In 2007, Pamela Geller–queen of the anti-Muslim internet world–published an email from Norway that sounds like it may have come from the anti-Muslim Oslo terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.  In it, the emailer ends his anti-Muslim rant with the ominous warning:

We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.

After the Oslo terrorist attack, Geller was worried that the link would be made between Breivik and herself, so she stealthily removed the offensive line from the 2007 post.  Too bad for her but Little Green Footballs called her out, reproducing an old cache of the webpage to prove it.

But the plot thickens.  As Glenn Greenwald writes:

In the comment section to the post at the time, she said she was purposely shielding the identity of the letter-writing — by publishing it anonymously – in order to prevent the writer from being investigated and prosecuted.

Pamela Geller’s exact quote, in response to a comment by a user by the name of turn, was: “yes turn, which is why I ran it anonymously.”

There exist two possibilities here:

1) The mysterious emailer to Geller’s website was indeed Anders Behring Breivik.  In that case, Breivik was not just citing Geller’s work, but Geller herself was reproducing Breivik’s writing on her website.  But more importantly, she personally knew Breivik’s identity and hid it in order that he wouldn’t be arrested and prosecuted.  Had she turned him in at that time the dastardly attack may have been prevented.

When Pamela Geller received an email from someone talking about how he is “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment”–and warns that “this is going to happen fast”–shouldn’t she have reported him to the authorities?  Imagine if an Islamic website got an email from a disgruntled Muslim saying the same…What do you think would have been the result?  What do you think Pamela Geller would be saying about that on her website?

2) The other possibility is that the emailer is not Anders Behring Breivik.  In that case, there’s another right-wing nut job in Norway who–like Breivik–is “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment.” Shouldn’t Pamela Geller reveal the identity of the mysterious emailer so that the authorities can investigate this possible future terrorist before he pulls off a terrorist attack like the one that just happened?

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to the United Nations, notes the possibility that emailer may be part of a network linked to Breivik:

Geller goes on to say that she is protecting the proto-terrorist’s identity so he won’t be arrested. We do not know how this wannabe terrorist in Norway relates to Breivik or his other “cells”. Geller may know but the police are not asking her.

The idea that Breivik might not have been acting alone should certainly be considered.  The mysterious emailer used the term “we,” indicating that there is a group of these lunatics.  And of course, there’s the question of the money:

Anders Behring Breivik, Mystery Man
Following the money trail

by Justin Raimondo, July 29, 2011

What do we really know about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway mass murdererwho killed in the name of his anti-Muslim ideology, nearly a week after his horrific rampage? We know what he did, and why he did it: he left behind not only a 1,500 page manifesto, in which he pours out his hatred of Muslims, but also a day-by-day diary that details his elaborate preparations, in which he claims his crime was nine years in the making.

That’s an awfully long time for a “lone wolf” to keep his plans to himself, yet the head of Norway’s intelligence agency was quick to state Breivik acted alone – this is spite of Breivik’s own contention, in his online “book,” that two other cells of his “Knights Templar Europe” exist. Furthermore, according to Breivik, the Knights were founded at a London meeting in 2002, at which his British “mentor” and representatives fromacross the continent were in attendance.

What we don’t know, however, is how he did it. Oh, he gives us a detailed account of his obsessive preparations, including how much protein he added to his weightlifting regimen. We know he set up a front company, Breivik Geofarm, supposedly devoted to the growing of tubers, which is how he managed to get the fertilizer that was a key component of his car bomb. What we don’t know, however, is where money came from.

Breivik hadn’t had much income recently, as detailed here – yet he seemed to have some assets. The exact source of these assets is unknown. According to him, he “earned his first million kroner as an entrepreneur at the age of 24.” Yet a number of news accounts flatly contradict this, notably the Sydney Morning Herald, which reports:

“Government records suggest that despite his management qualifications, his early attempts at business were a failure until he established Breivik Geofarm in eastern Norway for the cultivation of ‘’vegetables, melons and tubers.’ The business would have given Breivik access to nitrogen-based fertilizer – one of the main ingredients of a fertilizer bomb.”

Yet “Breivik Geofarm” was, according to Breivik, just a “front” company, a legal shell meant to shield his activities from prying eyes. We don’t know that he ever grew a single tuber. The Wall Street Journal tells us:

“Government records show Mr. Breivik registered a business, Geofarm, in May 2009, though its main business activity was at first listed as trading stocks and other investments. Tax records show he reported no income that year but listed 390,171 kroner (about $50,000) in unverified assets.”

If Breivik’s business ventures were failures prior to the Geofarm project, then where did these unverified assets come from? According to the Independent:

“After school, Breivik did a brief stint in the army, and then appears to have gone from one job to the next. He is believed to have started a computer company and earned enough money to live in a luxury apartment and sport a Breitling watch. However, other reports suggest that for years he worked in a lowly call center and lived almost anonymously.

“… Exactly what he lived on in the run- up to the massacre remains a mystery. But his bank details reveal that in 2007, a sum equivalent to €80,000 (£70,000) was added to his account, which would have enabled him to live without having to work.”

The mystery deepens….

Check out Breivik’s resume here, wherein he claims to have been the “managing director” of “E-Commerce Group AS,” which is described as a “part investment company – 50%, part sales/outsourcing company – 50%,” with a “total of 7 employees: 3 in Norway, 1 in Russia, 1 in Indonesia, 1 in Romania, 1 in the US.” Like Breivik Geofarm, he says:

“This was a front (milking cow) with the purpose of financing resistance/liberation related military operations. The company was successful although most of the funds were channeled through a Caribbean subsidiary (with base in Antigua, a location where European countries do not have access): Brentwood Solutions Limited with bank accounts in other Caribbean nations and Eastern Europe. E-Commerce Group was terminated in 2007 while most of the funds were channeled in an ‘unorthodox manner’ to Norway available to the coming intellectual and subsequent operations phase.”

There is no online record of Breivik’s “E-Commerce Group AS,” as far as I can see: an odd happenstance for an e-commerce outfit, wouldn’t you say? As for Brentwood Solutions Limited, there is no record of those guys, either: however, there is a Brentwood Solutions LLC in Naples, Florida. In any case, what I want to know is how did Breivik manage to get his hands on the equivalent of nearly $115,000 added to his account in 2007? If the money was legitimately earned, then why hide it in Caribbean and Eastern European banks and why go through “unorthodox” procedures in order to sneak it into Norway?

Okay, now let’s summarize what we know about Breivik’s money trail, based not on what he says in his diary but on what little investigative reporting has been done on the matter. It boils down to this: His tax records show a small income in 2007 – the year all that money miraculously appeared in his bank account – and a bit more in 2008. He had no reported income in 2006 and 2009. Prior to that, there is no evidence of his “first million” anywhere to be seen.

While his diary emphasizes that he saved every penny to finance his terrorist operation, there had to be some income coming in from somewhere. And then there’s that mysterious $115,000 – did he rob a bank? Or did he have a benefactor? Here is where Breivik’s money trail simply … trails off.

The idea that Breivik acted alone is absurd: he had to have help, just on logistical matters, never mind the financial side of such an operation. Furthermore, it’s hard – nay, impossible – to believe he kept the secret to himself for nine years. In order to escape detection, and have the means to carry off such a complicated operation, Breivik must have had some organized assistance – and not from amateurs, by any means. At this point, we don’t know from whom.

However, we can see in the reaction to his murderous assault a kind of support network that has sprung up, if not to defend him personally then to defend his motivations and the ethos from which his hatred welled up. As I have said in myother columns on this subject, the so-called counter-jihadist milieu – whose writings were copiously cited in the online manifesto – provided the theoretical basis for Breivik’s horrific actions. The “anti-jihadist” pro-Israel blogosphere played an important role in reinforcing and elaborating Breivik’s crazed worldview, and there is even some frightening evidence that they played more of an activist role than that.

In a post dated June 24, 2007, Pamela Geller, a leading light of the counter-jihadi movement, posted the following on her web site:

“I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.

“Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.

“Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.

“From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.

“We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.

“Before, I thought about emigrating to Britain, Israel, USA, South Africa, etc. for taxes and politics, but instead (although I believe we are the very last generation on earth before the return of God) I will stay and fight for the right to this country and indeed the entire peninsula, for the God-fearing people, just in case this isn’t the end of the world after all. Doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.

“It’s far from impossible to achieve, after all my people has done it every time before, in feats that match the ancient Greek, hebrew and british ‘legends’.

“Oslo and the southeast may fall easily, but there are other lines than ‘state’-borders drawn across this country since long before there was even a single muslim in the world, and we have held them this long, against everyone else too. We are entering a new golden age for my people, and those of a handful other countrys, but only through struggle.

“Never fear, Pamela. God is with you too in this coming time.”

In the comments, one of Geller’s readers warns that the author of the letter could be prosecuted by Norewegian authorities. Geller replies: “Yes … which is why I ran it anonymously.”

So here is some nut stockpiling “weapons, ammunition, and equipment,” because “this is going to happen fast” – with Geller’s enthusiastic encouragement. Indeed, she’s so concerned her correspondent might be arrested that she’s protecting his identity.

Who is Geller’s mystery correspondent – is it the same Norwegian nut-case who ruthlessly cut down dozens of children, or a different one waiting in the wings to do the same? Come on, Pamela – clear up the mystery. Or would you rather continue to shield your fellow “counter-jihadist”?

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the leaders and “scholars” who provided Breivik with the intellectual and political support he needed also provided more substantial support, such as ensuring the confidentiality of communications with the “Knights.” Geller has already gone on the public record as supporting the thugs of the English Defense League, who troll the streets of British cities looking for Muslim victims – why not Breivik?

Never has a “lone wolf” had this much company.

Normally, I’d be hesitant to jump to conclusions, but do you think Pamela Geller would be hesitant had the shoe been on the other (Muslim) foot?

Pamela Geller Edits Post to Conceal Violent Rhetoric in ‘Email from Norway’

by Charles Johnson

In June 2007, “counter-jihad” blogger Pamela Geller posted the following Email from Norway, from a reader who sounds a lot like the Oslo terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik.

This is what the post looks like today:

I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.

Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.

Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.

From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.

Before, I thought about emigrating to Britain, Israel, USA, South Africa, etc. for taxes and politics, but instead (although I believe we are the very last generation on earth before the return of God) I will stay and fight for the right to this country and indeed the entire peninsula, for the God-fearing people, just in case this isn’t the end of the world after all. Doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.

It’s far from impossible to achieve, after all my people has done it every time before, in feats that match the ancient greek, hebrew and british “legends”.

Oslo and the southeast may fall easily, but there are other lines than “state”-borders drawn across this country since long before there was even a single muslim in the world, and we have held them this long, against everyone else too. We are entering a new golden age for my people, and those of a handful other countrys, but only through struggle.

Never fear, Pamela. God is with you too in this coming time.

But Pamela Geller’s guilty conscience is showing again, because as a matter of fact, she edited her post very recently to take out the most incriminating line. The Internet Archive has a copy of the original:

As you can see, the line Geller edited out is:

We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.

Google’s cache also has a copy of Geller’s page, captured on June 30, 2011 — and the line about “stockpiling weapons” was still there at that time.

Obviously, Pamela Geller is going through her archives and scrubbing any violent rhetoric related to Norway, and equally obviously, she’s doing it to cover her tracks.

(h/t: po8crg.)

Even Jeffrey Goldberg is dishing it out to Geller’s followers.

Pamela Geller’s Followers Go Nuts (Or Are Nuts, or Something)

Jeffrey Goldberg

Please, nutty people, leave my e-mail inbox alone! I’ve been flooded with mail from defenders of Pamela Geller, the shrieking bigot who thinks all Muslims are evil, that Muslims live under her bed, that Muslims short-sheeted her bed at summer camp, and so on. Here is one such letter:

Pamela Geller is right, you want to see America and Israel destroyed. Why do you love Muslims so much? Are you a secret Muslim?

You got me! I am a secret Muslim. Well, not a secret one anymore. I’m actually known in Occupied Palestine as Abu Tsuris. I was a summer intern with Hamas (in the press office) and I’m hoping to get my M.A. in Shari’a from al-Azhar University, where I also play for the lacrosse team.

It is amazing to me how Geller’s followers think of Islam the way they believe Islam thinks of Christianity and Judaism. For the record: I’m a proud Jew, not observant enough, but trying, and I also admire many aspects of Islam. I don’t believe this to be a contradiction. I love Islamic art and architecture and poetry, and I appreciate the manner in which Islam provides meaning and solace to its followers. I appreciate Islam’s firm stand against idolatry, and I also find comfort in Islam’s stunning diversity. Included in this diversity, of course, are streams of Islam I find disagreeable, and one or two I find repugnant. But Islam, like Judaism, and like Christianity, is a universe. It is not a monolith, as Pamela Geller and her ilk would have you believe. Some of the best people I know are Muslim, and some of the worst are Muslim. The same holds true for Judaism. Pamela Geller is a terrible bigot because she believes that Islam is an intrinsically evil system, and that everyone who adheres to this system is intrinsically evil..

FBI ‘Islam 101′ Guide Depicted Muslims as 7th-Century Simpletons

As recently as January 2009, the FBI thought its agents ought to know the following crucial information about Muslims:

• They engage in a “circumcision ritual”
• More than 9,000 of them are in the U.S. military
• Their religion “transforms [a] country’s culture into 7th-century Arabian ways.”

And this was what the FBI considered “recommended reading” about Islam:

• A much-criticized tome, The Arab Mind, that one reviewer called “a collection of outrageously broad — and often suspect — generalizations“
• A book by one of Norwegian terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s favorite anti-Muslim authors.

All this is revealed in a PowerPoint presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit(.pdf), which trains new Bureau recruits. Among the 62 slides in the presentation, designed to teach techniques for “successful interviews/interrogations with individuals from the M.E. [Middle East],” is an instruction that the “Arabic mind” is “swayed more by words than ideas and more by ideas than facts.”

The briefing presents much information that has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with constitutionally-protected religious practice and social behavior, such as estimating the number of mosques in America and listing the states with the largest Muslim populations.

Other slides paint Islam in a less malicious light, and one urges “respectful liaison” as a “proactive approach” to engaging Muslims. But even those exhibit what one American Muslim civil rights leader calls “the understanding of a third grader, and even then, a badly misinformed third grader.”

One slide asks, “Is Iran an Arab country?” (It’s not.) Another is just a picture of worry beads.

“Based on this presentation, it is easy to see why so many in law enforcement and the FBI view American Muslims with ignorance and suspicion,” says Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal aid group. “The presentation appears to treat all Muslims with one broad brush and makes no distinction between lawful religious practice and beliefs and unlawful activities.”

A grainy copy of the PowerPoint was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California chapter and the Asian Law Caucus, a San Francisco-based civil rights group, and provided to Danger Room. The two groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year inquiring about government surveillance of American Muslim communities.

“In order for FBI training to be effective it has to present useful, factual and unbiased information. This material fails on all three criteria,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who now works for the ACLU. “Factually flawed and biased law enforcement training programs only expand the risk that innocent Muslim and Arab Americans will be unfairly targeted for investigation and prosecution, and stigmatized in their communities.” [Full disclosure: My fiancee works for the ACLU.]

In response to queries from Danger Room, the FBI issued the following statement about the PowerPoint: “The FBI new agent population at Quantico is exposed to a diverse curriculum in many specific areas, including Islam and Muslim culture. The presentation in question was a rudimentary version used for a limited time that has since been replaced. It was a small part of a larger segment of training that also included material produced by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point.”

It is unclear when the FBI stopped using the PowerPoint.

Among the most provocative aspects of the presentation is its recommended reading list. One book offered is The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, by Robert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ringleaders of the protest against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the co-founder of Stop the Islamicization of America, which “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda,” in the view of the Anti-Defamation League. A manifesto written by the Norwegian terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik cited Spencer 64 times.

Another book cited is The Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai. The volume was briefly infamous in 2004, after Seymour Hersh reported its influence among certain Iraq war hawks in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. According to Hersh, the takeaway of Patai’s book is that “Arabs only understand force” and are susceptible to “shame and humiliation.”

“It’s like asking law enforcement to learn ‘the facts’ about the African American experience by reading a book by the grand wizard of the KKK,” says Khera. “It is deplorable and offensive that the nation’s top law enforcement agency would promote such hateful so-called ‘experts’ on Islam.”

An FBI spokesman said Spencer’s book is no longer on the reading list but was not sure about the others. “We encourage our agents to seek out a variety of viewpoints. That does not mean we endorse or adopt the view of any particular author,” the bureau’s statement continues. “Broad knowledge is essential for us to better understand and respond to the threats we face. Knowledge also helps us defeat ignorance and strengthen relationships with the diverse communities that we serve.”

When dealing with Muslims and counterterrorism, the FBI’s record is mixed. It’s sent informants into mosques and used operatives to coax suspected extremists into active terror plots, arresting them before anyone was hurt. But its agents also stood up against torture at Guantanamo Bay and in the CIA’s undisclosed prisons. FBI Director Robert Mueller testified in 2008 that many of its terrorism cases “are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States.”

In recent years, law enforcement agencies around the country have proven receptive to anti-Muslim crusaders. The Washington Monthly recently reported on the “growing profession” of terrorism consultants who get paid to make “sweeping generalizations about Muslims” to rapt audiences of cops. Adam Serwer at the American Prospect reports that another Breivik favorite, Walid Shoebat, also gets government cash to tell police things like “Islam is the devil.”

At a Capitol Hill event on Monday, a Florida-based researcher named Peter Leitner claimed that up to 6,000 Muslims in America are a “fifth column.” According to Leitner’s official biography, he founded a group called the Higgins Counterterrorism Research Center; Higgins claims to have provided counterterrorism instruction to “FBI Counterterrorism Special Agents,” various police departments countrywide and even Blackwater.

“These characterizations of Islam and of Arab and Muslim people are not just disheartening — they are frightening,” says Veena Dubal, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. “Degrading and inaccurate characterizations of Islam and of the ‘Arab mind’ don’t help individual agents fight terrorism. Rather, they imbue law enforcement with an extremely biased view of a diverse community.”

Photo: newmanchu/Flickr

17,000 “Islamic terrorist” attacks exist in fevered Islamophobic brains

by Sheila Musaji

Robert Spencer objects to an MSNBC News Report by Michael Isikoff which discussed an increase in right-wing attacks over the past several years.  Spencer claims In this one, Isikoff claims that there has been a “surge” of “right wing attacks” in the last couple of years—since Obama has been president (racism implication noted). This is sheer Leftist fantasy; meanwhile, Isikoff and NBC completely ignore the very real and readily documented surge in jihad plots in the U.S. over the last two years.

Of course, any recognition that we face a serious problem from EXTREMISTS no matter what their ideological or religious underpinnings is an argument that Spencer must attempt to refute because it gets in the way of his paranoid delusion that all or most terrorists are Muslims.

In a number of recent articles we can clearly see Spencer (and the rest of his Islamophobic cohorts who endlessly repeat each others anti-Muslim memes) newest meme.  Spencer makes the claim (as have others) that there have been 17,000+ Islamic jihad terror attacks since 9/11. (He provides a link to a http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/).  Spencer then says:  Two non-Muslim terrorists: Tim McVeigh and, sixteen years later, Anders Breivik. And Scott Shane suggests that the “focus of counterterrorism efforts” should be shifted from Islamic jihadists to “the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists.”

Spencer also posted what he calls a “demonization roundup” in which he once again brings up this fake number of 17,000 Muslim terrorist attacks, but this time has upped his non-Muslim number to 4 – That’s four white male terrorists, versus 17,000+ jihad terror attacks since 9/11 committed by Muslim males (many of whom were white, by the way) and a handful of females. To the LA Times, the existence of those four is sufficient to refute the commonsensical call for the TSA to address the actual source of its troubles and reason for its existence.

Lies upon lies.  No matter how you define terrorism – Breivik and McVeigh are certainly not the only non-Muslim terrorists.  If this is the extent of Spencer’s research abilities, then any claims he makes to being a serious scholar of anything are pretty much undermined.
Spencer could go to legitimate sources to obtain factual information from which to make an informed decision about extremist and terrorist threats.

As Stephen Walt notes … according to the EU’s 2010 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, the total number of terrorist incidents in Europe declined in 2009. Even more important, the overwhelming majority of these incidents had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.  The report is produced by Europol, which is the criminal intelligence agency of the European Union. In 2009, there were fewer than 300 terrorist incidents in Europe, a 33 percent decline from the previous year. The vast majority of these incidents (237 out of 294) were conducted by indigenous European separatist groups, with another forty or so attributed to leftists and/or anarchists. According to the report, a grand total of one (1) attack was conducted by Islamists. Put differently, Islamist groups were responsible for a whopping 0.34 percent of all terrorist incidents in Europe in 2009. In addition, the report notes, “the number of arrests relating to Islamist terrorism (110) decreased by 41 percent compared to 2008, which continues the trend of a steady decrease since 2006.”

Spencer could go to http://www.fbi.gov/ which is the site of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you can access a great deal of information about terrorism in the U.S.  You can check out the FBI’s most wanted domestic terrorists.  There are 7 listed right now, and none seem to be Muslims.  You can check out their Domestic Terrorism In the Post-9/11 Era report.

Spencer could check out numerous existing reports and surveys about terrorism, radicalization, and strategies to counter these that have been produced by respected governmental and academic organizations that clearly paint a very different picture of the facts.

Spencer could check out the ADL or SPLC data bases on terrorism and extremism.

Spencer could check out our TAM collection of information on the topic titled Claim that all terrorists are Muslims ignores history.

Spencer could – but facts get in the way of propaganda.  Robert Spencer cites a rabidly anti-Muslim site called the Religion of Peace for his number of 17,000 terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11.  That would be somewhat like citing a KKK or White Supremacist site for their information about Jews or African-Americans.  This site lists acts commited around the world – some in wars, some having nothing to do with Islam, but to do with nationalist or political struggles, some in civil wars.  No links are given.  No sources for any of this just a list of supposed attacks carried out by “Islamic terrorists”.  All of my suggestions for Spencer to check out contain lots of links and sources.

Daily Show with Jon Stewart: In the Name of the Fodder

The Fox rapid-response team makes a plea to distinguish violence in the name of a religion from the practitioners and tenets of that religion as long as it’s Christianity.

Here’s an eye-opening article from the indefatigable Glenn Greenwald, which underscores why the government/media establishment absolutely cannot tolerate honest answers to the question: “why do they hate us?”

The transformation of Anwar al-Awlaki

The Washington Post today has the latest leak-based boasting about how the U.S. is on the verge of “defeating” Al Qaeda, yet — lest you think this can allow a reduction of the National Security State and posture of Endless War on which it feeds — the article warns that “al­-Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen is now seen as a greater counterterrorism challenge than the organization’s traditional base” and that this new threat, as Sen. Saxby Chambliss puts it, “is nowhere near defeat.”  Predictably, the Post‘s warnings about the danger from Yemen feature the U.S. Government’s due-process-free attempts to kill U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, widely believed to be in Yemen and now routinely (and absurdly) depicted as The New Osama bin Laden.

The Post says Awlaki is “known for his fiery sermons” (undoubtedly the prime — and blatantly unconstitutional — motive for his being targeted for killing).  But what is so bizarre about Awlaki’s now being cast in this role is that, for years, he was deemed by the very same U.S. Government to be the face of moderate Islam.  Indeed, shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon invited Awlaki to a “luncheon [] meant to ease tensions with Muslim-Americans.” But even more striking was something I accidentally found today while searching for something else.  In November, 2001, the very same Washington Post hosted one of those benign, non-controversial online chats about religion that it likes to organize; this one was intended to discuss “the meaning of Ramadan”. It was hosted by none other than . . . “Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki.”

More extraordinary than the fact that the Post hosted The New Osama bin Laden in such a banal role a mere ten years ago was what Imam Awlaki said during the Q-and-A exchange with readers.  He repudiated the 9/11 attackers.  He denounced the Taliban for putting women in burqas, explaining that the practice has no precedent in Islam and that “education is mandatory on every Muslim male and female.”  He chatted about the “inter-faith services held in our mosque and around the greater DC area and in all over the country” and proclaimed: “We definitely need more mutual understanding.” While explaining his opposition to the war in Afghanistan, he proudly invoked what he thought (mistakenly, as it turns out) was his right of free speech as an American:  “Even though this is a dissenting view nowadays[,] as an American I do have the right to have a contrary opinion.”  And he announced that “the greatest sin in Islam after associating other gods besides Allah is killing an innocent soul.”

Does that sound like the New Osama bin Laden to you?  One could call him the opposite of bin Laden.  And yet, a mere nine years later, there was Awlaki, in an Al Jazeera interview, pronouncing his opinion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up a civilian jet over Detroit was justified (while saying “it would have been better if the plane was a military one or if it was a US military target”), and urging “revenge for all Muslims across the globe” against the U.S.  What changed over the last decade that caused such a profound transformation in Awlaki? Does that question even need to be asked?  Awlaki unwittingly provided the answer ten years ago when explaining his opposition to the war in Afghanistan in his 2001 Post chat:

Also our government could have dealt with the terrorist attacks as a crime against America rather than a war against America. So the guilty would be tried and only them would be punished rather thanbombing an already destroyed country. I do not restrict myself to US media. I check out Aljazeerah and European media such as the BBC. I am seeing something that you are not seeing because of the one-sidedness of the US media. I see the carnage of Afghanistan. I see the innocent civilian deaths. That is why my opinion is different.

Keep in mind that I have no sympathy for whoever committed the crimes of Sep 11th. But that doesn’t mean that I would approve the killing of my Muslim brothers and sisters in Afghanistan.

And in his Al Jazeera interview nine years later, he explained why he now endorses violence against Americans, especially American military targets:

I support what Umar Farouk has done after I have been seeing my brothers being killed in Palestine for more than 60 years, and others being killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And in my tribe too, US missiles have killed 17 women and 23 children, so do not ask me if al-Qaeda has killed or blown up a US civil jet after all this. The 300 Americans are nothing comparing to the thousands of Muslims who have been killed.

A full decade of literally constant (and still-escalating) American killing of civilians in multiple Muslim countries has radically transformed Awlaki — and countless other Muslims — from a voice of pro-American moderation into supporters of violence against the U.S. and, in Awlaki’s case, the prime pretext for the continuation of the War on Terror.  As this blogger put it in response to my noting the 2001 Awlaki chat: ”it’s interesting to think about how many other people followed that same path, that we don’t know about it.”  In other words, the very U.S. policies justified in name of combating Terrorism have done more to spawn — and continue to spawn — anti-American Terrorism than anything bin Laden could have ever conceived.  The transformation of Awlaki, and many others like him, provides vivid insight into how that occurs.

* * * * *
It’s equally instructive to note that if the Post were to give Awlaki a venue to express his opinions now — or if the Pentagon were to invite him to a luncheon — those institutions would likely be guilty of the felony of providing material support to Terrorism as applied by the Obama DOJ and upheld by the Supreme Court.

Alan Colmes Has Heated Exchange With Director Of ‘Jihad Watch’ Blog Cited By Norway Terrorist

by Jon Bershad

When a tragedy like the one in Norway occurs, it’s human nature to try and explain the unexplainable. This almost always turns into a search for someone to blame. This frequently leads to attempts to guess what media figures the killers in question may have followed, putting those figures on the defensive. That defense is much harder when the terrorist himself cites your work explicitly. Such is the position that Robert Spencer, director of the blog Jihad Watch, now finds himself. Today, he appeared on Alan Colmes’ radio show to defend his site and his work.

Unsurprisingly, they found very little common ground.

This weekend, it was discovered that Spencer’s anti-Jihad (some, not Spencer, would say “anti-Muslim”) writing was cited 64 times in the manifesto of the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. Because of this, he quickly received a large amount of unwanted attention, being mentioned on NBC Nightly News and featured heavily in a New York Times article entitled “Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.” Spencer has decried this “blame game” as a “leftist fantasy.”

In this writer’s opinion, Breivik was crazy and you can’t blame any one person for crazy being, well, crazy. I may find much of Spencer’s writings reprehensible and he may have contributed to an anti-Muslim culture that Breivik dwelled in, but he’s no more guilty for this crime than a heavy metal band is for Columbine.

That being said, Colmes got some good points in when he pointed out the difference between the way people like Spencer categorize Breivik to the way they do Islamic terrorists. Why are the latter endemic of a massive Islamic cultural problem whereas Spencer is so quick to describe Breivik as alone gunman. Hypocrisy is just as dangerous as irrational blaming.

It’s a fascinating (and heated) conversation. Watch the clip from Fox News below:

Robert Spencer

By now you probably have read all the details concerning the terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway. This attack has shined a spotlight on the demonization of Muslims at the hands of anti-Muslim bloggers we have profiled on this site. For example, the NY Times published a devastating expose of the shooter’s ideological ties to Robert Spencer. The evidence is so damning that Spencer is in a panicked state of damage control. So his friends at Frontpage Magazine have jumped to defend his Islamophobic enterprise, an apologia worthy of a detailed response from Loonwatch.

The article begins with some whining about how poor Spencer is the victim of the lamestream media:

No tragedy goes long without exploitation, and the atrocities in Norway are no exception to that rule.

Spencer spends his days exploiting bad news about Muslims, but when the news reflects poorly on him and he is criticized, it suddenly becomes exploitation?

Is silencing researchers who have put years of effort into exposing networks of radicals the right response to a terrorist attack? No reasonable person would think so. But that is exactly what media outlets like the New York Times and the Atlantic are trying to do.

Who is silencing Robert Spencer? Has his website been shut down? Is he prevented from publishing more books? Rest assured that Spencer’s first amendment rights are intact. The problem here is that Frontpage is cynically playing victim; they cannot distinguish between being fairly criticized and actually being denied rights.

Now let’s turn to the voluminous citations from Spencer found in the Shooter’s manifesto:

The “64 times” cited by the Times and its imitators reflects lazy research since the majority of those quotes actually come from a single document, where Spencer is quoted side by side with Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice.

See, Spencer was only cited 64 times making the argument (unlike Blair and Rice) that terrorism is an essential aspect of mainstream Islam.

Quite often, Robert Spencer is quoted providing historical background on Islam and quotes from the Koran and the Hadith. So, it’s actually Fjordman quoting Spencer quoting the Koran. If the media insists that Fjordman is an extremist and Spencer is an extremist — then isn’t the Koran also extremist? And if the Koran isn’t extremist, then how could quoting it be extremist?

Actually, it’s Fjordman quoting Spencer quoting the Quran (out of context) and explaining that good Muslims are terrorist killers. Why shouldn’t he defend Western civilization from Muslims?

The New York Times would have you believe that secondhand quotes like these from Spencer turned Breivik into a raging madman… The complete absence of quotes in which Robert Spencer calls for anyone to commit acts of terrorism reveals just how empty the media’s case against him is.

See, Spencer is just arguing that good Muslims are terrorists, that Islam is pure evil, and that Muslim immigration, aided by liberals, is destroying Western civilization. He supposedly never* actually calls for outright violence, but he has no problem with people who post violent comments on his website.

If we follow Spencer’s logic, it can be easy to conclude that violence is needed to stem the Hottentot Mongol tide of immigration. This argument ignores the fact that demonization leads to violence:

“When you push the demonization of populations, you often end up with violence,” said Heidi Beirich, research director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But the shooter didn’t kill Muslims, so Islamophobia cannot be involved, right?

And even this is irrelevant because Breivik did not carry out violence against Muslims… If Breivik was motivated by Islamophobia, then why did he not attempt to kill Muslims? Why did he not open fire inside a mosque?

This point is refuted by Alex Pareene at Salon:

Opposition to Islam was the killer’s stated motivation. He targeted other white Scandinavians because he considered them race traitors. He wrote all of this down, too, so we don’t even have to make guesses about it! He blamed liberals for enabling jihad by supporting “multiculturalism.”

Just because he didn’t directly attack Muslims does not mean Islamophobia had nothing to do with this attack. In fact, it had everything to do with the attack. But there is one last straw for Spencerites to grasp at:

Not only did Breivik not target Muslims, but he considered collaborating with Muslim terrorists… “An alliance with the Jihadists might prove beneficial to both parties,” Breivik wrote. “We both share one common goal.”

Interesting, Breivik and the Islamophobic ideology he shares with Spencer do indeed share one common goal with jihadists. They both want a homogenous society that doesn’t tolerate the Other. They both want to incite religious/nationalist war. They both want to increase Islamophobia; Spencer because it is his source of income, and jihadists because it is good recruiting propaganda. So, it is not a surprise to us that extremists share common goals but for vastly different reasons. We’ve known for some time that Muslim and anti-Muslim extremists reinforce one another.

In sum, Spencer and Frontpage want free reign to demonize Muslims and peddle baseless sharia conspiracy theories, but they cry foul when they get criticized in public. They suddenly demand the nuance that they have so far happily denied to Muslims as a whole.

*Admin Note: Spencer has subtly and overtly endorsed violence or a violent posture against Muslim citizens and their “liberal enablers” in the West. Just in January, in a piece titled “Digging Graves for the Next World War,” Roland Shirk a contributor at JW wrote,

The strings that knit together peaceful coexistence among communities are straining under the pressure of millions of resident aliens who should never have been admitted, who can only be tolerated when they are as sure as we that compared to us they are helpless. Islam is a religion of fear and force, and its adherents can only be at your feet or at your throat. We had better decide which posture we prefer. The time is short.

Those words are essentially the theme of Breivik’s manifesto, and Spencer approved it. This is on top of the knowledge that Spencer joined a Facebook group that sought as its objective a Reconquista of Anatolia, a holocaust of Turks and a forced conversion of any and all remaining Muslims. Spencer never denied joining the group, only claiming that he was the victim of a “trick.”

Anders Breivik

In response to Norway attacks, right-wing bloggers suddenly demand nuance

American anti-Islam bloggers aren’t to blame for the Norway Massacre. But their response to the attacks is nonetheless revealing, in that they are now demanding the kind of nuanced analysis of the Norway shootings that they’ve always failed to offer when implicating jihadism or all Muslims for terror attacks.

As the news of terrorist attacks in Oslo broke on Friday, the conservative media were quick to place the blame on al Qaeda even though the details weren’t fully known. Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin wrote that the attacks were “a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.”

At first, it wasn’t unreasonable to reach that conclusion. Given the way the attacks unfolded — multiple targets being hit within a short time period — it was reasonable to assume that Islamic extremists were responsible, rather than anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik.

When the truth became known, Rubin, like many others on the right, tried to downplay the right-wing anti-Muslim ideology driving the alleged shooter. She was suddenly far more generic in how she describedBreivik’s motive, referring to it as “undiluted evil.”

What’s notable about the response by conservatives to the attack is that their primary worry was that the anti-Islam cause might be tarnished. Bruce Bawer, writing in the Wall Street Journal, was beside himself that “this murderous madman has become the poster boy for the criticism of Islam.” He then casts Breivik’s concerns, if not his actions, as defensible, describing “the way he moves from a legitimate concern about genuine problems to an unspeakably evil `solution.’”

It would be hard to imagine a conservative showing such empathy for Hamas, concluding that while terrorism is evil, they are nevertheless acting out of legitimate concerns about Palestinian suffering. What’s pathetic is not so much their reasoning, but the knowledge that their arguments would be the same in substance, if more enthusiastic, had Muslim extremists been responsible.

The most telling reaction was from the anti-Muslim bloggers Breivik cited by name in his manifesto.

Pamela Geller, who along with Professional Islamophobe Robert Spencer has been active in opposing the construction of mosques in the U.S., wrote: “This is just a sinister attempt to tar all anti-jihadists with responsibility for this man’s heinous actions.” Spencer, for his part,wrote: “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.”

Most of Geller and Spencer’s blogging consists of attempts to tar all Muslims with the responsibility for terrorism. At CPAC last year, Geller and Spencer drew a large crowd for their documentary referring to the proposed community center near Ground Zero as “the second wave of the 9/11 attacks.” Yet they’re now pleading for the world not to do what they’ve spent their careers doing — assigning collective blame for an act of terror through guilt-by-association. What’s clear is that they understand that the principle of collective responsibility is a monstrous wrong in the abstract, or at least when it’s applied to them. They are now begging for the kind of tolerance and understanding they cheerfully refuse to grant to American Muslims.

These bloggers are not directly responsible for the actions of Anders Behring Breivik. But make no mistake: Their school of analysis, which puts the blame on all Muslims for acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists, has been fully discredited — by their own reaction to the Oslo attacks. While it’s obvious that few if any of them will take this lesson to heart, the rest of us should — terrorist acts are committed by individuals, and it is those individuals who should be held responsible.

Robert Spencer and his biggest fan: Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik is by all accounts an intelligent individual, wealthy and from a privileged background. He believes Europe is under assault, that it is being colonized by the hordes of the evil “green” menace known as ‘Islam’ and that Europe’s leaders are responsible for the onslaught. He believes this despite the fact that there are no Muslim Armies occupying ANY European nation, there are no Muslim Armies that have set up bases in ANY European nation.

How did he come to the irrational conclusion that his very way of life was under imminent threat?

His inspiration can be gleaned from the words of his manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. In his own words he was inspired by Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, Ibn Warraq, Serge Trifkovic, the so-called “Vienna School” and a plethora of other Islamophobes and anti-Muslims.

LoonWatch since its inception has been warning about the ever increasing radicalization of the anti-Muslim Movement, its trans-atlantic nature, as well as the eventuality of violence. We documented numerous instances of “inciting violence,” both in the speech of the leading Islamophobes as well as in the conduct and speech of their followers.

One only needs to look at our piece on Pamela Geller, “The Looniest Blogger Ever,” in which Geller engages in all of the well worn conspiracies that we are used to and which Breivik shared, as well as her pronouncements of genocide against Muslims and the “political elites” who enable them.

Robert Spencer’s influence on Breivik’s ideas about Islam, Muslims and the West seems to be greater than anyone else. He cites Spencer numerous times (64) in his manifesto, always glowingly, for instance he writes on p. 754,

About Islam I recommend essentially everything written by Robert Spencer. Bat Ye’or’s books are groundbreaking and important, though admittedly not always easy to read. The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew Bostom should be considered required reading for all those interested in Islam. It is the best and most complete book available on the subject in English, and possibly in any language. Ibn Warraq’s books are excellent, starting with his Defending the West . Understanding Muhammad by the Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina is also worth reading, as is Defeating Jihad by Serge Trifkovic.

Like Spencer, Breivik believes in waging a Crusade against Muslims. Spencer declared in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), “God Wills it!,” that was the battle cry of the Crusaders. There is more in Danios’ series rebutting The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

We have been trying to prevent the grisly terrorist attacks that rocked Norway by making people aware of the serious threat from radicals who in the guise of freedom and under the mantle of liberty wish to impose their truly destructive, exclusivist ideology upon the masses.

However, our protestations were generally unheeded. It resulted in the Beslan of Norway and now we have a manifesto from a killer inspired by the extremists who we have been exposing for years. Anders Behring Breivik is the polo sweater wearing anti-Muslim Right-wing nationalist Crusader icon of Islamophobes worldwide, he is their Che Guevara and he will inspire more copycats in his wake.

Spencer is working hard to disassociate himself from one of his fans

The anti-Muslim loons of the world are in a major bind right now. Their intolerant anti-Muslim attitude and constant fear-mongering is responsible for the horrible terrorist attack that occurred in Norway at the hands of self-professed Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller supporter Anders Behring Breivik. Recent reports suggest that Breivik was inspired by the writings of anti-Muslim bigots like Spencer and Geller, as well as others in the anti-Muslim circle such as Bat Ye’or and Fjordman.

Spencer himself has come out and attempted to dismiss the connection between Breivik’s violence and his own anti-Muslim bigotry, saying “no one has explained or can explain how this guy’s supposed anti-jihad views have anything to do with his murdering children.” A fair question in light of the tragic violence that Breivik was responsible for.  Did the anti-Muslim hatred inspire the violence in Oslo?

Spencer lays out his version of the logic this way, saying:

1. Freedom fighters preach free speech, freedom of conscience and equality of rights for all people, against Sharia and Islamic supremacism that denies those rights, advocating only legal means of protest and dissent.

2. Some nutcase who allegedly expressed allegiance with the freedom fighters kills people, none of whom are preaching Sharia or Islamic supremacism.

3. Media assumes that #1 caused #2 and blames freedom fighters.

The obvious problem with Spencer’s logic is that it does not include his and other anti-Muslim loons’ consistent denunciations of “leftists” as jihad-enablers. This is a key tenant of the so-called anti-jihadist movement. They hate the left, or more specifically, anyone who treats Muslims with a smidgen of fairness and tolerance. Spencer and Geller consistently and constantly portray the left as those who would sell out the West to the scary Mooslems. Spencer’s hate site Jihad Watch is filled with posts denouncing the “Leftist/Jihadist alliance,” warning his readers of how the left will happily allow the Mooslem hordes to overthrow the West and “dhimmify” its population.

Breivik adopted this view of the left.  Paul Woodward notes that Breivik argued “that cultural conservatives should not identify their main opponents as Jihadists, but instead should focus their attention on those he regards as the ‘facilitators’ of Jihadists, namely, the proponents of multiculturalism.” It was these liberals and “multi-culturalists” that were the target of his rampage.

Therefore, a more logical set-up would be as follows:

1. Anti-Muslim bigots vilify Muslims as a threat to Western culture and civilization, and argue that the left is most responsible for allowing Muslims to undermine Western civilization.  In fact, the left is more the enemy than the anti-jihadists themselves!

2. A right-wing self-proclaimed anti-jihadist chooses the capital of a famously liberal, leftist, and socialist country as the target for his attack.

3. Media is perfectly justified in establishing a link between #1 and #2.

When you preach bigotry and fear on a daily basis, don’t be surprised when one of your followers takes the next logical step.  But Robert Spencer has a reason to feign surprise and indignation over what his hatred has incited, as the link between his hate-writing and this act of terrorism becomes clear:  Richard Silverstein notes that the right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik cited Robert Spencer 46 times in his manifesto.  He was clearly quite the fan.  This certainly seems to be right-wing anti-Muslim terrorism inspired by the king of Islamophobia himself, Robert Spencer.

Oslo Terrorism Bombing

Norway attacks suspect admits responsibility

(AlJazeeraEnglish)

The man suspected of a gun and bomb attack in Norway has called his deeds atrocious yet necessary, his defence lawyer said.

“He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary,” defence lawyer Geir Lippestad told TV2 news on Saturday.

Lippestad said his client had said he was willing to explain himself in a court hearing on Monday. The court will decide at the hearing whether to keep the suspect in detention pending trial.

Earlier on Saturday, officials in Norway had charged a 32-year-old Norwegian man with killing at least 92 people in a gun and bomb attack described as the worst act of violence in the country since World War II.

Police confirmed to Al Jazeera on Saturday that the suspect had been named as Anders Behring Breivik.

Breivik, who confessed to firing weapons during questioning on Saturday, belonged to right-wing political groups. But officials said they are not jumping to conclusions about his motives.

Reports suggest he belonged to an anti-immigration party, wrote blogs attacking multi-culturalism and was a member of a neo-Nazi online forum.

But Norwegian authorities said Breivik, detained by police after 85 people were gunned down at a youth camp and another 7 killed in an Oslo bomb attack on Friday, was previously unknown to them and his internet activity traced so far included no calls to violence.

‘Beyond comprehension’

Breivik bought six tonnes of fertiliser before the massacre, a supplier said on Saturday, as police investigated witness accounts of a second shooter in the attack on Utoya.

If convicted on terrorism charges, Breivik would face a maximum of 21 years in jail, police said

If convicted on terrorism charges, he would face a maximum of 21 years in jail, police have said.

Norway’s royal family and prime minister led the nation in mourning, visiting grieving relatives of the scores of youth gunned down at an island retreat, as the shell-shocked Nordic nation was gripped by reports that the gunman may not have acted alone.

The shooting spree began just hours after a massive explosion that ripped through an Oslo high-rise building housing the prime minister’s office.

“This is beyond comprehension. It’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Saturday.

Though the prime minister cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the gunman’s motives, both attacks were in areas connected to the left-leaning Labour Party, which leads a coalition government.

The youth camp, about 35km northwest of Oslo, is organised by the party’s youth wing, and the prime minister had been scheduled to speak there on Saturday.

‘Christian fundamentalist’ views

The blond-haired Behring Breivik described himself on his Facebook page as “conservative”, “Christian”, and interested in hunting and computer games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, reports say.

On his Twitter account, he posted only one message, dated July 17, in English based on a quote from British philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to a force of 100,000 who have only interests”.

The suspect was reportedly also a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi internet forum, a group monitoring far-right activity said on Saturday.

Nordisk, a 22,000-member web forum founded in 2007, describes itself as a portal on the theme of “the Nordic identity, culture and traditions.”

In comments from 2009-2010 to other people’s articles on another website, Document, which calls itself critical of Islam, Breivik criticised European policies of trying to accommodate the cultures of different ethnic groups.

“When did multi-culturalism cease to be an ideology designed to deconstruct European culture, traditions, identity and nation-states?” said one his entries, posted on February 2, 2010.

Breivik wrote he was a backer of the “Vienna School of Thought”, which was against multi-culturalism and the spread of Islam.

He also wrote he admired Geert Wilders, the populist anti-Islam Dutch politician, for following that school. Wilders said in a statement on Saturday: “I despise everything he stands for and everything he did”.

Nina Hjerpset-Ostlie, a contributing journalist to the right-wing website, said she had met Breivik at a meeting in late 2009.

“The only thing we noticed about him is that he seemed like anyone else and that he had some very high-flying, unrealistic, ideas about marketing of our website,” she said.

Police searched an apartment in an Oslo suburb on Friday, which neighbours said belonged to Breivik’s mother.

“It is the mother who lives there. She is a very polite lady, pleasant and very friendly,” said Hemet Noaman, 27, an accounting consultant who lives in the same building in a wealthy part of town. “He often came to visit his mother but did not live here.”

Oslo Deputy Police Chief Roger Andresen would not speculate on the motives for what was believed to be the deadliest attack by a lone gunman anywhere in modern times.

“He has never been under surveillance and he has never been arrested,” Andresen told a news conference on Saturday.

Populist party member

Breivik, who attended a middle class high school called Handelsgym in central Oslo, had also been a member of the Progress Party, the second-largest in parliament, the party’s head of communications Fredrik Farber said.

He was a member from 2004 to 2006 and in its youth party from 1997 to 2007.

The Progress Party – conservative but within the political mainstream – wants far tighter restrictions on immigration, whereas the centre-left government backs multi-culturalism. The party leads some public opinion polls.

A politician who met Breivik in 2002-2003, when he was apparently interested in local Oslo politics, said he did not attract attention.

“I got the impression that he was a modest person … he was well dressed, it seemed like he was well educated,” Joeran Kallmyr, 33, an Oslo municipality politician representing the Progress Party, told the Reuters news agency.

Progress leader Siv Jensen stressed he had left the party.

Breivik was also a freemason, said a spokesman for the organisation.

Oslo Bombing Anders Behring Breivick

Breivick sick twisted dream. This video that he originally created sums up his 1400 page manifesto titled, “European Declaration of Independence.”

Glenn Greenwald on point as always:

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of “Terrorism”

(updated below – Update II)

For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits.  The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates.  The morning statement issued by President Obama — “It’s a reminder that the entire international community holds a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring” and “we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks” — appeared to assume, though (to its credit) did not overtly state, that the perpetrator was an international terrorist group.

But now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn’t from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller’s Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.  Despite that,The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals (h/t sysprog):

So if this is somehow not considered “terrorism”, are we admitting that whether something is “terrorism” is solely a function of who did it?

That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly.  When an airplane was flown into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, it was immediately proclaimed to be Terrorism, until it was revealed that the attacker was a white, non-Muslim, American anti-tax advocate with a series of domestic political grievances.  The U.S. and its allies can, by definition, never commit Terrorism even when it is beyond question that the purpose of their violence is to terrorize civilian populations into submission.  Conversely, Muslims who attack purely military targets — even if the target is an invading army in their own countries — are, by definition, Terrorists.  That is why, as NYU’s Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language.  Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.

One last question: if, as preliminary evidence suggests, it turns out that Breivik was “inspired” by the extremist hatemongering rantings of Geller, Pipes and friends, will their groups be deemed Terrorist organizations such that any involvement with them could constitute the criminal offense of material support to Terrorism?  Will those extremist polemicists inspiring Terrorist violence receive the Anwar Awlaki treatment of being put on an assassination hit list without due process?  Will tall, blond, Nordic-looking males now receive extra scrutiny at airports and other locales, and will those having any involvement with those right-wing, Muslim-hating groups be secretly placed on no-fly lists?  Or are those oppressive, extremist, lawless measures — like the word Terrorism — also reserved exclusively for Muslims?

UPDATE:  The original version of the NYT article was even worse in this regard.  As several people noted, here is what the article originally said (papers that carry NYT articles still have the original version):

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking al-Qaida’s signature brutality and multiple attacks.

“If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from al-Qaida,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Thus: if it turns out that the perpetrators weren’t Muslim (but rather “someone with more political motivations” — whatever that means: it presumably rests on the inane notion that Islamic radicals are motivated by religion, not political grievances), then it means that Terrorism, by definition, would be “ruled out” (one might think that the more politically-motivated an act of violence is, the more deserving it is of the Terrorism label, but this just proves that the defining feature of the word Terrorism is Muslim violence).  The final version of the NYTarticle inserted the word “Islamic” before “terrorism” (“even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause”), but — as demonstrated above — still preserved the necessary inference that only Muslims can be Terrorists.  Meanwhile, in the world of reality, of 294 Terrorist attacks attempted or executed on European soil in 2009 as counted by the EU, a grand total of one — 1 out of 294 — was perpetrated by “Islamists.”

UPDATE II:  This article expertly traces and sets forth exactly how the “Muslims-did-it” myth was manufactured and then disseminated yesterday to the worldwide media, which predictably repeated it with little skepticism.  What makes the article so valuable is that it names names: it points to the incestuous, self-regarding network of self-proclaimed U.S. Terrorism and foreign policy “experts” — what the article accurately describes as “almost always white men and very often with military or government backgrounds,” in this instance driven by “a case of an elite fanboy wanting to be the first to pass on leaked gadget specs” — who so often shape these media stories and are uncritically presented as experts, even though they’re drowning in bias, nationalism, ignorance, and shallow credentialism.

A great piece from MondoWeiss.

The Norway massacre and the nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism

by Alex Kane (MondoWeiss)

Details on the culprit behind yesterday’s massacre in Norway, which saw car bombings in Oslo and a mass shooting attack on the island of Utoya that caused the deaths of at least 91 people, have begun to emerge.  While it is still too early for a complete portrait of the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, there are enough details to begin to piece together what’s behind the attack.

Although initial media reports, spurred on by the tweets of former State Department adviser on violent extremism Will McCants, linked the attacks to Islamist extremists, it was in fact an anti-Muslim zealot who committed the murders.  An examination of Breivik’s views, and his support for far-right European political movements, makes it clear that only by interrogating the nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism can one understand the political beliefs behind the terrorist attack.

Breivik is apparently an avid fan of U.S.-based anti-Muslim activists such as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes, and has repeatedly professed his ardent support for Israel.  Breivik’s political ideology is illuminated by looking at comments he posted to the right-wing site document.no, which author and journalist Doug Sanders put up.

Here’s a sampling of some of Breivik’s comments:

And then we have the relationship between conservative Muslims and so-called “moderate Muslims”.

There is moderate Nazis, too, that does not support fumigation of rooms and Jews. But they’re still Nazis and will only sit and watch as the conservatives Nazis strike (if it ever happens). If we accept the moderate Nazis as long as they distance themselves from the fumigation of rooms and Jews?

Now it unfortunately already cut himself with Marxists who have already infiltrated-culture, media and educational organizations. These individuals will be tolerated and will even work asprofessors and lecturers at colleges / universities and are thus able to spread their propaganda.

For me it is very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists differ. They are all supporters of hate-ideologies…(page 2-3)

What is globalization and modernity to do with mass Muslim immigration?

And you may not have heard and Japan and South Korea? These are successful and modern regimes even if they rejected multiculturalism in the 70′s. Are Japanese and South Koreans goblins?

Can you name ONE country where multiculturalism is successful where Islam is involved? The only historical example is the society without a welfare state with only non-Muslim minorities (U.S.)…(page 7)

We have selected the Vienna School of Thought as the ideological basis. This implies opposition to multiculturalism and Islamization (on cultural grounds). All ideological arguments based on anti-racism. This has proven to be very successful which explains why the modern cultural conservative movement / parties that use the Vienna School of Thought is so successful: the Progress Party,Geert Wilders, document and many others…(page 13)

I consider the future consolidation of the cultural conservative forces on all seven fronts as the most important in Norway and in all Western European countries. It is essential that we work to ensure that all these 7 fronts using the Vienna school of thought, or at least parts of the grunlag for 20-70 year-struggle that lies in front of us.

The book is called, by the way 2083 and is in English, 1100 pages).

To sums up the Vienna school of thought:

-Cultural Conservatism (anti-multiculturalism)

-Against Islamization

-Anti-racist

-Anti-authoritarian (resistance to all authoritarian ideologies of hate)

-Pro-Israel/forsvarer of non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries

- Defender of the cultural aspects of Christianity

- To reveal the Eurabia project and the Frankfurt School (ny-marxisme/kulturmarxisme/multikulturalisme)

- Is not an economic policy and can collect everything from socialists to capitalists…(page 20)

Daniel Pipes: Leftism and Islam. Muslims, the warriors Marxists Have Been praying for.

link to www.youtube.com

The following summarizes the agenda of many kulturmarxister with Islam, it explains also why those on death and life protecting them. It explains so well why we, the cultural conservatives,are against Islamization and the implementation of these agendas… (page 27)

We must therefore make sure to influence other cultural conservatives to come to our anti-rasistiske/pro-homser/pro-Israel line. When they reach this line, one can take it to the next level…(page 41)

Breivik’s right-wing pro-Israel line, combined with his antipathy to Muslims, is just one example of the European far-right’s ideology, exemplified by groups such as the English Defense League (EDL).  The EDL, a group Breivik praises, along with the anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, share with Breivik an admiration for Israel.

Anti-Muslim activists and right-wing Zionists share a political narrative that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a “clash of civilizations,” one in which Judeo-Christian culture is under attack by Islam.  Israel, in this narrative, is the West’s bulwark against the threat that Islam is posing to Europe and the United States.  The nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism was clearly on display during last summer’s“Ground Zero mosque” hysteria, which culminated in a rally where Geller and Wilders addressed a crowd that included members of the EDL waving Israeli flags.

This comment by Breivik is one example of the twisted way in which Islamophobia and a militant pro-Israel ideology fit together:

Cultural conservatives disagree when they believe the conflict is based on Islamic imperialism,that Islam is a political ideology and not a race.

Cultural conservatives believe Israel has a right to protect themselves against the Jihad.

Kulturmarxistene refuses to recognize the fact that Islam’s political doctrine is relevant and essential. They can never admit to or support this because they believe that this is primarily about a race war – that Israel hates Arabs (breed).

As long as you can not agree on the fundamental perceptions of reality are too naive to expect that one to come to any conclusion.Before one at all can begin to discuss this conflict must first agree on the fundamental truths of Islam’s political doctrine.

Most people here have great insight in key Muslim concepts that al-taqiiya (political deceit), naskh (Quranic abrogation) and Jihad. The problem is that kulturmarxister refuses to recognizet hese concepts.They can not recognize these key Muslim concepts. For if they do so erodes the primary argument that Israel is a “racist state” and that this is a race war (Israelis vs. Arabs) and not defense against Jihad (Kafr vs. Ummah)

Breivik’s admiration for the likes of Daniel Pipes is also telling, and should serve as a warning that, while it would be extremely unfair and wrong to link Pipes in any way to the massacre in Norway, Breivik’s views are not so far off from some establishment neoconservative voices in the U.S.  For instance, both Pipes and Breivik share a concern with Muslim demographics in Europe.  In 1990, Pipes wrotein the National Review that “Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene…All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

Pipes was appointed by the Bush administration to the U.S. Institute of Peace, andsits on the same board than none other than the Obama administration’s point man on the Middle East, Dennis Ross.

Pipes’ and Breivik’s concern about Muslim and Arab demographics also recall the remarks of Harvard Fellow Martin Kramer, who infamously told the Herzliya Conference in Israel last year that the West should “stop providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status…Israel’s present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim, undermine the Hamas regime, but they also break Gaza’s runaway population growth and there is some evidence that they have.”

Adding to the Israel/Palestine angle here is the fact that the day before the attack on the island of Utoya, a Palestine solidarity event was held there.

Why Breivik, and his accomplices if he had any, would attack young Norwegians remains unclear.  But it probably had something to do with Breivik’s belief that European governments, and the Norwegian government, were run by “Marxists” allied with Islamist extremists who were bent on destroying Europe through “multiculturalism.”

Of course, support for Israel and its current right-wing policies do not automatically translate into support for extremist right-wing violence.  But Palestinians, and the larger Arab and Muslim world, know far too well the consequences of Islamophobia and far right-wing Zionism.  Now, it seems that Norwegians do too.  While much remains to be learned about the attacks in Norway, it has exposed the dangerous nexus of Islamophobia, neoconservatism and right-wing Zionism, and what could happen when the wrong person subscribes to those toxic beliefs.

Alex Kane, a freelance journalist currently based in Amman, Jordan, blogs on Israel/Palestine at alexbkane.wordpress.com.  Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

Oslo Bombing Suspect Anders Behring Breivik

We’ve been screaming from the top of our lungs about how these crazed radical anti-Muslim Islamophobes are inciting violence through their hate-mongering. Anders Behring Breivak, arrested as a suspect in the attack has written glowingly of Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, SIOE, and the EDL. Charles Johnson of LGF reports that he had a link with Fjordman who was a guest writer on Geller’s blog.

Terrorism in Europe has been over linked to an Islamic Muslim threat, even though we reported on how exaggerated the claim was: Europol Report: All Muslims are Terrorists…Except the 99.6% that Aren’t.

What Just Happened in Oslo, Norway? (UPDATES)

(Mother-Jones)

This explainer is being updated as more news emerges. Click here for photos from the sceneand here for details about the man arrested in connection with the attacks. For the latest news updates, click here.

The basics: A massive explosion hit Norway’s government hub in central Oslo on Friday, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 15 others. The six-story building that was most heavily damaged included the oil ministry and is next to the building that houses the office of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. The PM was unharmed in the blast and is now operating out of an undisclosed location. Witness testimony and damage at the scene are consistent with reports of a car bombing. The New York Times reports:

Stunned office staff and civil servants working in the vicinity of the bombed building said two explosions could be heard in close succession. The sound of the blasts echoed across the city just before 3:30 p.m. local time. Giant clouds of light-colored smoke continued to rise hundreds of feet into the air over the city…

Photos and television footage showed windows blown out in the 17-story office building across the street from the oil ministry, and the street and plaza areas on each side were strewn with glass and debris.

The first person on the scene “described it as ‘worse than a war zone,’” says Joe Sivilli, who’s talking to Mother Jones‘ Tim McDonnell from on the ground in Oslo. Sivilli, who speaks Norwegian fluently, works at a home-brewed beer shop about 2 kilometers away from the site of the bombing. He says he felt a “rumble, like a small earthquake,” when the bomb went off, but assumed it was just “construction or something like that.” He’ll be monitoring the Norwegian-language media for us as this story develops.

Wasn’t there another attack? A gunman dressed as a policeman reportedly opened fire this afternoon at a Labour party youth camp on the island of Utoya, about 15 miles outside of Oslo, killing at least 80 people (police officials previously reported at least 10 casualties, but had expect that number to rise). Police have a suspect in custody. Prime Minister Stoltenberg was due to visit the camp tomorrow morning, according to NRK, Norway’s national public television broadcaster. (Stoltenberg has attended gatherings at the camp almost every year in recent memory.) On Friday evening, police found undetonated explosives on the island.

Close to 700 teenagers had gathered on Utoya, and initial reports suggested that some tried to flee by swimming. CBS News reports that Kurt Lier, Oslo’s assistant chief of police, “had little information about what had happened on the island, but said if people are leaving island swimming, it is a ‘long swim.’” Hans-Inge Langø, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), says the “timing and targets [of the attacks are] too similar for this not to be connected.” The AP reports that Norwegian police say the two events were definitely connected.

The Pamela Connection:

UPDATE 1, Saturday, July 23, 12:16 a.m. EDT: Blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs is reporting that the Oslo bombing/shooting suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, posted often on a Norwegian anti-immigration site and recommended a post by the prominent anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller, who spearheaded the US drive against the planned “Ground Zero mosque.” (We’ve previously covered her activities here, here, here, here, and here.) LGF also asserts a link between Breivik and one of Geller’s guest bloggers, Fjordman.

Geller responded on her own website: “This is just a sinister attempt to tar all anti-jihadists with responsibility for this man’s heinous actions…this is war. And the left is vicious, amoral and depraved. They mean to win, and that is the only way they know how.”

UPDATE 2, Saturday, July 23, 11:06 a.m. EDT: Oddmy Estenstad, an employee of agricultural retailer Felleskjøpet, tells CNN that Utoya shooting suspect Anders Behring Breivik bought six tons of fertilizer from the company in May:

She did not think the order was strange at the time because the suspect has a farm, but after Friday’s explosion in Norway’s capital, Oslo, she called police because she knew the material can be used to make bombs.

“We are very shocked that this man was connected to our company,” said Estenstad. “We are very sad about what happened.”

UPDATE 3, Saturday, July 23, 11:09 a.m. EDT: According to the UK’s Daily Mirror, Anders Behring Breivik has been “preliminarily charged with acts of terrorism.” Norwegian police say the 32-year-old Breivik appears to be an extreme right-wing, Christian fundamentalist, due to postings on his website. NRK reports that the suspect is a member of an Oslo gun club, and “was exempted from military service, and thus…has no special education [from the Norwegian] Armed Forces.”

UPDATE 4, Saturday, July 23, 11:19 a.m. EDT: Norwegian media report on eyewitness accounts of the Utoya massacre. The Los Angeles Times also has the story:

Media reports say the gunman apparently used a handgun and a machine gun, and that police arrived at the island possibly 90 minutes after the shooting started. At midmorning Saturday, police were still searching the island for more bodies.  One wounded survivor, Adrian Pracon, described the gunman as “calm and controlled,” shooting people who tried to escape the island by swimming to the mainland…Pracon described his attempt to escape. “We started running down to the water and people had already undressed and started swimming.”

Pracon said he began swimming, but “after 150 meters … I realized I wouldn’t make it so I went back and saw him standing 10 meters from me shooting at the people who tried to swim over.”

From our Loonwatch Readers:

Dane Bargeld:

He has written a number of comments on norwegian website document.no:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.document.no/anders-behring-breivik/

He seems to be more intelligent than the average loon. His comments are reflective rather than emotional. He doesn’t seem crazier than the average loon. His last comment is from october 2010 though.

He’s expresses support for:

- The Vienna school of thought
- Political movements like Tea Party, PVV (Wilders), EDL and (norwegian) Progress Party
- Israel
- Christianity (he’s a protestant but dislikes modern day protestancism and suggest that christians should unite in the roman-catholic church)
- Countries like Japan and South Korea (for rejecting multiculturalism)

He dislikes:

- Islam
- Totalitarian ideologies
- Cultural marxism
- Multiculturalism

David:

According to Norwegian reports, the organization this CHRISTIAN TERRORIST belonged to tried to establish links with the English Defense League — another Lieblingsorganization von Frau Geller.

Myrpou:

The swedish site realisten.se claim that Anders Behring Breivik claimed to be THE Fjordman over a year ago, so they initially reported when they got his name that Fjordman was the terrorist. However Robert Spencer claims it isn’t Fjordman and an article on Gates of Vienna claims the same, however the former was a bit suspicious to me, they didn’t allow any comments on that particlar article and made it clear that “the discussion was over”. If they’re certain that this guy isn’t fjordman wouldn’t they be more willing to prove it?

Eslaporte:

Breivik has had many posts on the site Document.no, an Islam-critical site that publishes news and commentary…Anders Breivik Behring has also commented on the Swedish news articles, where he makes it clear that he believes the media have failed by not being “NOK” Islam-critical…

As far as the Dutch connection, we still don’t know the total details about the 2009 Queen’s Day Apeldoorn attack – which there were accusations that the ethnic Dutchman, Karst Tates, was a radical right nutjob. The Dutch police appeared to whitewash the report and there appear to be a sloppy investigation of Tates’ past year up to his terrorist attack on the Dutch Royals.

Last April, we had a shoppingmall shooting where the shooter was an unabashed PVV voter and hated foreigners also. Are we going to see the are whitewash by Dutch police?

How Islam Created the Modern World:

He was active in the kind of Huy buoy-like forums in the Netherlands as we know. He was active in SOORTS called Huy buoy-eight forums that even in Kenner Netherlands.

There is another link with the Netherlands. Ice is another link system nand Netherlands. Breivik is also a follower of Pamela Geller, an angry white woman who became famous thanks to the action against the otnmoetingscentrum five blocks from where the WTC once stood. Breivik is a follower of Pamela Geller, an Angry glossy women who shoveled name thanks to the Acti called otnmoetingscentrum Five block from where formerly called World Trade Center stood. Geller invited Geert Wilders and the two support each other. Geller invited Geert Wilders supports a two Elka. Breivnik how close to her is unclear (probably a follower, and no more).

How Hecht Breivnik ice with her was not clear (probably a Volga, a Not anymore). It seems that he wanted to act against the Muslims politically dangerous enough to play offered. It seems that HE is a DAAD Wild Couples against the dangerous politics against Muslims Few games offered.

Apparently, the norwegian far right Anders has also praised Geert Wilders PVV party as being the only true party.

‘Verdachte aanslag en schietpartij heeft sympathie voor PVV’
http://welingelichtekringen.nl/14368-schutter-heeft-sympathie-voor-pvv.html

Google translate from Dutch to English

‘Suspicious attack and shootings have sympathy for PVV’

Anders Breivik Behring, the man suspected of the bombing and the shooting on the island, according to Fox News Utoya sympathy for Geert Wilders. On a Swedish news site he would have said that the Freedom Party is the only “true” conservative party. The media were not critical enough towards Islam.

Wilders said in a statement on Saturday:
“I despise everything he stands for and everything he did.”

Look at the hypocricy, it’s stunning. What a reptilian farce, I mean can’t these muslim haters at least be loyal to one another? Anders at least is honest, but Geert Wilders is a smarmy liar, when he says he despises everything Anders stands for.
How can he say that, when he shares his goals and supports the PVV, is pro Zionist, supports the Israeli far right, anti Muslim,

Death toll at Oslo attacks rises to 92

http://www.ejpress.org/article/52233

Breivik wrote he was a backer of the “Vienna School of Thought,” which was against multiculturalism and the spread of Islam.

He also wrote he admired Geert Wilders, the populist anti-Islam Dutch politician, for following that school.

Wilders said in a statement on Saturday:
“I despise everything he stands for and everything he did.”

Norwegian:

The suspect is not, by all accounts, the blogger known as Fjordman. He is one of his followers in his preachings of class war. Fjordman is widely believed to be one of the two brothers Anfindsens, since part of OJ ANfindsens book about the necessity of the survival of the white race seems written by his brother and bears close resemblance to Fjordmans style of writing.

JD:

Ok so when this story first broke out Yahoo was reporting it as a muslim terrorist see link below ( picture is fuzzy because it a screen shot of whole page click on it to zoom in and you can read it)

http://justpaste.it/2030…

If you scroll down you love the comments

Grobpilot: Kill all muslims even the babies because they will eventually grow up and start killing you.

Bob: They rounded up japanese americans during ww2 and put them in basicly concentration camps in the desert
maybe thats what need done with the muslims till they are shipped out

Hakepeszip:When will civilized countries finally learn not to allow in Islamist in especially not if they are from any
of their garbage countrys

Another Article Few Hours Later ( keep in mind this is mid day we still dont know who what where when why )

http://justpaste.it/2031

People blamed by journalist Louise Nordstum and Matt Lee at AP were..
Al-Quida
Helpers of Global Jihad
Libya
People Pissed off at Mohammed Cartoons.

This lead to more wonderful comments which are at bottom of the pic you can read them

Uncle Remus: Welcome to the rest of the world norway see how far the muslim cancer has spread.

Thaddeus : Lets Hope if it is a white christian patriot then he took out plenty of left wong traitors
and some muzzie immigrants Europe must cleanse itself of third world immigrants
and left wingers Me and my mates are ready herer in England blah blah blah(+5 thumb up)

Norwegian national broadcaster NRK identified him as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik and said police searched his Oslo apartment overnight. NRK and other Norwegian media posted pictures of the blond, blue-eyed Norwegian.

“He is clear on the point that he wants to explain himself,” Roger Andresen told reporters Saturday.

National police chief Sveinung Sponheim told NRK that the suspected gunman’s Internet postings “suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen.”

Andersen said the suspect posted on websites with Christian fundamentalist tendencies. He did not describe the websites in any more details.

George Carty:

Here’s an extra interesting piece of info: the island camp had hosted a pro-Palestinian rally the day before. I wonder if the gunman got his dates mixed up?

Salam:

He has written a 1400 page islamophobic book where he described in detail how the bombing/massacre would go down. I take back what I said about his ideology not being extreme. This is fucking insane. He used this as a publicity stunt to spread his propaganda. Oh wow.

You can download the book in English here: http://www.sharepdfbooks.com/3TZOU0V52W6B/2083_-_A_European_Declaration_of_Independence.pdf.html…

A quote from the book:
“7a. Apprehension
If you for some reason survive the operation you will be apprehended and arrested. This is the point where most heroic Knights would call it a day. However, this is not the case for a Justiciar Knight. Your arrest will mark the initiation of the propaganda phase.
7b. Your trial offers you a stage to the world”

When I thought this couldn’t get more surrealistic..

Damian:

This video calling for European Christians to take up arms against the Islam and the multicultural left seems to have been posted by Anders Breivik (here anglicised as “Andrew Berwick”) yesterday before he put his plans into action (please note: Youtube have removed original by Andrew Berwick, so this is a repost, which may also be moved):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZ29eUVAxg

The video shows him holding a gun a the end. From the text of the video, it seems he is hoping to start a new Crusade, a civil war that will finally rid Europe of Islam once and for all.

His thinking on these issues is clearly influenced by Robert Spencer of “Jihad Watch”, who also calls for a new “Crusade” against Islam in his books. Much of what Breivik says in online comments comes straight out of Spencer’s thinking on these issues: e.g. that the leftists/multiculturalists are the greatest threat to Western civilisation, because they are facilitating the “Islamisation” of Europe:

http://translate.google.com/translate?client=firefox-a&hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&u=http://www.document.no/anders-behring-breivik/

In these comments Breivik cites Spencer’s “Jihad Watch”, as well as Pamela Geller’s anti-Islam/anti-leftist hate-site “Atlas Shrugs”, as sites that all Europeans should read.

Jon Stewart Ruthlessly Ridicules Political Missteps Of Tim Pawlenty And Herman Cain

by Frances Martel | 11:41 pm, July 21st, 2011

The fundraising race on the Republican side in anticipation for 2012 has claimed several victims in the past few weeks, in, as Jon Stewart joked, “what will definitely be called the most important election of our lifetime,” but few have adequately depicted the swift elimination of each with the violence it deserves. Stewart made up for that tonight, sending off candidates with mini wildlife films after mercilessly tearing them apart for their mistakes.

Rick Santorum got the most traditional way out– a wildebeest eaten by a giant alligator for acquiring so few funds. Then came “old silverback Newt Gingrich,” who Stewart noted was “actually in a lot less debt” than America is, hitting the one million mark in deficit while the nation is still $45,000 in debt per person.

Then Stewart turned to Tim Pawlenty, whose campaign to be taken seriously while being thoroughly boring brought out some of the best in Stewart. “Ooh, Tim Pawlenty,” he mocked, “taking a bold stance against charisma! Saying it’s got no place in politics!” Jokingly mimicking Pawlenty asking whether politics was a “popularity contest,” he answered himself: “oh wait, it is.” Pawlenty’s animal alter ego didn’t even get killed by another animal– it was a mammal chopping down a tree, getting pummeled by the very tree he just cut down. “If a Pawlenty campaign falls in the woods,” Stewart asked, “does it make a sound?”

Then there is Herman Cain, who, Stewart ceded, was not doing bad at all in the money race– but then there is his understanding of the First Amendment. Stewart tore into his statements on last week’s Fox News Sunday, where Cain declared that the First Amendment gave communities the right to ban mosques. “There are some pronoun issues here,” Stewart quipped about Cain describing the struggle as “our First Amendment” protecting against “their mosque.” “the First Amendment protects their mosque from us,” Stewart corrected, similarly going through his claim that Islam is different from other religions in that it has an element of law in it. Cain, perhaps most pathetically, didn’t even get to die in animal form– he is just a domestic cat, head stuck in a tissue box.

The segment via Comedy Central below:

Walid Shoebat is well known as a fraud. CNN recently exposed him in a two part series for masquerading as a “terror expert.” The truth is that Shoebat is just one of many so called “terror expert professionals” who are banking big time on your dime when in fact they are impostors, no better then two-bit snake-oil salesmen.

Now there is a website documenting the fraud Shoebat is perpetrating: www.walid-shoebat.com.(hat tip: Rick) Please follow the site, favorite it and share with your networks.

What is going on in Arizona? The word “Haboobs” is being criticized because it is Arabic? Ridiculous, I thought the objection might be that to some ears the word is close to a certain slang term referring to women’s breasts? That would be reason to keep the term, it would be great fodder for comedians or regular citizens playing off the term!

‘Haboobs’ Stir Critics in Arizona

(NYTimes)

PHOENIX — The massive dust storms that swept through central Arizona this month have stirred up not just clouds of sand but a debate over what to call them.

The blinding waves of brown particles, the most recent of which hit Phoenix on Monday, are caused by thunderstorms that emit gusts of wind, roiling the desert landscape. Use of the term “haboob,” which is what such storms have long been called in the Middle East, has rubbed some Arizona residents the wrong way.

“I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob,” Don Yonts, a resident of Gilbert, Ariz., wrote to The Arizona Republic after a particularly fierce, mile-high dust storm swept through the state on July 5. “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?”

Diane Robinson of Wickenburg, Ariz., agreed, saying the state’s dust storms are unique and ought to be labeled as such.

“Excuse me, Mr. Weatherman!” she said in a letter to the editor. “Who gave you the right to use the word ‘haboob’ in describing our recent dust storm? While you may think there are similarities, don’t forget that in these parts our dust is mixed with the whoop of the Indian’s dance, the progression of the cattle herd and warning of the rattlesnake as it lifts its head to strike.”

Dust storms are a regular summer phenomenon in Arizona, and the news media typically label them as nothing more than that. But the National Weather Service, in describing this month’s particularly thick storm, used the term haboob, which was widely picked up by the news media.

“Meteorologists in the Southwest have used the term for decades,” said Randy Cerveny, a climatologist at Arizona State University. “The media usually avoid it because they don’t think anyone will understand it.”

Not everyone was put out by the use of the term. David Wilson of Goodyear, Ariz., said those who wanted to avoid Arabic terms should steer clear of algebra, zero, pajamas and khaki, as well. “Let’s not become so ‘xenophobic’ that we forget to remember that we are citizens of the world, nor fail to recognize the contributions of all cultures to the richness of our language,” he wrote.

Although use of the term often brings smirks, Mr. Cerveny said the walls of dust could have serious consequences, toppling power lines and causing huge traffic accidents. Although ultradry conditions in the desert are considered one cause for the intensity of this year’s storms, Mr. Cerveny pointed to another possible factor: the housing bust that left developments half-finished and unmaintained, creating more desert dust to be stirred up.

Study finds that news of Osama Bin Laden’s death led Americans to be more fearful of Muslims

Matthew C. Nisbet on July 20, 2011, 3:53 PM

My brother Erik Nisbet, a professor at The Ohio State University, has a study out that casts important new light on how Americans reacted to the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden.  Below is the write up from Jeff Grabmeier of the OSU Research News Service. You you can read the full survey report here.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Instead of calming fears, the death of Osama bin Ladenactually led more Americans to feel threatened by Muslims living in the United States, according to a new nationwide survey.

In the weeks following the U.S. military campaign that killed bin Laden, the head of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, American attitudes toward Muslim Americans took a significant negative shift, results showed.

Americans found Muslims living in the United States more threatening after bin Laden’s death, positive perceptions of Muslims plummeted, and those surveyed were less likely to oppose restrictions on Muslim Americans’ civil liberties.

For example, in the weeks before bin Laden’s death, nearly half of respondents described Muslim Americans as “trustworthy” and “peaceful.”  But only one-third of Americans agreed with these positive terms after the killing.

Most of the changes in attitude happened among political liberals and moderates, whose views shifted to become more like those of conservatives, the survey found.

The shift in views can be explained by the fact that bin Laden’s death reminded some Americans of why they may fear Muslims in the first place, saidErik Nisbet, assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University, and one of the leaders of the survey project.

“The death of bin Laden was a focusing event.  There was a lot of news coverage and a lot of discussion about Islam and Muslims and Muslim Americans,” Nisbet said.

“The frenzy of media coverage reminded people of terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks and it primed them to think about Islam in terms of terrorism.”

In fact, while prior to bin Laden’s death only 16 percent of respondents believed a terrorist attack in the United States was likely in the next few months, 40 percent believed an attack was likely after the killing.

“That is going to have a negative effect on attitudes,” Nisbet said.

The researchers’ ability to find out how American attitudes changed after bin Laden’s death was accidental, Nisbet said.  Nisbet and Ohio State colleagueMichelle Ortiz, also an assistant professor of communication, had commissioned the Survey Research Institute of Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire Survey Center to jointly conduct a national telephone poll of Americans beginning in early April.  The survey focused on perceptions and attitudes about Muslim Americans.

Interviews started on April 7, 2011, and 500 interviews were conducted prior to May 1, when bin Laden was killed.  The remaining 341 interviews were conducted following the death.

Many of the survey responses changed significantly after the killing, Nisbet said.

After bin Laden’s death, 34 percent of Americans surveyed agreed that Muslims living in the United States “increased the likelihood of a terrorist attack.”  That was up from 27 percent prior to the killing.  The percentage of respondents agreeing the Muslims in the United States are supportive of the country dropped from 62 percent to 52 percent.

Americans were less likely to oppose restrictions on Muslim American civil liberties after the killing, Nisbet said.  For example, public opposition to profiling individuals as potential terrorists based solely on being Muslim dropped from 71 percent to 63 percent.  Likewise, opposition to requiring Muslims living in the United to register their whereabouts with the government dropped from two-thirds of respondents to about one-half.

Changes in attitudes were not related just to preventing a possible terrorist attack, but also included attitudes about religious tolerance of Muslims.  For example, nearly one in three respondents surveyed after bin Laden’s death agreed that “Muslims are mostly responsible for creating the religious tension that exists in the United States today.”  That was up from about one in five respondents before the killing.  Correspondingly, opposition to a nationwide ban on mosque construction in the United States fell to 57 percent from 65 percent.

The negative feelings even carried over to personal relationships.  The percentage of respondents who said they were unwilling to have a Muslim as a close friend doubled after the death, going from 9 percent to 20 percent.

“That’s important because research has shown that the best way to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations is through personal contact,” Nisbet said.  “That won’t happen if people avoid contact with Muslim Americans.”

Many of the changes in attitudes after Bin Laden’s death were almost entirely due to political liberals and moderates changing their opinions about the threat posed by Muslims in the United States, the survey found.

The percentage of liberal respondents who agreed that Muslims in the United States “make America a more dangerous place to live” tripled after bin Laden’s death, going from 8 to 24 percent.  The percentage of moderates believing this increased from 10 percent to 29 percent.

In contrast, the percentage of conservatives who believed this were essentially unchanged – 30 percent before bin Laden’s death and 26 percent following.

“Liberals and moderates essentially converged toward conservatives in their attitudes about Muslim Americans,” Nisbet said.

Nisbet said it is unclear whether these changes in attitudes would last long-term or not.  But research suggests these negative feelings can be dangerous even if they are short-lived.

“Every time these anti-Muslim feelings are activated by media coverage, it makes them that much easier to get reactivated in the future,” Nisbet said.  “These feelings and attitudes become more constant the more you experience them.”

The telephone survey involved adults in the continental United States, including cell-phone only homes, and was designed to be representative of the U.S. population.  All percentages reported here were adjusted to control for differences in the characteristics of survey respondents interviewed before and after bin Laden’s death.  The researchers controlled for age, gender, race, education, political ideology, whether the respondents were evangelical Christians, and their knowledge about Islam.

That means any differences in attitudes between respondents polled before and after the death are not the results of any difference on these personal attributes.

In addition to Nisbet and Ortiz, the survey was conducted by Yasamin Miller, director of the Survey Research Institute at Cornell and Andrew Smith, associate professor and director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

A copy of the researchers’ survey report is available here:http://www.eriknisbet.com/files/binladen_report.pdf

#

Contact: Erik Nisbet, (614) 247-1693begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (614) 247-1693      end_of_the_skype_highlighting; Nisbet.5@osu.edu Written by Jeff Grabmeier, (614) 292-8457 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (614) 292-8457      end_of_the_skype_highlighting; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu

(via. IslamophobiaToday)

Quick Takes: Muslim families on TLC

Call it “Muslim Modern Family.”

Cable channel TLC is hoping to do for Muslims what it did for polygamists and Sarah Palin — put a new spin on controversial subjects that people often make judgments about without knowing the whole story.

The reality show “All-American Muslim” will follow the lives of five Muslim American families, some of whom are related, who reside in Dearborn, Mich., a suburb of Detroit that has a large Muslim population. The show will debut in late November.

The people participating in “All-American Muslim” seem to range from very religious to more casual, and all struggle to find a balance between their American home and their Muslim background. One cast member is a football coach and another is in law enforcement. There are even splits in the level of devotion in some families. One family features two sisters — one of whom wears a traditional head scarf and another who has tattoos and piercings and married an Irish Catholic.

“We wanted to show there was diversity even within the Muslim community,” said TLC General Manager Amy Winter. “These are families that might have beliefs that are different than yours, but we are all living similar daily lives and hopefully we will bring that to light.”

— Joe Flint

GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain has revealed himself to be, for various reasons, the biggest bigot and buffoon in the race. He kicked up a firestorm with his recent comments on Fox News Sunday in support of the “right” to ban American mosques. Apparently, Cain thinks that freedom of religion means freedom to ban religions:

CAIN: They could say that. Chris, lets go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying they’re objecting to. They’re objecting to the fact Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, Sharia law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes. The people in the community know best, and I happen to side with the people in Murfreesboro.

WALLACE: You’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque?

CAIN: Yes. They have a right to do that. That’s not discriminating based upon religion.

Discriminating against Muslims is not discrimination because they’re Muslims! Kind of like the argument we hear from racists that discrimination against black people is not discrimination because black people are more likely to be criminals.

Many religious leaders took Cain to task for his comments, but not everyone. In fact, more than enough far right wingers are gleefully embracing his call to deny American Muslims their fundamental American rights.

Bryan Fischer is a Christian fundamentalist who is one of the loudest voices of intolerance on the right wing. For example, he has argued that Muslims should not serve in the military, law-abiding Muslim immigrants should be “sent back home,” and all American mosques should be banned:

Permits, in my judgment, should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.

Did you get that? Each Islamic mosque is “dedicated” not to the pillars of Islam (faith, prayer, charity, and fasting) but to the “overthrow of the American government.” As if all the Muslims of every denomination (Sunni, Shi’ite, Sufi, liberal, conservative, etc.) are acting with one will, one goal, like the Borg (resistance is futile, you will be assimilated). He must have read that somewhere in the Protocols of the Elders of Mecca.

Anyway, it is this last point that has Bryan Fischer super excited: he is no longer alone in his Bigotry now that a big shot GOP candidate has legitimated his effort to ban all mosques. On what grounds can they so brazenly defy the First Amendment? The bogus talking point about Islam being a political ideology, not a religion:

In point of fact, in Islam the church IS the state. And since Islam allows no room for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience and equal rights for women, it’s view of culture is so bizarrely un-American as to be dangerous and destructive to civilized society in all its forms.

This is quite ironic coming from a man whose goal in life is to impose his backward religious opinions on an unwilling society. Don’t mind our homegrown Christian fundamentalists who reject separation of church and state. They don’t count.

In reality, the Gallup polls of the Muslim world reveal the exact opposite of Fischer and Cain’s claims:

•Large majorities cite the equal importance of democracy and Islam to the quality of life and progress of the Muslim world. They see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles.

•Political freedoms are among the things they admire most about the West.

•Substantial majorities in nearly all nations say that if drafting a new constitution, they would guarantee freedom of speech.

•Most want neither theocracy nor secular democracy but a third model in which religious principles and democratic values coexist. They want their own democratic model that draws on Islamic law as a source.

•Significant majorities say religious leaders should play no direct role in drafting a constitution, writing legislation, determining foreign policy, or deciding how women dress in public.

Another poll reports that less than 1% of Egyptians want the radical fusion of religion and state like Iran:

Egyptians… express little interest in recreating their country in the image of Iran, as has been the fear among some Western commentators. Less than 1% say the Islamic Republic should be Egypt’s political model, and most Egyptians think religious leaders should provide advice to government authorities, as opposed to having full authority for determining the nation’s laws. The majority of residents in the Arab world’s most populous nation desire a democracy informed by religious values, not a theocracy.

The numbers concerning Muslim attitudes toward women are equally destructive to Fischer’s arguments:

•Majorities in most countries believe that women should have the same legal rights as men: They should have the right to vote, to hold any job outside the home that they qualify for, and to hold leadership positions at the cabinet and national council levels

•Majorities of men in virtually every country (including 62 percent in Saudi Arabia, 73 percent in Iran, and 81 percent in Indonesia) agree that women should be able to work at any job they qualify for.

•In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote, 58 percent of men say women should be able to vote.

•While Muslim women favor gender parity, they do not endorse wholesale adoption of Western values.

So, while scientific polling of the Muslim world (not to mention American Muslims) reveals broad support for democratic principles, a rejection of theocracy, and support for women’s rights, that won’t stop the far right from parroting the thoroughly debunked but politically potent talking point that Islam is somehow uniquely anti-democratic, oppressive to women, and dangerous.

Bryan Fischer is the face of the grassroots prejudice to which Herman Cain is appealing and which will not likely be criticized by the rest of the GOP candidates. American right-wing politics has sunk to a new low. No longer is shredding the First Amendment considered fringe, crazy talk.

Fischer is not a lone anti-freedom bigot anymore. The GOP is right there with him.

La Mirada, South California mosque vandalized

Venusse Navid, Staff Writer

LA MIRADA – The vandalism of a La Mirada mosque is not being investigated as a hate crime, Sheriff’s Department officials said Tuesday.

Someone threw a rock through the mosque’s newly installed rear doors between 2 and 6 p.m. Monday, according to Rezaur Rahman, the president of Muslim Community Services Inc.

“This is not being classified as a hate crime right now because there is nothing to substantiate it as one,” said Lt. Pat Valdez of the sheriff’s La Mirada Station. “(But) we are very concerned about it and have already notified our department’s Terrorism Early Warning Group.”

The congregation finished prayer at 2 p.m. Monday and Rahman did not return until before the evening’s prayer session.

“Everything was fine before I left the mosque yesterday afternoon, and when I returned later that evening, I noticed shattered glass on the floor near our newly installed doors,” Rahman said.

“I found a rock lying among the shattered glass and was very surprised that it could have broken through our very strong, double-layered doors,” he said.

Deputies from the sheriff’s Norwalk Station responded to the scene, 14225 Imperial Highway, 10 minutes after Rahman reported the incident.

Authorities took pictures and secured the rock as evidence.

The report has been filed as a vandalism incident and additional patrols have been placed in the mosque’s area to ensure its safety until the investigation is completed, officials said.

The mosque opened on Feb. 16 after an eight-month renovation that began in July 2010.

“This is something that motivates me to create a peace rally,” Rahman said.

Rahman said he contacted Rabbi Mark Goldfarb of Temple Beth Ohr and the Rev. Bill Miller of United Methodist Church, relaying the news regarding the incident and his interest in organizing a community peace rally.

“We’re all concerned with the situation and the Whittier Area Interfaith

Council is determined to make it clear that this is not acceptable in our community,” Miller said.

“It is an outrage and when one of us is hurt, we’re all hurt and it’s our job to stand together when things like this happen,” he said.

The congregation reconvened at 9:30 p.m. Monday for prayer which lasted until 5 a.m. Tuesday.

“At first we were afraid to publicize this, but we think it’s better if we do because we need to do our part to let everyone know that we’re here and we want peace,” Rahman said.

“It’s deeply troubling to hear about the incident at the La Mirada mosque. Unfortunately mosque vandalism around the nation is not uncommon, however, we should remember those incidents are not widespread and the American Muslim community continues to live in peace and harmony with their American neighbors and citizens,” Munira Syeda, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Tuesday.

“It is also important to remember that as Americans, we need to continue to increase bridge-building and the understanding of our various minorities and those who may not know that much about the Islamic and Muslim faith. Mosques are American houses of worship and the Muslim faith is a positive part of our country. We ask mosque members to remain vigilant and report vandalism incidents to their local authorities right away,” Syeda said.

A similar incident took place on March 19, one month after the mosque opened.

“Luckily no one was here when the incident took place because someone could have been hurt,” Rahman said.

Deputies are investigating the incident.

venusse.navid@sgvn.com
562-698-0955, ext. 3000

Original post: La Mirada mosque vandalized

Not everyone on the Christian Right is an extremist, many are willing to defend the Right of Muslims to Freedom of Religion.

Southern Baptist leader defends US Muslims against Herman Cain

(Christian Post)

Southern Baptist leader Richard Land chided presidential candidate Herman Cain for disregarding the constitutional rights of U.S. Muslims during a Monday C-SPAN interview.

He reminded Cain that as a Christian and an African American, he should have a special interest in the enforcement of the constitution in all communities.

Last week, Cain told reporters that the plan to build the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in Rutherford County, Tenn., is “an infringement and an abuse of our freedom of religion.” He sided with community members who have protested the center saying the center is “another way to gradually sneak Sharia law into our laws.”

Cain, an associate pastor at Antioch Baptist Church North and a GOP presidential hopeful, argued last week that the ICM is not an “innocent mosque” and warned of the threat of Sharia (Islamic law) to American laws. He asserted in a Sunday Fox News interview that the Murfreesboro community has the right to ban the center’s construction.

Land said he agrees that allowing Sharia law in the courts is unconstitutional, as it also violates the rights of women. He agreed that it should not be enforced in America’s legal system or government, but reminded the public that that the First Amendment allows for religious freedom.

“I think the First Amendment is one of those amendments that is too important and protects rights that are too central to our guaranteed rights in this country to be left with a local option,” he asserted.

Like Christians, Muslims have the right to have places of worship near where they live, Land said. Additionally, Muslims and Christians have the shared right to abide by the rules of their faith as long as that faith is not imposed on the government, he argued.

Muslim women in America have a right to choose to be veiled and abide by Sharia in their marriages. Land said that he would fight to the death to protect Christians’ right to abide by biblical precepts in their marriages. Similarly he contended, “I defend to the death of their (Muslims’) right” to marry according to their customs.

The Southern Baptist also asserted that Cain, who boasts that he is the descendent of slaves, should defend Muslims’ rights under the Constitution so that they are upheld in every community, city and state.

“Mr. Cain of all people, as an African American, should understand that our civil rights have to be guaranteed on a federal level,” he said. “I don’t think he would want to leave the civil rights of an African American to the local voters in Philadelphia and Mississippi where they buried three civil rights workers – one black, two white – under a dam after they had killed them.”

Christian Post, 18 July 2011

There goes IRA terror linked Peter King again. We will be live tweeting the shenanigans once again on our Twitter page.

Rep. Peter King Announces Third Islamic Radicalization Hearing Will Happen Next Week

(Huffington Post)

Peter King, the controversial Republican congressman from New York who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, announced Tuesday that he will hold a third hearing on radicalization among Muslim-Americans next week.

While King’s first hearing in March focused on Islamic radicalization in general and his secondfocused on radicalization in prisons, the July 27 hearing will be about al Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist organization that has made headlines for recruiting Somali-Americans in the Midwest.

In a press release released on Tuesday, King said:

“At this hearing, the third in a series, we will examine Somalia-based terrorist organization al-Shabaab’s ongoing recruitment, radicalization, and training of young Muslim-Americans and al-Shabaab’s linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).“In Minnesota, Ohio, and other states, dozens of young Muslim males have been recruited, radicalized, and then taken from their communities for overseas terrorist training by al-Shabaab. In a number of cases, the men – including both Somali-Americans and other converts — have ended up carrying out suicide bombings or have otherwise been killed, often without their families even knowing where their sons have gone. There has not been sufficient cooperation from mosque leaders. In at least one instance, a Minnesota imam told the desperate family of a missing young man not to cooperate with the FBI.

“There are growing concerns that al-Shabaab in Somalia is linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen to better train these radicalized young men in order to attack Americans around the world, or potentially shift their focus to attacking our homeland.

“This coordinated and ongoing recruitment and radicalization of young Muslim men in the U.S. is a serious and growing threat to our homeland security and simply cannot be ignored.”

King has been criticized by Islamic organizations for his prior hearings, which many Muslim groupshave said too broadly target their communities. Muslims groups have also criticized prior hearings for largely lacking Muslim witnesses. A witness list for next week’s hearing has not been released.

Eugene Robinson takes a stand against bigot Herman Munster Cain.

Stand up to Herman Cain’s bigotry

by Eugene Robinson (Washington Post)

It is time to stop giving Herman Cain’s unapologetic bigotry a free pass. The man and his poison need to be seen clearly and taken seriously.

Imagine the reaction if a major-party presidential candidate — one who, like Cain, shows actual support in the polls — said he “wouldn’t be comfortable” appointing a Jew to a Cabinet position. Imagine the outrage if this same candidate loudly supported a community’s efforts to block Mormons from building a house of worship.

But Cain’s prejudice isn’t against Mormons or Jews, it’s against Muslims. Open religious prejudice is usually enough to disqualify a candidate for national office — but not, apparently, when the religion in question is Islam.

On Sunday, Cain took the position that any community in the nation has the right to prohibit Muslims from building a mosque. The sound you hear is the collective hum of the Founding Fathers whirring like turbines in their graves.

Freedom of religion is, of course, guaranteed by the Constitution. There’s no asterisk or footnote exempting Muslims from this protection. Cain says he knows this. Obviously, he doesn’t care.

Cain’s remarks came as “Fox News Sunday”host Chris Wallace was grilling him about his obsession with the attempt by some citizens of Murfreesboro, Tenn., to halt construction of a mosque. Wallace noted that the mosque has operated at a nearby site for more than 20 years, and asked, sensibly, what the big deal is.

Cain launched into an elaborate conspiratorial fantasy about how the proposed place of worship is “not just a mosque for religious purposes” and how there are “other things going on.”

This imagined nefarious activity, it turns out, is a campaign to subject the nation and the world to Islamic religious law. Anti-mosque activists in Murfreesboro are “objecting to the fact that Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, sharia law,” Cain said. “That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes.”

Let’s return to the real world for a moment and see how bogus this argument is. Presumably, Cain would include Roman Catholicism among the “traditional religions” that deserve constitutional protection. It happens that our legal system recognizes divorce, but the Catholic Church does not. This, by Cain’s logic, must constitute an attempt to impose “Vatican law” on an unsuspecting nation.

Similarly, Jewish congregations that observe kosher dietary laws must be part of a sinister plot to deprive America of its God-given bacon.

Wallace was admirably persistent in pressing Cain to either own up to his prejudice or take it back. “But couldn’t any community then say we don’t want a mosque in our community?” Wallace asked.

“They could say that,” Cain replied.

“So you’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque. . .,” Wallace began.

“Yes, they have the right to do that,” Cain said.

For the record, they don’t. For the record, there is no attempt to impose sharia law; Cain is taking arms against a threat that exists only in his own imagination. It makes as much sense to worry that the Amish will force us all to commute by horse and buggy.

This demonization of Muslims is not without precedent. In the early years of the 20th century, throughout the South, white racists used a similar “threat” — the notion of black men as sexual predators who threatened white women — to justify an elaborate legal framework of segregation and repression that endured for decades.

As Wallace pointed out, Cain is an African American who is old enough to remember Jim Crow segregation. “As someone who, I’m sure, faced prejudice growing up in the ’50s and the ’60s, how do you respond to those who say you are doing the same thing?”

Cain’s response was predictable: “I tell them that’s absolutely not true, because it is absolutely, totally different. . . . We had some laws that were restricting people because of their color and because of their color only.”

Wallace asked, “But aren’t you willing to restrict people because of their religion?”

Said Cain: “I’m willing to take a harder look at people that might be terrorists.”

Generations of bigots made the same argument about black people. They’re irredeemably different. Many of them may be all right, but some are a threat. Therefore, it’s necessary to keep all of them under scrutiny and control.

Bull Connor and Lester Maddox would be proud.

Eugene Robinson will be online to chat with readers at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Submit your questions before or during the discussion.

"Terrorism Expert" John Guandolo

This cottage industry of “terror experts” needs to be reanalyzed. Walid Shoebat, John Guandolo, Robert Spencer, and there are many more.

Terrorism Training Casts Pall Over Muslim Employee

by DINA TEMPLE-RASTON (NPR)

The man at the center of this story is 59-year-old Jordanian-American Omar al-Omari. He looks very much like the college professor that he is — tweed jacket, button-down shirt, thick round glasses, drinking coffee. We met at a coffee shop near downtown Columbus, Ohio, where he laid out a series of events that ended with him being accused of having links to terrorism.

“Actually, I was out of town, out of state, attending a conference and on my way back to Columbus,” Omari said, “and I received a call from one of the attendees of this conference in which I was told my name was used repeatedly during the training. Apparently I was labeled as a suspect. They personalized the attacks. There was a promise to dig into my background, and basically, as an Arab-Muslim American, they thought I’m a suspect.”

Omari was singled out at a three-day seminar for local police and law enforcement in the Columbus area last April. The class was part of a larger nationwide initiative to help local law enforcement not just understand terrorism, but perhaps find ways to stop it. The Obama administration has set aside millions of dollars to fund these training programs, and, not surprisingly, that money has helped create an industry in which self-styled terrorism experts contract themselves out to local police departments as terrorism tutors.

There is no certification process to vet the experts. They simply present their resumes and, often through word of mouth, they get hired. The trainers tend to be former government officials. Sometimes they have had key roles in the federal government fighting terrorism. Just as often, they have not. There’s growing evidence that many of these training sessions are providing officers at the grass roots with a biased view of Muslims in America. That is what appears to have happened to Omari.

The training at the Columbus Division of Police took place over three days in mid-April 2010. The course was titled “Understanding the True Nature of the Threat to America.” Broad outlines of the curriculum are posted on the trainers’ website. The course includes a discussion about the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States; Islamic law as it relates to jihad; and the trainers say they will provide “specific examples of Muslim Brotherhood/Islamic Movement activity in the locale in which the presentation is given.” It was in that context that Omari became a target.

One of the trainers in Ohio that day was a man named John Guandolo. He’s a former FBI agent and former Marine. According to people in the training class that day and Guandolo himself, a photograph of Omari with members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a local Muslim advocacy group, was put up on the screen. According to the people who were there, Guandolo and the other visiting trainers didn’t say outright that Omari was a terrorist, but they suggested that he had links to bad people — people who were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and even al-Qaida.

“I stand by what I said that day about Omari,” Guandolo told me, though he declined to say so on tape. “The facts are on my side.”

Now, to understand why the accusations against Omari were so surprising, it is important to know that at the time he ran a key Muslim outreach program for the state of Ohio. What he was doing for the state’s Department of Public Safety was considered so effective, counterterrorism officials in Washington sent him overseas to talk about it.

Omari is from Jordan. He has been living in the U.S. for 30 years, and he’s an American citizen. Even so, for people in the counterterrorism class in Columbus that day, it seemed entirely possible that he could be a terrorist. And that reaction in the room surprised a lot of people — most notably Deputy Chief Jeffrey Blackwell of the Columbus Division of Police. Blackwell is now in charge of the division’s homeland security unit.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I was shocked that a person at Omar’s level in the state of Ohio in the Department of Public Safety would have his picture displayed by an anti-terrorism group. His reputation was impugned incredibly by the speakers.”

Blackwell and other officials suspended the class to make sense of what happened. “We had a meeting and we discussed what we were witnessing right before our very eyes, what was transpiring in the lecture hall,” Blackwell said. What was so strange about Omari being singled out was that nearly everyone in the room knew him, or at least had heard of him. He was one of Ohio’s most high-visibility Muslims. Many of the visiting officers and Columbus officers had actually worked with Omari on outreach in the Muslim community.

“I knew him really well,” Blackwell said. “And I thought he was a great professional, so that was part of the reason why I was so surprised when his picture popped up in the presentation.”

But for some reason, maybe because former government officials said Omari couldn’t be trusted, Blackwell watched as some people in the room were ready to believe the worst.

“There were a large amount of people there that felt the class was in fact appropriate — that the finger-pointing and the name-calling and the nexuses that were developed and discussed were appropriate to discuss,” he said. “And then you had a huge percentage that were equally and diametrically opposed to that way of teaching and the substance of the anti-terrorism class.”

And the lesson Blackwell took from their reaction?

“That as Americans we are all over the board on our feelings about the terrorism issue,” he said. “And as a law enforcement professional, even law enforcement is divided in how they view people.”

The next day, some people came to Omari’s defense. The head of the local Joint Terrorism Task Force and one of the FBI’s top agents in Ohio both arrived at the academy and assured the class that Omari wasn’t a terrorism suspect. Everyone says that at that point the room erupted in shouts. Half the officers sided with Omari. The other half trusted the trainer, Guandolo. Blackwell said they assumed he must be privy to intelligence on Omari that he wasn’t revealing.

Guandolo suggested when I interviewed him on the phone that there were things he knew about Omari that the FBI didn’t. “We know we have our facts right, because we have to,” Guandolo said. (Nearly a dozen sources contacted by NPR in the intelligence community, the FBI and at the Department of Homeland Security said Omari has no links to terrorists or terrorism. They said the accusations against him are unfounded.)

Bill Braniff, who is in charge of the training program at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, sees what happened in Ohio as part of a larger problem.

“I think this is something that happens across the nation fairly consistently,” he said. “No one is tracking this with numbers, but anecdotally we are hearing about it all the time. The Muslim-American community is being preyed upon from two different directions. One, the jihadist recruitment and radicalization that is actively preying on their sons and daughters; and two, the elevated levels of Islamophobia — Islamophobia at worst and distrust and alienation at best.”

That distrust had real consequences in Columbus. Omari lost his job with the state of Ohio, though not because of claims that he had ties to terrorism. After that training session, officials began digging into Omari’s past, and they eventually found something: They discovered that his employment application was incomplete. He hadn’t listed all of the schools where he had worked before taking the job with the state of Ohio. Omari says he just listed places where he had taught relevant courses — courses that touched on Middle Eastern studies. But he was fired anyway — some six months after the training session.

Federal officials familiar with the case say Omari was singled out because he distinguished between extremist Muslims and mainstream Muslims in his outreach and training programs. Guandolo, the trainer, had a different view. When he talked to me about Muslim groups in the U.S., he spoke in terms of whether or not Muslims were patriotic.

Omari, for his part, still can’t believe he got fired. “I lost a lot of things over this,” he said. “I lost respect, dignity, reputation — everything really was connected with that, and definitely, you know, how could you defend yourself?”

Chief Blackwell says even more than a year after the episode, he’s still upset. “That was not a good day, in my opinion, for the Columbus Division of Police or law enforcement in general,” he said.

Omari filed suit last week against the Ohio Department of Public Safety and several individuals for wrongful dismissal. He said he’d love to get his job back. And the trainers who came to the Columbus police department? One of them is scheduled to hold another training session in August at the CIA.

Looks like Muslims aren’t all revenge-mongerers, thirsty for blood.

With One Day Left, Muslim Hate Crime Victim Tries To Save His Shooter From Execution

(ThinkProgress)

On September 21, 2001, a 41-year old white supremacist from Dallas walked into a gas station and opened fire on people he believed to be Arabs. Enraged by the 9/11 attacks, the shooter, Mark Anthony Stroman, killed an Indian man who was Hindu and a Pakistani man who was Muslim.
Rais Bhuiyan, a 37-year old Muslim Air Force pilot from Bangladesh, was Stroman’s third victim. Shot in the face at close range with a double-barrel gun, Bhuiyan survived the attack, suffering now from partial blindness. After admitting to the attacks, Stroman is scheduled to be executed tomorrow in Texas.

Bhuiyan, the lone survivor of Stroman’s attack, is now trying to save his life. After the attack, Bhuiyan told the New York Times that he spent his time “simply struggling to survive in this country.” But pulling on his profound capacity for forgiveness, he has spent the last several months petitioning Texas to spare Stroman’s life. When asked why, Bhuiyan said his Islamic faith taught him not to seek vengeance and that what Stroman “did was out of ignorance” about Islam:

Q Mr. Stroman has admitted trying to kill you. Why are you trying to save his life?

A I was raised very well by my parents and teachers. They raised me with good morals and strong faith. They taught me to put yourself in others’ shoes. Even if they hurt you, don’t take revenge. Forgive them. Move on. It will bring something good to you and them. My Islamic faith teaches me this too. He said he did this as an act of war and a lot of Americans wanted to do it but he had the courage to do it — to shoot Muslims. After it happened I was just simply struggling to survive in this country. I decided that forgiveness was not enough.That what he did was out of ignorance. I decided I had to do something to save this person’s life. That killing someone in Dallas is not an answer for what happened on Sept. 11.

Q If you had the chance to meet Mr. Stroman, what would you say to him?

A I requested a meeting with Mr. Stroman. I’m eagerly awaiting to see him in person and exchange ideas. I would talk about love and compassion. We all make mistakes. He’s another human being, like me. Hate the sin, not the sinner. It’s very important that I meet him to tell him I feel for him and I strongly believe he should get a second chance. That I never hated the U.S. He could educate a lot of people.

In response to Bhuiyan’s efforts, Stroman had this to say:

Q What do you think of Rais Bhuiyan’s efforts to keep you from being executed?

A “Yes, Mr Rais Bhuiyan, what an inspiring soul…for him to come forward after what ive done speaks Volume’s…and has really Touched My heart and the heart of Many others World Wide…Especially since for the last 10 years all we have heard about is How Evil the Islamic faith Can be…its proof that all are Not bad nor Evil.”

Stroman’s realization stands in stark contrast — and as a strong rebuke — of the nation’s continuing descent into an Islamophobic age. Americans are living through a time when theexistence of Islam in the U.S. is seen as an insidious infiltration of homegrown terror and the sight of anything or anyone Islamic sparks visceral paranoia and outrage. Instead of fighting this reactionary tide, conservative politicians are exploiting the right-wing hatred as a way to raise their profile. Be it through congressional hearings or campaign platforms, the marginalization of Americans because of their faith threatens our core values and cultivates the very attitudes that stoke those like Stroman to violence.

Bhuiyan’s “deep Islamic Beliefs Have gave him the strength to Forgive the Un-forgiveable…that is truly Inspiring to me, and should be an Example for us all. The Hate, has to stop, we are all in this world together,” said Stroman. “Its almost been 10 years since The world stopped Turning, and we as a nation will never be able to forget what we felt that day, I surely wont, but I can tell you what im feeling Today, and that’s very grateful for Rais Bhuiyan’s Efforts to save my life after I tried to end His.”

The surreal world of anti-Muslim Islamophobia knows no bounds. Islamophobes and the political class that panders to them have been caught with their pants down–figuratively for once. Since 9/11, these traffickers in hate have profited from the development of an industry of “terror expert professionals,” consisting of so-called: “ex-terrorists,” “ex-Muslims,” “scholars,” “think tank gurus,” pontificating on the incompatibility of Islam and Democracy, the danger of a growing Muslim populace in the West, the need to be suspicious of Muslims, Muslims’ susceptibility to terrorism, etc.

This narrative belies reality, Muslims who commit terrorism are an extreme minority, in fact what is most glaring in the face of this propaganda is what Charles Kurzman terms, The Missing Martyrs (book review to come soon). For all the hackneyed anti-Muslim diatribe and hypotheses of an omnipresent and ever dangerous “Islamic terrorism,” what is remarkable is the absence of “would-be martyrs,” let alone a threat level that is blown out of all proportion. The Arab Spring has, more than anything else, dealt a stinging, if not lethal blow to the harbingers of doom.

What is most irksome is that the real radicals, the ones who draw us into endless war, increase hostilities amongst communities, and hob nob with anti-freedom organizations are the same individuals projecting their worldview onto Muslims.

Where else (with the exception of perhaps a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel) could we witness a House Homeland Security Sub-committee Hearing being chaired by a Congressman who once was the most outspoken advocate of a terrorist organization. Rep. Peter King’s involvement with the IRA while they were targeting and murdering civilians is well known, and the hypocrisy and double standard of him chairing hearings on “American Muslim radicalization” is painfully evident.

This however is not the only, or even the most glaring example we can turn to of Congressmen or former high ranking government officials supporting or advocating on behalf of a terrorist organization.

Congressmen (including Democrats) and former government officials have met with the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an organization that was designated a terrorist group in 1997 when the list was first compiled, and is STILL ON THE LIST–for now.

MEK has a very aggressive and organized lobby effort in Washington D.C. According to one House staffer, the MEK is “the most mobilized grassroots advocacy effort in the country — AIPAC included.” Their mission is to be delisted as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), push the USA to foment war with Iran, i.e. “regime change,” and have themselves installed into power. Sound familiar?

They attempt to pass themselves off as the sole legitimate opposition to the Iranian regime, going so far as to claim that they are the Green Movement or the government in exile. Now there is a quiet push to have them delisted from the FTO list:

Members of Congress led by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) have introduced a resolution calling on the Secretary of State and the President to throw the support of the United States behind an exiled Iranian terrorist group seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime and install themselves in power. Calling the exiled organization “Iran’s main opposition,” Filner is urging the State Department to end the blacklisting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) — a group listed by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The resolution currently has 83 cosponsors and is gaining significant ground.

Such a move would have disastrous repercussions for the USA, and would inevitably lead to blowback considering what the MEK is about:

[F]or the record, here are the facts about the MEK (you can find this and more at www.mekterror.com):

• The State Department reports the MEK is a terrorist group that has murdered innocent Americans and maintains “the will and capacity” to commit terrorist attacks within the U.S. and beyond. [1]
• The MEK claims to have renounced terrorism in 2001, but a 2004 FBI report states “the MEK is currently actively involved in planning and executing acts of terrorism.” [2]
• RAND and Human Rights Watch have reported that the MEK is a cult that abuses its own members. [3] [4]
• MEK has no popular support in Iran and has been denounced by the Green Movement, Iran’s peaceful democratic opposition movement.[5]

Iran’s Opposition Green Movement Rejects the MEK

• The leaders of the Green Movement, Iran’s true popular opposition movement, have denounced the MEK and warned that the Iranian government seeks to discredit Iran’s opposition by associating it with the MEK:
• “The Iranian Government is trying to connect those who truly love their country (the Greens) with the MEK to revive this hypocritical dead organization.” – Mehdi Karroubi, Green Movement leader. [6]
• “The MEK can’t be part of the Green Movement. This bankrupt political group is now making some laughable claims, but the Green Movement and the MEK have a wall between them and all of us, including myself, Mr. Mousavi, Mr. Khatami, and Mr. Karroubi.” – Zahra Rahnavard, Women’s rights activist and wife of Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi[7]

Iraqi National Congress Redux?

• The MEK claims it is “the main opposition in Iran,” yet similar to Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress that helped bring the United States into war with Iraq, the MEK is an exiled organization that has no popular support within Iran. [8]
• RAND reports that the MEK are “skilled manipulators of public opinion.” The MEK has a global support network with active lobbying and propaganda efforts in major Western capitals. [9]
• Members of Congress have been deceived and misinformed into supporting this terrorist  organization:
• In 2002, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen led efforts for the U.S. to support the group, prompting then-Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House International Affairs Committee, Henry Hyde and Tom Lantos, to send a Dear Colleague warning against supporting the MEK.  They cautioned that many Members had been “embarrassed when confronted with accurate information about the MEK.” [10]
• In the current Congress, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) have each introduced resolutions calling for MEK to be removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

A Capacity and Will to Commit Terrorist Acts in the U.S. & Beyond

• The Bush administration determined in 2007 that “MEK leadership and members across the world maintain the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.” [11]
• The Canadian and Australian governments have also designated the MEK as a terrorist organization. The Canadian government just reaffirmed its designation in December.[12] [13]
• An EU court removed the MEK from its list of terrorist organizations, but only due to procedural reasons.  According to a spokesperson for the Council of the European Union, the EU court “did not enter into the question of defining or not the PMOI [MEK] as a terrorist organization.” [14]

Saddam Hussein’s Terrorist Militia

• The MEK received all of its military assistance and most of its financial support from Saddam Hussein, including funds illegally siphoned from the UN Oil-for-Food Program, until 2003. [15]
• The MEK helped execute Saddam’s bloody crackdown on Iraqi Shia and Kurds. Maryam Rajavi, the MEK’s permanent leader, instructed her followers to “take the Kurds under your tanks.” [16]

A Cult That Abuses Its Own Members

• Human Rights Watch reports that MEK commits extensive human rights abuses against its own members at Camp Ashraf, including “torture that in two cases led to death.”[17]
• A RAND report commissioned by DOD found that the MEK is a cult that utilizes practices such as mandatory divorce, celibacy, authoritarian control, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, confiscation of assets, emotional isolation, and the imprisonment of dissident members. [18]
• RAND concluded that up to 70% of the MEK members at their Camp Ashraf headquarters were likely recruited through deception and are kept there against their will. [19]
• The FBI reports that the MEK’s “NLA [National Liberation Army] fighters are separated from their children who are sent to Europe and brought up by the MEK’s Support Network. […] These children are then returned to the NLA to be used as fighters upon coming of age.  Interviews also revealed that some of these children were told that their parents would be harmed if the children did not cooperate with the MEK. ”[20]

A History of Anti-Americanism

• One of the founding ideologies of the MEK is anti-Americanism—the MEK is responsible for murdering American businessmen, military personnel, and even a senior American diplomat. [21]
• The MEK strongly supported the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, vigorously opposed their eventual release, and chastised the government for not executing the hostages. [22]

The MEK was Not “Added” to the FTO List as a Goodwill Gesture to Iran

• The MEK has been a designated terrorist group since the State Department established the FTO list October 8, 1997. [23] MEK was also listed in the Patterns on Global Terrorism report prior to 1997. [24]

Delisting MEK: Disastrous Repercussions

The MEK is opposed by the Iranian people due to its history of terrorist attacks against civilians in Iran and its close alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

1. The greatest beneficiaries of delisting MEK would be Ahmadinejad and Iranian hardliners who seek to link the U.S. and the Green Movement to MEK.
2. U.S. support for MEK would be used as a propaganda tool by hardliners to delegitimize and destroy Iran’s true democracy movement.
3. American credibility among the Iranian people would be ruined if the U.S. supported this group.

This should all gives us pause. Do the elected and former government officials who support delisting the MEK know the troubling anti-American, terrorist history of the MEK? If they do, then how in good conscious can they actively push to delist them?

The scenario that keeps coming to mind is cover for war or a possible Israeli attack against Iran. A possibility that seems ever more likely as MJ Rosenburg wrote recently:

A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in the fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering US military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Robert Spencer’s link to the MEK. Spencer frequently spews insults at Reza Aslan for being a board member of the NIAC. In his “expert” opinion true Iranian Freedom organizations oppose the NIAC, and view them as tools of the Mullahs.

A contemptuous claim if it wasn’t so laughable, considering that the NIAC has frequently spoken out against the Iranian regime and has thrown its weight completely behind the Green Movement.

Spencer comes to this conclusion based on the opinion of his friends in a group called the PDMI or Pro-Democracy Movement of Iran. No one really knows how many people are in the PDMI, all they have is a blogspot website which Spencer links. The website is quite strange, it has an image of former Iranian dictator Reza Shah, and also articles supporting the MEK. Is it another MEK front group? One recent article from July 15 is titled “Iran, Mujahedin-e Khalq, and the US State Department,” by Hamid Yazdanpanah, who writes:

[W]hat has consistently been a go-to practice in appeasing Tehran? The harassment and terrorist listing of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)…the terrorist designation of the MEK arose purely out of appeasement of the Iranian regime…The terrorist designation of the MEK has not only failed to appease the Iranian regime, it has resulted in severe harm and restriction for an organization devoted to the liberation of the Iranian people. The State Department has a moral and legal obligation to undo this grave error and delist the MEK.

It looks as if on top of all the conspiracies, hatred, and anti-Freedom ideas that Spencer pushes he is also linked to the terrorist MEK. Human Events, another website Spencer writes for contains articles supporting the MEK, such as this one by James Zumwalt. Can we now begin every piece on Spencer with, “The MEK linked Robert Spencer…”?

Sadly, this chimera world in which the Islamophobes and their allies turn everything upside down or sweep it under the rug hoping no one will find the truth is real. We are confronted with an organized mechanism of propaganda seeking to profit from endless war, occupation, hatred, hypocrisy and double standards. We are in an age in which the Supreme Court has upheld a “criminal prohibition on advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization,” and yet our Congressmen, and their lobbyist friends can get away with doing exactly that when it suits their purposes!

*Update: There are more Islamophobes involved in the cynical nexus of bringing legitimacy to the MEK. One such longtime advocate has been neo-Conservative Daniel Pipes, who rather seems like a mild Islamophobe these days. For his support of the MEK see, Daniel Pipes: My Writings on the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. (hat tip: NassirH)

Ultra-Orthodox protestors clashing with police on Jerusalem’s Neviim Street on Saturday. By Nir Hasson Photo by: Olivier Fitoussi

There were 800 ultra-Orthodox protesters attempting to block traffic on Shabbat due to religious motivation, but if Muslims did something of this caliber, everyone would mention that Islam demands all Muslims to act like this.

800 ultra-Orthodox protesters attempt to block Jerusalem road

Police arrived on horseback to disperse the crowd on the central Neviim Street, using a water-spraying vehicle to push the ultra-Orthodox protesters back toward the curb and allow traffic to resume. Protesters yelled out “Shabbos” and “Nazis” and threw objects as police remained in the vicinity to keep the peace.

Earlier this week, Jerusalem District Commander Niso Shaham requested that secular activists refrain from protesting ultra-Orthodox attempts to close off the road, explaining that this would only fuel tensions. The commander pledged to take the necessary measures to ensure traffic would flow as usual on the central Jerusalem road.

Saturday’s events come just days after ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim residents set fire to trash cans and hurled rocks at police officers to protest the shutting down of an illegal slaughterhouse. Six policemen were wounded in the fray.

Neviim Street, a central Jerusalem road, is one of the most important avenues of transportation in the capital, particularly since the closure of Yaffo Road to traffic in recent years. Neviim also serves as a border between ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and the cultural and shopping center of the city.

Secular residents claim that the police are turning a blind eye to ultra-Orthodox efforts to block traffic on the street every Saturday, with hundreds of religious men often resorting to violence in a bid to prevent cars from desecrating Shabbat.

Although police have successfully prevented the total closure of Neviim Street in the past, secular drivers have complained of ultra-Orthodox zealots kicking, hitting, and throwing bottles on their cars when they attempt to drive through the street.

In This Town, Open Arms for a Mosque

By PETER APPLEBOME

In the boiling caldron of American outrage, here’s one to throw in the pot.

In this faded industrial town on the Erie Canal, the old United Methodist church downtown is being turned into a mosque, the old roof topped with minarets, the crescent moon and star of Islam on new white stucco replacing the familiar red-brick facade. Like the immigrants and refugees making up an ever-increasing share of the local population and the 42 languages spoken in the local schools, it is one more sign of how much the familiar world here is fading into the past.

Somehow, though, people here have not been given the current script. Instead, while mosques and Islamic community centers have been contested from near ground zero and Staten Island to Murfreesboro, Tenn., Temecula, Calif., and Sheboygan, Wis., Utica is a place where the dog hasn’t barked.

Instead, the mosque has been welcomed by, among others, former church members grateful that the old building will be saved. Some 200 people showed up this month for a tour by the Landmarks Society of Greater Utica.

Utica is hardly some post-racial nirvana, and it probably helps that the Muslim community is largely Bosnian, not Arab. But if we had today’s stories told by Frank Capra rather than by talk radio, there are more than a few that could be told in this town, which is being revived by immigrants and is embracing difference not in the didactic style of do-gooder moralizing but as a continuation of what Utica has always been.

“Where would we be today if no one welcomed the Italians, like my father, the Irish, the Polish, who became the backbone of this community,” said Mayor David R. Roefaro, who owns a funeral home. “When I ran for office, my slogan was ‘We’re in this together,’ because I believe it.”

Like most of upstate New York, Utica has seen better days. The population, more than 100,000 for much of the past century, is now around 60,000. Most of the old textile and manufacturing jobs are gone. That said, a flood of immigrants and resettled refugees, Bosnians, Burmese, Somalis, Vietnamese, Iraqis and many others, who now make up about a quarter of the population, have almost stopped the population decline. The Bosnians, in particular, have refurbished much of the housing, and Utica feels like a place with a pulse and maybe even a future.

“I’ve been here for eight years, and to watch the transformation, new stores, new restaurants, has been amazing,” said Peter D. Vogelaar, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. He said an estimated 600 houses had been purchased by refugees, helping to prop up the housing market. “Utica is a model for a small community in terms of integrating and acculturating emerging populations.”

So while some other communities grapple with English-only movements, Utica’s City Hall does its best to provide information in all the languages its residents speak while they learn English. The city and the Muslim community together came up with a plan to save the old church building, its basement underwater, which would have cost the city $1 million to demolish.

Would the mosque construction have been as placid if it began now or if the congregation came from somewhere else or looked Middle Eastern rather than European? Maybe not. But the imam, Ahmedin Mehmedovic, said he took pains to be sensitive to the community, making sure to save and return all the religious artifacts to the church members, and he wasn’t surprised his congregation was treated well in return.

“I think the main point is to respect each other,” he said. “So if you respect me as a Muslim and as a good man, I’ll respect you, too. I’ll try to do what’s best for you. You’ll try to do what’s best for me. In Utica, there is a big harmony between different religions and different congregations.”

Not all is harmony. The Republican candidate for Congress, Richard Hanna, expressed support last week for the project in Lower Manhattan, only to have the Democratic incumbent, Michael Arcuri, come out against it. On Monday, Mr. Hanna changed course, calling the project “an affront to the victims of 9/11.”

Disturbing alliance between Right-wing Zionists and Russian Nationalists. (Hat tip: SR)

The Unholy Alliance: how Israeli wingnuts befriended Russian Hitlerophiles

by Sergey Romanov (LGF)

On an Israeli Russian-language site IzRus we can see this news item from 12.07.2011:

Russian nationalists met in Israel with a right-wing Zionists

One of the leaders of Russia’s National Democratic Alliance, who visited Israel together with his colleagues at the invitation of religious-right-wing Zionists, came to the conclusion that the two political forces have a lot in common …

Since last week, in Israel there is a group of moderate [ethnic] Russian nationalists from Russia, arrived here at the invitation of the religious-right bloc “Ihud ha-Leumi” (“National Unity”). The leaders of an interregional public association of the National Democratic Alliance (established in March 2010) made several trips to the Holy Land, visited the Knesset, and the memorial complex “Yad Vashem”. Following the visit, co-chairman of the movement Ilya Lazarenko came to the conclusion that the Russian nationalists and right-wing Zionists have much in common. “We are very much in common, and first of all – rejection of violent Islamism, which is a threat to civilization – he said to the portal IzRus. – We also have some ideological overlap associated with the objectives of nation-building and its operation.”

Russian political leaders in recent years emphasize the multi-ethnic country and its citizens need to instill ethnic and religious tolerance. However, Lazarenko is convinced that in Russia today it is not only appropriate but also very important to talk about national component. “The national problem in Russia – this is primarily a[n ethnic] Russian problem, all the rest follow. The problem is that [ethnic] Russians don’t have their own national state, their homeland. Just as Jews didn’t have it for a long time,” – said Lazarenko.

The Russian version of the Israeli 7th channel - Arutz Sheva – that caters to the religious right-wing segment of the population provides further details of the visit.

www.7kanal.com/news.php3?id=283314

Yesterday in Knesset leaders of the Russian National Democratic Alliance (NDA) met with the representative of the bloc “National Unity” MK Aryeh Eldad, head of the parliamentary lobby against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

Member of the “Union of Professors for strong Israel” Dr. Michael Pavlov
accompanied the group and translated during the meeting.

The meeting took place in a warm, friendly atmosphere, – said Dr. Pavlov. Aryeh Eldad was interested in the political platform of NDA and the opinion of the alliance about Israel and to certain Israeli politicians. In response to Ilya Lazarenko said he had been impressed by the visit to the Deputy Minister of Negev and Galilee Ayoob Kara. Mr. Lazarenko also warmly praised the bloc “National Unity”, believing members of this unit to be the real patriots of Israel.

[...]

Ilya Lazarenko said he hoped for further cooperation with the patriotic forces of Israel. MK Aryeh Eldad assessed the meeting as productive.

On the photo in the article are NDA’s Ilya Lazarenko (right) and Alexey Shiropayev(left).

www.7kanal.com/news.php3?id=283299

For one week representatives of Russian public movement “National Democratic Alliance” (NDA) were in Israel.

Guests from Russia visited the memorial complex “Yad Vashem”, toured the West Bank, walking on Hebron and Jerusalem, and had a conversation at the “Round Table” in Netanya, with the extra-parliamentary and informal social and political organizations and movements, including “The Jewish Memorial “and the” Altalena – New Zionist revisionists.”

Guests from Russia, accompanied by Shlomo Lensky, editor of “7th channel” [Arutz Sheva] Tuvia Lerner and Dr. Michael Pavlov. Conversation with the deputy minister Ayoob Kara was also recorded by television reporters from “Israel Plus” channel (the same day, two representatives of the NDA were guests at the “Open Studio” show with David Cohn).

Says Dr. Michael Pavlov: “About a month ago I was contacted by my friend, asking for help in organizing the visit to Israel of the movement of Russian National-Democrats. I was a little confused, because, in my understanding a Russian nationalist is a drunken member of Pamyat society, brandishing an ax, shouting “Beat the Jews – save Russia.” However, looking at information about the movement of the national democrats, I was pleasantly surprised. It turns out that for a long time the movement takes the Israel-friendly stand, and was one of the few Russian organizations that fully supported Israel during “Operation Cast Lead.”

Yesterday there was a meeting of the co-chairmen of the NDA Alexey Shropayev and Ilya Lazarenko and the movement’s press secretary Alexander Galitskij and representatives of the St. Petersburg branch of the movement with the Deputy Minister development of Negev and Galilee Ayoob Kara. During the meeting, Mr Kara told about the blood relationship of the Druze – and specifically of his family – with the people and the State of Israel, as well as his vision of the Israeli national policy and current global threats. Russian leaders of the National Democratic Alliance Alexey Shiropayev and Ilya Lazarenko told about similar aspects of political life in Russia and have found many points of mutual understanding.

The Deputy Minister told guests that he had only recently returned from a trip to Europe, where he had met with representatives of right-wing national parties [Vlaams Belang/Dewinter - S.R.]. “Some accuse me of having links with the ultra-Right movements and leaders. But I say – Israel must find allies to fight the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism. Left-wing leaders can not understand what I explain to them for many years: we have no partner for negotiations among the Arab countries – they do not want the existence of a Jewish state at all. This is proved by our retreat from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Israel returned to the boundaries defined by the UN, “Hezbollah” and Hamas failed to cease hostilities against Israel. Every day I read the Arabic-speaking press and see all the duplicity: while in English the Islamists broadcast their love of peace, then in Arabic – they call for Islamic expansion and the destruction of Israel.”

[...]

Russian National Democrats were satisfied with the visit to Israel. “In Russia, most of the media lie about the Jewish occupation and discrimination against the Arab population. We visited Hebron, and have not seen any signs of occupation. On the contrary – most people in the Russian provinces would envy those conditions which are at the Arab residents of Hebron. We have seen in Israel the only effective model of national state in the world, preserving the democratic structures, and we believe that Russia has a lot to learn from Israel in this field “- the movement’s leader Alexey Shiropayev said.

Shlomo Lensky (deputy adviser to Michael Ben-Ari on ‘Russian’ Affairs) who accompanied the NDA group to the Knesset (as well as on a trip to Hebron, and to the “round table” in Netanya) noted that both for the Russian nationalists and for the Israeli right it was very important to break down stereotypes. “It is believed that if you’re a Russian nationalist – automatically you’re an anti-Semite and a fascist, etc., etc., and if you’re an Israeli right-wing you are always an extremist, a fanatic, a schismatic, and both – marginal. Meeting with Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara was an indication that it is the people who value and care about their country’s national interest who will find common language, who have a space for dialogue and may cooperate in the fight against common enemies, without being burdened with an inferiority complex and a variety of prejudices, “- said Shlomo Lensky.

Ayoob Kara has expressed willingness and even the desire to visit Russia as an official guest of the NDA, and said he would prefer St. Petersburg – a city about which he had heard many things, but, unlike other cities in Russia, and he hadn’t visited. “I am pleased to become a mediator between Russia’s NDA and similar national parties in Europe” – said Ayoob Kara.

OK, so who are Ilya Lazarenko and Alexey Shiropayev?

Ilya Lazarenko is best known as the founder of the so-called “Society of Nav“, a defunct pseudo-occult organization. Another name – “Church of the Great White Race”. It is described as a “racist ariosophic Gnostic-neo-Pagan organization which calls for the “rebirth of the Russian people as a part of the Aryan nations of the white race”. The organization “copies several elements of the KKK symbolics – gowns, pointy hats – but are very hostile to Abrahamic religions”. Lazarenko called this society “the Russian KKK”. See this link for some photos of their symbols, including the swastika.

In an old interview with Moscow News (quoted here) Lazarenko explained why the organization was founded on April 20:

April 20th was pointed out by the prevailing astrological situation. This is pure coincidence. Although we have nothing against Hitler. He was a good man, loved animals, children and his people.

Lazarenko claims: “We’re not fascists”, but then adds:

If we come to power, we will immediately introduce martial law, arrest the current government, restore the death penalty, will make Moscow a restricted area. We will revive the slogan “Beat the kikes, save Russia!” Modern rotten society is unable to resist. Like a goat on a string, it will follow the leader.

Lazarenko has a blog at LiveJournal, “ariognostic”. Here are a couple of his comments:

igni-ss.livejournal.com/268535.html?thread=8354039

2009-05-06 04:01 pm UTC

No trolling, actually.
That the NSDAP regime was Judeophobic is a fact.
That 6 million of specially killed Jews during the Holocaust are a myth – it is also a fact.
The method of “proving” the “6 million” is pure hysterics, nothing more. This myth doesn’t hang together.

ru-gnostik.livejournal.com/102455.html?thread=9303 59

2007-02-02 10:17 pm UTC
It would be more reasonable for Jews to admit that 80% of the “Holocaust” consist of inventions of the Allied war propaganda. The war propaganda was never “objective”. [...]

Being in sound mind, it is difficult to believe that “death camps” were effectively killing Jews up until the 70s, to get to the 6 million victims.

Nowadays even an attempt to get to the bottom of this causes hysterics.

[...]

There is no evidence of intended, massive extermination of any groups by national criteria in NS Germany.

Now Shiropayev. You can look at the Wiki article about him through Google Translate, or at this note. He was writing essays in defense of swastika back when he was still a Christian. He is well-known for his radical poetry. Some samples are here (use Google translate). Two examples of raw translation:

The sacred springOver Moscow – stormy expanse.
People and greenery come to life.
The day is such – the birthday of Adolf.
It means – the joy is in the sky.

Celestial strings rattle,
Continuing as flows of rain.
With undiluted bass of Perun
The Führer’s name responds.

Führer is with us – neither black bones
Nor the poor product of Hollywood.
He is the air in discharges of energy,
Which is clear as the Buddha.

He is a breath of spring tillage,
Washed clean by the triumphant sky.
He is the zenith with the Kolovrat of Salvation
And the jubilant roar of Messerschmitt.

Collapsed on Moscow as a flood
And as a pagan baptism Spree -
From the volatile mountains of airy Europe,
From the peaks of cloudy Hyperborea.

Zeus strikes the golden aegis,
Without giving cheap warranties.
This Spartan name – Hitler -
Comes to life under the sun, as an antique.

Führer with us! In the glow of a halo,
Shuddering roofs and grounds,
The sun-faced messenger of Olympus,
Who awakened the mystery of the Race.

Führer is alive! Wheel of Helios
Like a tsunami will crumple paranoia.
No, not the flocks of geese from Laos -
It is the souls of heroes are returning.

What is left is the shifting pile
From banners, legions and steel -
The Doric world of thunder and sun
Will rise from the hot ashes.

(C) Alexey Shiropaev, 2001

From another poem:

Greetings, our stern happiness,
The steel of space, the steep sky!
Catacomb symbols of swastikas
Hallow the concrete.

And from yet another (2005):

Singing “Horst Wessel”
I go out on the trail.
I hanged a Communist
On a high oak.[...]

How easy and pleasant it is
To pass through the woods,
While falling apart into the spots
Of the SS camouflage.

In his 2002 book “Prison of the Nation” [pdf] Shiropayev blames the Ukrainian famine of 1933 on the “Jewish Kremlin”. He writes:

But what can one say about nobility and aristocracy, if even in XIXth century the Jews, this, using Menshikov’s words, “Asiatic, extremely dangerous, extremely criminal people” have introduced their blood in the the Russian Imperial family?[...]As we see, the St. Petersburg emperors have inherited from the Moscow tsars the tradition of interracial sodomy. But the asiatic element was the new one. Instead of Tatar princes – Jewish bankers.

And further:

So, during the pre-October decades an organic “changing of the guard” in the elite layer of the Russia-Eurasia took place. “Steppe” element replaced by “desert” element, which was – because of many religio-historical features – far more anti-Aryan. Moreover, in contrast to the “nomads”, the “desert children” had developed an ideology of Talmudic racism, which proclaims religio-racial superiority of the Jews over “goyim” and, accordingly, the right of the “people of God” to rule and even the massively physically exterminate the “heathens”. Add to this the Jewish control over a significant part of international financial capital and the world’s masonic structures. All this did not promise the white population of Russia anything good. Tatarism must have seemed like “flowers”. This is what happened. Compared to Trotsky, Batu-Khan was an Asiatic liberal.[...]

Jews entered the Project to pursue their own goal – the power over the world, and that means primarily the Aryan world.

[...]

It was’t difficult for Jews to push Russia into war with Germany.

[...]

The organizers and main implementers of the the Tsar’s murder were, of course, the Jews.

[...]
By killing the Romanovs the Jews were exterminating the living memory about mother Europe, about Rus.

[...]

After the murder of White tsars, a genocide of the white population began on a monstrous scale. The second after oprichnina, but incomparably more powerful and fanatical Asiatic terror apparatus was created – the Cheka, in which acronym is hidden the Hebrew word meaning “slaughterhouse for cattle”, i.e. for all non-Jews-goyim according to the Talmud race theory.

And so it goes on, and on, and on…

Finally, some photos: 1, 2, 3.

These are the people who were invited by Ichud Ha-Leumi to Israel, whom Lensky and Lerner of Arutz Sheva promised to promote while they were visiting. What’s worse, judging by this interview an Arutz Sheva reporter took from Shiropayev after the latter visited Yad Vashem, AS people knew about his background – he is asked about his views about Hitler, about his poems (he, of course, dismisses it as mere poetry, says he grew out of it, and dishes out a boilerplate speech about the dangers of Islamism).

More ironically, these people are complete political non-entities in Russia – they have no influence, so this visit cannot be excused even as “Realpolitik”. In fact, it serves as a legitimization of these people in Russia.

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

71-year-old Muslim seriously assaulted outside Kilmarnock mosque

Police at Kilmarnock are continuing enquiries and appealing for information after an elderly man was seriously assaulted in the early hours of Friday 15 July 2011.

The 71-year-old Asian man was discovered with serious facial injuries around 0130 hrs on Friday 15 July 2011 outside the Community Mosque in Hill Street, Kilmarnock. It is believed that he was attacked prior to opening the Mosque for a prayer session and was discovered by two fellow members of the Mosque who informed the emergency services.

The injured man was taken by ambulance to Crosshouse Hospital where he is currently being treated for his injuries. Hospital staff describe his condition as stable.

Chief Inspector Wilson Brown at Kilmarnock Police Office said: ”This is a despicable act of violence carried out on a defenceless man. At this time there would appear to be no motive for this attack however we can’t rule out the possibility of it being racially motivated.

“It is believed that the man was attacked prior to him opening the Mosque and it is not known how long he may have been lying on the ground injured before two fellow members discovered him.

“At the time that the injured man was discovered by his fellow members of the Mosque, another two young men approached them to assist. Unfortunately these two men left prior to police arrival and I’d like to ask them to contact police immediately as it is vital that we speak to them.

“I also urge anyone who has any information which could assist us in tracking down the person or persons responsible for this sickening attack to contact police.

Anyone with information should contact Kilmarnock Police Office on 01563 50500 or alternatively CRIMESTOPPERS on 0800 555 111 where anonymity can be maintained.

Cumnock Chronicle, 15 July 2011

Via ENGAGE

The Hill Street mosque was opened earlier this year after the conversion of what had formerly been the Hillhead Tavern. The conversion was denounced by the Scottish Defence League who held a demonstration in Kilmarnock in June last year.

This is a GOP candidate who is getting 6% of the popular vote right now, and this sort of rhetoric is acceptable for a large portion of Americans.

Herman Cain: Americans Can Stop Mosques

Herman Cain said Sunday that Americans should be able to ban Muslims from building mosques in their communities.

“Our Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state,” Cain said in an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “Islam combines church and state. They’re using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their morals in that community, and the people of that community do not like it. They disagree with it.”

Last week, the Republican presidential candidate expressed criticism of a planned mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, telling reporters at a campaign event that “This is just another way to try to gradually sneak Sharia law into our laws, and I absolutely object to that.”

“This isn’t an innocent mosque,” Cain said.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Wallace pressed him about those comments.

“Let’s go back to the fundamental issue,” Cain said. “Islam is both a religion and a set of laws — Sharia laws. That’s the difference between any one of our traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes.”

“So, you’re saying that any community, if they want to ban a mosque…” Wallace began.

“Yes, they have the right to do that,” Cain said.

Cain has made a number of controversial comments about Muslims, including a vow to be cautious about allowing a Muslim to serve in his administration.

On Sunday, Cain defended his position, telling Wallace that it’s not discrimination.

“Aren’t you willing to restrict people because of their religion?” Wallace asked.

“I’m willing to take a harder look at people who might be terrorists, that’s what I’m saying,” Cain replied. “Look, I know that there’s a peaceful group of Muslims in this country. God bless them and they’re free to worship. If you look at my career I have never discriminated against anybody, because of their religion, sex or origin or anything like that.”

“I’m simply saying I owe it to the American people to be cautious because terrorists are trying to kill us,” Cain said, “so yes I’m going to err on the side of caution rather than on the side of carelessness.”

Original post: Herman Cain: Americans Have The Right To Ban Mosques In Their Communities

This soldier stole C4 and was caught trying to board a flight with it in his possession. Can you imagine if he had been Muslim?

Christopher Eric Wey, U.S. Soldier, Tries To Board Flight With Explosives

A U.S. soldier was caught attempting to board a flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday with high-velocity explosives in his bag.

Army Private First Class Christopher Eric Wey, 19, was arrested after he tried to board a United flight, the U.S. Attorney’s office for Arizona told Reuters.
Reuters reports that TSA officials at the Yuma International Airport detected a half-ounce of C4 explosives hidden in a tobacco can inside one of Wey’s bags. In a conflicting report, the Associated Press reportsthat it was a quarter-ounce.

Wey was detained and interviewed by FBI agents, who in turn discovered that Wey had stolen the C4 while attending an explosive training course.

Authorities found no indication that Wey intended any harm but him with trying to carry an explosive onto an aircraft and a stolen one at that, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine.

The Islamophobes will deny this happened at all or will instead blame the victim, saying she had it coming for wearing a “hijab.”

Muslim Woman in Hijab Kicked and Slapped in Hate Crime

(Buffalo News)

NIAGARA FALLS — The arrest of a Niagara Falls woman accused of using ethnic slurs and assaulting a woman of Pakistani origin is “a troubling symptom” of increased anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, the spokesman of a national civil rights group said Friday.

“How do you prevent something like this if [you're a] law enforcement officer?” asked Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.

“It’s almost impossible,” Hooper said. “I think it’s more of a job for religious and political leaders, who need to speak out against this anti-Muslim sentiment in our society, so that those who carry out these attacks don’t see tacit approval of their actions in the silence of public officials.”

Police described the incident as uncommon in a city that regularly welcomes international tourists of many ethnic origins, and a local Muslim leader said relations between Muslims and others generally are better in the Buffalo Niagara region than in many other parts of the country.

But police say good will went out the window at about 8:20 p.m. Thursday when Antoinette S. Ivey, 32, of Ninth Street, and another woman in a van hurled ethnic and racial slurs at a 26-year-old woman of Pakistani origin walking along Portage Road on the way to meet her husband.

The victim was wearing a purple head scarf, or hijab, a common garment among Muslim women.

According to the victim and other witnesses, the two women continued yelling at the victim after she met her husband in the parking lot of the Dollar Tree store on Portage, and when the victim asked why they were swearing at her, the two women got out of the van and assaulted her.

Before her husband could intervene, the victim was slapped in the face, knocked to the ground, punched and kicked repeatedly, police said. Her hair also was pulled, and she suffered bruises, pain and swelling on her head and body.

There is “no indication” that the victims and assailants knew each other, Police Superintendent John R. Chella said.

The victim was taken by ambulance to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, where she was treated and released, police said.

While police searched Friday for her companion, Ivey was held in the Niagara County Jail in lieu of $750 bail. She was charged with third-degree assault as a hate crime.

The crime normally is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in a county jail, but as a hate crime, it becomes a felony punishable by up to four years in state prison, Assistant Niagara County District Attorney Peter M. Wydysh said.

Chella said this might have been the first instance this year of a hate crime, which his department is required to report quarterly to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

The Falls, he said, is a safe place for residents and visitors.

“Our numbers don’t indicate a serious problem,” he said. “We take each individual case seriously, but we don’t have an epidemic that we’re doing anything proactively to prevent it. I can’t recall any one [incident] this year.”

Police responded quickly and appropriately, said Hooper, whose group has called on the FBI to investigate the matter along with two other recent incidents in New York City.

Relations between Muslim-Americans and others in Western New York are “much better” than some other parts of the country, said Dr. Khalid J. Qazi, president of the local chapter of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

“We’ve been visible in the community for a number of years, and hopefully that has made a difference in how we are perceived and Muslims in general [are perceived],” Qazi said. “We want to make sure we contribute to the growth of the country like everybody else.”

News Niagara Reporter Thomas J. Prohaska contributed to this report.

cspecht@buffnews.com bobrien@buffnews.com

If such an initiative were started by a group in a pre-dominantly Muslim nation, as it has in places such as Jordan and Malaysia, the Islamophobesphere would go buck wild with cries that it is proof of the backwardness of those societies, or a result of evil SHARIA!! At the very least the complexity of the issue both theologically and societally would be reduced or all together discarded.

Even in the United States there are now efforts to introduce legislation to legalize polygamy in Utah. What if they were Muslim?

New Jewish group wants to restore polygamy

(Jerusalem Post) By JONAH MANDEL

Practice promoted as solution for the abundance of single women, Arab demographic threat and the predicament of seeking extramarital relations.

A new organization is trying to reinstate polygamy into mainstream Orthodox Judaism, despite it being against the contemporary norm of Jewish law, and prohibited by the state.

The idea is the brainchild of Habayit Hayehudi Hashalem (The Complete Jewish Household).

It is being promoted as the Jewish solution for the abundance of single women, the Arab demographic threat and the male predicament of seeking extramarital relations.

A small advertisement over the weekend in the broadly circulated Shabbat Beshabato, a hand-out distributed in synagogues nationwide dealing with the weekly Torah portion and contemporary issues, quoted a paragraph from senior Sephardi adjudicator Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s Yabi’a Omer treatise, in which he wrote that it is a mistake for non-Ashkenazim to follow Rabbeinu Gershom’s “stringency,” according to which it is prohibited for a man to marry more than one wife. Approximately 1,000 years ago, Rabbeinu Gershom of Mainz, Germany, issued resonating reforms on a variety of subjects pertaining to Jewish life, and those who transgressed them were liable to be socially excommunicated. Perhaps the most well-known of these prohibitions is to not to be married to more than one woman at a time, despite the fact that this was common in biblical times.

The man behind the ad, Rabbi Yehezkel Sopher, saw no legal problem in his initiative.

“This is not about secular people who abide by the rules of the state, rather religious people. Whoever wants to take another wife – the Torah does not object to it,” Sopher told The Jerusalem Post. “We work according to the Shulhan Aruch, there are rules here.”

As for Rabbeinu Gershom’s excommunication ban, even for those who would as Ashkenazim have followed it – “that has been over for hundreds of years by now,” as its end date was the end of the fifth millennium according to the Jewish year count, i.e. some 700 years ago, he said.

As for the fact that the rabbinate is against bigamy and polygamy, Sopher, who identified himself as a resident of the Central region, explained that “the rabbis at the Chief Rabbinate receive their salaries from the state,” so publicly they have to object to polygamy. “But if you ask them behind closed doors, they will say it’s allowed.”

Sopher himself is married to only one woman, “but there is already consent to a second.”

Asked why they made this issue public now, and in a mainstream national-religious publication, he said that “we really wanted it to resonate.

We’ve been working on it for two years now, through our publications.

But we want it to get out to the larger public.

“This is a cry out to all God-fearing Jews. Instead of Arabs marrying Jewish women, Jews should,” he said.

“This is also a solution for women who never married, for widows, divorcees.”

The whole notion of monogamy is not an essentially Jewish one, Sopher stressed. “This [polygamy] is very acceptable in our religion, it’s religious coercion from the establishment under the influence of Catholicism that prevents about 15 percent of women in their fertile age from marrying,” he said.

“It’s cruel. And the Jewish nation is harmed by it. We think national fertility could rise by at least 10%. This is national discrimination, where the state turns a blind eye to Beduin, who freely take more wives. If Jews do, they are thrown into prison. And if a law is implemented in a discriminatory manner, it doesn’t have to be heeded,” he said.

In the ad, Sopher noted his group had a rabbinical court working with it on the issue. The head of that court is Rabbi Dov Stein of Jerusalem, who also serves as secretary for the nascent Sanhedrin project.

Stein said Habayit Hayehudi Hashalem’s initiative is not counter to the laws of the state.

“You can legally marry a second woman, the same way the secular public figured out how to marry in Cyprus and then have it approved here. Rabbis have found ways to enable such frameworks – otherwise we’d be inciting to a crime here,” he told the Post. “There are loopholes in the law we can find, Ashkenazim as well.”

The source of this move is not men, rather women, said Stein.

“This is an appeal of women to change the law, they are voicing their protest, they are not enabled to establish a family, have a future.

They are miserable.”

Stein said on Sunday afternoon that nearly 100 people had already telephoned to express interest in such an endeavor, following the weekend ad.

“There are women who agree, but can’t act on it. But even if a woman doesn’t agree, her husband is not her property, and by law he is not prohibited from having an affair with another woman.”

Senior members of the Chief Rabbinate slammed Habayit Hayehudi Hashalem and said it was a perversion of Judaism, motivated solely by “carnal lust.”

This is a distortion and madness,” said Rabbi Ya’acov Bezalel Harrar, the head of Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s office.

As for Yosef’s adjudication quoted in the ad, “this was taken out of context.

The validity of Rabbeinu Gershom’s excommunication ban might have expired, but that doesn’t mean that polygamy is permitted,” Harrar said.

“No rabbi would permit such a thing,” he said. “This is despicable villainy,” Harrar continued. “I am even less bothered by homosexual relations than such an instance in which a man takes two wives. In a homosexual scenario there are two people who decide to live their life that way. Here a person is putting two women into a conflict.

“Besides carnal lust” of the men involved, “there is nothing here,” he said of the claim that this was being proposed in the name of women who otherwise wouldn’t be able to marry or bear children. Harrar also doubted the fact that this could be seen as a trend. But “if it is a trend, it deserves all possible condemnation,” he said.

Kiryat Ono Chief Rabbi Ratzon Arusi, head of the Chief Rabbinical Council’s Marriage Committee, said that “it is true that in the Torah a man is allowed to marry more than one woman. But it is wrong to think that besides Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban the phenomenon was widespread.”

Arusi noted as proof the fact that Yemenite Jews, who never accepted the ban, rarely took more than more wife, and even when they did it was only in extreme cases such as infertility.

But in modern Israel, a rabbinic court would not allow a Yemenite man to take another woman, even when his barren wife insisted that she wanted him to, he said.

“Don’t think rabbinic courts aren’t very careful about not letting one bring troubles into his home,” Arusi said. A rare case in which a second wife would be allowed would be if the first one were in a coma, and it would be impossible to divorce her according to Jewish law. “And even then, the rabbis would ensure that all the comatose woman’s rights were ensured, should she awake from her coma,” he said.

Arusi was concerned that such a phenomenon would increase the rates of unregulated marriages and divorces in Israel, which could lead to severe pedigree problems.

“Woe to all those who take the law into their own hands, and create facts on the ground, and seek ways around the rabbinate with private weddings, without getting permission from the rabbinate and the leading rabbis.

They are not solving problems, rather creating them. By registering marriage in Israel, we can monitor things and ensure there are no mamzerim [people forbidden to marry according to Halacha] marrying. Can we have that supervision with unregulated weddings? And how can one be sure that the divorce carried out for such a person who wed off the books would be entirely by Jewish law? This is narrowmindedness that should not be allowed,” Arusi said.

“There is an internal halachic debate on this, but these people should not deceive the public into thinking that without Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban any Jew can go and marry as many women as he wants,” he said.

Arusi said his committee would examine the issue in its next meeting.

Freedom of worship is one of our most invaluable rights. It means that I have the complete freedom and the human right to worship God the way I see fit or to not worship, provided that I uphold the standards of civil law. Thomas Jefferson so eloquently wrote:

That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

[The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom]

This human right is the cornerstone of our democracy. It keeps the political conversation rational, among other things, and prevents our nation from degenerating further into partisan religious delinquency. So, naturally, I am dismayed when I see this most basic and cherished freedom become a casualty in our national discourse on Islam and Muslims.

Observe Asra Nomani, whom we’ve criticized before for supporting racial profiling, in her latest draconian suggestion; if mosques do not bow to the demands of her ideology, they should be denied tax exempt status (i.e. forced to shutdown from crippling taxes). How did she arrive at such a conclusion?

Nomani says she is fighting Gender Apartheid:

Our goal was to walk through the front double doors designated for “brothers” and pray in the forbidden space of the opulent musallah, or main hall, of the mosque.

She paints herself as a freedom fighter, a successor to Martin Luther King Jr. But the question is: why do Muslim men and women pray in separate spaces? Is it sexism?

Until a point in time when we live in a “genderless” society (maybe something Asra advocates?), men and women are generally considered distinguished entities and traditional religions tend to take this into account. In the case of the majority of Muslims, men and women pray in separate places for the five congregational prayers because the Quran says:

Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for greater purity for them… And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof… (24:30-31)

Pious Muslims are not supposed to gawk with lust at members of the other sex. This applies in daily life and even more so in the ritual prayer in which concentration and focus should be directed towards God and not the opposite sex. Separating men and women in the Muslim prayer is therefore considered a matter of modesty; not that women are inferior or have less rights. Thus, separate prayer halls in themselves are not an indication that women are being mistreated or denied access to the mosque.

But perhaps the issue is that women have a less nice area to pray in or are being denied access to the mosque altogether. On this issue Nomani has a point, and she produces some statistics and studies, although mired by her sweeping generalizations:

In a 2005 publication, “Women Friendly Mosques and Community Centers,” written by two American-Muslim groups — the Islamic Social Services Associations and Women In Islam — the authors confirmed that “many mosques relegate women to small, dingy, secluded, airless and segregated quarters with their children,” some mosques “actually prevent women from entering,”…

It is true that some mosques have less than adequate facilities to accommodate female worshippers, but is it always a case of sexism? If you haven’t noticed, opening or expanding a mosque is not the easiest thing to do in America right now. There are other factors involved other than an alleged omnipresent sexism dominating the Muslim community. Some of these mosques do not have the funding to give women a bigger space; and perhaps, it may be the conservative culture of a particular mosque for women to normally pray at home with their children, usually coming to the mosque only on special occasions, and thus a bigger space is unnecessary.

Nomani could draw from Islamic tradition to support her legitimate goal of helping women increase their presence and participation in the mosque. She could, for example, mention how numerous authentic traditions record that the Prophet Muhammad gave women universal support to go to the mosque:

Do not prevent the maid-servants of Allah from going to the mosque.

[Sahih Muslim, Book 004, Number 0886]

She could engage in a respectful dialogue with notable Imams, scholars and activists, work for grassroots change in her local community, and help establish the model mosque she seeks with their help or of her own volition. Unfortunately, Nomani thinks strong-arm bully tactics and shouting matches in the mosque are the way to go.

First, she travels to different communities to whom she does not belong and demands to violate their sacred spaces. Then, she makes a ruckus in the media to bring pressure on Muslim communities from society at large. That hasn’t worked, so now she wants the government to step in and tell Muslims how they should organize their prayer halls:

I understand the difficulties in having the state intervene in worship issues. I believe in a separation of church and state, but I’ve come to the difficult decision that women must use the legal system to restore rights in places of worship, particularly when intimidation is used to enforce unfair rules.

Unbelievable! One Christian author took the words right out of my mouth:

That is an almost comically irrational paragraph, and yet it ran in a column published in none other than USA Today. Nomani says that she “understand[s] the difficulties in having the state intervene in worship issues,” but shows no such understanding at all. Then, she writes that she “believe[s] in a separation of church and state,” but then she calls upon the coercive power of the state to force doctrinal change in places of worship. She cannot have it both ways…

I am not worried that IRS agents are about to descend on the nation’s churches, mosques, and synagogues to force a new government-endorsed theology on our places of worship. I am very concerned, however, that this kind of argument, left unaddressed, implies a power that the government does not and should not possess.

Undoubtedly what Nomani is asking for is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution’s, First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” She would open the floodgates of government intervention into the most private area of our lives, our places of worship, our sacred spaces, and threaten to raise our taxes if we didn’t worship in a manner consistent with her ideology (a curious double-violation of Tea Party ideology but nonetheless will probably receive a free pass from many on the Right because of the fact that Muslims are Nomani’s target).

She warns us that in mosques “intimidation is used to enforce unfair rules” but she has no problem using the long arm of the law to intimidate Muslims and force them to construct their prayer halls in line with Nomani’s ideology or else be crushed by burdening taxes.  So, Asra, how are you not also using intimidation “to enforce unfair rules?” Can anyone else see the double standard?

Don’t get me wrong. Freedom and women’s rights are very vital issues for Muslims to tackle, but not so much for Nomani. She seems far more interested in getting her uninformed and sensational views published than in helping the Muslim community from within.

How else can we understand her aggressive assault on our most basic American freedom?

Cain should have stuck to making pizzas.

Breaking: Herman Cain Is Suspicious of Muslims

(New York Magazine)

Does Herman Cain know what a mosque is?

Herman Cain, it’s probably safe to say, has already peaked. For reasons that remain unclear, hewowed Republicans in the primary season’s first debate but was quickly forgotten when Michele Bachmann wowed Republicans in the second debate. His national polling average of 10.2 percent in late June has gradually dropped over the past couple of weeks to 6.5 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. His numbers have steadily declined in polling of the Iowa caucus as well, and some of his staff in Iowa and New Hampshirerecently abandoned ship. But Herman Cain does still have one card up his sleeve: More than any other candidate, he’s willing to say heinous, bigoted things about Muslims.

Cain has said he wouldn’t appoint a Muslim to any position within his administration because of fears that Muslims are trying to “gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.” He later softened his position slightly, allowing for the potential hiring of Muslims that pass some kind of loyalty test that only Muslims have to take. And now Cain is speaking out against the never-ending controversy over a proposed Islamic center and mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee:

“It is an infringement and an abuse of our freedom of religion,” he said. “And I don’t agree with what’s happening, because this isn’t an innocent mosque.” ….

“It is another example of why I believe in American laws and American courts,” Cain said. “This is just another way to try to gradually sneak Shariah law into our laws, and I absolutely object to that.”

You read that correctly: Letting Muslims practice their religion is an infringement on our freedom of religion. Let that argument sink in for a second. Or don’t. It’s actually uncomfortably farcical.

The expose on the fraud known as Shoebat continues on CNN:

Robert Spencer, watch out you’re next.

(via. Islamophobia-Today)

Muslim Woman Assaulted in an Alleged Hate Crime in New York, Civil Rights Violation Lawyer Investigates

By: The Perecman Firm

New York civil rights lawyer David Perecman comments on allegations of an possible attack on a burka-wearing woman in Harlem. New York City police are investigating whether the attack was a hate crime.

Aissatou Diallo claims that two women, one back and one white, attacked her as she was walking in Harlem. She said she was called a “f–king terrorist” and punched after she asked one of the women to stop taking pictures of her. The pair allegedly then ran off only to return and throw Diallo to the floor, pull off her burka and curse at her.

Both women who allegedly attacked Diallo have been arrested on assault charges. NYPD hate crime detectives are investigating whether the crime was a bias attack.

In New York, civil rights violation lawyers understand that being charged with a hate crime can increase the severity of an assault or battery charge.

“Being charged for a hate crime can make a rotten situation even worse for someone arrested in New York,” civil rights violation lawyer Perecman said.

New York civil rights violation lawyer Perecman is the founder of The Perecman Firm, one of New York’s civil rights violation law firms.

Original post: Muslim Woman Assaulted in an Alleged Hate Crime in New York, Civil Rights Violation Lawyer Investigates

We have been covering the story about “The King’s Torah” for quite some time now, it is quite popular amongst the religious right in Israel. Can you imagine if texts such as this were found in an Islamic book called the “The Caliph’s Sharia’”?,

I. A gentile must not kill his friend, and if he has killed, he must die.

II. The prohibition “thou shalt not commit murder” refers to a Jew who kills another Jew.

III. A Jew who kills a gentile is not required to die.

Replace “gentile” with “kafir” and Jew with “Muslim,” and imagine the reaction from the Islamophobesphere.

Inside Torat Hamelech, the Jewish extremist terror tract endorsed by state-employed rabbis

by Max Blumenthal

Last year, I reported on a convention of top Israeli rabbis who gathered to defend the publication of Torat Hamelech, a book that relied on rabbinical sources to justify the killing of gentiles, including infants “if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us.” The most prominent rabbinical endorsers, Kiryat Arba’s chief rabbi Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, had dismissed police summons at the time, insisting that man’s law could not touch the halakha. A year later, in late June, the Israeli police finally arrested Lior for his role in endorsing and promoting the book.

Riots broke out almost immediately in the wake of the arrest, with mobs of religious Zionists burning tires and attempting to storm the Israeli Supreme Court compound. Fearing more riots and with sales of Torat Hamelech surging, the police handled Rabbi Yosef with kid gloves, requesting he come in for questioning but not arresting him. In the end, the state neglected to remove Lior, Yosef, or any other state-employed rabbi from his position for endorsing Torat Hamelech.

Why is Torat Hamelech so explosive? Yuval Dror, an Israeli journalist and academic, excerpted some of the book’s most incendiary passages. What appeared was Jewish exclusivism in its most extreme form, with non-Jews deemed permissible to kill, or Rodef, for the most inconsequential of wartime acts, including providing moral support to gentile armies. The book is a virtual manual for Jewish extremist terror designed to justify the mass slaughter of civilians. And in that respect, it is not entirely different from the Israeli military’s Dahiya Doctrine, or Asa Kasher and Amos Yadlin’sconcept of “asymmetrical warfare.” The key difference seems to be the crude, almost childlike logic the book’s author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, marshals to justify the killing of non-Jewish civilians.

Here are passages from Torat Hamelech, as excerpted by Dror and translated by Dena Bugel-Shunra:

II. Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder

Maimonides wrote in the Halachas of Murder, Chapter A, Halacha A:

He who kills one soul of Israel violates a prohibition, as it is said “thou shalt not commit murder, and if he committed murder maliciously, in front of witnesses, his death shall be by the sword…

It is therefore made explicit that the “thou shalt not commit murder” prohibition refers only to a Jew who kills a Jew, and not to a Jew who kills a gentile, even if that gentile is one of the righteous among the nations… we have derived that from the verse “thou shalt not commit murder”, one cannot learn that there is a prohibition on killing a gentile.

(Page 17-18)

VIII. Conclusion

I. A gentile must not kill his friend, and if he has killed, he must die.

II. The prohibition “thou shalt not commit murder” refers to a Jew who kills another Jew.

III. A Jew who kills a gentile is not required to die.

IV. The prohibition on a Jew killing a gentile derives from the fact that a gentile is not allowed to kill a gentile.

(Page 27)

I. A gentile is killed for one death, and with one judge

A gentile who violates one of the seven rules [of Noah] must be killed, and he is killed based on the word of one witness and with one judge and with no warning.

II. A witness becomes a judge

For the Sons of Noah [gentiles] the witness can himself be a judge. This mean: if one person saw the other committing a crime – he can judge him and kill him for this, as he is the witness and he is the judge… Moses [moshe rabbenu] saw the Egyptian hitting a man of Israel, and killed him for that. So there Moses is the witness and is the judge, and this does not delay the carrying out of the law upon the Egyptian.

(Pp. 49-50)

What transpires from these matters is that when you judge a gentile for crimes that he has committed – you must also consider the question of whether he has repented, and if he has – he must not be killed… moreover: it is better that the gentile repent than that we kill him. If we come upon a gentile who does not abide by the Seven Laws [of Noah], and the importance of abiding by them can be explain to him, so he will repent – we would prefer to choose that path, and not judge an kill him.

(page 70)

It is explained in Yerushalmi [codex] that when a [child of] Israel [a Jew] is in danger of his life, as people tell him ‘kill this particular gentile or you will be killed’ – is permitted to kill the gentile to save himself… and the [interpreters of the law] Rashi and Maimonides say that the law of requiring to die rather than commit the crime is only valid in case of a Jew against another Jew, not in the case of a Jew against a stranger living among them… It is clear from these statements that when the choice is between losing the life of a stranger living among them and losing the life of a child of Israel [a Jew] – the simple decision is to permit [the killing].

(Pp. 157-158)

When the question is of a life of a gentile weighed against the life of a child of Israel [Jew], the initial proposal returns, which is that a Jew can violate  law in order to save himself, as what is at stake is the soul [life] of a Jew – which supersedes the entire Torah [code of law] - in contrast with the life of a stranger living among us, which does not permit any Torah prohibition to be superseded.

(page 162)

To save the life of a gentile, one does not violate the Sabbath rules, and it is clear from this that his life is not like the value of the life of a child of Israel, so it may be used for the purpose of saving the life of a child of Israel.

(page 167)

An enemy soldier in the corps of intelligence, logistics, and so forth aids the army that fights against us. A soldier in the enemy’s medical corps is also considered a “rodef” [villain who is actively chasing a Jew], as without the medical corps the army will be weaker., and the medical corps also encourages and strengthens the fighters, and helps them kill us.

A civilian who supports fighters is also consider Rodef, and may be killed… anyone who helps the army of the evil people in any way, strengthens the murderers and is considered to be Rodef.

(page 184)

III. Support and encouragement

A civilian who encourages the war - gives the king and the soldiers the strength to continue with it. Therefore, every citizen in the kingdom that is against us, who encourages the warriors or expresses satisfaction about their actions, is considered Rodef and his killing is permissible. Also considered Rodef is any person who weakens our kingdom by speech and so forth.

(p. 185)

We are permitted to save ourselves from the Rodef people. It is not important who we start with, as long as we kill the Rodef people, and save ourselves from the danger they pose. And see for yourself: if you say that the fact that there are many of them brings up the question of whom to start with, and that that question is supposed to delay us from saving for ourselves - why it stands to reason: the existence of any one of them postpones the salivation, and this is the reason to treat each and every one as a complete Rodef, and to kill him, so he will not cause this ‘life-threatening’ question…

Whoever is in a situation where it is clear that he will chase and danger us in the future - it is not necessary to give it fine consideration as to whether at this moment, exactly, he is actively helping the chasing [harassment?] of us.

(Pp. 186-187)

X. People who were forced to partner with the enemy

We have dealt, so far, with gentiles whose evil means that there is a reason to kill them. We will now turn to discuss those who are not interested in war and object to it with all force…

We will start with a soldier, who is party to fighting against us, but is doing so only because he has been forced by threats to take part in the war.

If he was threatened with loss of money and such things - he is completely evil. There is no permission to take part in chasing and killing due to fear of loss of money, and if he does so -he is a Rodef in every definition thereof.

And if he was threatened that if he would not participate in the war, he would be killed - according to the MAHARAL [rabbi]… just as he is permitted to kill others - so, too, can others (even gentiles)kill him, so we will not die. And for this reason, according to the MAHARAL, it is simply evident that such a soldier may be killed.

And according to the Parashat Drachim [rabbi? Or possibly book of law?] - he must not participate in the murdering even if he must give his life due to this. And if he does so [participates] - he is evil and may be killed, like any other Rodef.

We will remind, again, that this discusses all types of participation in the war: a fighter, a support soldier, civilian assistance, or various types of encouragement and support.

(P. 196)

XVI. Infants

When discussing the killing of babies and children - why on the one hand, we see them as complete innocents, as they have no knowledge, and therefore are not to be sentenced for having violated the Seven Laws, and they are not to be ascribed evil intent. But on the other side, there is great fear of their actions when they grow up… in any event, we learn that there is an opinion that it is right to hurt infants if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation the damage will be directed specifically at them.

(Pp. 205-200)

IV. Killing the enemy like killing our own men

Inside Torat Hamelech, the Jewish extremist terror tract endorsed by state-employed rabbis

by Max Blumenthal

If the king is permitted to kill his own men for the purpose of war - that same opinion also holds with regard to people who belong to the evil kingdom. In a war of righteous people against evil people, we assume that the evil will eventually hurt us all, if we let it raise its head, and the people of the evil kingdom will also suffer from it.

We are, in fact, arguing to any person from the evil kingdom: if you belong to the evil king - you are liable to be killed for helping murderers; and if you do not help him - you should help us, and it is permissible to kill you as we kill our own people (as we are all in trouble together, and in such a situation it is permissible to kill the few in order to save the many.)

This theory also permits intentional hurting of babies and of innocent people, if this is necessary for the war against the evil people. For example: If hurting the children of an evil king will put great pressure on him that would prevent him from acting in an evil manner - they can be hurt (even without the theory that it is evident that they will be evil when they grow up.)

(P. 215)

VII. Revenge

One of the needs which exists, in the hurting of [Evil people?] is the revenge. In order to beat [win the war against] the evil people, we must act with them in a manner of revenge, as tit versus tat…

In other words, revenge is a necessary need in order to turn the evil-doing into something that does not pay off, and make righteousness grow stronger; and as great as the evil is - so is the greatness of the action needed against it.

(Pp. 216-217)

Sometimes, one does evil deeds that are meant to create a correct balance of fear, and a situation in which evil actions do not pay off… and in accordance with this calculus, the infants are not killed for their evil, but due to the fact that there is a general need of everyone to take revenge on the evil people, and the infants are the ones whose killing will satisfy this need; and they can also be viewed as the ones who are set aside from among a faction, as reality has chosen them to be the ones whose killing will save all of them [the others from that faction?] and prevent evildoing later on. (And it does indeed turn out that to this consideration, the consideration that we brought forth at the end of the prior chapter also definitely is added - which is, that they are in any event suspected of being evil when they grow up.)

Walid Shoebat

Last night CNN had a “special investigation” on the fraud that is known as Walid Shoebat. It took them years to realize that he was a fraud, even after they had him on as a “terrorist expert” in the past. We wrote about Shoebat two years ago in a piece titled, Three Stooges Coming to a Campus Near You, and Walid Shoebat:”Kill them and their Children”.

CNN provided some disturbing video of Shoebat defrauding security personnel and first responders and wasting tax payer money with his lies. Hopefully it won’t be long until Robert Spencer and the rest who get paid to hate-monger to the DHS are exposed by mainstream media.

Watch Part 2 of Drew Griffin’s special investigative report about Walid Shoebat Thursday on AC360° beginning at 10pm E.T.

From Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston, CNN Special Investigations Unit

Rapid City, South Dakota (CNN) — Walid Shoebat had a blunt message for the roughly 300 South Dakota police officers and sheriff’s deputies who gathered to hear him warn about the dangers of Islamic radicalism.

Terrorism and Islam are inseparable, he tells them. All U.S. mosques should be under scrutiny.

“All Islamic organizations in America should be the No. 1 enemy. All of them,” he says.

It’s a message Shoebat is selling based on his own background as a Palestinian-American convert to conservative Christianity. Born in the West Bank, the son of an American mother, he says he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist in his youth who helped firebomb an Israeli bank in Bethlehem and spent time in an Israeli jail.

That billing helps him land speaking engagements like a May event in Rapid City — a forum put on by the state Office of Homeland Security, which paid Shoebat $5,000 for the appearance. He’s a darling on the church and university lecture circuit, with his speeches, books and video sales bringing in $500,000-plus in 2009, according to tax records.

“Being an ex-terrorist myself is to understand the mindset of a terrorist,” Shoebat told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

But CNN reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinianterritories found no evidence that would support that biography. Neither Shoebat nor his business partner provided any proof of Shoebat’s involvement in terrorism, despite repeated requests.

Back in his hometown of Beit Sahour, outside Bethlehem, relatives say they can’t understand how Shoebat could turn so roundly on his family and his faith.

“I have never heard anything about Walid being a mujahedeen or a terrorist,” said Daood Shoebat, who says he is Walid Shoebat’s fourth cousin. “He claims this for his own personal reasons.”

CNN’s Jerusalem bureau went to great lengths trying to verify Shoebat’s story. The Tel Aviv headquarters of Bank Leumi had no record of a firebombing at its now-demolished Bethlehem branch. Israeli police had no record of the bombing, and the prison where Shoebat says he was held “for a few weeks” for inciting anti-Israel demonstrations says it has no record of him being incarcerated there either.

Shoebat says he was never charged because he was a U.S. citizen.

“I was born by an American mother,” he said. “The other conspirators in the act ended up in jail. I ended up released.”

He said his own family has vouched for his prison time. But relatives CNN spoke to described him as a “regular kid” who left home at 18, eventually becoming a computer programmer in the United States.

Shoebat, now in his 50s, says he converted to Christianity in 1993 and began spreading the word about the dangers of Islam. He has been interviewed as a terrorism expert on several television programs, including a handful of appearances on CNN and its sister network, HLN, in 2006 and 2007.

Since al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, expertise on terrorism has been in high demand. The federal Department of Homeland Security has spent nearly $40 million on counterterrorism training since 2006. The department doesn’t keep track of how much goes to speakers, nor does it advise officials on the speakers hired by states and municipalities.

Shoebat spoke at a 2010 conference in South Dakota and was so well-received that he was invited back for the May event in Rapid City, according to state officials. He warned the police and first responders gathered in the hotel conference rooms that the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah had operatives working in Mexico and that drug cartels were raising money with Islamic groups. He also asserted that federal agents could have prevented the 9/11 attacks by looking for a chafed spot, called “zabibah,” that sometimes forms on the foreheads of devout Muslims.

“You need ex-terrorists who can tell you what life is like and what thinking is like of potential terrorists,” Shoebat said. “But had we looked at the zabibah only, we would have deflected a suicide action of killing 3,000 Americans.”

But Shoebat also told the group there were 17 hijackers when there were 19. And perhaps more surprising from a man who bills himself as a terror expert, Shoebat said the Transportation Security Administration could have stopped them. The TSA wasn’t created until after the 9-11 attacks.

Jim Carpenter, South Dakota’s homeland security director, said Shoebat brought “a point of view that certainly is not mainstream.”

“He brings in commentary about living and being raised as a Muslim and converting over to Christianity — gives them a different aspect of breaking the mold, so to speak,” Carpenter said. But he said Shoebat’s appearance was “a small portion” of the two-and-a-half-day conference.

“It’s not like we’re talking about setting up training and a discipline we would follow, that this is the only way and that’s the particular point of view of a Muslim or somebody of the Islamic faith. That’s not the case,” Carpenter said. “That’s his point of view.”

Carpenter said there is “no fear of threat” from Islamic terrorism in South Dakota, where the last census reports showed the state’s Muslim community made up less than one-half of 1 percent of the population. According to Rapid City’s local newspaper, about two dozen Muslims live in the city.

During Shoebat’s presentation, he criticized Muslim organizations and told audience members to be leery of Muslim doctors, engineers, students and mosques.

“Now, we aren’t saying every single mosque is potential terrorist headquarters. But if you look at certain reports by the Hudson report, 80 percent of mosques they found pamphlets and education on jihad. So they’re in the mosque, the mosque in accordance to the Muslim brotherhood is the command post and center.”

The conservative Hudson Institute said it never issued such a report and has no idea why its name was invoked.

Shoebat warned that making special accommodations for Muslim beliefs was a step toward establishing Islamic religious law. And he recounted how he wore a T-shirt that read “Profile me” on a trip to the airport and approached the screeners at the security checkpoint.

“I got tapped down, I got checked, I got all these different things,” he said. “I say it’s wonderful.”

Shoebat and business partner Keith Davies run several foundations and three websites that are all linked. Shoebat said the major group, the Forum for Middle East Understanding, includes his own Walid Shoebat Foundation.

In tax records filed by Davies, the Forum for Middle East Understanding reported 2009 earnings from speaking engagements, videos and book sales of more than $560,000. The documents are thin on specifics, and so is Shoebat.

“Basically, we are in information, and we do speaking and we do also helping Christians that are being persecuted in countries like Pakistan, and we help Christians that are suffering all throughout the Middle East,” he said. Asked how they do that, he said, “None of your business” — adding that disclosing details could endanger people he was trying to help in Islamic countries that have laws against blasphemy.

Shoebat’s name doesn’t appear on any of the paperwork. As for his own salary, he said he makes “probably what a gas station makes or a garage makes.”

“Everybody thinks I’m just raking in the dough, which is absolutely incorrect,” he said. He referred details to Davies, who offered to provide a copy of the group’s tax returns — but didn’t. When asked who served on the foundation’s board of advisers, Davies gave “Anderson Cooper 360″ the name of a former pilot, who didn’t return phone calls. But he could not name the high-ranking military officers he said were on the board.

Federal officials say they don’t know exactly how much money has gone to speakers like Shoebat. But in April, the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee raised concerns about “vitriolic diatribes” being delivered by “self-appointed counterterrorism experts” at similar seminars.

Sen. Susan Collins, the committee’s Republican chairwoman, and Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman asked the department to account for how much federal grant money went to state and local counterterrorism programs and what standards guided those grants. The request followed reports by the liberal Political Research Associates and the Washington Monthly that raised similar questions.

The Homeland Security Department told CNN that it has standards — and if training programs don’t meet them, “corrective action will be taken.”

“We have not and will not tolerate training programs — or any DHS-supported program — that rely on racial or ethnic profiling,” the agency said in a written statement.

If this happened in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood, rest assured the Islamophobes would be blaming Islam.

Boy’s remains found in refrigerator; New York man in custody

(LA Times)

NEW YORK—A young Brooklyn boy who vanished while walking home from a day camp in one of the safest parts of the city was killed and dismembered by a stranger who he had turned to for help after getting lost, police said Wednesday.

An intense search for the missing 8-year-old, Leiby Kletzky, ended early Wednesday morning with the gruesome discovery of pieces of his dismembered body inside the home of a man who had been seen with the child around the time he disappeared, police said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the 35-year-old suspect, Levi Aron, made statements implicating himself in the boy’s death.

Photos: Missing boy found dead

Investigators tracked Aron with the help of surveillance video that showed him being approached by the lost boy.

When detectives arrived at the man’s home, they asked him where the boy was and he nodded toward the kitchen, Kelly said.

Detectives saw blood on the freezer door and they opened it to discover bloody knives, a cutting board and feet inside, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Additional body parts were found inside a red suitcase that had been tossed into a trash bin in another Brooklyn neighborhood.

Police and volunteers had been looking since late Monday afternoon for Leiby, who disappeared while on his way to meet his mother in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park.

The break in the case came when investigators focused on a grainy surveillance video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, walking down the street, while a man walked nearby.

Detectives noticed the man on the video going into a nearby dentist’s office, Browne said. The dentist, located later in New Jersey, said he remembered someone coming by to pay a bill for a patient, and police were able to identify Aron using records from the office. When they went to his home, they made the gruesome discovery.

Police said Aron lives alone in the apartment, in a building shared with his parents. He once had a summons for urinating in public but otherwise did not have a criminal record, Kelly said.

Outside the family’s apartment building Wednesday morning, men and women from the community clustered in separate groups. Many of the mothers gathered there said the streets are safe enough for a child Leiby’s age to walk home alone.

“This is a no-crime area,” said State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes the area. He said the boy was the only son of the Kletzky family. The couple has four daughters, and the husband works as a driver for a private car service.

“Everybody is absolutely horrified,” he said. “Everyone is in total shock, beyond belief, beyond comprehension … to suddenly disappear and then the details … and the fact someone in the extended community … it’s awful,” he said.

He said the parents did not know Aron, who lived about a mile away from the boy.

At about 6:45 a.m., an NYPD crime unit carted away the trash bin where some of the body parts had been found and put it in a truck, and police officers walked in a line looking for evidence under cars and on sidewalks.

The medical examiner’s office will determine a cause of death and positive identification.

Leiby was one of the neighborhood’s many Hasidic Jews, an ultra-Orthodox people who live in tight-knit, somewhat insular communities and abide by strict religious rules that require men to wear dark clothing that includes a long coat and a fedora-type hat. Men often have long beards and ear locks.

Most of the 165,000 members in the New York City the area live in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and are part of three different sects. Hasidism traces its roots to 18th-century Eastern Europe.

A $100,000 reward had been offered, Hikind said the outpouring of support has been tremendous with people from all over the state volunteering their time to scour the neighborhood and hand out flyers.

Adel Erps, who lives two blocks from the family, said she was very upset because the state of the body means it will be more difficult to do a proper burial. Like other neighborhood residents congregating near the boy’s home Wednesday, she expressed shock that the suspect was Jewish.

“He’s a sick person obviously, but it hurts so much more,” she said.

A very extensive piece from John Bowen regarding the rightward shift of European politics and the constructed attack against “multiculturalism.”

Europeans Against Multiculturalism

John R. Bowen (Boston Review)

One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.

Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street.

But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.

Political criticisms of multiculturalism confuse three objects. One is the changing cultural and religious landscape of Europe. Postwar France and Britain encouraged immigration of willing workers from former colonies; Germany drew on its longstanding ties with Turkey for the same purpose; somewhat later, new African and Asian immigrants, many of them Muslims, traveled throughout Western Europe to seek jobs or political refuge. As a result, one sees mosques where there once were only churches and hears Arabic and Turkish where once there were only dialects of German, Dutch, or Italian. The first object then is the social fact of cultural and religious diversity, of multicultural and multi-religious everyday life: the emergence in Western Europe of the kind of social diversity that has long been a matter of pride in the United States.

The second object—suggested by Cameron’s phrase “state multiculturalism”—concerns the policies each of these countries have used to handle new residents. By the 1970s, Western European governments realized that the new workers and their families were there to stay, so the host countries tried out a number of strategies to integrate the immigrants into the host society. Policymakers all realized that they would need to find what later came to be called “reasonable accommodations” with the needs of the new communities: for mosques and schools, job training, instruction in the host-country language. These were pragmatic efforts; they did not aim at assimilation, nor did they aim to preserve spatial or cultural separation. Some of these policies eventually were termed “multicultural” because they involved recognizing ethnic community structures or allowing the use of Arabic or Turkish in schools. But these measures were all designed to encourage integration: to bring new groups in while acknowledging the obvious facts of linguistic, social, cultural, and religious difference.

The third object that multiculturalism’s critics confuse is a set of normative theories of multiculturalism, each of which attempts to mark out a way to take account of cultural and religious diversity from a particular philosophical point of view. Although ideas of multiculturalism do shape public debates in Britain (as they do in North America), they do so much less in continental Europe, and even in Britain it would be difficult to find direct policy effects of these normative theories.

Politicians err when they claim that normative ideas of multiculturalism shape the social fact of cultural and religious diversity: such diversity would be present with or without a theory to cope with it. Nor are state policies shaped by those ideas, which tend to be recent in origin. Quite to the contrary, each European country has followed well-traveled pathways for dealing with diversity. Methods designed to accommodate sub-national religious blocs are now being adapted and applied to Muslim immigrants. Far from newfangled, misguided policies of multiculturalism, these distinct strategies represent the continuation of long-standing, nation-specific ways of recognizing and managing diversity.

• • •

Consider the case of Germany. Merkel’s claims were perhaps the least weighty, but her words point to a growing conviction among some Germans that Muslim immigrants are inassimilable. Merkel’s attack was as vague as it was opportunistic. She regretted that the German “tendency had been to say, ‘let’s adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other’” and concluded that this attitude had not produced results, as if she had thereby identified policies that could be changed. Her real meaning was made clear by the presence of Horst Seehofer next to her on the podium. Seehofer, the Bavarian state premier and Merkel’s coalition partner, has called for curtailing immigration.

One poll showed a third of Germans believed the country was ‘overrun by foreigners.’

Merkel’s speech followed a series of anti-Muslim public statements by high-placed German officials. In June 2010 then-Bundesbank member Thilo Sarrazin published a book in which he accused Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society. Although he was censured for his views and dismissed from his central bank position, the book proved popular, and polls suggested that Germans were sympathetic with the thrust of his arguments. One poll showed a third of Germans believed the country was “overrun by foreigners.” A few months earlier, in March, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble waded in to say that Germany had been mistaken to let in so many Turkish workers in the 1960s because they had not integrated into society.

At least the finance minister pointed to a real German policy, one that encouraged low-paid laborers to relocate to the country and rebuild it. But Merkel’s notion that the German government had promoted a multikulti society (as distinct from celebrating colorful Kreuzberg or a Turkish star on the German soccer team) ignores the brunt of German immigration policy, which, until 2000, denied citizenship to those workers, their children, and their grandchildren. In other words, the government and many, perhaps most, Germans had not hoped, as Merkel claimed, that everyone would live side by side. Rather, the hope was that “they” would just pack up and leave.

In this sense Germany has largely followed its longer-term policies for dealing with diversity: German federal and state governments have historically denied that immigration could be of value and maintained a policy of limiting citizenship only to those who could demonstrate German descent. But Germany may also follow the public-corporation model it has arranged with Christian and Jewish groups. A proposed Islamic public corporation would have the legal status to obtain government funding for mosques and would serve as a legitimate overseer of materials selected for Islamic religious education. This promising policy goal, not yet achieved, would recognize and support Islam in accordance with long-standing German principles governing religious diversity, not on grounds of multiculturalism.

• • •

In contrast to Germany, Britain has promoted multiculturalism as an explicit policy, but not in those domains where Cameron denounced it. In his February 2011 speech, Cameron blamed multiculturalism for creating spatial divisions and fomenting terrorism. “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism,” he claimed, “we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream.” Left apart, some have submitted to extremism, he argued, and some of those extremists have in turn carried bombs in the name of Islam. His solution was three-fold: ensure that any organization asking for public money subscribes to doctrines of universal rights and encourages integration, keep extremists from reaching students and prisoners, and ensure that everyone learns English.

As a diagnosis of problems of homegrown terrorism, the speech fell short. The British bombers principally responsible for the 2005 attacks in London knew English and English people well. Mohammad Sidique Khan, believed to be the leader of the bombing plot, was recalled as a “highly Westernized” man who grew up in Leeds and attended university there. Shehzad Tanweer, another of the bombers, had a similar background. According to the official report on the bombings, both men had developed jihadist convictions in Pakistan.

If these and other homegrown terrorists have problems feeling at home in Britain, it is because they do not remain in their “separate cultures” but instead become isolated individuals without a social or cultural base. In otherwise-distinct analyses of European jihadists, French political scientist Olivier Roy and American counterterrorism expert Marc Sageman each paint a picture of young men who suffer from a lack of ties with others in their communities. Roy calls them “deterritorialized”; Sageman describes a “bunch of guys” who find themselves without opportunities at home, who are considered foreigners despite being born in Europe, and who end up traveling abroad to seek out extremists. Hardly walled off in enclaves in Bradford (or Hamburg), they are free-floating, perfect speakers of English (or German) who feel themselves rejected by the people and institutions around them.

It’s not just Muslims who cut themselves off. A large percentage of British children attend schools that admit only Catholics and Anglicans.

Cameron used his speech to argue for his “Big Society”—policies of state divestment from welfare predicated on the belief that if people have to work together to survive they will gain a stronger sense of being British. But whatever the merits of this approach to British social ills, it has little to offer individuals who already consider themselves discarded by those around them.

So Cameron got it wrong when it comes to homegrown terrorism. What did he have in mind when he spoke of “state multiculturalism”? Multicultural policies in Britain today mainly concern how state schools handle their diverse clientele: teaching cultural and religious studies curricula, offering halal meals to Muslim pupils. Behind these specific policies is the notion, generally accepted in Britain, that the cultural and religious traditions of each pupil should be positively recognized. These politics find one salient expression in a commissioned white paper by the political theorist Bhikhu Parekh, whose 2000 book, Rethinking Multiculturalism, asks: in a multicultural society, how should the state balance legitimate claims to diversity with the need to “foster a strong sense of unity and common belonging among its citizens”? This is precisely Cameron’s concern, but Parekh voices it as a justification for educational multiculturalism. Parekh argues that recognizing the traditions held by religious and ethnic communities through multicultural school curricula provides a psychologically sound basis on which to construct an inclusive national identity. (His view comes close to claims made by another political theorist, Will Kymlicka, who argues that maintaining cultural heritage is of psychosocial importance in the development of a liberal citizen.)

There is controversy in Britain about schooling and the isolation of cultural minorities, but spatial segregation of immigrant communities was a product of South Asian settlement patterns in Britain in the 1960s and ’70s, not state multiculturalism. When men (and, later, families) moved from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Britain, they brought whole lineages and villages along with them, reproducing their old linguistic and religious networks in urban British neighborhoods. The result was a chasm separating Asian and white communities, and in some cities this absence of interaction and understanding spiraled into hatred and unrest. In the spring and summer of 2001, riots pitted Asians against whites in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley, and Bradford. Today, these cities remain highly segregated. Their schools reflect, and exacerbate, the problem. Pupils remain sorted into largely white and largely Pakistani or Bangladeshi schools. As one head teacher at a 92 percent Pakistani primary school said in a report released on the tenth anniversary of the riots, “Some of our children could live their lives without meeting someone from another culture until they go to high school or even the workplace.”

Charles Roffey / Flickr.com / CharlesFred

The combination of religion and schooling contributes to this segregation, but not in the way that Cameron’s speech suggests: it’s not just Muslims who’ve cut themselves off from the rest of society. Across Britain a large percentage of children go to schools that only admit students who regularly attend a Catholic or an Anglican church. In sharply segregated Oldham, 40 percent of secondary schools are of this type, and they draw from a largely white population. This religious divide is increasing, due to the addition to the school scene of state-supported “faith academies,” mainly Church of England and Catholic schools. Whereas in the United States government support for religiously exclusive schools would be judged as excessive entanglement of the state with religion, British ideas of public life start from the premise that religious communities are legitimate and socially important sources of citizen education, and thus deserving of state aid.

Thus, if state multiculturalism exists in 2011, it would be found in broadly accepted principles about the role of state support in promoting diverse kinds of schools. These policies can have segregating effects, but they are also current Tory policies. Cameron and his Party don’t like to bring them up in other contexts, though; they are not in the business of attacking Christian schools.

On the whole, then, it seems that accommodation of immigrants in Britain has taken the usual course for that nation. The methods applied to distinct religious groups that predate Islam on the Isles have been extended to the newest arrivals.

British ideas of public life start from the premise that religious communities are legitimate sources of citizen education.

Cameron’s policy proposals were on a wholly different topic: he paid special attention to reducing the degree of toleration afforded Islamic groups with extreme views. Here one might join with the prime minister in finding that certain Islamic groups ought to have their public activities curtailed. The most frequently cited example is the Hizb ut-Tahrir, who reject participation in British politics and urge British Muslims to prepare themselves for the coming of the Islamic state, to be created somewhere in the world in the not-too distant future. This, however, does not concern the validity of recognizing cultural diversity but rather the degree to which the state ought to allow extreme or intolerant public speech, the same issue that arose thanks to the Danish cartoons controversy and that regularly figures in laws against Holocaust denial.

• • •

Although French President Nicolas Sarkozy attacked le multiculturalisme, more often French politicians use the term “communalism” (communautarisme). This refers not to the North American philosophy of communitarianism, although that takes its lumps sometimes as well, but to everyday practices and attitudes that reject “living together” in favor of “living side by side.” Usually Britain is the negative example, though of late the French have been blaming themselves for this supposed deficiency as well.

But communalism is no more precise an object of denunciation than is multiculturalism. InLe Monde on March 16 of this year, the new Interior Minister, Claude Guéant, said that high unemployment among those who come to France from outside the European Union proves “the failure of communalisms” because those immigrants tend to clump together by culture and doing so keeps them from getting jobs. He acknowledged that people chose where to live, that the state did not put them there, but argued, “We have gone too long in letting people group together in communities.” Guéant suggests that what has been going on is a state multiculturalism of inaction without specifying how the state could break up existing communities.

A few pages later in the same issue, a columnist analyzed the American “Galleon affair,” a case of financial fraud involving financiers from India, as an instance of communalism because these men, who held degrees from Harvard and Wharton and worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, had common national origins. Now, these immigrants did get jobs, great ones. Apparently communalism of one sort is the key to success, albeit illicit success, while communalism of another sort explains high unemployment rates. A cynic might add that if working in small incestuous groups defines communalism, then France, with its unusually small set of industrialists serving on interlocking boards of major companies, its exclusive school system, and marriage practices designed to preserve the elite, is among the most communalist of nations.

In any case France has never undertaken state multiculturalism. Although some officials have decried the politics of the “right to a difference” that marked several years at the beginning of François Mitterrand’s presidency in the 1980s, those politics could hardly be called “multicultural.” Some instruction in “languages of origin” was provided, but this was intended to facilitate the eventual “return” of immigrants and their children. Other sources of aid provided tutoring and training, and current policies direct additional money to school districts with large numbers of pupils “in difficulty.” At the same time, the French state has provided free language classes to immigrants, assistance to groups seeking to build mosques, and practical accommodations to allow the preparation of halal meat in abattoirs. State support for and control of religious groups is, despite the rhetoric of strict state-religion separation, a long-term feature of French policy. More than a century after France’s 1905 law of church-state separation, the state pays for the upkeep of older religious buildings, gives tax breaks to religious groups, and hires teachers for private religious schools (most of them Catholic).

• • •

Blaming multiculturalism for social ills is a Dutch national sport. Yet, as the University of Amsterdam sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak has written, the Netherlands has never pursued state multiculturalism or the preservation of minority cultures. Instead it has pursued two sets of policies, one aimed at maintaining the long-standing commitment to the political peace, the other at achieving the integration of minorities.

The long-standing Dutch preference for compromise is embodied in the polder model—a reference to working together to build dykes, a bit like Tocqueville’s American “barn-raising.” Historically this meant that people were loath to criticize unassimilated immigrants. Dutch cultural practices thereby favored the unofficial continuation of a multicultural social reality, where people were free to continue to speak their own languages, worship in their own ways, and so forth. This kind of “live and let live” social habit was the Dutch solution to religious conflicts during a period of relatively intense religious belief and practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It gave rise to a quasi-official model of “pillars”: religious networks and institutions within which each Dutch man or woman was presumed to remain.

For the Dutch right, attacking Islam is a psychologically useful way of reworking their own heritage.

This social conception of keeping the religious and political peace by separating people according to religion subtended policies of creating and financing religious schools. Although the pillar structure had come apart before major Muslim immigration was underway in the 1970s and ’80s, a psychological residue persisted, dictating that each religious group should ignore the particularities of the other. Far from accepting or recognizing the other’s validity, this attitude promoted bare tolerance, civic acceptance of the right to the existence of Catholics, Protestants, and for that matter, gays and pot-smokers. Condemnation was constrained to the home or the pulpit. So while Dutch policies and norms favored a diverse society, they took no part of what is today thought of as multiculturalism, with its efforts to reach beyond toleration toward appreciation.

At the same time, governments developed a series of policies aimed at promoting the advancement of minorities through provision of schoolteachers who spoke their languages (principally Arabic and Turkish), construction of local councils that would advise the government on how best to foster integration, and special funding to provide additional tutoring and support at schools heavily attended by the children of immigrants. By the end of the twentieth century these policies had been changed to focus more on skills training and teaching in Dutch, but the goal of state policy continued to be, as it had always been, that of promoting integration. In the Netherlands, as in France, financial aid was targeted to schools with many poor students, who happened to descend from recent immigrants.

The attack on these policies and attitudes has focused on values attributed to Muslims or to Islamic doctrine. In 1991 parliamentary opposition leader Frits Bolkestein criticized the government for failing to defend Western values of free speech and equality against Islamic views. He used the case of Islam to launch a broader attack against the political elite and their way of papering over differences (the polder model) rather than standing up for Enlightenment values against the Islam of the Ayatollahs. A rising class of populist politicians seconded this critique, among them the right-wing and openly gay Pim Fortuyn—killed in 2002 by an activist concerned about scapegoating Muslims—and the anti-Islam campaigners Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders. Their attacks on Islam were also political appeals against the elites in order to curry favor with the forgotten working classes. Polder politics, elite domination, and Islam were the common enemy, and the refusal of the leading classes to denounce non-Dutch and anti-Enlightenment Islamic values was the major evidence that things had gone wrong. As in France this admonition has been heard on the left and the right, from Social Democrats as well as from Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom. It reflects a cultural nationalism that can appeal to the old-style populism of the right or to the universalism of the left.

In life and in death, Fortuyn focused the attack on multiculturalism even more narrowly as an attack on Islamic intolerance of sexual diversity, and in particular, of gay lifestyles. Fortuyn personified a secularist, sexually open, and “tolerant” Dutch identity, against which Islam and Muslims could easily be targeted as the pre-Enlightenment other. In no other country has the issue of tolerating gays become so central and so salient a part of the critique of Islam. This line of attack was powerful because it also was a critique of older Dutch ways of doing politics and thinking about sexuality. Throughout most of the twentieth century, most Dutch people held religious views about homosexuality and women’s rights that were not too different from those now ascribed to Muslims by their opponents. Attacking Islam was thus also a psychologically useful way of reworking one’s own heritage.

Ironically, the current focus on Islam per se—Wilders compared the Qur’an to Mein Kampfand seeks to have it banned in the Netherlands—has distracted the far right from policies about minority achievement and language learning. The focus now is on the acceptability in the Enlightenment West of the pre-Enlightenment Muslim. And yet the right continues to attack Dutch multiculturalism because it remains rhetorically useful to link the cultural critique of religion to a populist critique of past elites.

• • •

Blaming multiculturalism, then, is useful because it is both vague and misdirected. It would be much harder for Cameron to acknowledge that British racism, immigration trajectories, foreign policy, and faith-based schools have made major contributions toward minority isolation than it is to say: we got it wrong, now let’s get it right, let’s all be British. Islam provides a soft target for aspiring cultural nationalists. It is easier for Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen of the right-wing French National Front to decry Muslims praying in the street than it is to make room for adequate mosques. And across Europe, it is easier to point to the irresponsible statement of a foreign imam and say that Islam is the problem than to figure out how Muslims, like practicing Catholics and Jews before them, might best construct the cultural and religious institutions they need to be at ease in their new (and not so new) countries.

One can, and should, refute these misdiagnoses and at the same time give due credit to policies promoting integration within each of these societies. Speaking the language of the country and gaining job skills are the keys to becoming a productive citizen. France made free French courses part of its “integration contract” in 2003; with its 2005 Immigration Act, Germany began providing free German lessons to people granted work visas. When most Islamic religious officials are recent immigrants, it makes good sense to offer them instruction in the language, law, and politics of their new country of residence. These are policies of integration rather than assimilation; they are perfectly consistent with the promotion of equal respect for all religions and cultures.

Blaming multiculturalism ties the package together: it discredits a foreign element—Islam—and it identifies the fifth column that let it in, those past proponents of multiculturalism. That it misreads history is beside the point. It makes for effective, albeit irresponsible, populist politics.

Fuller-Bennet. Now allowed in the country after a lengthy battle.

What if they were Muslim?

American Jew refused entry to Israel on suspicion of converting to Islam

By Amira Hass

Two years after participating in a Taglit-Birthright tour, Harald Fuller-Bennett was denied entry into Israel. The Shin Bet claimed he had links to terrorists and suspected him of no longer being Jewish.

With regard to a young American Jew named Harald Fuller-Bennett, the Taglit-Birthright project to some extent achieved its goal. The project brings young Jews from around the world for a trip in Israel “in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people,” to quote its own words. And indeed, about two years after coming on a Taglit-Birthright tour, Fuller-Bennett intended to visit Israel again.

But this time, the people working to diminish the distance between him and Israel were two Tel Aviv lawyers, Omer Shatz and Iftach Cohen, and Jerusalem District Court Judge Yoram Noam. Together, they overturned a bizarre attempt by the Shin Bet security service to accuse him of having connections with terrorists and intending to convert to Islam – for which reasons it barred him from entering Israel for 10 years.

Fuller-Bennett is now 30 years old. On his Taglit-Birthright tour in January 2008, he said, “I gained a lot of sympathy for Israelis and for the multitude of challenges they face (and the many mistakes the government is currently making in facing them ). We had a number of engaging Israeli military members on our bus. I am still Facebook friends with some of them. My conversations with them taught me much about the complexity of modern Israel, and the difficulty of being born into a state with a siege mentality.”

Fuller-Bennett joined a group within the Taglit program called “Peace, Pluralism and Social Justice.” He is not certain that this subgroup of Taglit is still active, but the fact of its existence shows the organizers recognized that there are young Jews whose interest in Israel has not eliminated their capacity for criticism. “We had questions about Israel but wanted to see for ourselves,” Fuller-Bennett said.

But it was not his participation in Taglit’s “most lefty, peacenik” group, as Fuller-Bennett defines it, that made the Shin Bet decide this employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture was dangerous.

‘Suspicious conduct’

That happened on May 2, 2010, when he and his girlfriend (now his fiancee ) landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport for a week-long visit to Israel. This would have been his third visit to the country. But to their astonishment, after his passport was stamped for entry, he was taken aside, interrogated and put on a plane back to the United States. The fresh stamp was crossed out with two diagonal lines and the additional stamp: “Denied Entry.”

“About a week after I was denied entry, Noam Chomsky and a Spanish clown were denied,” he recalled.

The Shin Bet investigator asked him where they intended to go. “To Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and perhaps Bethlehem,” where a friend of his girlfriend lives, he answered. Afterward the state would claim, in response to the suit filed by Shatz and Cohen, that Fuller-Bennett had been “briefed to conceal his intention to enter Judea and Samaria,” and that “his conduct during the questioning at Ben-Gurion Airport aroused the questioners’ suspicion.”

Indeed, as Fuller-Bennet wrote me by email from his home in the U.S., “I was quite nervous during the investigation, especially when the investigator became accusatory and suspicious because of my travel to Syria and Sudan. I had never been interrogated in such a manner before, and I am a naturally easygoing person not accustomed to, nor expecting, such treatment. I’m sure I acted oddly as a result.”

When he realized he was being denied entry, he wrote, “I felt like shit. I felt like an idiot for being naive and not getting a ‘clean’ passport, and for being nervous during my interrogation despite the fact that I had absolutely zero intention of doing anything remotely activist-like in Israel other than possibly going to Bethlehem (which I hear many foreign Christians do every year ).”

A few months after he was sent back to the U.S., he contacted attorneys Shatz and Cohen. In October 2010, they asked the Interior Ministry to explain the deportation and inform them whether a denial of entry order had been issued, and if so, for how long, so that they could request its cancelation.

Having received no reply, the lawyers wrote again in January 2011, this time warning they would go to court if they did not receive an answer. The answer was: “Your client’s entry into Israel was denied by the security authorities because he is suspected of links to hostile terrorist elements.”

The petition to the Jerusalem District Court, in its capacity as a court of administrative affairs, was filed in March 2011. The state’s response, filed on June 29, 2011 by Deputy Jerusalem District Attorney Moran Braun, asked the court to reject the petition. To defend the Shin Bet’s decision to deny Fuller-Bennett entry, Braun wrote: “Information was received about anti-Israel protest activity in which the plaintiff took part; moreover, the possibility arose that the plaintiff had converted to Islam.”

But at the hearing on June 3, Braun said the claim that Fuller-Bennett had ties to terrorists was “mistaken.” And while there had been concern that he might have converted to Islam, “Today we have presented our position and we are not insisting on this.” In short, he added, the ban on Fuller-Bennett entering Israel had been canceled.

The lawyers therefore agreed to withdraw the petition. Judge Noam ordered the state to pay Fuller-Bennett’s court costs, because the Interior Ministry rescinded its entry ban only after the petition. And Fuller-Bennett would like to make it clear he is in fact an atheist.

Richard Dawkins has been an “asshat” for quite a while now. His anti-Muslim, sexist, xenophobic statements have been exposed on our site before.

Below, Fatemeh Fakhraie dissects his most recent inane and despicable comments.

Obligatory Richard Dawkins Post

by Fatemeh Fakhraie (Muslimah Media Watch)

So Richard Dawkins is an asshat. Anyone surprised?

Here’s the comment he left on a thread that discussed sexism:

Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard

And here’s a brief roundup of what people are saying about it.

The Atlantic Wire:

Several comments, including Watson’s own, hit on exactly what the fight’s about. Dawkins has every right to dismiss Watson’s story and to argue that she was not in a high risk situation. But his attempt to prove how insignificant Watson’s story was by comparing it with the much worse scenario of a Muslim woman’s daily life hurts his argument. The fact that something worse is going on somewhere else does not diminish whatever may be happening here. Also, as Watson points out, Dawkins is admired widely for work criticizing creationism and denouncing the use of religion as an excuse for repressing women in particular. To defend only some women from misogyny and not all, she and others argue, is hypocrtical. (sic)

Shakesville:

Again, he implies that “Muslim women” and “American women” are mutually exclusive groups; again, he implies that American women do not “suffer physically from misogyny,” nor are their lives “substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny.”

What Tami Said:

High-profile and influential men, like Dawkins, who use their status to minimize sexism in the West, deny the lived experiences of women, and advance the stupid thinking that all Western women are both white and privileged, poison a well already rank with gender bias. Men like Dawkins who sneer at Western misogyny make Western women’s lives more difficult, including women like Watson who are atheists. So, why should Watson and other women continue to hand Dawkins their money and support, and prop up his influence, when he thinks they’re all a bunch of whiny bitches who should be satisfied getting sexually harassed because somewhere (in those bad, brown, Muslim countries) a woman has it worse?

Lots of people have said lots of things about this, rightfully calling out Dawkins’ male privilege and pointing out that the “there are bigger problems” argument is derailing and silencing.

But very few of these posts have touched on Dawkins’ use of Muslim women specifically. And that’s where we come in.

Richard Dawkins is an atheist, and as an atheist, he believes that organized religion is harmful for women. There are plenty of religious and non-religious thinkers who can level-headedly make the case that organized religions use rooted patriarchal norms to oppress women and often works against their own ideals, but Dawkins is not one of those people. Dawkins uses the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman and gives little regard to how his politicized views are received by Muslim women.

So no one should be surprised at his comment above.

But that’s doesn’t make it okay. Dawkins’ comment trades in stereotypes about Muslim women “over there.” Does female genital mutilation happen? Yes. Are women not allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia? Yes. Is stoning a thing? Yes. But is Dawkins’ use of these acceptable? No.

It’s unacceptable for Dawkins to make sweeping statements like this because he attaches loaded terms like “female genital mutilation” and “stoning” to a huge, worldwide term like “Muslim women,” and attaches these things to Islam itself, ignoring outside cultural, economic, and social influences. Making blanket statements about FGM and stoning and driving attaches these to all of us, and contributes to the Oppressed Muslim Women stereotype. And you know what that stereotype has done to help us? Nothing.

It’s also just as silencing to female Muslim activists “over there” who are dealing with these issues, and other important ones, such as campaigning for the right to vote, pass their citizenship to their children, or keep custody of their children after divorce. Dawkins is injecting Muslim women “over there” into an issue that concerns us as well (sexual harassment and sexism in belief systems), but uses us to derail this issue.

And what is Dawkins doing to actually help the Muslim women he claims are “mutilated with a razor blade[s],” and “not allowed to drive a car,” and “stoned to death”?

NOT A DAMN THING.

So kindly shut the f**k up, Richard Dawkins, and stop using us as foot soldiers in your crusade against organized religion. We’ll be fine without you.

Robert Spencer cites crackpot mythistorian on Hajj

Robert Spencer is failing to convince America that Islam itself is a threat to national security. Americans are waking up to the fact that the universal values that bring Americans and Muslims together are far more numerous than our differences. But Spencer has spent the last several years trying to “prove” that Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, was a war-monger, a fanatic, a woman-hater, a pervert, (insert evil cliché here), etc. For example, one of his top books is, “Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion.” All of his arguments are predicated on the fact that Muhammad existed in order to found Islam. Jihadist terror didn’t come from nowhere, right?

Well, these arguments just won’t cut it anymore. People can only be fooled for so long by a handful of cherry-picked verses and facts. Perhaps Islam does have something in common with Judaism and Christianity, Spencer’s readers might think. These are dangerous thoughts in Spencer’s profession. So he has moved on to a new strategy: Muhammad didn’t exist. Islam is, in fact, an extension of Hinduism. How did he reach such a conclusion and for what purpose?

Spencer receives an e-mail from the mysterious “Arnaud” allegedly an “Islamic scholar who writes from Switzerland” with a strange theory about how Hajj (pilgrimage) and Salat (ritual prayer) are actually Hindu in origin. He posts the article, the purpose of which is to “debunk” the two pillars of Islam:

Islam is like a special table that needs 5 legs (so-called “5 pillars”). Displace two of them and the table would fall, wouldn’t it?

At some point Spencer must have realized that it was simply the junk history of “mythistorian” and “crack pot” Purushottam Nagesh Oak. The article is riddled with so many factual errors that Spencer takes the post down. He must have thought that anything with a negative angle on Islam deserves the benefit of the doubt. Post first; ask questions later.

Yet Spencer depends upon his audience perceiving him as an authoritative “Islamic scholar.” He has to maintain some pro forma standards of objectivity. Damage control is needed. So he rewrites the article, taking out the most egregious misinformation (just enough to appear somewhat scholarly), crediting an unnamed “European researcher” (not Arnaud), and publishes it on Pam Geller’s site as a part of his new-found effort to prove that Muhammad never existed.

What does this little sidetrack into mythistory have to do with Jihad and “Islamic” terrorism, the focus of Spencer’s work? Nothing at all, which plainly demonstrates what we’ve been saying all along. Spencer is an intolerant fundamentalist, a religious polemicist, NOT an expert on security or terrorism. He cares about sustaining his career on the back of Islamophobic prejudice, even if that means drawing upon every crackpot theory he receives from fellow internet goons. No need for his allegations and theories to be logical or internally consistent, so long as the target is Islam. The ends justify the means.

Honestly, this is quite bizarre coming from Spencer, a man who has sold himself for so long as the “politically-incorrect” Islamic scholar willing to speak hard truths about the “intolerant” Muhammad, the prophetic figure allegedly at the heart of Jihadist terrorism. Now it seems he’s willing to completely change his tactics and develop other theories to attack Islam. Whatever Spencer ultimately believes about the nature of Islam, it must be profoundly negative and foreign. He sees no “universal moral values” in Islam that Muslims can share with other religions (see Politically Incorrect, Ch. 6).

Yesterday, Muhammad was a fire-breathing infidel-slayer. Today, he is a Hindu myth gone wrong. Tomorrow, I imagine he’ll be something else, perhaps the first Nazi. Wait, that’s been done. Oh well. If the old stuff doesn’t work anymore, you’ll think of something new, right Bob?

Srebrenica Anniversary: One Mother’s Catharsis As Son’s Bones Are Identified

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Three bones make Kada Hotic feel like a winner. It may not sound like much after nearly two decades of anguish, but to her they mean everything.

Two pelvic bones and a fragment of the lower jaw are what remain of Hotic’s son Samir, who was killed by Serb forces in the killing fields of Srebrenica. They were dug up this year and identified – and now he will have a proper funeral along with 612 other newly identified massacre victims.

“They said I should not be looking for more,” she said of the remains. “In a way I am happy, if this can be called happiness. But the alternative is not finding anything and that would have been worse.”

There’s something else that makes Hotic happy.

She came face to face last month with the man she blames for Samir’s death: former Serb general Ratko Mladic, who was captured in May and is standing trial in The Hague, Netherlands on charges of masterminding Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.

Last month, her eyes met Mladic’s through the glass barrier that divided the courtroom from the audience chamber. She pointed at him, then at herself, slowly dragged a finger across her throat – and waved it Mladic.

“You killed my only son,” she said the gestures meant. “Now you will pay for it.”

Srebrenica – with its majority Muslim population – was a U.N.-protected area, besieged by Serb forces throughout the 1992-95 war for Serb domination in Bosnia.

But U.N. troops there offered no resistance when the Serbs overran the town on July 11, 1995. There, Serbs proceeded to round up Srebrenica’s Muslims and killed more than 8,000 men and boys – the climax to the 1992-95 Bosnian war that claimed 100,000 lives. An international court later labeled the killings a genocide.

Hotic lost 29-year-old Samir, her husband Sead, two brothers, and many men in her wider family.

The killers plowed the bodies into hastily dug mass graves, which they later reopened to move the bodies to other sites in an attempt to hide the crime. They worked with bulldozers that ripped bodies apart.

Forensic experts have been painstakingly assembling complete skeletons and checking each bone against the DNA from survivors’ blood samples.

Most of the time, however, families don’t get anything near a full set of bones. They just bury body parts so they have a grave to visit at the Potocari memorial center near Srebrenica, built across the former U.N. base where Bosnian Muslims had sought shelter.

Hotic sat there paralyzed with fear 16 years ago, listening to the general issuing orders as U.N. peacekeepers stood idly by.

“He told them ‘my Serb brothers, you have green light, use this opportunity, one like this will not be offered to you again,” she remembers. Then she watched soldiers separating men from women – and taking the men away, it turned out, for execution.

The memorial was built in 2003 at the site where she last saw her son and husband. That year, Hotic buried her husband, whose remains had already been found.

Through the years, Hotic has found special ways to keeping her son alive. Samir was a smoker and blew rings “you could push a stick through.”

After Srebrenica, she took up smoking and practicing smoke rings.

“If I would manage to make one, I imagined it was his.”

Since 2003, she has been going to Potocari every year for the mass funerals, in which almost 4,000 victims have been laid to rest. As of Monday, one of the gravestones will read Samir Hotic.

And with closure near, she has quit smoking.

“The waiting was not in vain,” she said. “I may be a victim, I lost my loved ones but I am the winner.”

Islamophobia comes to the fore in the poorly written articles of Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis.

High priests of Islamophobia

by Tanvir Ahmed Khan (Gulf News)

All across the world of Islam, we find responsible thinkers, analysts and creative writers engaged in deep introspection on how their societies became vulnerable to religious extremism and how this issue became a casus belli for the West.

Some of the affluent Arab states invest considerable sums of money in the promotion of inter-faith harmony and understanding. Many intellectuals from the West respond positively and help place issues in a constructive perspective.

Unfortunately, the dominant trend in the West continues to be the exploitation of terrorism to demonise Islam. This becomes particularly noticeable when writers of repute give up all pretence to objectivity and weigh in on the side of low order propagandists against the Muslim world.

Christopher Hitchens is a famous British writer who migrated to the United States some 20 years ago. In due course he abandoned his leftist past and became an ardent neo-conservative.

He also claimed a Jewish lineage on facts that his own brother considers rather exaggerated. In internal debates on both sides of the Atlantic, he fiercely supported the invasion of Iraq. In the latest issue of Vanity Fair he returns to Pakistan, a country that arouses visceral hatred in him and lambasts it in a language that does not fight shy of using four-lettered words.

The occasion is the hunting down of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. The very opening of his polemic, however, shows that he wants to use the incident to attack the Pakistani society from every conceivable angle. So blatant and biased is the denunciation of Pakistan that the best refutation so far has come from Christine Fair, a regional specialist who teaches at Georgetown University.

Hitchens employs his old trick of seizing on some isolated feature of a Muslim society and dresses it up as its dominant trait. The opening gambit comes from the well-known fact that Islam has not been entirely successful in uprooting some old tribal customs, usually in remote areas. Pakistan still faces the evil phenomenon of honour-killing that raises its head in some communities from time to time.

In the opening paragraph of a very poorly researched article that Vanity Fair thought it fit to publish, Hitchens first finds that much of Pakistan has been Talibanised and then goes on to make the extraordinary observation that Pakistan ‘is a society where rape is not a crime’. “It is”, he declares ” a punishment” to which women can be sentenced by tribal and kangaroo courts.

He then quickly moves on to savage President Asif Ali Zardari as the man who “cringes daily in front of the forces who openly murdered his wife, Benazir Bhutto” ; a man ‘lacking in pride’ and indeed ‘lacking in manliness’. As he ridicules the very concept of sovereignty of Pakistan, very few Pakistani readers would doubt that the writer is a typical American Zionist-neoconservative who cannot bear the thought of a Muslim state equipped with nuclear weapons in violation of the ‘law’ that only Israel in this region has the right to possess them.

Hitchens’ ludicrous claim that much of Pakistan has been Talibanised is a reminder that most polemics against Islam and Muslim societies rely on such sweeping generalisations.

Qutb’s impact

In October 2006, Hitchens’ closest friend, the distinguished British novelist, Martin Amis, published a long essay on extreme Islamism in London’s Sunday Observer. He based his lengthy thesis on the premises that liberal Islam has already been defeated and supplanted by violent Islamism.

For evidence he relied heavily on a critique of the impact of Sayyid Qutb. In his native Egypt as, indeed, in most Muslim countries his philosophy and political activism continue to generate controversy. This dialectical debate about his work is an essential part of intra-Islamic disputations. Amis completely ignored this fact and presented him as the triumphant influence on Muslims.

As a critique of Qutb’s ideas the essay was a non-starter. Having made a most perfunctory reference to this aspect of Qutb, he went on to ridicule him almost entirely in terms of his presumed frustrations in dealing with liberated western women during his travels and study in Europe and North America. The idea was to locate the true provenance of Qutb’s struggle against western imperialism in his discomfort in dealing with western women.

Some time back, a thoughtful article by Michael Vlahos in the American Conservative discussed in detail how the ‘great Muslim War’ replaced the story of globalisation and how American insistence on ‘you are either with us or against us’ is now promoting counter-movements all over the globe. Hitchens and Amis wilfully ignore the context — centuries of western colonialism and the revived quest for western hegemony at the turn of the century — because their basic purpose is to support war as an instrument of restoring dominance.

By trying to show all Muslims as potential Al Qaida followers they sell their militarism to the anti-war majorities in the West. It is unfortunate to see the broad humanism of distinguished writers who should claim a universal audience being made available to the neo-imperialists of our times.

The writer is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan. Till recently, he worked as the Chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.

Robert Spencer next to his Perpetual Serf Pamela Geller

It has been a while since we addressed the blog wars, the phenomenon in which anti-Muslim hate bloggers such as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Debbie Schlussel etc. fight with fellow travelers in bigotry or individuals who have reformed themselves of their hate-mongering.

In the past we saw eruptions of in-fighting when Charles Johnson of LGF denounced Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller for allying with neo-Fascist Euro supremacist politicians such as Geert Wilders (the website Gates of Vienna vs. the World vs. LGF covered the events). Then there was the tussle between Debbie Schlussel and Pamela Geller/Robert Spencer, (Spencer at one time called Schlussel a “freedom fighter, for her part Schlussel refers to Geller as “Scamela”), and not too long ago Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer flung accusations of plagiarism and insults at one another.

Now it seems we have further cracks in the radical anti-Muslim right. Pamela Geller, who has been supporting and defending the EDL for quite some time, calling them “Defenders of Western Civilization” finally made some critical remarks about them due to their open anti-Semitism:

[I]t has become increasingly clear that the EDL has morphed and diverged from its original course. They now have clearly been infiltrated by the worst kind of influences, something that had successfully staved off for years, and they’re no longer staving it off. Roberta Moore, the leader of the Jewish Division, has broken with the EDL…the EDL has done a Charles Johnson…Now that the person whom I most trusted in the EDL, Roberta Moore, has resigned, as she was increasingly uncomfortable with the neo-fascists that had infiltrated the administration of the group, I too am withdrawing my support from the EDL.

Can we just say, “I told you so?!”

Of course, Roberta Moore is also a strident bigot, she was exposed by our European correspondent Remora for comparing Islam to “nazism,” calling Islam a “cult,” and saying Muslims come to the West and live off of “government support.”

It took Pamela Geller ages to realize the hateful character of the EDL, it was only when the gross, malignant and open anti-Semitism of the group became undeniable that she distanced herself from them. She was and is unwilling to condemn their and Roberta Moore’s anti-Muslim bigotry because she shares in the same hatred.

For her condemnation Geller was rebuked by Gates of Vienna, an anti-Muslim site that was (formerly?) an ally of hers. They expressed shock and “astonishment” that Geller would condemn the EDL, and wrote an open letter addressing Geller and asking her to “reconsider your deplorable words and withdraw them.” Numerous anti-Muslim hate sites signed the letter.

How long until Geller and co. suffer further setbacks in their fight against “the Mooslims?” Maybe Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller will be trading shots at each other in the near future.

(Via IslamophobiaToday)

Using the religion card when it is irrelevant to the topic is unprofessional and bigoted, but that doesn’t phase Fox News Channel television personality Brian Kilmeade. He thought it was important to bring up the issue of the burqa and somehow connect it with Keith Ellison.

Kilmeade: If Rep. Ellison Is Worried About Extremism, “Maybe He Can Focus On Getting The Burqa Off” Muslim Women

The cracks are starting to appear in the hate facade of the transatlantic “counter-jihad.” Another unsuccessful march for the EDL.

Slideshows & video: English Defence League march ends after failed bid to target mosque

Raymond Brown (Cambridge-news)

Members of the English Defence League (EDL) made a failed bid to target a Cambridge mosque after they marched through the city.

>> Click here to read our live updates on how the day unfolded.

The incident came after a relatively peaceful march by the EDL through the city centre Saturday in which scuffles with police broke out along with bottle-throwing.

Officers threw up a cordon around the mosque in Mawson Road and managed to quell the troublemakers. A man was arrested but was allowed to go free after he calmed down.

Police have been heaped with praise for how they handled the two marches on one of the city’s busiest days due to the Big Weekend celebrations on Parker’s Piece.

Officers quelled some of the flashpoints sparked as around 200 EDL marchers were taunted by a small number of counter-protesters from an earlier 1,500 strong demonstration by Unite Against Fascism.

But members of the EDL, who arrived in coaches from across the country to Queens’ Green, also began fighting amongst themselves.

After the march, members of the group attempted to reach the mosque in Mawson Road, off Mill Road.

But they were stopped by dozens of police officers who then threw up a wall of steel to protect the scores of Muslims and their supporters

And at around 3pm, Muslims manning a community stall in Sidney Street were attacked by a group who picked up copies of Korans from the stall and hurled them at the victims – one of whom had his spectacles broken.

More than 650 officers and staff from six forces, including Cambridgeshire, have been praised for handling the relatively peaceful protests.

A total of seven people, all men, have been arrested.

Amjed Sheikh, a Muslim leader, said: “The police have done a great job today. We are a peaceful people and we came to live in Cambridge because the people here accept us no matter what people from the outside who have come here today say.”

Richard Howitt MEP, who was a keynote speaker at the start of the counter-protest, praised police and described the emotional scenes in Mill Road when more than 1,000 anti-EDL protesters marched along the street.

He said: “I would say that many of the counter-protesters stayed around Petersfield thinking to protect the mosque but when all is said and done it was really the police who did a fantastic job throughout the day.

“As we all walked along Mill Road, shopkeepers were all standing outside their shops handing out samosas and drinks. I had a tear in my eye.”

Insp Robin Sissons said: “Cambridge residents are familiar with and generally supportive of protest activity and this was evident on Saturday.

“Their tolerance combined with the joint operation by police and partner agencies meant the protests were largely peaceful with only minor disorder and some minor disruption to residents, visitors and businesses in the city.

“The well-established community and partnership-based relationships were also particularly beneficial in planning for, and during, the operation.

“It was heartening to hear that members of the community who reported tension before the protests, then praised the tone and nature of the policing operation after it was complete.”

Arrest details:

A 36-year-old man from Norwich arrested for being drunk and disorderly was released with no further action taken.

A 48-year-old man from Colchester has been charged with a public order offence and assaulting a police officer and has been given conditional bail to appear at Huntingdon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday (July 14).

A 27-year-old man from Ely arrested on suspicion of a public order offence was released with no further action taken against him.

An 18-year-old man from Peterborough was charged with a public order offence and was given conditional bail to appear before Huntingdon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

A 51-year-old man from Luton has been charged with a public order offence and is due to appear at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court on July 25.

A 30-year-old man from Gillingham, Kent, arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and was issued with a fixed penalty notice and released.

A 28-year-old man from Cambridge has been charged with a public order offence and is due to appear at Huntingdon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

Forces assisting with the operation were Warwickshire Constabulary, Essex Police, Ministry of Defence, City of London Police, Suffolk Constabulary and Leicestershire Constabulary.

(via. Europeans Against Islamopohobia)

One Third of Germans Prefer a “Germany without Islam”

CAIRO – Well-qualified, ambitious and skilled Germen Muslims are complaining of growing discrimination against them in the job market, especially veiled women, who are taking the full brunt for their dress.

“Society is not open enough to let us work,” Erika Theissen, managing director of the Muslim Women’s Center for Encounters and Further Education (BFmF) in Cologne, told Deutsche Welle on Sunday, July 10.

Converting to Islam in the 1980s, she dons a carefully matched pastel blue headscarf to the rest of her outfit.

Noticing the changing work atmosphere in Germany, accompanied by exclusion of many Muslim women from work, Theissen established her BFmF center which employs over 50 Muslim women, some of them highly qualified.

In Dusseldorf, the North Rhine-Westphalian capital, she currently organizes a conference gathering about 80 people including scientists, politicians, activists and Muslim social workers to discuss discrimination against Muslim women in the workplace.

“People think the Muslim community doesn’t want Muslim women to work. But most Muslim women are not discriminated against by the Muslim community, but by society,” she added.

Theissen is not the only Muslim to face job market discrimination.

Collecting about 30 rejection letters, Ismahen Dabbach is a best example on the growing job discrimination in Germany.

“My name is Ismahen Dabbach, I am 26 years old, I was born in Germany and I am a trained office clerk. I am very flexible, independent and open to everything that carries me further forward in life,” the ambitious young woman used to say during job interviews. Yet, rejection was also the expected reply.

Dabbach, whose parents are Tunisians, feels that since she decided to wear hijab four months ago, her search for a job has become extremely difficult.

“They put you on a waiting list, then they invite you and tell you that they will call you, but after three days you get a rejection letter,” Dabbach asks.

“So you start asking yourself: did I make a mistake or is it the company’s fault?”

Germany has between 3.8 and 4.3 million Muslims, making up some 5 percent of the total 82 million population, according to government-commissioned studies.

Stereotyping

Social analysts agree that German Muslim, especially veiled women, have hardly any chance of getting a job.

Such a trend, according to Mario Peucker, a social scientist at the University of Melbourne, is apparent in medium-sized German companies which show clear anti-Muslim tendencies.

“Even if they don’t have personal resentments, they may think that their customers or their staff might have a negative image of Muslims and this becomes their reason for not employing Muslim men or women,” he says.

Germans have grown hostile to the Muslim presence recently, with a heated debate on the Muslim immigration into the country.

A recent poll by the Munster University found that Germans view Muslims more negatively than their European neighbors.

Germany’s daily Der Spiegel had warned last August that the country is becoming intolerant towards its Muslim minority.

According to a 2010 nationwide poll by the research institute Infratest-dimap, more than one third of the respondents would prefer “a Germany without Islam.”

Denouncing the growing prejudice, which a 2006 anti-discrimination law could not end, Peucker called for offering employers anonymous applications so they would not see a name or photo on the applicant’s resume.

But Erika Theissen thinks it’s not enough.

“I think the government must be a role model for those people who have the possibility to give jobs and then I hope, other people will think: ok, I can take a woman with a headscarf, it will not cause a big problem for my business,” she said.

Living the current tragedy, Dabbach only dreams of a normal eight-hour job in her home country Germany.

“I want to have a normal eight-hour-job, from eight to five, five days a week, where I can wear my headscarf, like an ordinary citizen,” she says.

To turn the dream into a reality, she started searching the internet for jobs offered by Muslim companies. She got a job outside Germany after only three days of search.

For this job, Dabbach, who lives in the western German town of Gütersloh, would move outside Germany.

“What should I do now?” Dabbach asked helplessly.

“I am at home in Germany, my family and friends are here. Should I just leave them? I am really torn.”

ECHR refuses to rule against Swiss minaret ban

Europe’s rights court on Friday rejected two cases brought by Muslims against Switzerland’s constitutional ban on the construction of new minarets.

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights said it would not consider the cases because the plaintiffs “cannot claim to be ‘victims’ of a violation” of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the court enforces.

One of the cases was brought by a former spokesman for the mosque of Geneva and the other by a number of Swiss Muslim associations.

Switzerland held a referendum in November 2009 in which citizens voted to ban the construction of new minarets, a move that drew criticism worldwide. The vote inserted a new line in the Swiss constitution stipulating that “the construction of minarets is forbidden”.

The plaintiffs had said the ban violated their religious rights, but judges in Strasbourg said they had not proven the ban “had any concrete effect” on the plaintiffs.

As the plaintiffs could not prove they planned to imminently erect a mosque with a minaret, they could not show they were subject to any discrimination, the judges said. ”The simple fact that this could be the case in the near or far future is not, in the eyes of the court, sufficient” to warrant the examination of the cases, the judges said.

The Strasbourg court is due to consider three more cases on the minaret ban.

AFP, 8 July 2011

See also “Strasbourg minaret ruling causes no surprise”, Swissinfo, 6 July 2011

We have been discussing this topic for a while now. We also addressed, Pamela Geller’s hate rally cancellation.

What must be affirmed is that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are compatible, and neither will be sacrificed to the bigots.

Combating Religious Intolerance When Freedom of Speech Enables Hate Speech

(Huffington Post) by John L. Esposito and Sheila B. Lalwani

Religious pluralism, versus the defamation of religion and freedom of speech have become an increasing source of conflict in international politics and interreligious relations. Preachers of hate and activists in America, Europe, and many Muslim countries are engaged in a culture war. Far right anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political leaders and parties warn of the Islamization of America and Europe to garner votes. The acquittal on June 22, 2011 of Dutch politician Geert Wilders on charges of “inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims,” is a political victory for Wilders but also a sign of the times, growing normalization of anti-Islam bashing in the West.

The OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference which represents some 57 countries) lobbied the United Nations for more than a decade to address this issue. Initially targeting Islamophobia, it broadened its request to a resolution on “defamation of religions” that would criminalize words and actions perceived as attacks against religion.

Opponents, in particular the U.S. and E.U., maintained that the resolution could also be used to restrict religious freedom and free speech, and foster religious intolerance and violence against religious minorities. Indeed, in recent years attacks against Christians and other religious minorities have risen in Egypt, Malaysia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan. These conflicts have varied from acts of discrimination to the bombing and burning of churches and murder.

Pakistan’s blasphemy law exemplifies the issue. In 2009 Asia Bibi, a Christian and 45-year-old mother of four was sentenced to death on charges of insulting Islam, a charge she strongly denied. The case sparked international outrage that was heightened in 2011 by the brutal assassination of Salman Taseer — the governor of Punjab and an outspoken critic of the blasphemy law, and the assassination of Pakistani Chief Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian and outspoken opponent of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently ostensibly resolved the conflict over “Defamation of Religions.” After close discussions with the U.S. and E.U., Pakistan introduced a compromise resolution on behalf of the OIC, which addressed the concerns of both the OIC and those of member states and human rights organizations, including the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The “Combating Discrimination and Violence” compromise resolution affirms individual rights, including the freedoms of expression and religion that are part-and-parcel of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the same time, the 47-member state body also called for strengthened international efforts to foster a global dialogue and the promotion of a culture of human rights, tolerance and mutual respect.

But will this U.N. resolution prove to be an effective tool in combating the rise of Islamophobia? A clear sign of the limits of the resolution can be seen in the stunning verdict in Geert Wilder’s acquittal. Wilders’ track record includes the charges that “Islam is a fascist ideology,” “Mohammed was a pedophile,” and “Islam and freedom, Islam and democracy are not compatible” and warnings of a “tsunami” of Muslim immigrants. Wilders’ “missionary” efforts have extended other parts of Europe to the US where his admirers refer to him as a “freedom fighter.” Plaintiffs had charged that Mr Wilders’ comments had incited hatred and led to a rise in discrimination and violence against Muslims. But Judge van Oosten ruled that although he found Wilders remarks “gross and denigrating”, they had not given rise to hatred. Spiegel Online’s headline of the acquittal read “Wilder’s Acquittal a ‘Slap in the Face for Muslims.’”

The exploitation of freedom of speech to promote religious intolerance emerged only days after the Wilders’ decision. Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), a coalition of far right anti-Muslim European and American groups billing themselves as human rights organizations, had scheduled “United We Stand: First Transatlantic Anti-Islamization” in Strasbourg, France on July 2. On June 28, French and EU authorities’ cancelled the conference. In response, the Islamophobic cottage industry and their websites’ headlines blared: “Free in speech rally cancelled in Strasbourg over Muslim violence threats” and “Democracy Collapses in Europe: EU Cancels SIOA/SIOE Free Speech Rally.”

Freedom of speech is a precious right that must be guarded carefully. But what happens when that right is used to incite hatred and to feed religious intolerance, such as Islamophobia, that is spreading like a cancer across the United States and Europe? While some statements may not immediately be the direct cause of a specific act of violence, they spread seeds of intolerance and anger that lead to legitimizing and accepting acts of bigotry and hate, like the “Burn a Quran day” that took place in Florida, the desecration of mosques, physical attacks against Muslims including women and children. As a result, the public slowly becomes inured to Islamophobic actions and statements. At the same time, this ideology of hatred has a very real effect on the everyday life of Muslims and Arabs: issuing in verbal attacks from their community members, Islamophobic statements by political candidates, or law-enforcement policies that target Muslims and Arabs.

The issue of freedom of speech and the rights of hate groups is not new in American history. Even today, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic organizations are allowed to express their disdain for certain ethnic and religious groups, regardless of how distasteful their ideologies may be. However, their power to attack has greatly diminished and their words have become a social taboo in the public square because our country has created a social environment where racism and anti-Semitism are loudly condemned and discredited in public life and in media. Muslim Americans and Europeans are entitled to the same treatment, rights and protections.

Islamophobia and its impact, like racism and anti-Semitism, must be countered by creating a climate in which hate speech and discrimination in the public square are not tolerated even when bigots exploit freedom of speech. Today, one can engage in anti-Islam and anti-Muslim hate speech and threats in print, media, and protest rallies that promote a popular culture that paints the religion of Islam, not just terrorists, as a threat to America. These preachers of hate and Islamophobia must be rejected and marginalized. Their mission to polarize our society must not be allowed to threaten our belief that religious tolerance and free speech are indeed compatible.

It’s been travelled before.

Aside from the fact that real democracies don’t persecute their minorities, Jews are reminded in many pieces of scripture to never forget when we were “strangers in a strange land” (see the book of Exodus). Maybe this is one reason why Muslim-bashing ticks me off so much. As a group, we should know what it’s like — if not us personally, then our parents.

Nowadays, though, we have discovered that, after centuries of being despised by zealots and Christian-tinged nationalists, we have suddenly been mailed gold membership cards to a newly-constituted “Judeo-Christian” country club [others need not apply]. We’ve arrived, we tell ourselves. They love us. Things have changed.

Well, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but the folks who hated Jews last year have simply moved on to new enemies. They haven’t stopped their hating, and I don’t trust their unctuous expressions of new-found love. The religious right responsible for so much of the bigotry toward Muslims (and previously Jews and African Americans) still can’t decide whether they want to kiss us, convert us, wear tallit and sing in Hebrew, or keep blaming us for Golgotha. By the time they realize we really aren’t converting any time soon, I suspect they won’t love us quite so much. And then it will be time for us to die in their End Times scenario. All this is to say – we’re really still the enemy. But ever since the Holocaust it’s just been, well, a bit awkward to say things like that in polite company. But give it time. They haven’t really changed.

Yet Jews are not their only enemies. Blacks, gays, tree-huggers, socialists, progressives, unionists, Hispanics, immigrants, flag-burners, pacifists, anti-globalists, anti-imperialists, secularists, atheists – the list is pretty long – everyone’s a target. And it has always seemed so obvious to me that much of their hostility to Muslims is that Islam is simply their number one religious competitor.

But none of this is new.

A few years ago, while doing some genealogical research, I came across a 1909 immigration document which recorded a family member’s recent arrival in America on a ship from Antwerp. I always found it odd that the shipping company had recorded all this information (but more on this in a second):

19y; male; single; can read/write;
Citizen of: Russia, Race: Hebrew;
Last Residence: Russia, [town] Destination: NY, NY; Has ticket;
Passage paid by brother;
In possession of: $25; Has been in US before in NY;
Never in prison or supported by charity;
Not a polygamist or an anarchist;
Place of Birth: Russia, [town]

In that year, 1909, many Jews were sympathetic to movements advocating anti-authoritarian forms of government based on justice, not nationalistic slogans. After all, nationalism had never been kind to Jews in Europe. For reasons of both fact and perception, most Jews were presumed to be anarchists in 1909.

And a cautious nation couldn’t be too careful about letting such troublemakers into a society whose ideal was British and German Protestantism. Organizations such as the Boston-based Immigration Restriction League were alarmed that so many of these new Jewish immigrants were “undesirable” that they helped legislate large fines on steamship companies which failed to screen them out (thus the detailed steamship records above). The League’s Numerical Limitation Bill was hardly subtle: restrictions were harshest on eastern and southern Europeans (Jews and Italians). The Dillingham Commission further restricted such immigration and totally eliminated Asians. The American nativists of the time believed these foreigners were inherently “lesser breeds” and incompatible with a superior Christian, European society – something echoed frequently by Tea Party types in the U.S. today and by Islamophobes like Geert Wilders. The League’s charter:

We should see to it that the breeding of the human race in this country receives the attention which it so surely deserves. We should see to it that we are protected, not merely from the burden of supporting alien dependants, delinquents, and defectives, but from what George William Curtis called “that watering of the nation’s lifeblood,” which results from their breeding after admission.

Sound familiar?

First they came for the Jews, then the Muslims. Who’s next?

(via. Islamophobia-Today)

Churches across America read from the Quran

by Tad Stahnke

Washington, DC – Although negative stories of Islamophobia in the United States abound in news media, most Americans respect religious diversity. That’s why on Sunday, June 26, thousands of people across America joined together at dozens of churches and other houses of worship across the country. Congregants united to do far more than read Christian scriptures; from Alabama to Alaska, from California to New York, worshippers also heard the words of Jewish and Muslim sacred texts as rabbis and imams joined pastors in leading an event called Faith Shared.

A joint project of Human Rights First and the Interfaith Alliance, Faith Shared brought Americans together to counter the anti-Muslim bigotry and negative stereotypes that have erupted throughout the country in the past few years and led to misconceptions, distrust and, in some cases, even violence.

If I were living in a Muslim-majority country, I might think the United States is filled with people burning the Quran, demonizing Islamic beliefs and tarring all Muslims as supporters of radicalism and terrorism. To the casual observer, the anti-Islam fervor of late would seem to bear that out, but the truth is far more complicated.

It is true that in recent years the United States has seen a disturbing trend of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and rhetoric, as well as a general lack of understanding about Islam. We’ve seen Quran burnings, individuals attacked only because they are Muslim, a pipe bomb explosion at an Islamic community center in Florida and a surge in reported cases of discrimination against Muslims in workplaces and schools throughout the country.

But those incidents – all of which have grabbed headlines – don’t represent the views of so many Americans who respect religious freedom and the diversity of faiths that freedom brings. In fact, a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that Muslims are an important part of the American religious community, with strong agreement across political and religious lines. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently released a report showing that much of the hatred directed toward Muslims has been stirred up by a small but influential group of activists and media.

Discussions about the role of Islam and Muslims in American life have all too often degenerated into stereotypes and hatred. If not challenged, these can undermine respect for the religious freedom of all Americans and weaken our resilience as a nation.

And the concerns go beyond our country. What happens in the United States with respect to the treatment of Muslims, rightly or wrongly, has a huge impact overseas on the perception of the country in general, and on U.S. efforts to promote human rights abroad.

It’s imperative for the international community to support efforts to create responsive governments – those that give equal rights to members of all minorities, protect religious freedoms and allow for the freedoms of expression and assembly. The United States can and should play a key role in supporting those efforts.

For that reason, it’s vital to recognize that what happens in the United States – how Americans protect human rights and religious freedoms and how they deal with security issues in relation to the Muslim community – influences how the international community perceives the American people’s commitment to promoting democracy. A message of respect among religious groups in the United States, one that says anti-Muslim fervor is only a small part of the American story, will strengthen that commitment in the eyes of many.

As we continue in this effort, my colleagues and I are not naive about the challenges that can divide America along religious lines. Muslims are not alone among Americans in terms of bearing the brunt of stereotypes and hatred. Indeed, with the Faith Shared services, we sent and will continue to send a clear message: Despite the challenges, the way forward must begin with respect.

We cannot solve these problems in a day but on June 26, Americans across the country showed that we respect religious differences and reject the demonization of any religion. Americans are a nation not of the few who burn Qurans and incite hatred, but of the many who fully embrace religious freedom, tolerance and pluralism.

* Tad Stahnke is the Director of Policy and Programs at Human Rights First. This originally published by the Common Ground News Service, or CGNews.

Pamela Geller and her cronies are waging a personal war, and once again her line of target is the silent evil enemy: common sense.

Not content with spreading venom in the USA, Pam is now screaming that Europe has bowed to the shackles and chains of imperialist “Islamic supremacists,” after French and European authorities “cancelled” a Stop the Islamisation of America (SIOA) and Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) “freedom” rally, that aimed to protest outside the European Parliament, over “the Islamic takeover of Europe.”

As ridiculous as Pam’s event sounds I for one wouldn’t mind seeing Pam Geller and her friends make a fool of themselves, so was her rally really “cancelled?”

Yes, the European authorities seem to have annulled the Pam and co. rally, but is it in the context of “pro-Jihadism submission to Islamic Supremacism,” as the hate-mongers are claiming?

Let’s dissect the truth behind this “cancellation”:

Pam Geller’s Fascist Message and the Implications for Violence

Geller writes,

Democracy collapses in Europe: EU cancels SIOA/SIOE free speech rally — Freedom from jihad flotilla to launch on 9/11

STRASBOURG, FRANCE, June 28: In a capitulation to Islamic supremacists and violent radical Leftists, French and European Union authorities have canceled a free speech rally planned by a coalition of American and European human rights organizations in Strasbourg, the seat of the European Parliament. The human rights organizations Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) were planning to hold their first-ever transatlantic summit in Strasbourg, France, on July 2.

The SIOA/SIOE summit was dedicated to the defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law – all principles denied by Islamic law.

The evidently responsible and comprehensible actions of the European and French authorities, who were prompted to cancel the potentially violent event, is now being used by Geller as proof of European and French authorities’ “support for Islamic terror and anti-Semitism.”

The authorities may have cancelled the event due to many factors. Firstly, an event justifying racism, fascism and bigotry towards a minority, Muslims in this case, is one big red flag! While some Americans may reflexively take exception to the cancellation of the rally on the grounds that it compromises “free speech,” here in Europe we take our practised laws of equality and freedom very seriously. Authorities have to balance “freedoms” and “rights” with the competing issues of “security,” “community harmony,” and defense against “hate speech” that incites violence, and so decisions to cancel rallies are taken very seriously.

Secondly, a main factor in the cancellation of the event seems to be the crowds that would flock and gather for the rally: neo-nazis, thugs, violent fringe groups, racists, and xenophobes masquerading as self-proclaimed ‘human rights’ activists. This event would have been a grave security threat to the people of Strasbourg, an event purely designed to deliberately provoke the liberals, Muslims and opposition groups and hence would be a breach of French and European law.

The Gellerists attempts in Europe give us pause, after all, Europe is home to one of the most inhuman crimes in history, the Holocaust, which was the result of propaganda, scapegoating and persecution. The rational expertise of the authorities recognised these signs, and sanctioned it in the appropriate manner. In this case, they have cancelled a palpable hate rally that had the potential to turn violent.

Human Rights and Muslim Takeover in the Bizzare-o World of Pamela Geller

The atypical, and apocryphal view of Geller’s interpretation on the meaning and definition of ‘human rights’ is comical. She calls for an international deployment to “defend the rights of man,” when she herself is partaking in an epic act of human oppression:

“The SIOA/SIOE Freedom From Jihad aid flotilla,” Geller explained, “is intended to be a direct response to the capitulation of French, European, and American authorities to Leftist and Islamic supremacist forces of oppression and injustice. It is set to launch after our national Rally for Freedom at Ground Zero on the tenth anniversary of the Islamic jihad attacks that murdered three thousand Americans.”

The “Freedom from Jihad aid flotilla,” is obviously a mock-term employed by Geller to demean the Gaza Freedom Flotillas, which she derisively describes as “Jihad flotillas.” Geller dare not admit that Gaza has been and is in need of desperate aid due to the inhumane and oppressive blockade instituted by the Apartheid state of Israel because, well…you know, Israel is sugar and spice and everything nice!!

Let us analyze the facts here. It is estimated that 857 million people are citizens in Europe, and 58 million Muslims in Europe, 14 million of these numbers directly living under the European Union, including those who have converted to the religion of Islam. Where is the indication that Islam is in a takeover of Europe, when the numbers of non-Muslims to Muslims ratio is incomparable and far greater. This is a tool of hysteria and sensationalism on the part of Pam Geller, to insert misinformation to promote a repugnant agenda.

Another important point to note here is that Geller, on the mention of the tragedy of 9/11, conveniently makes no mention of the numerous Muslim victims that died on 9/11, who also were equally victims of such a heinous crime. The lack of acknowledgement of those Muslim deaths, only reiterates her pure uncompromising hatred of Muslims.

The SIOA Freedom From Jihad Flotilla will call upon the international community to act in defense of these basic human rights:
The freedom of speech – as opposed to Islamic prohibitions of “blasphemy” and “slander,” which are used effectively to quash honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacism;The freedom of conscience – as opposed to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy;The equality of rights of all people before the law – as opposed to Sharia’s institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims. The Flotilla will call upon all free people of all races and creeds to stand with us to defend our freedoms against the radically intolerant ideology codified in Islamic law.

Geller wants to galvanize the globe to fight 12th century medieval law books that are not applied in the Muslim world, and are particularly irrelevant in light of the Arab Spring. Geller has a condensed and inept understanding of the term “Human Rights,” one which is limited in scope, and only applies to her circle of hate and dogmatism. According to her human rights apply to everyone –except Muslims. That is not human rights, it’s the selected persecution of a minority group, which in-turn presents this whole so called ‘freedom from jihad’ flotilla as nothing more than an opportunity to channel Islamophobic extremism from the right of the spectrum. There are no two ways about this issue.

Geller and co. have a very idiosyncratic strategy to illuminate the principles of ‘violence’ and ‘hatred’ in Islam. In order to combat and deplete the notion of Islamist extremism and hatred, the Gellerists have adopted the very same model of intolerance and prejudice, in order to stamp out the very elements they oppose. What a paradoxical stance, where two wrongs never will make a right. In what parallel universe would such an absurd theory make any sense? Only in the world of Pamela Geller.

The story below from AlterNet is a must read, I don’t know why it is not being covered more. This is a clear and bold example of a high ranking politician meddling in religion and thereby comprising the separation between Church and State. If that wasn’t bad enough he happens to be propping up one of the most extremist, dominionist organizations and movements in the country, the AFA.

AFA is the same group whose rising star is the repugnant Bryan Fischer. Fischer has made radically hateful comments about Muslims and Gays. In light of the fact that the Islamophobesphere and twitterati are up in arms about the Imam who made homophobic statements, where is the outrage over Gov. Rick Perry? This is an issue that effects us ten times more than some Imam making bigoted remarks.

Interestingly enough I have just found out that Bruce Bawer, (a friend of Robert Spencer’s, who thinks the West is “appeasing Islam”) is now blogging on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. Just today, under a blog titled “Islamophobia,” Bawer writes somewhat misleadingly that if you object to an Imam who preaches intolerance of gays you will be labeled an “Islamophobe.” How ridiculous is that?

I tweeted back, “Bigotry does not make bigotry OK. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Homophobia does not justify #Islamophobia and vice versa.”

No response yet. However, I noticed that neither Andrew Sullivan or any of his fellow bloggers at the Daily Dish have commented on Gov.Rick Perry’s endorsement of AFA or full frontal assault on the separation of Religion and State.

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Bizarre, Fringe Mass Prayer Rally — What Happened to No Gov Meddling in Religion?

Gov. Rick Perry’s call for a day-long event of prayer and fasting Aug. 6 at a sports stadium in Houston is a dramatic escalation of government meddling in religion.

AlterNet / By Rob Boston

American politicians love to invoke religion, and a generic form of an alleged “one-size-fits-all” piety is so common that scholars have even give it a fancy name: ceremonial deism.

Ceremonial deism is what explains “In God We Trust” on our money, “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance and the tendency of presidents and governors to attend interfaith prayer services whenever there’s a natural disaster.

Despite its short-comings – ceremonial deism doesn’t offer much to non-believers, for example, and many devoutly religious people find it sterile and bland – the practice at least recognizes that religious beliefs come in many forms. Thus, God is appealed to but not Jesus. Prayers are “non-sectarian.”

What’s planned for Texas in August is not ceremonial deism. It’s something else entirely. And it’s a big problem.

Gov. Rick Perry’s call for a day-long event of prayer and fasting Aug. 6 at a sports stadium in Houston is a dramatic escalation of government meddling in religion. Called “The Response,” the event is being coordinated by the American Family Association (AFA), an extreme Religious Right group, as well as other far-right religious groups and figures with controversial theological and political ideas. The rally is exclusively Christian in nature; in fact, it reflects a certain type of Christianity – the fringes of fundamentalism.

What brought this about? Perry’s theological allies claim that America is being punished by God for its wicked ways. They see a national day of repentance as the solution.

On The Response’s website, Perry writes, “Right now, America is in crisis: we have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy.”

Of course, this could be just a sheer political ploy. Perry has been openly flirting with a presidential run, and this event could be little more than an effort to curry favor with the Religious Right in advance of that.

Regardless, word is spreading quickly among the religio-political right. Potential attendees to The Response are told to bring a Bible and encouraged to fast – although there will be a few food vendors on site for those who can’t or won’t. The groups behind this effort tend to come from the fringes of Christianity that are obsessed with things like prophecy, direct messages from God, faith healing and so on. These charismatic Christians emphasize a highly charged form of worship that stresses emotional outbursts and a theology of judgment. They seem to be convinced that God has it in for America, mainly because we permit legal abortion, tolerate gays and have a secular government.

Many churches in America preach this theology, and Americans are free to attend these houses of worship and hear it whenever they like. But government endorsement of this sectarian message goes too far – and that’s why more and more people are speaking out over Perry’s prayer confab.

Mainline Christian, non-Christian and secularist groups have protested the Perry event – and rightly so. Perry and his supporters don’t try to downplay the proselytizing nature of the event; in fact, they brag about it. They say non-Christians are welcome to attend to hear a message about redemption through Christ.

Perry defended the event, tellingThe New York Times, “It is Christian-centered, yes, but I have invited and welcome people of all faiths to attend.” He also brushed off charges that the AFA is extreme, calling it “a group that promotes faith and strong families, and this event is about bringing Americans together in prayer.”

Read the rest at AlterNet

Is this meeting one of convenience?

Here is the money quote,

Israel’s embassies in Berlin and Vienna have warned against such contacts. “Even if this is an alleged attempt to create an anti-Islamic European front, some of these elements seek to obtain an Israeli seal of approval without altering their anti-Semitic views,” an Israeli state official said.

The deputy minister said he was unaware of Brinkmann’s problematic connections with Germany’s neo-Nazi far-right movement, claiming this was “irrelevant.”

So it would have been OK if there was an “anti-Islamic European front” as long as they toned down their anti-Semitism? (via. Europeans Against Islamophobia)

Israeli deputy minister meets German neo-Nazi millionaire

Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara met with Swedish-German millionaire Patrik Brinkmann who has ties with German neo-Nazi groups in Berlin over the weekend,Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Brinkmann, who is trying to establish a far-right anti-Islamic party in Germany claims he is not an anti-Semite, however his previous close contacts with the German neo-Nazi party (NPD) and his past membership in another neo-Nazi party raise questions regarding his ideology.

Brinkmann, 44, made his fortune in the Swedish real estate business in the 1980s before becoming mixed in tax problems in his home country. As legal battles were going on he used the majority of his finances for the establishment of two research foundations which became closely affiliated with far-right and neo-Nazi elements in Germany.

The millionaire later began supporting the Pro NRW movement, Germany’s far-right and anti-Islamic party. He declared he fears that Sharia law will be introduced in the country and has pledged to establish a strong German right-wing party. He left the party last year in protest of its anti-Semitism, but resumed membership earlier this year. He now heads the party’s Berlin branch.

Brinkman visited Israel several months ago where he met Kara and announced his intention to promote one of his foundations in Israel. He met the deputy minister again in Berlin over the weekend as part of Kara’s private visit to the city’s World Culture Festival. Several months ago, Kara met with Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache who was once active in neo-Nazi groups.

Israel’s embassies in Berlin and Vienna have warned against such contacts. ”Even if this is an alleged attempt to create an anti-Islamic European front, some of these elements seek to obtain an Israeli seal of approval without altering their anti-Semitic views,” an Israeli state official said.

The deputy minister said he was unaware of Brinkmann’s problematic connections with Germany’s neo-Nazi far-right movement, claiming this was “irrelevant.”

Ynetnews, 4 July 2011

See also Ayoob Kara’s meeting last month with Filip Dewinter of the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang.

Muslims and Jews don’t know much about one another due to distrust, fear, and anger stemming from the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Muslim-Jewish parley seeks ‘platform for dialogue’

By JEREMY SHARON (Jerusalem Post)

The second annual Muslim- Jewish Conference kicked off in Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday, with 70 students and young professionals coming from around the world to promote mutual understanding between global Jewish and Muslim communities.

The event is sponsored by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding based in New York and the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, among others, with participants coming from Austria, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

“Most young Jews and Muslims never really meet because of the situation, and only learn about each other from their respective communities and through the media,” Muslim- Jewish Conference Secretary- General Ilja Sichrovsky told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“The conference is designed to be a platform for dialogue between Muslims and Jews to talk to each other instead of about each other,” Sichrovsky said.

Ayse Cindilkaya, vice secretary- general of the organization, said the political conflict can “overshadow” relations between the two communities but that they are not focusing on conflicts.

“We are trying to start from new but we are sensitive to the conflicts,” Cindilkaya said.

“Instead we are focusing on breaking down stereotypes, sharing our religious traditions and culture, and filling in the gaps on our mutual knowledge of each others faith.

One of the major issues that the conference is addressing is the increasing xenophobia and the rise of far-right groups in Europe.

“We are careful not to equate Islamophobia and anti-Semitism,” Sichrovsky said, “although there are commonalities.

The impact often feels subjectively the same and we are trying to find a strategy where young Jews and Muslims come together and stand up for each other.”

“The conference offers the opportunity to bring together some of the most outstanding Muslim and Jewish leaders in their 20s and 30s,” said president and chairman of the FFEU, Rabbi Marc Schneier.

The conference steps beyond non-communication and estrangement and helps participants connect with each other.

The five-day conference will include working committees on the question of religious practice, fundamentalism and citizen loyalty; countering Islamophobia and anti-Semitism; and methods for conducting sustainable dialogue.

Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer has really outdone himself.  Hate does things to you, and it really shows. Take this reaction to the lawsuit of an Ametican Muslim woman against Abercrombie and Fitch:

The real question is, Why would a Muslima want to work at Abercrombie & Fitch in the first place? Wouldn’t she find the clothing line, the advertising, and the whole atmosphere objectionable on moral grounds? Shouldn’t she prefer to shun such an environment rather than want to work there at all, especially if she is pious and observant enough to want to wear the hijab? Unless, of course, the real point of her getting hired in the first place was to compel an American business to change its practices in order to accommodate Islamic norms, and thereby to assert once again that Islam must dominate and not be dominated.

LOL. Spencer wonders why a “Muslima,” or Muslim woman, would want to work at A&F? Umm…maybe to make some money? Novel concept, eh? (pardon the Canadian) But, no! Mssr. Spencer knows the REAL reason: to get hired, and then get fired in order to…what were his words?:

“to compel an American business to change its practices in order to accommodate Islamic norms, and thereby to assert once again that Islam must dominate and not be dominated.”

Really? Her whole ordeal…getting fired, losing income, and filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – which, by the way, evaluated her claim and saw merit to her lawsuit going forward – was so she can “assert Islamic dominance”?

Dude…really?

If A&F had simply adhered to their own stated policy, she would not have been fired in the first place.  It is the law of the land, Mssr. Spencer, to make reasonable accommodations for religious practice. The Muslim woman in this case didn’t object to the dress code. She just refused to violate her religious beliefs and take off her headscarf. And for this she was fired.

Moreover, this wasn’t the first time Muslim women at A&F were fired for refusing to take off their headscarves, according to the article. So it seems that A&F has a problem vis a vis Muslim women employees. Hence, the lawsuits.

But Mssr. Spencer knows better! He saw through the whole scheme! It was all an elaborate plot, full of taqiyya and dhimmis (in the EEOC). He said it himself:

Yes. It seems tolerant to force Abercrombie & Fitch to change its dress code. It seems open-minded. In fact, it is accommodating an ideology that is radically intolerant, and when in power has never granted similar accommodation to those outside it.

Oh yes! The “radical ideology” of allowing a Muslim woman to wear her headscarf while working? Really? Would Spencer be saying this if A&F fired an Orthodox Jewish man for refusing to take off his yarmulke? Hardly. But when it comes to Muslims, it is “Stealth Jihad.” How pathetic.

Like I said…hate does thing to you.

It is July 4h, 2011. The United States of America has been free of British colonial rule for 235 years now.

Let’s not let the Islamophobes and haters ruin the day.

Russell Blackford recently wrote a piece on Islamophobia that was reproduced by Richard Dawkins, in which he said,

“attacks on Islam..made opportunistically..cannot be dismissed out of hand as worthless.”

We responded on Twitter by saying that most attacks can be dismissed as worthless. Exhibit A: Conspiracy Theories.

Now here is a perfect example, from one Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, who thinks the recent E.coli outbreak in Germany is linked to Muslim immigrants’ importation of “fecal jihad.” After this, I don’t know who could compete for “the craziest conspiracy theory of the year award.” (hat tip: Sphinx and Jake)

Ulfkotte: Turkish women’s poor hygiene to blame for E.coli/EHEC outbreak

The writer and “Islam expert” Dr. Udo Ulfkotte has made a nice career for himself in Germany by spreading hate and fear against Muslims.  In a recent interview he fantasized about all the “living space” (Lebensraum) ethnic Germans could have if only they could conduct forced deportation of all the Turkish and Arab people living in Germany. No matter that nearly all of Dr. Ulfkotte’s hateful diatribes are based on lies: he is a much sought-after guest for TV talk shows and discussion panels.

But even Dr. Ulfkotte may have outdone himself with his mostrecent piece on the right-wing Truther site of Kopp Verlag(with thanks to Politblogger). Germany is facing a health crisis due to vegetables tainted with E.coli. Naturally, Udo Ulfkotte seizes the opportunity for yet another attack on immigrants from Turkey:

Im »Erdbeerland« in Pottenstein und auf mindestens zehn weiteren Erdbeerplantagen erfand man den Hosenzwang, weil Türkinnen, die dort saisonal gearbeitet hatten, bei der Arbeit auf die Erdbeeren uriniert und zwischen den Pflanzen auch noch andere »größere Geschäfte« verrichtet hatten. … Bestimmte Migranten haben eben völlig andere Vorstellungen von Hygiene und der Einhaltung von Hygiene-Richtlinien als wir Europäer.

(In the “strawberry region” in Pottenstein (Austria) and on at least ten other strawberry farms workers are required to wear pants because Turkish women who were working there seasonally were urinating on the strawberries and even defecating among the plants….Certain migrants have a completely different concepts of hygiene than we Europeans.)

Dr. Ulfkotte goes on to describe a “fecal Jihad” being waged by Muslims against Europeans.

Thus far, there is zero evidence that the E.coli outbreak has any connection with strawberries, much less strawberries from Austria.  Authorities believe rather that cucumbers from Spain may be to blame.  But don’t look for a retraction or an apology from Dr. Udo Ulfkotte.  He has never once retracted any of the numerous lies he’s published at Kopp Verlag or elsewhere.

Again, Ulfkotte is free to publish whatever he wishes, even if it’s mostly lies.  What concerns me is that he is viewed by the German media as an “expert” and frequently appears on German television.  They are lending to this fraud credibility he in no way deserves.

So what happens when the world’s oldest Islamic university and seminary declares support for a constitutional, democratic state? Deafening silence from the Islamophobesphere, why of course. It proves the lie to the claim that somehow Islam and Muslims are impervious to Democracy, Rule of Law, Equal Rights and universal suffrage.

Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam declares support for a constitutional, democratic state

(Al-Ahram)

In a statement titled “Al-Azhar Document” and read on national television, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed El-Tayeb, the country’s highest religious authority, outlined his institution’s vision on key political, social and economic issues that have been subject to raging debates across the country for months.

The product of a consensual agreement reached between Al-Azhar officials and numerous prominent intellectuals and religious figures following extensive discussions over the last few weeks, the Document contains 11 main articles and is meant to serve as a foundation for a new social arrangement in post-Mubarak Egypt.

The statement opens with a definitive and unequivocal position on the contentious debate taking place in society between liberal forces and religious currents on the nature of the relationship between religion and the state in a new Egypt.

In a clear rejection of the argument put forward by many Islamic Salafists, the Grand Imam laid out his support for a ‘democratic and constitutional’ state.

“Islam has never, throughout its history, experienced such a thing as a religious or a theocratic state,” El-Tayeb said. He added that theocratic states have always been autocratic and humanity suffered a great deal because of them.

The document stressed its support for universal democratic rights such as free and democratic elections where the citizens as a whole constitute the sole and legitimate source of legislation.

The Grand Imam said that striving towards social justice needs to be a basic component in any future economic arrangement in Egypt. He stressed that affordable and decent education and health care services must become a right for all citizens.

The document was explicit in its support for freedom of expression in the arts and literary fields within the accepted boundaries of Islamic philosophy and moral guidelines. It highlighted the need for expanded scientific and popular campaigns to combat illiteracy and advance economic progress.

“We need a serious commitment to universal human rights, the rights of women and children,” El-Tayeb said.

In a clear reference to the status of religious minorities especially Copts, the Grand Imam stated that citizenship must be the sole criterion by which both rights and responsibilities are administered in society.

The document emphasised the right of all citizens to practice any of the three main religions in complete freedom. Along those lines, the Grand Imam admonished all those “who use religion to incite sectarian strife or those who accuse others of religious apostasy simply based on political disagreements.”

The document asked all Muslims to refer to Al-Azhar’s religious opinions as the highest and final word in all disputed theological matters.

In foreign affairs, the document stressed that Egypt must regain its once prominent status in the Arab, Muslim and African spheres, maintain its sovereign and independent decision making process and continue its support for the Palestinian people.

Finally, the Grand Imam demanded that the Institution of Al-Azhar be independent of the state. Along those lines, the document pointed out that the Supreme Clerical Committee of Al-Azhar not the government – as has been the practice for decades – chooses the position of Grand Imam.

I wanted to find out what the kerfluffle over “creeping Shariah” was all about. After all, this is a Republican worry in thirteen states which have introduced anti-shariah laws. And apparently it’s more serious than even a global economic Depression.

So I went to a blog by the promising name of “Creeping Shariah” and its matching Twitter feed for some hard answers.

The website promised to easily locate the numerous recent cases of jihad being waged on our very shores. In Massachusetts alone there were forty incidents of jihad, as those sly Mahometans managed to finesse a Muslim holiday in Cambridge, plotted to build a cemetery in Belchertown, and the Muslim Brotherhood had apparently consulted with Whitey Bulger to get governor Duval Patrick to build a mega-mosque in Bah-stahn.

Those armed-and-dangerous ladies from Code Pink were raising money for Hamas, CAIR was at it again, trying to help out some headscarf-toting Muslim terrorists at a Boston pharmacy school, Yale University was cozying up to faculty jihadis by not re-inviting an Islamophobe to come back for a conference, and some crazy Mooslim women troublemakers in Kansas City wanted to wear Islamic-style bathing gear in a pool. The fate of our pools, our children, and our very nation were at stake. And all this trouble from a bunch of Muslim women, no less.

Beside the fact that New Haven and Kansas City are not exactly in Massachusetts, most of the other “incidents” reported were endlessly-recycled hate blurbs from people like Pamela Geller and Rick Santorum — which, I will grant you — do constitute a sort of domestic terror. But most of the postings were over a year old. Maybe getting all that “news” onto his website was just too overwhelming for him. HTML can be so wordy.

But now I was really curious. Incidents of creeping shariah and jihad were obviously so numerous, so dangerous, and so troubling that perhaps a Twitter feed could provide better real-time coverage of the onslaught. And surely the feed would corroborate a pattern of Islamification of our beloved heterosexual, fetus-friendly, pro-capitalist, White-loving, brown-skin-hating, Ayn Randophilic, Judeo-Christian-based culture! I went online looking for more answers.

And answers I found. More attacks on Keith Ellison, indignation at a Toronto school which tried to accommodate a Muslim student who wanted to pray quietly in a corner of its library, and the unmitigated gall of the town of Farmington, Michigan, to sell an unused school to an Islamic cultural association. Truly disturbing stuff, indeed!

Elsewhere in the tweets were some on a Republican congressman (Wolf, R-VA) going after CAIR via the IRS, Judicial Watch going after CAIR, and disappointment that CAIR could sue a former intern who stole tens of thousands of documents for his Islamophobe father, Paul David Gaubatz.

There was also a speech by Geert Wilders at the Cornerstone Church in Nashville, part of his “Warning to America” event, which concluded with the words:

You and I, Americans and Europeans, we belong to a common Western culture. We share the ideas and ideals of our common Judeo-Christian heritage. In order to pass this heritage on to our children and grandchildren, we must stand together, side by side, in our struggle against Islamic barbarism. That, my friends, is why I am here. I am here to forge an alliance. Our international freedom alliance. We must stand together for the Judeo-Christian West. We will not allow islam to overrun Israel and Europe, the cradle of the judeo-Christian civilization.

Wow. Now I get it. Only Leni Riefenstahl was missing from the picture. Or was that Hermann Goering?

I mean, thank goodness I’m a Jew! It wasn’t that long ago that Nordic types like Wilders were saying the same thing about my people. Now with the cool kids expanded to “European Judeo-Christians” and not just Christians anymore, I could join a select club and kick around Muslims if I wanted to — rather than just being a Yid whose faith and culture was once characterized by Nazis exactly as Wilders paints Islam at churches and synagogues today.

I’d get with his program, but all I’d have to do is stop trying to be a mensch. That and the stench Wilder’s words would leave in my mouth.