clash of cultures or civilizations (the familiar “us vs. them” paradigm), or a simple difference in the degree of harassment.

Reality asserts that at the end of the day, women are mistreated across the globe, across cultures, races, and religions at unfortunately high and gross levels.

The website Stopthestreetharassment.com deals with the issue of harassment, and in its category on statistics does away with the myth that somehow “harassment” and “assault” are unique to men from the Middle East or Muslim countries. The report indicates that this is a world-wide pandemic ranging from such divergent places as India, Europe, Egypt, Latin America and of course…the USA.

In its report on Statistics, stop the street harassment informs us:

In one of the first street harassment studies ever conducted, Carol Brooks Gardner, associate professor of sociology and women’s studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, interviewed 293 women in Indianapolis, Indiana, over several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The women were from every race, age, class, and sexual orientation category of the general population in Indiana and the United States. She oversampled women of color to better represent their experiences. Gardner found that every single woman (100 percent) could cite several examples of being harassed by unknown men in public and all but nine of the women classified those experiences as “troublesome.”

Using a national sample of 12,300 Canadian women ages 18 and older from 1994, sociology professors Ross Macmillan, Annette Nierobisz, and Sandy Welsh studied the impact of street harassment on women’s perceived sense of safety in 2000. During their research, they found that over 80 percent of the women surveyed had experienced male stranger harassment in public and that those experiences had a large and detrimental impact on their perceived safety in public.

Laura Beth Nielsen, professor of sociology and the law at Northwestern University conducted a study of 100 women’s and men’s experiences with offensive speech in the California San Francisco Bay Area in the early 2000s. She found that 100 percent of the 54 women she asked had been the target of offensive or sexually-suggestive remarks at least occasionally: 19 percent said every day, 43 percent said often, and 28 percent said sometimes. Notably, they were the target of such speech significantly more often than they were of “polite” remarks about their appearance.

…

During the summer of 2003, members of the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team in Chicago surveyed 168 neighborhood girls and young women (most of whom were African American or Latina) ages 10 to 19 about street harassment and interviewed 34 more in focus groups. They published their findings in a report titled “Hey Cutie, Can I Get Your Digits?” Of their respondents, 86 percent had been catcalled on the street, 36 percent said men harassed them daily, and 60 percent said they felt unsafe walking in their neighborhoods.

In 2007, the Manhattan Borough President’s Office conducted an online questionnaire about sexual harassment on the New York City subway system with a total of 1,790 participants. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents identified as women. Of the respondents, 63 percent reported being sexually harassed and one-tenth had been sexually assaulted on the subway or at a subway station. Due to collection methods used, the report “Hidden in Plain Sight: Sexual Harassment and Assault in the New York City Subway System” is not statistically significant, but it suggests that a large number of women experience problems on the subway system.

The author’s own studies support the pervasive and widespread nature of the problem of harassment that exists in the USA,

Nearly every woman I have talked to about this issue has been harassed by men in public. Further, every woman can cite strategies, such as avoiding going in public alone at night, which she uses to avoid harassment and assault. To learn more about women’s harassment experiences I conducted two informal, anonymous online surveys about street harassment: one in 2007 for my master’s thesis at George Washington University and one in 2008 as preliminary research for a book. Between both surveys, there were 1,141 respondents. Similar to the other studies conducted on street harassment, nearly every female respondent had experienced street harassment at least once.

In my first online survey, conducted during the spring of 2007, I asked the 225 respondents: “Have you ever been harassed (such as verbal comments, honking, whistling, kissing noises, leering/staring, groping, stalking, attempted or achieved assault, etc) while in a public place like the street, on public transportation, or in a store?” Ninety-nine percent of the respondents, which included some men, said they had been harassed at least a few times. Over 65 percent said they were harassed on at least a monthly basis.

Over 99 percent of the 811 female respondents (916 respondents total) of the second informal survey I conducted in 2008 said they had experienced some form of street harassment (only three women said they had not). In one question they could indicate the types of interactions they have had with strangers in public, here is a sampling of their responses.

• Leering
  Ninety-five percent of female respondents were the target of leering or excessive staring at least once, and more than 68 percent reported being a target 26 times or more in their life.
• Honking and whistling
  Nearly 95 percent of female respondents were honked at one or more times and 40 percent said they are honked at as frequently as monthly. Nearly 94 percent of female respondents were the target of whistling at least once and nearly 38 percent said it occurred at least monthly.
• Kissing noises
  Just over 77 percent of women said they were the target of kissing noises from men and 48 percent said they’ve been the target at least 25 times in their life.
• Making vulgar gestures
  Nearly 82 percent of female respondents were the target of a vulgar gesture at least once. About twenty percent said they had been a target at least 51 times.
• Sexist comment
  Over 87 percent of women said they were the target of a sexist comment, and about 45 percent said they’ve been a target of a sexist comment in public at least 25 times in their life.
• Saying sexually explicit comments
  Nearly 81 percent of female respondents were the target of sexually explicit comments from an unknown man at least once. More than 41 percent have been the target at least 26 times in their lives.
• Blocking path
  About 62 percent of women say a man has purposely blocked their path at least once and 23 percent said this has happened at least six times.
• Following
  Seventy-five percent of female respondents have been followed by an unknown stranger in public. More than 27 percent have been followed at least six times.
• Masturbating
  More than 37 percent of female respondents have had a stranger masturbate at or in front of them at least once in public.
• Sexual touching or grabbing
  Nearly 57 percent of women reported being touched or grabbed in a sexual way by a stranger in public. About 18 percent said they have been touched sexually at least six times.
• Assaulting
  About 27 percent of women report being assaulted at least once in public by a stranger.

These jarring statistics of abuse, harassment and assault upon women in the “enlightened, culturally superior” West should give us pause and a heavy dose of perspective on the meaning of that age old adage, men are pigs.

Once and for all let us quit the holier-than-thou hypocritical obfuscation of the facts and realities on the ground when it comes to women and harassment. Women do not feel safe on Western streets, not because of the “evil Mooslims” but because too many men are unable or unwilling to control themselves.

To rectify this pandemic we must not divert the truth but face it head on. Instead of resorting to racist diatribes, innuendo, hate speech and efforts to destroy a race, religion and culture, organize to stop the harassment and aid in creating a safe space for women in our societies as opposed to the present status quo on our streets.

I encourage everyone to visit StoptheHarassment.com and check out how to End It.

Anti-Sharia propaganda is a load of BS

Justin Elliot of Salon.com has been on point in his reporting over the last few months of the hysterics of the Islamophobes. He deserves massive credit for going to experts (i.e. people with actual credentials to discuss a certain topic) on Islam and Islamic law to find out the truth of these matters. Here, Elliot discusses a recent case in Florida where Islamic law was used in the ruling of a civil dispute between two groups of Muslims with Cyra Choudhury of Florida International University College of Law. The verdict: these types of cases happen all the time in American courts.

In addition, Muslim Americans are not the only ones who use their religious law to draw up contracts between themselves. In fact, Americans Christians and Jews have done this throughout American legal history without so much as a peep that their religious law was going to overcome the U.S. Constitution.

For all of the jingoism and pretentious patriotism that these loons display, they do not know much about how their own legal system operates. The freedom of contract allows Americans to resolve their disputes through any law they want to contract upon. If two Americans want to make a contract based upon Sharia or French law, then they have the right to do it and courts will hold them to that contract based upon the law they freely contracted upon.

However, criminal law is already established by each state – so there will never be the stoning to death of an adulterer or the amputation of a theif’s hand for theft. Why? Because criminal penalties cannot be arbitrated between individuals – they are matters of the state.

But don’t expect the Islamophobes to know any of this. They’re too caught up in either being afraid of a threat that does not exist or are intentionally ignoring these facts for the sake of drumming up hostility against Muslims.

Salon.com – Debunking the latest Sharia scare by Justin Elliot

The movement to ban the use of sharia in the United States continues to grow, even as its proponents struggle to find examples of Islamic law posing a threat to the American way of life.

Anti-sharia activists have now resorted to focusing on an obscure Florida civil lawsuit called Mansour vs. Islamic Education Center of Tampa. The case, which has been elevated to cause celebre status in the right-wing blogosphere involves a mundane financial disagreement between two factions of the Islamic organization.

But in a ruling in the case last month, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen wrote a sentence that has been seized on by anti-sharia activists: “This case will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic Law.”

On the surface that may sound odd. And, indeed, the typical right-wing reaction has gone something like this: “A Florida judge ruled that a Muslim v. Muslim case can proceed under sharia law. I’m being unbelievably serious here! This kind of crap is why I drink, which would get me beheaded under sharia law. ” Ironically, Nielsen is a registered Republican and Jeb Bushappointee.

And as it turns out, the case is entirely routine, according to Cyra Akila Choudhury, a professor at the College of Law at Florida International University who has been following the case closely. Nevertheless, the uproar over the case is “already bolstering the political prospects of an [anti-sharia] bill being considered by the Florida legislature,” Politico reported.

I spoke with Choudhury to find out more about the case and why it’s not at all cause for alarm. The following transcript of our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the dispute that led to this ruling?

The dispute is between two factions of an Islamic organization, the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, and centers on control of money that was given to them by the government through an eminent domain taking. It was about $2.2 million in this taking, so the controversy arose over who was going to control the proceeds from the settlement. As the lawsuit was moving along, the parties agreed to arbitrate, and the arbitrator would be a Muslim law scholar, an a’lim. That is somebody who is well-versed in Islamic law and would settle the dispute in terms of Islamic law principles.

Who are the two parties?

They’re different factions of this organization. In January, the side that emerged victorious from the arbitration filed a motion asking the court to essentially enforce the decision of the arbitrator. Arbitration is an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, in which parties decide not to go into court and not litigate. The rules that apply are chosen by both parties in the agreement. We do lots of arbitration in this country. We apply all kinds of laws, we have many religious mechanisms; for instance, the Jewish community has the beth din. That is basically an alternative court that applies Jewish law and performs litigation with regards to all kinds of civil disputes. It’s very common, and it has existed for many years.

In this Florida case, the judge’s ruling is getting all the attention. When he uses the line “this case will proceed under ecclesiastical Islamic law,” what is that actually about?

What the ruling put very simply was, “You agreed to these rules, and the court is bound to apply them.” It isn’t about who wins. The arbitrator has already decided who wins. The judge’s role in the conflict is to enforce or to set aside the arbitration result. It is very difficult to set aside an arbitration result. You have to show that there was some sort of impropriety in the procedure.

Did the judge decide that the arbitrated agreement should or shouldn’t be enforced?

It’s still out. He still has to hear evidence about the process. The decision says “the court will require further testimony to determine whether the Islamic resolution procedures have been followed in this matter.” So it’s clear from this that one side is resisting enforcement based on some challenge of improper procedure. The judge has to hear evidence on that. This is very similar to many other arbitration scenarios. You can pick for your arbitration any set of laws that both parties agree to — within reason. It’s really a contractual matter. You’re entering into a contract with the other side to arbitrate your disagreement, and you agree upon the rules, and the arbitrator applies those rules. So for instance sharia law in this case simply applies the ecclesiastical religious law of the two parties. This is a conflict around a religious institution. It’s not a dispute between say, a Muslim property owner and his Christian or Jewish neighbor — but even there, if they agreed to use sharia law, that would be enforced.

What do you make of the intense reaction to this decision around the country?

It has been peculiar. What the judge did was extremely noncontroversial, particularly when it comes to religious organizations. It happens all the time. It happens with regards to the Jewish mediation and arbitration, it happens with arbitration that has used foreign law. What’s disheartening about this is the level of misinformation and the level of ignorance about our own legal system that has been propagated by people who either have an agenda or simply do not understand what we do in the civil system. This really is fundamentally about our right to contract. If we unsettle arbitration rules on the grounds that we don’t like a law that somebody is agreeing to arbitrate under, we’re going to have a lot of problems when it comes to all kinds of other contractual arbitration clauses that call for foreign law. In a place like Florida, for example, with Latin America on its doorstep, there’s so much business done with Latin American countries.

There’s currently an anti-sharia bill in the Florida legislature. If a law like that passed, how would it effect a situation like this?

The way that the Florida measure is written, it would only prevent the application of foreign law if that foreign law did not guarantee the constitutional rights of the litigators. So essentially it creates a floor. It creates our state constitutional rights as a floor and says you cannot apply foreign law in any arbitration proceeding if that foreign law will work to deny the rights provided by the constitution of the state. Which is an incredible waste of time. Our laws are already the laws of the land.

If you ask the lawmakers, “Has there ever been a situation in which sharia has been applied in a way that is antithetical to our public policy?” The answer is always no. It’s a fundamental misapprehension of our legal system to believe this can actually happen. People are writing on the blogosphere “Judge Nielsen is pro-sharia law, what’s next? Stoning of women?! Chopping off heads?!” We have a criminal system of law in the United States. The state prosecutes criminals under state criminal law. It’s never going to apply Jordanian law in the United States. That would never happen. You have to be completely ignorant to make these claims, unless you’re making them opportunistically in order to fan the flames of bigotry.

Glenn Greenwald

Islamophobes constantly argue that bloodlust is unique to Muslim extremists. However, as Glenn Greenwald points out, there are plenty of blood thirsty American Christians and Jews out there as well. Remember people like Joe Kaufman who were shouting for American nukes to be launched against Iraq and Syria after the 9-11 attacks. This is systematic in the loonosphere.

Salon.com: Primitive Muslims’ unique love of violence by Glenn Greenwald

University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, today, echoing so many by lamenting the compulsive violence of Muslims:

It’s hard to keep track of all the barbaric behavior emanating from that part of the world.

Glenn Reynolds, November 23, 2010, on his prescription for dealing with North Korea:

If they start anything, I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs. They’ve caused enough trouble — and it would be a useful lesson for Iran, too.

Glenn Reynolds, November 4, 2006, on how to deal with the Muslim world:

It’s also true that if democracy can’t work in Iraq, then we should probably adopt a “more rubble, less trouble” approach to other countries in the region that threaten us.

Glenn Reynolds, February 13, 2007, on how to deal with Iran:

We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists . . .

Glenn Reynolds, September 11, 2001, on responding to the 9/11 attacks:

GEORGE BUSH IS NOW THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD:. . . Now, if he wants to nuke Baghdad, there is nobody to say him nay — and damned few who would want to.

Boy, those primitive, dirty, lowly Muslims sure do have a bizarre, unique cultural compulsion toward violence and barbarism, don’t they? Reynolds is highlighted here not because he’s unique but because he’s so drearily common. Behold the spectacle of those who cheered for the attack on Iraq (resulting in the deaths of at least 100,000 innocent people), who casually call for massive first-strike nuclear attacks on other nations (certain to vaporize hundreds of thousands or millions of human), who loyally marched lockstep behind a leader who instituted a worldwide torture and disappearance regime, lamenting how those grimy, backward Muslims over there have a disturbing and incomparable affinity for violence (and for examples of religious-motivated violence among Christians and Jews, see here).

Nuke ‘em. Invade ‘em. Torture ‘em. Occupy ‘em. Murder their scientists and religious leaders.  Put ‘em in cages for life without due process.  Reduce ‘em to rubble. Why? Because Muslims are so prone to violence and barbarism! That’s a fairly succinct summary of America’s political culture for the last decade at least.

Herzliya’s Hayovel School. Activities included target practice on silhouettes wearing keffiyehs. Photo by: Nir Keidar

Students on trip to IDF base simulated shooting targets with Arab headdress

Incident took place during at a military base where students were being escorted as part of an ‘IDF preparation’ project, sanctioned by the Education Ministry.

By Or Kashti

Twelfth-grade students from Herzliya’s Hayovel High School took part in a simulated shooting attack in which the targets were figures decked out with the Arab keffiyeh headdress, Haaretz has learned.

The incident took place at a military base last week during the annual 12th grade trip. The students were being escorted to a commanders’ base in the Negev as part of an “IDF preparation” project, which is sanctioned by the Education Ministry.

According to a person familiar with the details, the event was tantamount to “educating toward hatred of Arabs.”

“Some citizens of the State of Israel wear keffiyehs,” the source said. “Now they are viewed as legitimate targets for a shooting simulation.”

The trip concluded on Thursday. In a notice that was sent to parents, the school said that “the course of the trip is an inseparable part of the educational curriculum in general, and the ‘IDF preparation’ in particular.”

The first day of the trip included “activities with soldiers in commanders’ school,” according to the notice. The students met with soldiers on the base and heard lectures about the army and the importance of conscription.

During one of the discussions, the students were told that whoever does not serve in a combat unit “does not perform meaningful service.”

During the visit to the base, some of the students took part in an “electronic shooting range,” a computer-generated simulation that recreates a setting in which a soldier uses a laser-guided weapon to shoot targets. According to sources, the images in the electronic shooting range were outfitted with keffiyehs.

“From what I understood, the boys were more excited about this visit than the girls, some of whom preferred not to take part,” said the parent of one student on the trip. “I don’t think that it’s the education system’s job to train students to shoot.”

The “IDF preparation” project usually entails the visit of army officers to schools as well as occasional class trips to army bases for educational and instructional activities. This is believed to be one of the first times a visit to an army base has included students’ participation in a military activity. Children who are eligible for conscription usually undergo introductory military training as part of “Gadna Week,” which is not under the purview of the school system.

A school official said that the use of an electronic simulator that depicted a target wearing a keffiyeh “is certainly problematic, but this is a wider and more fundamental issue than our visit to the base. We have no intention of teaching the students to shoot people with keffiyehs.”

The Education Ministry did not issue a comment as of press time.

More statistical evidence on the anti-Muslim wave post-9/11.

The Truth About American Muslims

At the Justice Department, it’s called the post-Sept. 11 backlash — the steady stream of more than 800 cases of violence and discrimination suffered by American Muslims at the hands of know-nothing abusers. These continuing hate crimes were laid bare at a valuable but barely noticed Senate hearing last week that provided welcome contrast to Representative Peter King’s airing of his xenophobic allegation that the Muslim-American community has been radicalized.

Offering federal data rather than mythic scapegoating of an easy political target, the Senate hearing focused on the fact that while Muslims make up 1 percent of the population, they are victims in 14 percent of religious discrimination cases. These range from homicides and mosque burnings to job, school and zoning law abuses, according to the Justice Department.

In running the hearing, Senator Richard Durbin tried to set the record straight about the patriotism of a vast majority of American-Muslim citizens and the continuing assaults on their civil rights. He warned against the “guilt by association” whipped up by Mr. King’s broadsides — that there are “too many mosques” in the nation, that most of them are extremist, and that American Muslim leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement against home-grown terrorism.

It was former President George W. Bush who first warned against turning on Muslim Americans after Sept. 11, 2001, stressing the fact that Islam is “a faith based upon love, not hate,” regardless of the religious veneer the fanatics of 9/11 tried to attach to their atrocities. Since then, American Muslims have served as the largest source of tips to authorities tracking terror suspects, according to a recent university study.

The Senate hearing was not designed as a full refutation of Representative King’s wild thesis, but it put a more human and factual face on a community that has been badly slurred. Mr. King is promising more committee haymakers. This is unfortunate. At least Mr. Durbin’s hearing made clear that the nation’s struggle against terrorism is best served by information, not dark generalizations.

Senior Research Director Chris Rodda chronicles the proceedings of a Conservative conference, the Rediscover God in America conference, in which its belief is that America should be governed by “Biblical law”:

While most eyes were on the Conservative Principles Political Action Committee conference in Iowa on Saturday, many of us who follow the religious right were more interested in another conference, also held in Iowa, on Thursday and Friday. This other conference was the Rediscover God in America conference, where all the same potential 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls that appeared at the Saturday’s Conservative Principles PAC conference told us what they really think — that America should be governed by biblical law.

One of the principle proponents of this view is David Barton, a much-loved “historian” featured by Glenn Beck and other right-wingers. In fact, potential Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said at this conference that Americans should be forced, at gunpoint, to learn from David Barton. This statement, according to Rodda, was edited out of the webcast:

But the most outrageous statement by far came from Mike Huckabee, who expressed his admiration for Barton by saying that he “almost wished” that “all Americans would be forced — forced at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message.”

Now, I wasn’t watching the Rediscover God in America conference live on Thursday when Huckabee said this. I had planned on watching and recording the whole conference when it was webcast again on Saturday, so that’s when I saw Huckabee’s speech. I was quite surprised a few days later to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.

What if this was a Muslim? Would the Right, especially “Police Blotter Bob,” be silent? While lawmakers are in search of the “threat” from Sharia, there are Americans who are actively seeking to supplant our secular, Constitutional system with Biblical law, and Mike Huckabee thinks we Americans should be forced to learn about this under threat of death. Wow.

But, they are not Muslim, so no worries…

In this photo taken on March 22, 2011, people pay there respects to Imam Souleyman Sissouma and his family at the Bilal Mosque during a funeral service in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Souleymane Sissouma was the third imam slain this month in a wave of anti-Muslim attacks so brutal his surviving family members were too afraid to attend his funeral. At least 10 mosques across Abidjan have been burned, and another was abandoned after attackers threw a grenade through a window during prayers. (AP)

What if the Muslims were attacking churches and killing innocent people, this would reach American channels quicker than we would realize. In the Ivory coast Muslims have been facing attacks for a while but recently these attacks are on the rise.

Muslims face growing attacks in Ivory Coast crisis

By MARCO CHOWN OVED | AP

As dozens of mourners gathered at a mosque, the twisted wreckage of a burned car lay outside — another sign of the growing campaign of violence against Muslims who widely support Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of November’s presidential election.

Ouattara, who is Muslim, is locked in a battle with the entrenched president Laurent Gbagbo for power, and their conflict is veering dangerously toward sectarian violence.

At least 10 mosques across Abidjan have been set ablaze, and another was abandoned after attackers threw a grenade through a window during prayers.

“Us Muslims, we’re not safe. We are the object of every kind of violence. We’re afraid. We don’t know how this is going to end,” said Imam Idriss Koudouss, president of the National Islamic Council. “And we aren’t even involved in politics.” Ouattara supporters also have been beaten to death with bricks, even doused with gasoline and burned alive. Cell phone videos of the horrors are traded on the street and broadcast on state television along with calls to arms.

“It’s the political manipulation of ethnicity,” said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

“The root of the conflict is competition for political power and the fault lines are drawn along religious, ethnic and national lines.”

November’s presidential election was supposed to reunite the country after a 2002-2003 civil war split it into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south. But when Gbagbo refused to recognize UN-certified results showing that he lost, Ivory Coast was plunged back into a cycle of violence.

The UN says up to 1 million people have fled the fighting and at least 462 people have been killed, though Ouattara’s camp puts the toll at 832. The vast majority of these deaths were Ouattara supporters who were abducted and killed by Gbagbo-allied security forces, human rights groups say.

“We’re afraid. Everyone’s leaving,” said Abdias Goita, a father of two who waited outside the Malian embassy for evacuation Friday. “My brother had his door broken down by pro-Gbagbo militias. He gave them all the money he had — about 200,000 francs ($430) — but they slit his throat anyway.” During the presidential campaign, little was made of the fact that Ouattara would be Ivory Coast’s first Muslim president, drawing much of his support from the north. In the aftermath though, pro-Gbagbo police and militias have been widely accused of targeting Muslims because they are perceived as being defacto Ouattara supporters.

Last week, riot police showed up at Imam Sissouma’s mosque, arresting him and his son and taking the offering box. A fellow imam immediately called the interior minister to plead for their release and thought everything would be fine when Sissouma’s wife called to say they were back at home, safe and sound.

But Sissouma’s wife called back a half hour later to say the riot police had executed him and five other people, including his elderly mother.

Interior Minister Emile Guirieoulou acknowledged receiving the call, but refused to confirm the arrests or the killings, because the investigation is ongoing.

“In Ivory Coast, there have never been religious problems, Christians and Muslims live side by side. This tragic incident is a pure result of the political crisis,” said Imam Moussa Drame, whose own mosque was attacked in December.

Some 38.6 percent of Ivorians are Muslim, and 32.8 percent are Christians, according to the CIA World Factbook. An inter-religious council, made up of Christian and Muslim leaders is one of the country’s most respected institutions.

But xenophobia has long been a problem in this country, which has attracted millions of immigrant laborers from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. They came to work on plantations, especially cocoa farms that produce the raw material that goes into much of the world’s chocolate.

Resolving who would even be allowed to vote in the presidential election took years.

Now armed youth who support Gbagbo are stopping and threatening people at makeshift roadblocks across Abidjan.

Those with northern or Muslim names are accused of being pro-Ouattara rebels, and are beaten or killed, activists say.

Human Rights Watch reported dozens of ethnically and religiously motivated killings earlier this month, often carried out by the police or by pro-Gbagbo youth with police consent. Ouattara supporters were beaten to death “with bricks, clubs, and sticks, or doused them with gas and burned them alive.” Cell phone videos of the incidents have been posted on YouTube and Facebook, often accompanied by dehumanizing and anti-Muslim comments.

Fueling the fire is a relentless campaign of what the UN has called “lies” and “propaganda” on Gbagbo-controlled state television. The Radio-Television Ivorienne (RTI) is referred to by some foreign journalists as TV Mille Collines, in reference to the radio station that encouraged the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

In one report aired last week, the anchorman smiled as he described a dozen alleged rebels killed by pro-Gbagbo soldiers in central Abidjan as “culled like little birds.” Graphic images of their bloodied bodies were interspersed with images of soldiers giving each other high five and cheering crowds.

“The future Gbagbo proposes for his country is war, anarchy and violence, with ethnic, religious and xenophobic dimensions,” wrote Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group, in an open letter this week.