What is wrong with this picture?

Not the best video from the Young Turks but interesting nonetheless. I particularly agree with the guy about how speaking with a face veil is not an obstacle in understanding or learning.

In the end this is about free choice, a choice that does not effect anyone else, a choice that does not hinder a woman from going about the normal activities of daily life. Next we are going to be hearing about grocery stores not allowing people in who wear the face veil.

Nicolas Sarkozy, better known as Nicoleon

The discussion on the veil ban is now leading to practical implementation with plans for the veil ban to become effective in the spring. (via. Islamophobia-Watch)

Debbie Almontaser

The New York Times reports:

Federal Panel Finds Bias in Ouster of Principal
By Andrea Elliot
Published: March 12, 2010

A federal commission has determined that New York City’s Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language public school by forcing her to resign in 2007 following a storm of controversy driven by opponents of the school.

Acting on a complaint filed last year by the principal, Debbie Almontaser, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the department “succumbed to the very bias that creation of the school was intended to dispel and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on D.O.E. as an employer,” according to a letter issued by the commission on Tuesday.

The commission said that the department had discriminated against Ms. Almontaser, a Muslim of Yemeni descent, “on account of her race, religion and national origin.”

The findings, which are nonbinding, could mark a turning point in Ms. Almontaser’s battle to reclaim her job as principal of the school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn.

The commission asked the Department of Education to reach a “just resolution” with Ms. Almontaser and to consider her demands, which include reinstatement to her old job, back pay, damages of $300,000 and legal fees. Should the two sides fail to reach an agreement, the dispute will end up in court, her lawyer said.

Commission officials declined to answer questions about the case, citing federal confidentiality law, but Ms. Almontaser’s lawyer provided a copy of the letter to The New York Times.

“There is no question that this is an important step in the road to her ultimate vindication,” said Alan Levine, Ms. Almontaser’s lawyer. “Up until now, the D.O.E. has really had its way and hasn’t had to answer for its actions.”

In a statement, a lawyer for the city disputed the commission’s findings.

The Department of Education “in no way discriminated against Ms. Almontaser and she will not be reinstated,” said Paul Marks, the city’s deputy chief of labor and employment law in the Law Department. “If she continues to pursue litigation, we will vigorously defend against her groundless allegations.”

The controversy surrounding the dual-language school began in early 2007, shortly after the city announced that Ms. Almontaser, a longtime teacher, would lead it. A group of opponents, including conservative commentators and a City University trustee, mounted a campaign against the school and Ms. Almontaser, claiming that she carried a militant Islamic agenda.

Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a moderate Muslim, her critics succeeded in recasting her as a “9/11 denier” and a “jihadist.”

The conflict came to a head that August, when Ms. Almontaser’s opponents, who had formed the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, asserted that she was connected to T-shirts bearing the words “Intifada NYC.” While Ms. Almontaser was on the board of an organization that rented space to the group that distributed the shirts, she was unaware of them, she said. (The commission determined that she had no connection to the T-shirts.)

Nonetheless, in response to mounting inquiries about the shirts, the Department of Education pressured her to give an interview to The New York Post, she said. In that interview, with a department employee listening in, she explained that the root of the word intifada meant “shaking off,” but that it had acquired other connotations because of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

The next day, The Post published the article under the headline “City Principal Is ‘Revolting’ — Tied to ‘Intifada NYC’ Tee Shirts,” stating that Ms. Almontaser had “downplayed the significance” of the T-shirts. (Federal judges later issued a ruling — related to a lawsuit brought by Ms. Almontaser — stating that The Post had reported her words “incorrectly and misleadingly.”)

It was The Post’s article, the commission wrote in its letter this week, that prompted the Department of Education to force Ms. Almontaser to resign. (City officials have said that she resigned voluntarily.)

“Significantly, it was not her actual remarks, but their elaboration by the reporter — creating waves of explicit anti-Muslim bias from several extremist sources — that caused D.O.E. to act,” the commission’s letter said.

Pressure soon mounted for Ms. Almontaser to step down. Randi Weingarten, the head of the teacher’s union, published a letter in The Post that was sharply critical of Ms. Almontaser. She finally resigned on Aug. 10, under pressure from the mayor’s office, she said. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the resignation on his radio show, saying, “she’s certainly not a terrorist,” while adding that she was “not all that media savvy, maybe.”

Ms. Almontaser continued working with the department in an administrative job, at her principal’s salary of about $120,000, but that job was eliminated and she was demoted.

The lawsuit that she filed against the city, claiming that her First Amendment rights had been violated because she was forced to resign after saying something controversial, was dismissed. She is appealing that decision.

A lawyer for the Stop the Madrassa Coalition said he found the commission’s determination predictable. “I think the E.E.O.C. is constitutionally constructed to find discrimination in a high-profile case,” said the lawyer, David Yerushalmi.

But the development struck other lawyers as surprising. Bill Lann Lee, a labor-law expert in San Francisco, said the commission rarely issued such rulings, and so its decision might help Ms. Almontaser if she pursued a discrimination lawsuit.

“The courts tend to consider what the E.E.O.C. finds,” he said, adding that “the courts know generally that these findings are very rare, so if there is such a finding, there’s a general belief among lawyers and judges that there may be something there.”

Jenny Anderson and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

Big ups to the E.E.O.C.  Way to be on the ball on this one.

Geert Wilders

At the same time that he is facing charges for hate speech his party is making advancements in local polls which bode ill for future national elections. Islamophobia is on the march!

For more on Wilders, read Krapuul.nl which is the number one site tracking Geert Wilders.

Sue Myrick wrote the foreward for Muslim Mafia

After writing the forward for “Muslim Mafia,” which is basically a conspiracy about how Muslims are ’spying’ on the United States by Paul Sperry and David Gaubatz, Myrick is now attempting to distance herself from Gaubatz.

Constituents Confront GOP Rep. Sue Myrick Over Muslim Bashing at Tense Town Hall

Muslim constituents repeatedly challenged Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) at an emotional town hall meeting in Charlotte Thursday, with Myrick scrambling to distance herself from the Islam-bashing co-author of the book Muslim Mafia, whose foreword was written by the congresswoman herself.

Myrick has had a tense relationship with her district’s Muslim community for many years, but it’s been aggravated recently by her campaign to investigate undercover Muslim intern “spies” on Capitol Hill.

That effort arose from purported revelations in Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America, written by Paul Sperry and David Gaubatz, with a foreword by Myrick.

But when confronted by some of Gaubatz’s past inflammatory statements — particularly that Islam is a “terminal disease that once spread is hard to destroy” — Myrick said she did not agree, later claiming that he did not even write the book that bears his name.

“The book was written by Paul Sperry, who is very well respected journalist,” Myrick told one questioner, according to audio of the event obtained by TPMmuckraker.

(For the record, Sperry is a WorldNetDaily contributor who once called on America to “force-feed Taliban clerics pork rinds until they give up [Osama bin Laden's] location.”

“Gaubatz did the investigating for it,” Myrick added. “And, quite frankly, Gaubatz didn’t write a word of the book. And in that sense, it’s kind of a shame his name is on the book because he didn’t write it.”

The book’s cover bears the names of both Gaubatz and Sperry.

And in her own foreword to Muslim Mafia, Myrick wrote: “Former federal investigator and co-author P. David Gaubatz, meanwhile, is a great American who deserves all our gratitude for his heroic service to our country.”

Gaubatz last year called for a “professional and legal backlash” against Muslims in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, a remark that Myrick declined to denounce at the time.

Here are two clips of Myrick responding to constituents’ questions about Gaubatz (these came about 10 minutes apart). Transcript is below.

Q: My question is, do you stand by Mr. Gaubatz’s statement … that “Islam is a terminal disease that once spread is hard to destory.” Do you stand by the statement?

Myrick: Well — what he says I don’t — that’s not something that I say, no.

Q: Why do you call him a great American?

Myrick: Because of what he did serving our country in the armed forces. You know, that situation with that whole book, and the way they got the information and all, I’ve said it should all be investigated.

…

Q: I believe that as the veteran eight-term congresswoman that you are, it would have been more fitting if you had repudiated such a book written by David Gaubatz.

Myrick: It was actually written by — let’s get that clear. The book was written by Paul Sperry, who is very well respected journalist. Gaubatz did the investigating for it. And quite frankly, Gaubatz didn’t write a word of the book. and in that sense, it’s kind of a shame his name is on the book because he didn’t write it, Paul Sperry wrote it.

Wearing a Yarmulke (Yamaka) is okay but not the Hijab

Geert Wilders previously called for a tax on the Hijab, now a recent political event reveals a new tactic in his  discriminatory political agenda. On a side note this is a good compliment to Danios’ article, as it ironically reveals that it is contemporary, if marginal Westerners who want to repress religious freedom and are advocating repressive conditions and restrictions on minorities akin to the ones in the fabled ‘Pact of Umar.’

Wilders goes for headscarf ban in the Hague

A ban on headscarves for city council workers and in all institutions and clubs which get local authority money will be the most important point in the PVV´s negotiations to join governing coalitions in Almere and the Hague, says party leader Geert Wilders.

Speaking to RTL news, Wilders said the ban would be central to talks to form new local authority executives in the only two cities where the party is contesting the March 3 local elections.

The ban will apply to ‘all council offices and all other institutions and clubs which get even one cent of council money,’ he said.

The PVV is tipped to emerge as the biggest party in Almere and second biggest in the Hague.

Speech

Wilders brought up the ban again in a speech to supporters in Almere, where he entered the room to the Rocky theme tune Eye of the Tiger.

The ban will not apply to other religious items such as Christian crosses and Jewish skull caps because these are symbols of our own Dutch culture, Wilders said in his speech, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

The speech began with a ‘lengthy tirade’ against the ‘arrogant Labour party’, according to the Volkskrant report of the meeting. ‘If you translate the PvdA’s Arabic language election brochures they say ‘bring your family here. You get benefits, we pay for everything’, the Volkskrant quoted the PVV leader as saying.

‘Almere must become the safest city in the Netherlands,’ he said. ‘There will be an end to subsidies for Turkish macramé and Arabic finger painting. Not just the Netherlands but all of Europe will look to Almere.’

Discrimination

Wilders is currently facing charges of discrimination and inciting hatred against non western immigrants and Muslims. He always maintains he is opposed to Islam, not Muslims themselves.

Earlier this week, Wilders told the Telegraaf the PVV´s commitment to maintaining the current retirement age of 65 would be crucial in negotiations to form a new national government, following the collapse of the CDA, Labour and ChristenUnie alliance last weekend.

Most parties have already ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders. Only the Christian Democrats and right wing Liberals VVD have not done so.

Opinion polls make it likely that four parties will be needed to form a new government after the June 9 vote.

The Washington Post reports:

Allegations of religious bias are being leveled against a notable federal body: the one responsible for monitoring international religious freedom.

Some past commissioners, staff and former staff of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom say the agency charged with advising the president and Congress is rife, behind-the-scenes, with ideology and tribalism, with commissioners focusing on pet projects that are often based on their own religious background. In particular, they say an anti-Muslim bias runs through the commission’s work– a charge denied by its chairman, Leonard Leo.

…

From the start, critics say, the commission has disproportionately focused its efforts on the persecution of Christians, while too often ignoring other religious communities and downplaying their claims of persecution.

“It was predetermined who the bad guys are and who the good guys are,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a Muslim who served as a commissioner from 2003 to 2007 and teaches human rights at UCLA. “There is a very pronounced view of the world, and it is that victims of religious discrimination are invariably Christian. It was rather suffocating.”

Although the persecution of minorities in many Muslim majority countries cannot be denied, there is certainly no monopoly on religious intolerance.  Muslims are persecuted in many countries, such as in China, Russia, and Israel. To its credit, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom does address some of these issues.  Yet, former and current employees allege that this is only at the insistence of the staff, which often compensates for the pro-Christian and anti-Muslim bias.  The Washington Post article goes on:

Others who work or used to work for the commission said advocacy for Muslims and the balance typically evident in the commission’s public statements are due to the professional staff.

“When anti-Muslim violence is mentioned, it’s usually because staff forces it,” said Kustin, 26, a South Asia researcher for the commission until she resigned in July to protest commissioners withdrawing Ghori-Ahmad’s contract. “The staff compensates for the biases of the commissioners.”

…

As with other congressionally created bodies, the commission is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so meetings and internal communications are private. With commissioners allowed to focus on any issue, their work is vulnerable to charges of arbitrariness.

What really irks me is when ideologues exploit and abuse the suffering of people to further their agendas and push their hate-infested propaganda.  It is these people who gleefully report the persecution of their coreligionists in order simply to demonize what they see as “the other.”  They view it as a football match: each time they can report “the other” persecuting someone else, that’s a score!  The concern is not for the persecuted, but for demonizing a population.  Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller do it, and so do Usama bin Ladin and his cronies.  Two sides of the same coin.

We certainly cannot tolerate our tax dollars being used to further the propaganda of right wing Christians who view the world in a binary way.  These charges should be taken very seriously and thoroughly investigated.  And by investigated, I don’t mean it the way the Israeli government does when it says that.

Michael Gove Opposes Mosque

The construction of a mosque is opposed by the  EDL and other right-wingers, a Conservative MP agrees with them. (via Islamophobia-Watch)

Michael Gove Opposes Mosque at Center of ‘Inflammatory Campaign’

A Conservative frontbench spokesman, Michael Gove, has opposed plans to build a mosque in his constituency after it became the target of an “inflammatory and offensive” online campaign.

The shadow schools secretary, who warned that the west was facing a “total war” from Islamists in his book Celsius 7/7, had initially refused to take sides in the dispute over proposals to build a mosque next to Sandhurst barracks in Camberley, Surrey. But this week he said he had been convinced that the strength of feeling was threatening the area’s “good community relations” and called on local Muslims to withdraw the application.

“The issue has become a flashpoint and people from inside and outside the community were making statements that I did not think would further community relations,” he said. “It struck me that it was best to ask the Bengali Welfare Association to withdraw the application and to consider how to improve the facilities for worship for the Muslim community in a calmer environment.”

A Facebook group set up to oppose the mosque has 6,834 “fans” and was criticised by one local organisation opposing the mosque as “inflammatory and offensive”. The Facebook group is supported by the far-right English Defence League.

The local Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, Alan Hiliar, said Gove had “lost all respect” over the issue. “I reject Michael Gove’s decision to ask the community to withdraw their application on the ground that it’s ‘divisive’. To ask the Muslim community to withdraw the application is simply kicking the issue into the long grass; it resolves nothing.”

Guardian, 13 February 2010

Rabbi Nachum Shifren

Rabbi Nachum Shifren is a West Bank Settler, a teacher in the Los Angeles educational system and a surfer. The last time he came to the attention of the media was for his books on surfing and spirituality.  He implied then that he wasn’t into politics, Denise Dowling of Salon.com wrote at the time,

The Surfing Rabbi will talk religion, but not politics. If pressed on his views, it’s evident how he earned the nickname “Shifty.” “My politics are not germane to what I’m doing,” he demurs. “All I’m about is surfing.”

Yet even then there were hints that he was deeply political and that his allegiance was to extreme right-wing Zionist ideology,

Yet he opted to reside in Kfar Tapuah, a West Bank settlement perched a half-hour from the “lousy” Mediterranean surf. Kfar Tapuah is considered an extremely militant, right-wing, anti-government stronghold. “I’d compare its residents to white militants in the United States,” says Hagit Yaari, an Israeli spokesperson for Americans for Peace.

Kfar Tapuah is the settlement where Israeli police recently arrested an remorseless extremist Jewish settler who was killing Palestinians. Now Rabbi Shifren is running to be a State Senator in California and what he is saying doesn’t reflect the peaceful rhythms of the Ocean but instead reflects a hateful ideologue filled with bigotry against Islam. I haven’t investigated his past statements thoroughly but there is no need to waste time to find his views, his most recent article sums it up quite directly.

Shifren writes on a recent student protest at UC Irvine where 11 students were arrested for protesting the visit of Israel’s Ambassador to America, Michael Oren on the grounds that he represents a government which perpetrates “war crimes, violates international law, and subjugates and oppresses Palestinians.” Shifren believes that they will get off too lightly and he wants them jailed and expelled from the university.

In an article he penned, Cal. Senatorial Candidate Responds to Muslim Hooliganism, Rabbi Shifren writes that the protesters weren’t just “rude, and disrespectful students” but they “are the front line of an army of Muslims that is waiting patiently to take over and subvert our country.”

The article doesn’t make a lot of sense a lot of the time but he goes on to repeat many of the stereotypical essentialist, paranoid, anti-Muslim statements that we are used to from Islamophobes,

For instance the canard that Muslims only respect strength,

The rule that we in the West refuse to acknowledge is simply that to the muslim, whoever is perceived as strong, will be feared and will survive; and whoever is seen as weak, irresolute, or wavering, will be despised and will be vanquished.

He also states that he believes we are at war with Islam,

This will be a hard bullet for America to bite, but we are at war with Islam! Those who deny this are quislings or fifth-columnists — and very often, university professors and chancellors. With strong leadership, there would be no notions of “academic freedom” for those who come here to subvert and destroy.

These students weren’t just protesters but according to Rabbi Shifren are “Muslim terrorists-in-training,” who are “breeding” like crazy on our university campuses,

Make no mistake: these students are the probing squads that are testing the waters to see what they can get away with, positioning themselves to ultimately shut down the entire campus when they please. These are among the first salvos in a war that, until now, has been only academic and ideological — at least in this country.

If you want to see where we are headed, if we don’t find the courage to stand up to and defeat these muslim terrorists-in-training, just look to France, Spain, England and other countries where muslims have been allowed to get a toe-hold. Or consider the carnage caused by just one insane muslim terrorist at Fort Hood, then multiply that many times over, as more muslim terrorists consolidate their power base in our country — and our state and their favorite breeding grounds, our campuses!

Hurry, the Mooslims are coming, the Mooslims are coming, in fact they are here!

Without strength of character in our leaders, and the courage of our people, we are poised to become just another chapter in history — right next to the debauched and pillaged societies of Greece and Rome. The muslim onslaught is at the gates; they are weary of our self-indulgence and they abhor our eroding social mores and valueless culture. They are sharpening the long knives, knowing that their time will come shortly.

Of course Rabbi Shifren thinks he has the “strength of character” to be a leader, but the reality seems to be he that he is not fit to be a teacher. Can one imagine him teaching a diverse classroom of students that includes Middle Easterners and Muslims? Can we trust him to to be respectful, even handed? In fact can we trust him to educate and open the minds of youth when the bigotry that he revels in indicates that his mind is narrow and constricted?

I urge readers to contact the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to lodge a formal complaint that due to the preponderance of bigoted and hate filled comments by Rabbi Nachum Shifren he is not fit to teach in the school system and should be disciplined.

LAUSD information:

Address: 333 S. Beaudry Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Phone: (213) 241-4131 (thanks Usman)

The Video from the Protest at UC Irvine of Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren:

Ilham Moussaid is an NPA candidate in forthcoming elections in France. The fact that she wears a headscarf has politicians from every corner in an uproar. French sensitivity to the scarf is bordering on fanaticism.

Ilham Moussaid

These two statements from Ilham are amazing and I think many Western Muslims can find resonance in what she says,

“Try as I might to explain that I am not oppressed and that it shows, there’s still a lack of understanding,” she told today’s Le Monde.

In a statement to local party members at the weekend she wrote: “It is with great sadness that I watch … my life reduced to my headscarf. It is with great sadness that I hear that my personal beliefs are a danger to others while I advocate friendship, respect, tolerance, solidarity and equality for all human beings.”

From the Guardian via Islamophobia-Watch:

Election Candidate in Headscarf causes Uproar in France

Olivier Besancenot, the postman-turned-revolutionary at the helm of France’s anti-capitalist movement, has been fiercely criticised from all sides of the political spectrum for fielding a headscarf-wearing candidate in forthcoming elections.

Ilham Moussaid, a 21-year-old Muslim woman who describes herself as “feminist, secular and veiled”, is running for the far-left New Anti-Capitalist party (NPA) in the south-eastern region of Avignon.

But, despite her insistence that there is no contradiction between her clothing and her political role, Moussaid’s candidacy in the regional vote due in March has angered other feminists and politicians.

In an echo of the controversy raised by recent moves to ban the full, face-covering veil in public places such as schools, hospitals and buses, critics have said that the young activist’s headscarf, which conceals only her hair, goes against values of laïcité – secularism – and women’s rights.

Today, in a sign of how deep concerns are running, a leading feminist group announced it would file an official complaint against the NPA’s list of candidates in the Vaucluse département to protest against what it called an “anti-secular, anti-feminist and anti-republican” stunt.

“In choosing to endorse ‘open’ laïcité, the NPA is perverting the values of the Republic and suggesting we reread them in a manner which conforms with regressive visions of women,” said the Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) association in a statement.

Others have expressed their shock at Besancenot’s attempt to field a candidate who sees no problem with making an overt statement about her religion in the public sphere, a practice considered taboo.

Moussaid’s candidacy has been considered all the more surprising because she is running for a party with far-left leanings traditionally seen as hostile to religion and pro-women’s rights. Socialist MP Aurélie Filippetti advised Besancenot to “reread Marx” in order to understand why the headscarf was unacceptable.

The government is attempting to wrap up a “great debate” on national identity, which many people believe has caused Islamophobia. It is reminiscent of the controversy in 2004 when headscarves and other conspicuous religious symbols were banned from state schools.

Moussaid, an advocate of contraception and abortion rights whose candidacy was announced last month, said she had been particularly stung by the criticism from feminist groups. “Try as I might to explain that I am not oppressed and that it shows, there’s still a lack of understanding,” she told today’s Le Monde.

In a statement to local party members at the weekend she wrote: “It is with great sadness that I watch … my life reduced to my headscarf. It is with great sadness that I hear that my personal beliefs are a danger to others while I advocate friendship, respect, tolerance, solidarity and equality for all human beings.”

Rep. Keith Ellison

Lynne Torgerson, an Independent Conservative who we profiled before as an opportunist who was trying to play off of people’s fears to win votes confirms our suspicions in an interview with some die hard anti-Muslims.

Hart Van Denberg breaks it down.

When you launch an independent campaign to unseat the first American Muslim to ever hold a seat in Congress, and you introduce yourself to the public by saying the guy is unfit for office by tarring him with a guilt-by-association link to Islamic militants, it’s only a matter of time before right-wing Christians with a persecution complex come calling, looking for some action.

And so, over the weekend, Lynn Torgerson was interviewed by a couple of people most folks have never heard of, Babe Huggett and Warner Todd Huston, in an online-only broadcast from BlogTalkRadio called “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Conservatism.” What ensued was ensued was a journey through the two hosts’ dark paranoia.

Sometimes Torgerson went there with them, sometimes she didn’t. Mostly, she had a hard time getting a word in edgewise, as the hosts gradually steered her away from her criticisms of incumbent 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison, and towards an endless attack on Islam. Here are a few highlights:

Ellison and the Council on American Muslim Relations

Torgerson: “He has been a person who has regularly appeared at their fundraisers and CAIR regularly appears at Keith Ellison’s fundraisers. So here we have an elected federal official with too close of ties to a named co-conspirator organization funding terrorism.”

Note: A Texas jury convicted five Holy Land Foundation organizers in 2008 of funneling money to the Palestinian group Hamas, which the U.S. government has labeled a terrorist organization. CAIR was listed as unindicted co-conspirator in that case, but the link is used by right-wing activists, lawmakers and journalists to paint CAIR as a terrorist front — an accusation the group vehemntley denies.

Ellison has supported CAIR group and spoken at its gatherings aimed at generating better understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. He has known the group’s leader since the two were at college together, and has received campaign donations from some CAIR members.

Moderate Muslims

Haggett: Muslims “squeal and they scream for tolerance. And if you criticize them, they immediately accuse you of bigotry. Yet they are the most intolerant of people, correct, when it comes to their religion? They consider themselves superior and either you’ve got to convert or die.”

Torgerson: “I think we have to be careful. There do exist moderate Muslims.”

Immigration

Haggett: “Here’s the problem with moderate Muslims. As long as they are 1 percent or less of the population in any given area, they can be such model citizens. They can be wonderful. They’re just nice and sweet and everything. And then when their numbers increase, to like 2 to 5 percent, they start proselytizing, and then they start pushing, and at 5 percent they get more aggressive. And when you get to 10 percent, like they have in France right now, that’s when the riots start. that’s when the lawlessness starts. That’s when the burning of cars starts — you know its winter season because that’s when the cars are going up in flames. … Should we allow unlimited immigration of Muslms into this country? I don’t think so.”

Torgerson: “Right. I would agree with that position. These are very difficult issues to address. But I do think we do need to limit immigration.”

Note: For a reality-based review of the riots in France, click here.

Infidels

Haggett: “We have to be very careful about letting Muslims in because unfortunately a good Muslim is forbidden by the Koran to live among the infidels unless he intends on using (his) demographics to convert the area he moves to to Islam. So, what do you see as the threat of Islamic sharia law getting established here, because in the UK they’ve had massive Islamic immigration and you start getting Islamic no-go zones where people who are not Muslims literally take their lives in their hands going into these areas. Like firemen. Like ambulance people. They get attacked because they’re not Muslims.”

Huston: “Not only that, but these same communities start pushing for a parallel set of laws. They want to have their own courts. They want to settle their own issues. And unfortunately England has allowed this to happen.”

Torgerson: “Yes, clearly we cannot have in the United States separate sharia courts and separate sharia law. This particular form of radical Islam that cannot be practiced in the United States. All people, no matter what their religion or nationality, in the U.S. have to be subject to the U.S. Constitution.”

Note: The UK sharia courts exist outside the legal system. And here are some basics on Islam.

Death Cult

Haggett: “To me, Islam is a religio-political death cult. So how do you manage to divorce the politics from the religion. Because essentially anytime it imposes its will through sharia it goes from being a religion that somebody practices, you know, within their religious community to a political statement. And that’s the whole aim of Islam, to be dominant in all areas, including politics.”

Torgerson: “These are very difficult issues I think to even grasp and then to formulate into words.”

Subversion

Haggett: “If Islam is so antithetical to the American political system, why are men like Keith Ellison running for, and getting into office? Are they trying to subvert us from within?”

Torgerson: “I’m not sure.”

Note: Later, when asked why she stalled on that answer, she said she hadn’t ever thought about whether Ellison’s faith is actually trying to subvert us from within and added that no evidence of any such nefarious plot actually exists. Torgerson has hinted before of some shadowy effort by Muslims to take over the world. But, maybe because she’s a lawyer and sensed too many assertions masquerading as questions wrapped into one, Torgerson balked in the interview with Haggett.

Lawfare

Haggett: “It doesn’t matter what your background is. The first time that anyone — you could be a saint, you could walk on water — the first time you say something a Muslim doesn’t like, they’ll immediately shout “bigotry” at you. I mean, it’s just the way they work. As a lawyer, what are your thoughts on the Islamic practice of Muslims using lawfare (sic) in their cultural jihad to overthrow western civilization in general and America in particular?”

Torgerson: “Did you say ‘lawfare?’”

Haggett: “‘Lawfare.’ It is a thing that Muslims do — especially the cultural jihadists — when they want to get sharia established, they’ll start bringing lawsuits. It can be the most frivolous lawsuits. It doesn’t matter. But they will bring lawsuits against anybody who speaks out against them, or like the wearing of the hijab. My research has shown that the muslim veil, that the women wear, is not a requirement in their religion. Yet they will force the issue and claim it is, and then sue if you try to say, ‘no, you can’t wear that in here,’ because it establishes a hostile atmosphere for other muslim women who do not wear it. Right?”

Torgerson: “With regard to the law I think we need to do exactly what we are doing, which is expose what this radicalized form of Islam is trying to accomplish and how the are trying to accomplish it. One is through terrorism and one is through culture. And to expose that is to bring to light the infringements on, I think, our freedoms of speech. We need to educate America that this is not a left or right issue.”

Ibrahim Hooper

Haggett: “The head of CAIR wants sharia law to sub-plant the Constitution.”

Torgerson: “Yes I believe that statement has been attributed to Ibrahim Hooper”

Note: Nihad Awad is the Executive Director and co-founder of CAIR. Hooper is CAIR’s national communications director. A Muslim convert, he once worked as a worked as a news producer at KSTP-TV.

The full interview is here.

This Kumar isn’t going to White Castle for some tasty burgers after a wild night out smoking weed, but is setting his sights on Congress.  The Kumar we are speaking of is the less well known Vijay Kumar, who was born in Hyderabad, India and immigrated to the US in 1979. We covered two other Conservative candidates, Allen West and Lynne Torgerson, who are running on an Islamophobic platform and Kumar is no different.

Kumar seems to fit into the tea-baggers portion of the Republican party. He is a hawk on all the issues, from gun rights to immigration and of course “national security.”  His website is littered with anti-Islamic rhetoric and innuendo while sounding as genuine as a snake oil salesman.

Vijay Kumar Running for Congress

Realistically Kumar has no prospect of winning even if he won the Republican primary, since the 5th Congressional District in Tennessee has been held by Democrats ever since Reconstruction, but anything can happen in the wily world of politics, especially when a candidate tries to play on the fears of the people.

The most instructional point that highlights Kumar’s vapid intelligence and parroting of other Conservatives is the conspiracy theory he furthers, that “Sharia is taking over the US.”

Sharia (Islamic) Law is slowly permeating America. We are focused on the global “War on Terror” and are ignoring a more dangerous threat developing right within our country.

Muslims are beginning to insist that they do not have to follow our laws and customs.

He is trying to whip up hysteria by focusing on a minority, which it turns out is not a threat to our country. According to the Pew and Gallup polls, Muslims in America are amongst the most law abiding citizens in the US and are obviously not advocating a replacement of our system of laws. One can only come to Kumar’s conclusion if you take the words of fringe extremists as representing the majority of Muslims, which is itself an essentialist process of logic.

We should roundly condemn and reject Islamic reasoning that our legal system is man-made and corrupt, while Islamic Sharia law is divine law. It is not the place of immigrants to our nation to rewrite our system of laws to suit their tastes.

Of course, no immigrant is trying to rewrite our system of laws (except maybe Orly Taitz), I haven’t seen a Sharia bill proposed by a Congressman yet but notice another interesting and revealing point, the disdain in which Kumar holds immigrants.  It seems to go right over Kumar’s head that he was an immigrant to this country and if he were by some freak miracle made a Congressman he would be writing and “re-writing laws.”  His implication is that immigrants have no place in America but to remain quiet and invisible.

All of this, when Christianity in this country is under siege by radical proponents of “separation of church and state.” Where is the outrage at these Muslim demands for special religious privilege? There seems to be no limit to the disregard for the American culture that allowed Muslims to settle in our country. How wonderful it would be if Christians enjoyed the same freedoms in Muslim nations as Muslims are taking advantage of in America. But they don’t and never will.

Christianity is under siege?  This is a country in which over 70% profess to be Christians, so it doesn’t look like Christianity is going anywhere nor is it threatened.  Kumar’s hypocrisy becomes evident, he complains that no one is watching over the Constitution as ‘evil Mooslim immigrants undermine it,’ but when it comes to his faith of choice he feels those who uphold the “separation of church and state” are radical.   One must ask Kumar where he stands in regards to the Dominionist beliefs that some of his Christian brethren harbor, does he support their cause to overturn the Constitution and replace it with Biblical laws?

In the end Kumar is just another wanna-be, right-wing, tea bag affiliated nauseating politician who attempts to sucker voters by playing off of xenophobia, hate, racism and patriotism.  A cocktail that thankfully will be rejected by most voters in his district.

A very interesting read on some of the anti-Muslim machinations amongst some members of Congress that go right over our heads or that we don’t perceive.

How Members of Congress are Advancing anti-Muslim Hysteria to Push a Radical Legal Agenda

January 28, 2010 | by Liliana Segura

Roughly one month after the massacre at Fort Hood and a little over a week after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the “underwear bomber”) tried to blow himself up over the city of Detroit, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Congress, South Carolina Representative Gresham Barrett, re-introduced a sweeping piece of legislation that he first rolled out in 2003 as a freshman on Capitol Hill.

The Stop Terrorists Entry Program (STEP) Act was originally introduced on September 11 (naturally), 2003 “to bar the admission of aliens from countries determined to be state sponsors of terrorism, and for other purposes.” At the time, these countries included Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Iraq and Cuba. The bill not only sought to bar presumed enemies of the state from entering the U.S., it also would have forced “nonimmigrant aliens” — visitors with a temporary visa — to leave the country, within 60 days of its passage.

In other words, they would be deported.

The STEP Act never got very far. But a few days into the new year, Rep. Barrett decided to try again. “Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens,” he announced. “In light of these unfortunate facts, the Step Act of 2010 bars the admission of aliens from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism and Yemen.”

Iranian advocacy groups were especially vocal in their alarm over the re-introduced bill. In an open letter to Barrett on January 9, Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), described his bill as an attempt to “make discrimination against Iranians into United States law.”

“You have said you are reintroducing the STEP Act in response to the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit,” Parsi wrote. “We hope you recognize that no Iranian has been involved in any of these attacks, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks for that matter. The individuals who carried out the Fort Hood attack and the Christmas day attempt — an American Army major and a Nigerian national — would not have been affected in the slightest by the sweeping provisions offered in your bill.”

This point was reiterated by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, who crowned Barrett one of his “Worst Persons” on his January 12 segment. Pointing out that Major Nidal Hasan was born in Arlington, VA and went to high school in Roanoke, Olbermann said, “I guess, congressman, you need to expand your STEP program to stop aliens from infiltrating our homeland from such nests of terror as Interstate 81 in Virginia.”

The day before Barrett officially re-introduced the STEP Act, NIAC delivered thousands of letters to his office, urging him to reconsider. “Your bill punishes innocent Iranians and implies that ’stopping terrorists’ means barring them from entering the U.S. to visit family or go to school,” the letters read.

Surprisingly, hours after the letters were delivered, Rep. Barrett’s office said he would get rid of the language that would lead to the deportation of immigrants from Iran and other countries. “Unfortunately, many have been misinformed on the true nature of this legislation,” Barrett claimed in a statement released alongside the bill. “Contrary to some reports, the STEP Act does not contain any language that calls for deportation of citizens from countries identified as state sponsors of terrorism who have already obtained a United States visa and currently reside in the United States … Citizens from these countries who have already obtained a United States visa and currently reside in the United States will not be affected by this legislation.”

NIAC declared this “a major victory,” but warned that the fight is not over. The revised version of the bill still basically criminalizes Iranians and others, banning them from obtaining U.S. visas.

The STEP Act may be a uniquely bad — not to mention far-fetched — example of legislative efforts to install blatantly discriminatory policy into American law books in the name of national security. But the danger it represents, even in its softened version, is hard to overstate. “That people even consider dropping those pieces of legislation is pretty troubling,” Corey Saylor, legislative director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told AlterNet. At a time when blatant and far-reaching anti-Muslim measures are being enacted in other parts of the world — such as the Swiss ban on minarets or the campaign to ban the hijab in France — new attempts to target Muslims in this country are cause for concern. “I think we’re headed in a very disturbing direction, in which anti-Muslim hysteria is growing, and I think it’s something that we all need to address,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told AlterNet.

The issue should be addressed sooner rather than later. Within days of Abdulmutallab’s foiled bomb attempt, the White House announced that citizens of 14 predominantly Muslim countries — Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Cuba — would now be subject to additional screenings at airport security, a policy that will remain in place “indefinitely.” As with the STEP Act, this effectively criminalizes whole global populations, feeding into the “clash of civilizations” narrative that has fueled so many destructive post-9/11 misadventures. Nawar Shora, the legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the 14-country directive “extreme and very dangerous.”

“All of a sudden people are labeled as being related to terrorism just because of the nation they are from,” he told the New York Times.

In a statement released by CAIR, executive director Nihad Awad argued that the policy amounts to racial profiling (a practice candidate Obama vowed to abolish as president). “Under these new guidelines, almost every American Muslim who travels to see family or friends or goes on pilgrimage to Mecca will automatically be singled out for special security checks — that’s profiling.”

Is ‘Homegrown Terrorism’ on the Rise?

Soon after the shooting at Fort Hood, Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing titled “The Fort Hood Attack: A Preliminary Assessment.” Lieberman has been one of the most vocal members of Congress stressing the threat of “homegrown terrorism,” which, by his definition, takes the form of radicalized Muslims within the U.S.

Lieberman was one of the first to call the shooting at Fort Hood an act of terrorism. “We don’t know enough to say now, but there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act,” Lieberman said in an interview on Fox News on November 11.

Whether to label Hasan a “terrorist” versus a violent criminal may sound like a semantic debate, but the policy implications are very real. As with the recent heated debate over the fate of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — conservative commentators insist he deserves no right to due process, and a group of U.S. Senators are peddling a bill that would require civilian officials to consult with intelligence authorities when taking an alleged terrorist into custody — what is at stake is the question of whether, ultimately, we could see a different, undemocratic set of legal standards for Muslims who commit violent crimes. By the logic of today’s right-wingers, the Beltway snipers could potentially have been labeled terrorists and tried before a military commission rather than the ordinary criminal justice system. (Although, given that John Allen Muhammad was executed late last year, it’s hard to imagine that a military trial would have led to a tougher sentence.)

Of course, there is some truth to the “homegrown terrorist” meme. Lieberman’s hearing took place just before news broke that five young men from Northern Virginia, ages 18 to 24, had been arrested as part of a terrorist probe in Pakistan, allegedly attempting to help plan jihadist attacks against their own country. Earlier last year came the news that young Muslim American men from Minnesota have been radicalized into traveling to Somalia to join the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group Al Shabab. These stories have led to numerous media reports with headlines like “Homegrown Terror on the Rise.”

Meanwhile, on the home front, the case of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a convert to Islam who shot and killed two military recruiters in Little Rock, Arkansas last year, took a turn for the bizarre when the 24-year-old changed his plea from “not guilty”to “guilty” in a letter to his presiding judge in which he claimed to have connections to al-Qaeda. According to MSNBC, “Muhammad also called himself in the letter a member of Abu Basir’s Army,” a reference to the alias of Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, the Yemeni group’s leader.

“This was a jihad: attack on infidel forces,” Muhammed wrote. His lawyer was skeptical. “He’s said lots of things. None of them seem to be real consistent with each other.”

Nonetheless, these cases have lent themselves to an easily woven narrative, in which terror cells are being planted all over the country, with dastardly plots in the works.

“There’s definitely a rise in jihad recruits and volunteers in the United States, whether they’re concerning plots here in the U.S. or whether they involve material support to terror plots overseas,” Steve Emerson, author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, told Fox News in December.

At least one recent study suggests that the homegrown Islamic terrorist narrative is overblown. In a report funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and published this month, North Carolina-based researchers David Schanzer, Charles Kurzman and Ebrahim Moosa write: “In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and subsequent terrorist attacks elsewhere around the world, a key counterterrorism concern is the possible radicalization of Muslims living in the United States. Yet, the record over the past eight years contains relatively few examples of Muslim-Americans that have radicalized and turned toward violent extremism.”

While the report found relatively low numbers of radicalized Muslim-Americans, it discovered an “increased Anti-Muslim bias.”

“Muslim-Americans perceive a stronger anti-Muslim bias from both their day-to-day interactions and the media, a bias that is confirmed in public opinion polling. While Muslim-Americans understand and support the need for enhanced security and counterterrorism initiatives, they believe that some of these efforts are discriminatory, and they are angered that innocent Muslim-Americans bear the brunt of the impact of these policies.”

“Muslim-American communities and law enforcement agencies,” the authors concluded, “must make efforts to cooperate more closely to overcome mutual suspicions and achieve common goals.”

Unfortunately, law enforcement’s ties to Muslim communities remain strained. Last year the FBI officially severed ties with CAIR over allegations that the group had ties to Hamas, an ironic decision given the fact that, most recently, it was CAIR who brought the recent case of the five would-be terrorists from Northern Virginia to the attention of the FBI.

Writing about Lieberman’s November hearing, author Chip Berlet called it “an example of flawed, biased, or discredited scholarship being used in a zealous propaganda campaign that will do little to enhance public safety and much to expand bigotry against Muslims in the United States.” Berlet continued:

The main thesis of Lieberman’s renegade Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is that there is a looming threat of “homegrown terrorism” by domestic “Jihadists.” To use the tragic shootings at Fort Hood to further promote this biased propaganda as part of an ongoing political campaign is grotesque.

At issue is the validity of the concept of “Leaderless Jihad” and the idea that “extremist ideology” somehow has created squads of anti-American terrorists lurking in domestic Muslim communities where “Leaderless Resistance” cells and “lone wolfs” are even now plotting acts of “Jihadist” violence — just like the right-wing domestic terrorists in the 1980s and 1990’s which culminated in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in April 1995.

Sounds scary.

The Oklahoma City bombing, however, was not the act of a “lone wolf,” and while it involved a clandestine terror cell, it was not an example of “Leaderless Resistance.” In fact, there is no evidence that “Leaderless Resistance” was adopted as a successful terror strategy by the ultra-right in the 1980s and 1990’s, which undermines the whole concept of “Leaderless Jihad” being peddled by Lieberman.

Nevertheless, Lieberman and committee ranking minority leader Susan Collins have long been pushing this theme. In May 2008 they released a controversial report titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat” warning that “the threat of homegrown terrorism is on the rise, aided by the Internet’s capacity to spread the core recruitment and training message of violent Islamist terrorist groups.” Lieberman subsequently went after YouTube in an attempt to get videos taken down that he considered to be spreading a dangerous message. Some 80 videos were removed from the site.

Among the critics of Lieberman’s targeting of YouTube was the New York Times editorial page:

While it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the “Homegrown Terrorism” bill and related efforts “could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet.”

Bigots On Capitol Hill

Beyond Congressional hearings that push the “homegrown Islamic terrorist” narrative — or even repressive pieces of legislation like the STEP Act — CAIR’s Corey Saylor says the alliances formed by members of Congress like Barrett with members of the anti-Muslim right are far more dangerous.

“It’s less the legislation and more the legitimacy that’s offered to some of the anti-Muslim bigots by members of Congress,” he says.

One example Saylor cites is Rep. Paul Broun, a Republican member of the House from Georgia. Broun recently invited a man named David Yerushalmi to testify at a hearing on Capitol Hill. “Yerushalmi belongs to an organization that once called for adherence to Islam to be punishable by 20 years in prison,” says Saylor.

Yerushalmi is the president and founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which, in addition to seeking to criminalize Islam, has statements on its Web site such as: “There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.”

“This man has the right to free speech, he has the right to believe what he believes,” says Saylor. “But he gets legitimized because someone like Paul Broun invites him to Capitol Hill and gives him a platform … That allows him to go out and push his hate speech.”

Two days before Christmas, CAIR sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to address what it described as a “rise in Anti-Islam hate, Islamophobic incidents, and rhetoric targeting ordinary American Muslims.” Among these incidents was “an attack on a Sikh youth in Texas who was mistaken for a Muslim,” “a Colorado sheriff who called the U.S. Marines ‘Travel agents to Allah,’” and “a spate of vandalism incidents at mosques nationwide.” It also listed a disturbing number of anti-Muslim incidents among supporters of and aspiring elected officials, as well as elected officials themselves.

Most memorable, perhaps, was the attempt last year by right-wing members of Congress to convince the public that CAIR itself was engaged in a sinister conspiracy to infiltrate and take over Congress, by dispatching interns to Capitol Hill. Last October, U.S. Representatives Sue Myrick, R-South Carolina, was joined by Rep. Broun as well as Arizona Republicans John Shadegg and Trent Franks in issuing a call for a federal investigation into CAIR’s attempts to place interns in the Committees on the Judiciary, Intelligence and Homeland Security. The accusation was inspired by a book titled Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America, written by Dave Gaubatz, an anti-Islamic activist who posed as an intern for CAIR in an attempt to prove that the group is trying to infiltrate Congress. (Rep. Myrick wrote the introduction to the book.)

The backlash against Myrick and her co-conspirators was swift. “These charges smack of an America of sixty years ago where lists of ‘un-American’ agitators were identified,”wrote Reps. Michael Honda, D-CA, Barbara Lee, D-CA and Nydia Velazquez, D-NY in a letter on behalf of the Congressional Tri-Caucus, and signed by 87 members of Congress.

“The idea that we should investigate Muslim interns as spies is a blow to the very principle of religious freedom that our founding fathers cherished so dearly. If anything, we should be encouraging all Americans to engage in the U.S. political process; to take part in, and to contribute to, the great democratic experiment that is America.”

The Obama administration didn’t have much to say about the Muslim-intern conspiracy theory, perhaps making the strategic decision to simply let the rumor die. But the White House did not respond, either, to CAIR’s December letter asking Obama to address the trend toward anti-Muslim sentiment.

“I don’t know why they don’t respond,” CAIR executive director Ibrahim Hooper told AlterNet, “but all we can do is ask.”

While Myrick and her supporters — whom Hooper refers to as “the usual suspects” peddling anti-Muslim bigotry — have not really been taken seriously outside the right-wing blogosphere, they have had some effect. “I think they’ve made the whole administration rather skittish about associating in any way with Muslims or Islam,” Hooper says. (Certainly, the ugly fear-mongering and lies that sought to portray Obama as a “secret Muslim” were on full display even before his election.)

Corey Saylor says that although the Muslim-intern conspiracy theory pushed by Myrick has mostly gone away, it’s not dead. “They’ve been working on sort of retooling their message and it’s slowly starting to crop back up again,” he says. In Myrick’s case, this means repositioning herself as an ally of moderate Muslims.

“We’re trying to work with mainstream Muslims and help give them a voice and hear where people stand and help them think about the issues,” she recently told the Charlotte Observer.

Saylor says Myrick is simply trying to insulate herself from further accusations that she is prejudiced against Muslims. “Keep in mind,” he says, “she’s the one whose on the record as saying [after 9/11] that we need to take a look at who’s running our convenience stores.”

According to the Observer, “Myrick met with Jibril Hough, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte, shortly after the Fort Hood shooting to address what Hough said were inflammatory remarks by Myrick to local media about Islam.”

“A part of me thinks that she means well, but that doesn’t mean her message is well-meaning,” Hough told the Observer, noting that she has softened her rhetoric. “She’s being more careful.”

Europol releases an annual study of terrorism; the results do not support claims that "(nearly) all Muslims are terrorists"

Islamophobes have been popularizing the claim that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but (nearly) all terrorists are Muslims.”  Despite this idea becoming axiomatic in some circles, it is quite simply not factual.  In my previous article entitled “All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t”, I used official FBI records to show that only 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1980 to 2005 were carried out by Islamic extremists.  The remaining 94% were from other groups (42% from Latinos, 24% from extreme left wing groups, 7% from extremist Jews, 5% from communists, and 16% from all other groups).

But what about across the pond?  The data gathered by Europol strengthens my argument even further. (hat tip: Koppe)  Europol publishes an annual report entitled EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report.  On their official website, you can access the reports from 2007, 2008, and 2009.  (If anyone can find the reports from earlier than that, please let me know so we can include those as well.)

The results are stark, and prove decisively that not all terrorists are Muslims.  In fact, a whopping 99.6% of terrorist attacks in Europe were by non-Muslim groups; a good 84.8% of attacks were from separatist groups completely unrelated to Islam.  Leftist groups accounted for over sixteen times as much terrorism as radical Islamic groups.  Only a measly 0.4% of terrorist attacks from 2007 to 2009 could be attributed to extremist Muslims.

Here are the official tables provided in the reports…

For 2006:

For 2007:

For 2008:

(According to the report, there was 1 “Islamist attack” in the UK in 2008, which was omitted in the table above.  It has been included in the bar graph below.)

Just glancing at those tables is enough to know how absurd it is to claim that “all terrorists are Muslims.”  That statement is nowhere near the truth.  If we compile the data, it comes out to this:

On p.7, the 2009 Europol report concludes:

Islamist terrorism is still perceived as being the biggest threat worldwide, despite the fact that the EU only faced one Islamist terrorist attack in 2008.  This bomb attack took place in the UK…Separatist terrorism remains the terrorism area which affects the EU most. This includes Basque separatist terrorism in Spain and France, and Corsican terrorism in France…Past contacts between ETA and the FARC illustrate the fact that also separatist terrorist organizations seek cooperation partners outside the EU on the basis of common interests.  In the UK, dissident Irish republican groups, principally the RIRA and the CIRA, and other paramilitary groups may continue to engage in crime and violence.

Perception is not reality.  Due to the right wing’s influence and propaganda, people mistakenly think that Islamic terrorism is the greatest threat to the Western world.  It is even a commonly held belief that Islamic terrorism poses an existential threat–that the very survival of the Western world is at stake.  Of course, the reality is that there are other groups that engage in terrorism on a much larger scale, yet these terrorist incidents are minimized.  Acts of terrorism committed by Muslims are purposefully sensationalized and focused upon, culminating in the idea that “(nearly) all terrorists are Muslims.”

Terrorism from Islamic extremists is certainly a cause for concern, but it need not be an issue that creates mass hysteria.  Nor should it be allowed to be such a critical issue that we are willing to sacrifice our ideals or civil rights for fear of it.  Neither should we be reduced to a status of absolute sissitude.  We have analyzed data from America and Europe (a good portion of the entire Western world), and the threat from Islamic terrorism is much more minimal than commonly assumed; in the U.S., it accounts for 6% of terrorist attacks, and in Europe not even half of a percent.

It is only through sensationalism and fear mongering that the topic of Islamic terrorism is allowed to be used to demonize a religious community that happens to be a minority in the West.  When confronted by such lunacy, we ought to respond with the facts and the truth.

In a future article, we shall analyze the data for terrorism on the world stage in order to further strengthen our argument…

It seems to be a day of questions, is the veil so threatening that it requires a parliamentary inquiry when only 400 or so wear it in the entire country? Is it so vital an issue as to be the top agenda for Sarkozy and his party when there are other pressing problems facing the country such as the Economy, troops in Afghanistan, and the restive Suburbs? Maybe it is very French to bicker and abuse a minority and waste time when other things are more pressing, but when will the line be drawn as to what is French and what isn’t?

A far right Swedish businessman by the name of Patrik Brinkmann has contributed €5 million to an anti-Islam party in Germany called the Pro-NRW, a party that is behind the rabidly fascist group Burgerbewegung whose supremacist ideology we exposed and also the SIOE (Stop the Islamization of Europe) campaign.

(Via Islamophobia-Watch)

Swedish far-right businessman Patrik Brinkmann has announced he will pour €5 million into the coffers of Pro NRW, an anti-Islam populist party based in Cologne. In a report to air Sunday night on Germany’s public broadcaster WDR, Brinkmann says he fears Germany is becoming “too foreign” and that Sharia law will be introduced in the country.

“However, there are no, or very few, politicians who take this seriously,” Brinkmann said. “That’s why I believe that a new right wing (in Germany) can not only succeed, but in five or ten years be as large as the FPÖ in Austria or the SVP in Switzerland,” he added, referring to Austria’s Freedom Party and the Swiss People’s Party, two far-right groups which have enjoyed a certain amount of electoral success.

The millionaire, who reportedly already has ties to Germany’s extreme-right NPD and DVU parties, will finance a building for Pro NRW to be used as an anti-Islam centre.

Russelll Wiseman, Republican mayor of Arlington

We all know how Pamela Geller and company claim(ed) that Barack Obama is/was a Muslim.  Russell Wiseman, the Republican mayor of Arlington, Tennessee, believes not only that President Obama is a Muslim, but that he waged a calculated stealth Jihad against the Charlie Brown Special.  It never ceases to amaze me how such high level Republicans can think such insane stuff.

I know that this is a bit old, but better late than never:

What a loon.

The un-American Senator James Inhofe

The Republican senator from Oklahoma has called for passengers to be “racially and ethnically profiled,” because according to him, “all terrorists [or at least 90% of them] are Muslims.”  Yes, that’s true: all terrorists are Muslims…except of course the 94% that aren’t.

Does the good senator not know the ugly history of racial profiling?  Based on this same logic, white racists justify the racial profiling of blacks.  A white supremacist on the white nationalist website Stormfront.org says:

Blacks looking ghetto in an affluent neighborhood should send up flags. For some reason, I doubt that they are there to do the plumbing, though I am sure they wouldn’t mind relieving you of a few of your more valuable items.

These white nationalists ask, just like Inhofe: “why should my white wife be considered on the same level as a ‘ghetto’ black guy?”

That racist forum is in fact full of calls for a return to racial profiling.  And they justify their belief based on “practicality” just like Inhofe and other loons do.  These white nationalists argue that according to the Department of Justice, blacks are seven times more likely to commit murder than whites:

Racial differences exist, with blacks disproportionately represented among homicide victims and offenders
In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

…In 2005, offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites……………..

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

In another thread, they argue that blacks commit fifty times the number of violent crimes as whites.  There are also other points brought forth by such people, such as the fact that one in twenty adult black men are incarcerated.  Or that “more than three times the number of black Americans live in prison as in college dorms.” Or that over 55% of offenders admitted under the age of 18 are black. And on and on…All justifications to legalize racial profiling.

So if you justify profiling on airplanes by arguing that 90% of terrorists are Muslims (which is false anyways), then by that same logic you ought to be OK with profiling blacks, especially those “ghetto blacks” who happen to be walking through the suburb.  Whatever arguments you use to justify profiling of Arabs/Muslims can be used for blacks…What?  You’re not OK with that?  Then why is it OK to do that to Muslims or Arabs?

I am an American, and I oppose these un-American calls to racially and ethnically profile.  I don’t believe in such discrimination, and know that it is prohibited by the fourth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution (that annoying document that right wingers always try to circumvent).  If you don’t believe in the ideals of this country, then kindly leave.  You, Senator Inhofe, are un-American.

And if you want to lament about your wife being pulled aside for extra searching, maybe think about changing the war mongering policy that has been shoved upon us by the right wing.  You can’t really kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and not expect there to be a handful of disgruntled Muslims who seek revenge.

I know that people are annoyed by the added costs of airport security.  Well, I have a very low cost solution: the U.S. would save trillions of dollars if it withdrew all troops from foreign lands, and stopped aiding the state of Israel.  (Then put the money into universal health care.)  That would take away the motivations of Islamic extremists.  But I get it: you don’t want to do that…then stop complaining when that policy ends up fueling terrorism.  You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Geert Wilders

It seems like Geert Wilders racism and anti-Muslim discourse is going to catch up with him, but don’t hold your breath.

This article is from the Morroco Post and is littered with a lot of grammatical mistakes but it is informative:

By Rachid Chelouah\ Cambridge \ England
The most popular Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders asked judges today 13 January 2010 during his first meeting at court for mitigation to reduce the penalty regarding his accusation of Islamophobia.

The far-right Dutch politician who is known for his hate for Muslims and Islam and who was once denied entry to the British territory   at London – Heathrow airport by the immigration officials because of his racist views towards the Islamic religion, asked judges to drop or reduce charges against him since his racist discourse is met with freedom of speech right.

The suspect is facing charges because of hate crime based on his intolerance and insulting Muslims as a group which makes of his trail very serious with few chances to be discharged or acquitted within the course of justice.

At Amsterdam District Court, Wilders tried to politicize his trial saying that the session was “the first day of a political trial” in an attempt to associate   his trail to political agenda of his party in a way to avoid or win the public support

The most popular politician in Netherland built his Freedom Party movement on anti-immigrant and anti-Islam principals while calling for banning the Quran in the Netherlands and deny entry to any immigrant to the country as well as taxing clothing commonly worn by Muslims, such as headscarves, because they “pollute” the Dutch landscape.

In retrospect to the year 2008, Geert Wilders linked Quran verses with terrorism and violence in his 17 minutes in length film “Fitna” . The MP Geert Wilders has been extended to include inciting hatred against Moroccans and non-Western immigrants

If found guilty Wilders could face a maximum sentence of two years in prison, though a fine of up to euro18, 500 ($26,800) can apply.

Ed Koch

You might remember Ed Koch as the mayor of New York or as the judge on People’s Court but now he seems to be a not so wise pundit on Fox News.

‘Hundreds of Millions’ of Muslims are Terrorists

Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City, told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Thursday that “hundreds of millions” of Muslims are terrorists.

Taking up the now-standard conservative political talking point, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, that political correctness prevents the US from identifying Muslim terrorists as such, Koch said:

We’re afraid of calling them Muslim, Islamist terrorists. We’ll call them anything but. Because we don’t want to alienate Muslim countries. That’s ridiculous. Of course the vast majority of Muslims — there are a billion, four hundred million — are not terrorists, but there are hundreds of millions who are. They want to kill every Christian, every Jew, every Hindu who won’t convert. And we ought to put it on the table.

Host Neil Cavuto did not attempt to correct or even question Koch’s claim.

Joshua Holland at AlertNet gives Koch “the benefit of the doubt” and assumes Koch meant to say “hundreds of thousands” of Muslim terrorists. Even so, Holland argues, that suggests Muslim terrorists aren’t doing their job very well.

“Given that there were a total of around 9,000 fatalities worldwide resulting from Islamic terrorism in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available), those hundreds of thousands must have been pretty damn incompetent,” he quips.

Koch was a Democratic member of Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, and was the Democratic mayor of New York for much of the 1980s. But in recent years he has taken to endorsing Republican candidates, including endorsing George W. Bush for president in 2004, although he endorsed Barack Obama in the general election in 2008. In his interview with Cavuto, Koch said he would fire National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter over the Christmas Day bomb attempt.

The following video was broadcast on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, January 7, 2010, and uploaded to YouTube by user therightscoop.

There is a eye widening new documentary out called “Waiting for Armageddon” which explores the Faith and ideology that close to 50 million Americans hold dear to their hearts and which also has a tremendous effect on the foreign and domestic policy of the United States.

Waiting for Armageddon

By RONNIE SCHEIB

Doggedly nonjudgmental docu “Waiting for Armageddon” delves into the faith of some 50 million Americans (including more than one president), exposing the central role of Israel in end-of-days scenarios, their impact on the volatile situation in the Middle East, and the confluence of national policy with biblical prophecy. From interviews with families awaiting the imminent arrival of the Rapture to evangelical tours of Israel, where Texans reverently sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” over the Sea of Galilee, the pic explores beliefs as pervasive as they are largely unexamined. “Waiting,” which bowed Jan. 8 at Gotham’s Cinema Village, could spark strong urban response.

Filmmakers Kate Davis, Franco Sacchi and David Heilbroner structure their docu around the four stages of the apocalypse, each headed by numbered scriptural placards: 1) the Rapture, when, in a microsecond, all true believers, living and dead, will be transported into the clouds with Jesus; 2) the Tribulation, during which untold horrendous catastrophes, ecological and man-made, will rain down upon those haplessly “left behind”; 3) Armageddon, when Christ will return with a sword to judge the sinners and the blood will gush as “high as a horse’s bridle,” to quote one comely software engineer, and 4) the Millennium, encompassing the 1,000-year reign of heaven on earth reserved for Christ and his followers (along with 144,000 converted Jews).

Within this general framework, the filmmakers capture adherents calmly discussing “future history” at church, around the dinner table, at “Pre-Trib” conventions, at Christian telethons raising millions for Israel, and, especially, on junkets to the Holy Land.

The unlikely alliance between Christian evangelicals and right-wing Israelis is predicated on their shared conviction that Jerusalem must remain entirely in Jewish hands. The pic’s representative of the Israeli wing of this coalition is a sneer-afflicted rabbi (dismissing Jesus as a second-rate skirt-chaser), in charge of rebuilding the temple supposedly predestined to supplant the Muslim Dome of the Rock. In the words of a savvy political researcher, one of the pic’s few dissenting voices, the evangelicals “want the Muslims to be evicted by the Jews, the Jews to rebuild the temple of Solon and then Christ to return and trump everybody.”

Waiting” sometimes plays like Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” minus Maher’s snarky mediating p.o.v. In their zeal to not misrepresent evangelicals, the filmmakers tend to record every discussion in mind-numbing C-SPAN-like detail and, more problematically, sometimes unintentionally wind up enabling an evangelical agenda; a shot of men praying in a mosque inadvertently reads as an example of “Islamofascist” behavior.

Still, the docu’s open-endedness offers something for everyone. For believers, it provides a sympathetic portrait of sane, educated families coping with what they perceive as the suffering of the world. For Jews, it sounds a wake-up call to the dangers of supporting a faction that counts as necessary an Israeli future of wholesale destruction and a choice between conversion or death. Lastly, for unrepentantly cynical secularists, it serves up delicious ironies (one “saved” Christian’s barely disguised glee at the prospect of a front-row seat for the upcoming carnage).

Camera (color, HD), Sacchi, Davis; music, Gary Lionelli; sound, Heilbroner, Roberta Dougan, Rich Cutler. Reviewed on DVD, New York, Jan. 2, 2010. (In 2009 New York Jewish Film Festival.) Running time: 74 MIN.

The paranoid calls to profile Muslims on airplanes have become louder in recent days.  Here’s a story from 2008 that ought to make us think twice about such an un-American response (hat tip: KevinMD.com):

Doctor Flying Southwest Tries To Go To Bathroom, Ends Up In Jail

By Chris Walters on September 24, 2008

A 65-year-old urologist, born in India but living in the United States for 38 years now, was flying from his home in Missouri to a medical convention in Las Vegas on June 26th, 2008. Did you notice that “born in India” detail? Apparently his attempts to go to the bathroom angered and frightened a flight attendant, who wouldn’t tell Dr. Sivaprasad Madduri why he couldn’t use the lavatory (the pilot was using it) and who wouldn’t listen to Dr. Madduri’s explanation that he was taking a medicine that acts as a diuretic. When the plane landed he was arrested, spent the night in jail, and was told the next day to plead guilty and pay $2500 if he wanted a quick resolution.

Southwest has since told Dr. Madduri, “We don’t want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future,” and they’ve offered him a $100 voucher. It turns out the “apology” was meant for the other passengers, and was in fact about Dr. Madduri.

From Rediff:

Ironically, even before he filed his complaint with the Southwest Airlines officials, he got a letter from Frederick Taylor Jr, senior manager at the airline’s customer service communications, offering a $100 voucher for a future flight.

“Sometimes, an explanation for the reason why things happen is not always possible, and the bizarre behaviour of the individual during your June 26 flight to Las Vegas supports this point,” Taylor said in a letter accompanying the voucher. “While I am unable to explain the circumstances surrounding the disruption, I think it is important to offer my heartfelt apologies for any concerns you may have had as a result of this event”.

“Naturally, we don’t want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future, or for it to be your last recollection of traveling with our company. In fact we would consider it a privilege if you gave us another opportunity to provide you with better memories.”

Here’s Dr. Madduri’s story in his own words:

[I am] a physician from India who immigrated to the United States 38 years ago and [has] been in private practice in South East Missouri for more than a quarter century.

On June 26, 2008, I traveled from St Louis to Las Vegas to attend AAPI annual convention by Southwest flight 1226. Two hours into the flight, I tried to go to the bathroom ( I take a blood pressure medicine with diuretic that makes one ‘go’ more often). As I was sitting in row six, I walked to the front lavatory. The flight attendant, named Lora Lee Minton, abruptly stopped me and essentially shouted at me, “Go back! This bath room is occupied, and you cannot stand here.”

Shocked and dumbfounded at this unfriendly behavior, I went back and sat in my seat. Two minutes later, I saw the lavatory door opening and I got up and walked towards the bath room again. The same flight attendant (Lora Lee Minton) screamed at me, “I told you not to go to that bathroom,” and started pushing me into my seat. I was totally confused at this erratic behavior, and told her that I had been taking medicine and I had to go to the toilet. I even tried to walk past Ms.Minton as I was very uncomfortable.

“I told you not to go,” she pushed me into my seat! I was lost. I flew many times but had never experienced a rude and unfriendly behavior like this. Confused and not knowing what to do, I went back and sat in my seat. I saw the pilot came out of the lavatory, walked into the cockpit and closed the door behind him. Later I could use the bathroom.

The sequence of events that followed were more frightening and beyond the scope of any one’s imagination. As the plane landed in Las Vegas , I was escorted by two police officers and was handed over to the FBI. The FBI interrogated me at length and for the first time, I was told that the flight attendant, Ms.Lora Lee Minton, reported that I was causing ‘disturbance’ during the flight. I was also told that when the pilot is out of the cockpit, no one is supposed get up from their seat, till the pilot goes back to his seat. This apparently is a federal law being enforced since 9/11 and no one ever told me, nor was it announced during the flight.

That night I was taken through federal centers for further investigation. I was hand-cuffed, finger printed and was ‘processed’ as a common criminal. I was told repeatedly that my background was checked and I had no criminal record. Even after checking my back ground and even after confirming it by calling my family members (Our two children that live in St Louis and Houston, Texas ) and my professional partner (urologist from Poplar Bluff, Missouri ), I still had to go through the harassment. I was dragged through Federal court buildings that night with hand and ankle cuffs, left in cells for hours before I was interrogated and was threatened repeatedly with abusive language: ‘Shut up,’ ‘I am going to kick your ass,’ to name a few. Finally I was taken to a federal detention center in Las Vegas and was ushered into a large jail cell! I spent the night in jail with 43 prisoners - most of them drug dealers and picked up at street fights!

The next day I went through processing in a federal court building and presented in front of a Federal Judge. The public defender told me that my ‘case’ was decided and I would be released if I pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $2,500. He also told me that I could refuse to plead guilty, contest the judgment and even could win, but could be taking a long time, cost more and might result in multiple trips to Las Vegas.

Exhausted, depressed and completely deflated, I agreed to what ever the public defender suggested and got out after 24 hours of ‘living hell’.

I endured the most horrifying and traumatic 24-hours of my life for a crime I sincerely believe I did not commit. A simple statement by the flight attendant (Lora Lee Minton) in normal tone of voice that I was not supposed to wait in front of the toilet when it was occupied by the pilot, would have saved the ghastly ordeal.

I was told repeatedly by the prison guards, some of the FBI officials (not all of them were rude), the prison inmates who heard my story that the reason I was targeted was because of my skin color (brown) and ethnic background (South Asian, Indian).

When I returned home, I did not feel like lying flat and take the abuse, more so the incident involved not only me but an entire race and ethnic group. I sent my story to local, state and national news papers including all the major Indian news publications. The response was overwhelming: the news papers were very receptive; I received numerous e-mails, letters, phone-calls, sympathy and supportive cards; every one wanted me to ‘fight-it-out’ and ‘not to keep quite and do nothing.’

I did send my story to ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Missouri and Nevada , yet I haven’t heard from them yet, though I was told that my experience had merit. I contacted attorneys locally as well as in St Louis and was told that they were looking for proper attorneys that specialize in civil liberties cases; I was told by some that I should not have pleaded guilty and should find eye-witnesses that would testify in my favor.

During 30 years of my stay in America , I never felt so threatened nor my rights so violated as I did that fateful night. ‘You are not guilty until proven otherwise’, the anthem we are made to believe all the time was turned out to be not true; I was guilty until prove my self innocent. I was treated like a guilty person and was never given a chance even to tell my side of the story. Even after the incidence, I am finding it difficult to prove my innocence. I want Southwest Air Lines to realize their mistake and drop charges against me. I did contact Southwest airlines and was informed that they were standing by their stewardess and the issue had no racial profile or bias.

Jane Norton

We have already done a few pieces on how the 2010 election season is turning out to be a doozie, and how the Conservative contenders all seem to be playing off of one form of Islamophobia or another. Allen West talks about going “kinetic,” and Lynne Torgerson seems to think saying “Keith Ellison is a Muslim” will automatically give her a victory.

Now we have Jane Norton, former Colorado Lt. Governor giving her full support to tea baggers.

GOP Senate Candidate, Sits Silently as Obama Called a Muslim by Sam Stein

Former Colorado lieutenant governor Jane Norton, one of the five candidates competing in the Republican primary for the state’s 2010 Senate race, is distinguishing herself with her full-hearted embrace of the tea party crowd.

Appearing at a recent coffee-shop event with Colorado voters, Norton sat silently while a female attendee declared twice that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and while a male attendee insisted that the president — who he deemed “an idiot” — wanted to let babies die on the side of the road “with the garbage.”

“Well as you can tell there is a lot of passion around what is happening in our own country,” Norton responded to the crowd, rather than correcting either individual. “And how we can channel that into positive constructive ways that will get our vote out it is going to be absolutely critical.”

Go here to see the Video: Jane Norton, GOP Senate Candidate, Sits Silently as Obama Called a Muslim

Also at the event, Norton praised the “tea-party movement and the 9/12 groups” for pushing a right-wing populist, anti-Washington agenda. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee highlighted that exchange in a video it sent to reporters on Monday.

Colorado remains a hub of arch-conservative politics and anti-Obama sentiment despite its recent Democratic leanings. One month ago, an auto dealer in the state gained notoriety when he put up a billboard asking whether Obama was a Jihadist and demanding a birth certificate be produced for the president.

So it’s not all that surprising that Norton, in an effort to curry favor with the more impassioned voters, would tolerate that kind of over-the-top rhetoric. Indeed, the National Republican Senatorial Committee worked behind the scenes to get Norton into the race.

And yet, the willingness of the general public to stomach this kind of conspiracy-theory vitriol seems limited.

French Immigration Minister, Eric Besson

What is going on in Europe? Some have postulated that Europe is going through an identity crisis that challenges the core universal values that it trumpets, while others like the more conservative populists warn of a transformation of Europe at the hands of barbaric Muslim hordes remaking Europe into a Eurabia.

The dialogue has gotten heated, and we have seen a rise in neo-fascist and Euro-supremacist groups who are leading Europe into a dangerous direction of greater Islamophobia. This dialogue has a way of polluting reality which then effects mainstream parties who see this rise in anti-Muslim sentiment and for political gain drop their universal values and resort to cheap populist rhetoric.

At the same time that Muslims across Europe are integrated into their countries and identify with their nations to a greater extent than their fellow citizens, it seems their fellow citizens view them increasingly with suspicion (with the exception of Britain). This has lead to initiatives that are truly shocking to anyone who believes in Democracy, such as the recent ban on minarets in Switzerland which has echoed across Europe, from Italy to Denmark with parties such as the Northern League and Geert Wilders saying they will follow suit.

Recently France has been the scene of some of the most strident Islamophobia, and moves that from the perspective of an outsider smack of an attack on Democracy. We have heard of the desecration’s of Mosques and Muslim graves, but this has all happened in light of statements like this from French junior minister Nadine Morano,

In one of the many local debates scheduled to be held as part of the nationwide discussion on what it means to be French, the junior minister for families, Nadine Morano, suggested Tuesday to a young Muslim that he should change his behaviour. “What I want of a young Muslim is that he loves France when he lives here, finds work and does not speak in slang. And that he doesn’t wear his cap back to front.”

This discussion follows an earlier discussion around the niqab, or full face veil that a small minority of Muslim women wear in France. If you recall, Nicholas Sarkozy inaugurated the first presidential address to France’s parliament in decades with a call to ban the niqab.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, says it will push for a law banning the full-face Islamic veil, according to its parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé.

“The issue is not how many women wear the burqa,” Copé wrote in an article in the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro. “There are principles at stake: extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country.”

It seems the principles of the French Republic do not include women choosing to wear what they want. Banning the niqab is not enough, just yesterday the French Immigration minister Eric Besson said that he wants to make it law that women who wear the face veil be denied citizenship and residency cards.

France’s immigration minister said Wednesday that he wants the wearing of Muslim veils that cover the face and body to be grounds for denying citizenship and long-term residence.

Eric Besson said he planned to take “concrete measures” regarding such veils, which are worn by a small minority of women in France but have become the object of a parliamentary inquiry into whether a ban should be imposed. Besson spoke during a hearing before the panel of lawmakers as their nearly six-month inquiry draws to a close.

Besson said he believed a formal ban on veils that cover the face and body seemed to him “unavoidable,” with a ban in public services as a minimum step. Whether such veils are banned or not, he said he intends to personally move forward to ensure that women wearing such veils and seeking French nationality or residence cards are denied.

“I want the wearing of the full veil to be systematically considered as proof of insufficient integration into French society, creating an obstacle to gaining (French) nationality,” he said. He said he would advise prefects, the highest state representative in the various French regions, that the wearing of such veils is a motive for not delivering 10-year residence cards.

Besson said he was prepared to put the measures before parliament to make them law. In November, Besson ordered a nationwide debate on the French identity, to conclude by the end of January with possible measures.

This raises a whole number of questions: what about those French women who were born in France, whether descended from immigrants or indigenous who have taken up the veil, will they have their citizenship revoked? What if a woman immigrated to France but didn’t wear a veil but decided to wear one since, will she be denied citizenship?

These anti-Democratic measures have opened a pandora’s box of bigotry and racism that is leading Europe into an essentialized discourse that doesn’t bode very well for the future, as one French Law maker said, “This brings back the ethnic vision of the nation, the one that took place at (the pro-Nazi puppet government of) Vichy.”

Shantaram Naik

A Muslim Indian MP has said that rape after midnight is not a crime…no wait a second! He isn’t Mooslim!!

A Goan Hindu MP has said that if tourists get raped after midnight it shouldn’t be considered rape. What if he were Muslim? This would be news all over the media, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller would be adding it to their litanies of look at what “Islam” is doing. Of course we wont hear a peep out of them about this. (hat tip to our indelible reader: Retaane)

Goa MP says Rape after Midnight not a Crime

An Indian politician has sparked outrage after he suggested that cases when a woman was raped after staying out past midnight should be treated differently to other sexual attacks.

Speaking before the country’s parliament, Shantaram Naik, an MP from Goa from the ruling Congress Party, reportedly made a series of “contentious” comments referring to the British teenager Scarlett Keeling, who was raped and murdered in Goa last year, and a Russian woman who alleges she was recently the victim of an assault by a state politician.

“An alleged rape of a lady who moves with strangers for days together even beyond middle of the night is to be treated on different footings,” said Mr Naik, as opposition MPs shouted their disapproval.

He then turned his attention to the media, accusing it of sensationalising and over-reporting such attacks. “If we go by electronic media coverage of recent times, it appears that nothing happens except incidents of rape,” he added.

Mr Naik’s comments were also criticised by the Russian consulate in Mumbai, which wrote to the state government saying it intended to advise Russian visitors not to stay out past 10pm if it was not safe for them to do so.

“Essentially the Russian government is concerned about the safety about its citizens,” Vikram Verma, a lawyer representing the consulate, told the Times of India. “If [the state authorities] feel that Russians should not be out late in the night, we would [be] happy to give them any advisory which would improve their safety and security.”

The darker side of Goa, which has long attracted visitors from around the world, has received no shortage of publicity following a series of killings and assaults on tourists – among them Devon teenager Scarlett Keeling in February 2008. An initial investigation by police concluded she had drowned but after the intervention of her mother, it was shown the 15-year-old had been murdered.

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald has a very interesting article in Salon.com, on the recent surge in talk all over the media about the so-called “rise” in threat from homegrown radical “American Muslims.”

Allen West

The political season is turning out to be a hot one with elections in a lot of districts around the United States coming up in 2010, and there are sure to be some interesting races and good old political shenanigans. There will also be Republican contenders who will resort to the cheap strategy of xenophobia, hate and Islamophobia. We already have Lynne Torgerson, (who judging from her campaign picture looks as though she saves a lot of money by cutting her own hair), the Minnesota republican running against Rep.Keith Ellison and then there is Allen West.

We have to thank our long time reader James for bringing Allen West to our attention, we have heard of West before, mostly because Pamela Geller, other wise known as the looniest blogger ever, likes to take pictures with him and gloat on how anti-Muslim he is, in fact just today she wrote “West is America’s best hope.”  It also turns out that he isn’t only anti-Muslim but he is also somewhat of a racist who includes a highly dangerous degree of biblical literalism into his worldview, which wouldn’t be a problem if that would inform his personal life but it becomes a problem for all of us when it informs his policy ideas.

The truth is, it is not really clear how much of a chance Allen West has, hopefully next to none, though when he ran in 2008 he lost by only 29,000 votes, but crazier things have happened in Florida. Lets take a gander at what he advocates: he is a hawk on every issue, from Health Care and Immigration to National Defense.  As you can tell he wants no Health Care reform, agrees with Michael Savage on Immigration and on National Defense says in a bizarre sentence about fighting America’s “enemies”,

I pledge to never succumb to this enemy, seek out non-kinetic means, but will stand ready to go kinetic in order to “provide for the common defense”.

I don’t know if that means he will go nuclear or is willing to fight many wars but it sounds like jibberish.

Allen West with Pamela "the loon" Geller

On his website, Allen West has a whole page dedicated to his Christian Zionist/dispensationalist view on Israel. When you read it you understand why kooks like Pamela Geller love him so much, he essentially takes a position squarely outside of the mainstream in both the Middle East and United States by stating he is against the “creation of a Palestinian state.”

I do not support any creation of a Palestinian state, to do so would be to create a terrorist state. There is already a state for the Arabic people residing in the region called Palestine, Jordan. If the Arabs can build an indoor ski slope in Dubai, they can resolve the issue of their Arab brothers and sisters…I do not support any division of Jerusalem. If I recall from history and the Old Testament, David, Son of Israel built Jerusalem and his son Solomon made it great. The muslim claims to Jerusalem are based upon a very contentious story concocted by muhammad, and of course the latter conquering of the city, even by Salahaddin. One flag will fly over Jerusalem, the Israeli flag, never any other, certainly not a UN flag.

I don’t even know where to begin in deconstructing the enormous fallacies and clear bigotry on display in the above quotations. There seems to be a mammoth disconnect in reality here, two presidents, including a man West admires, George W. Bush clearly stated that a Palestinian state will be created. He obviously believes all Palestinians/Arabs are terrorists, that they are all “Mooslims,” and that their right to live or not live in their homes in Jerusalem are based on “stories” which somehow have less validity than the “stories” in the Old Testament.

Scary, this guy is like what would happen if Glenn Beck and Pamela Geller conspired to bring their wildest dreams to fruition in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. But that isn’t all, West also seems to believe that according to his twisted literal interpretation of the Bible, Arabs are stained forever with certain characteristics, this is the same kind of racist mindset that justified the Apartheid regime in South Africa and all other racist ideologies in the past.

Genesis Chapter 16, verses 11-12 states, “And the Angel of the Lord said to her (Hagar): Behold you are with child, and you shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against everyman, and every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”

Ishmael of course became the beginning of the Arab people….and God’s word is immutable truth.

In closing, there are battle lines clearly drawn, I know where I stand, and that is to support the State of Israel.

This kind of religious zeal imbuing our politics is old, it was thrown into the trash heap when Bush’s term ended and the Republicans who relied on this kind of rhetoric were voted out of office. Allen West, hopes to resurrect it by positioning himself in a fantastical “Kinetic” battle pitting himself on the side of Israel against those spawns of Ishmael, the Arabs/Mooslims.

Lynne Torgerson

Ever since Keith Ellison got elected as a House Representative from Minnesota he has been making news and headlines. He is a brilliant mind and a strong advocate for liberal policies and social justice/civil rights, but a lot of times his great work gets overshadowed by the fact that he is….Muslim.

First there was the controversy created by right-wing windbags that Ellison should swear on a Bible and that he was undermining America (a secular government by the way) by swearing on a Qur’an. Then there was Glenn Beck saying he was “scared” of Ellison and wanted Ellison to “prove that he was a true American,” not too long ago Daniel Pipes said Ellison was more dangerous to Western Civilization than AlQaeda and other terrorists and now we have Lynne Torgerson who has almost no shot of winning the upcoming race against Ellison resorting to the one hail Mary strategy that might give her a shot at victory: Islamophobia. Stranger things have happened but aside from having no real critique about Ellison’s record, Torgerson seems dead set on trying to bash voters over the head with the fact that Ellison is a “Mooslim.”

Gawker has a great satirical piece on the rabid lunacy that is Islamophobe Lynne Torgerson:

Most Vile Politician in America Hellbent on Vanquishing Muslims, Muslim Congressman by Azaria Jagger

Lynne Torgerson—who is running against Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a popular, well-respected U.S. Congressman—wants to stop the “globalization of Islam” and “Ellison [who] is a Muslim.” She cites 9/11, Fort Hood, and the book Muslim Mafia as evidence.

It is our patriotic duty to ridicule this woman and her bigotry. She’s hit the national stage despite describing herself as “apolitical” but for her disgust for Ellison, who, in 2006, was the first Muslim elected to Congress. From her campaign website:

Keith Ellison is a Muslim, a person who was raised Christian and converted to Islam. … Now, with all due respect, America, and its people, should be lauded for its goal of promoting to public office and other high ranks, people of color, women, minorities, etc. However, quite frankly, in our zeal, we simply went too far with Keith Ellison. Keith Ellison simply is not a proper person to have in our federal government. [emphasis mine]

Torgerson, an independent candidate, devotes a third of her “Issues” page to “Freedom of Religion,” but she explains that Islam “is not ‘religion’ recognizable under the First Amendment” because it wants to “kill people not of their faith” and to “Islamize the entire world.” (Torgerson aligns with the Catholic Church, which has never killed a nonbeliever or converted a wayward, thank Allah.)

And, what do I know of Islam? Well, I know of 911. Nineteen (19) men from Saudi Arabia, all Muslim, hi-jacked planes, and flew into the two (2) World Trade Towers murdering thousands of people, and tried to fly into our Pentagon…

People say that we can’t include the moderate, peace loving Muslims. Well, I agree. But, who are they? … I cannot tell. It is not for me to go and try and find them. Rather, it is their duty to stand up and identify themselves, if there are any.

I know why Lynne can’t find “peace loving Muslims.” It’s that when a Muslim tells her “I love peace,” what she hears is, “I am going to kill you”:

I think it is interesting that Keith Ellison, in the past year or so, introduced a bill entitled “Global Peace.” “Global.” I think that word is telling. Globalization of Islam. It is also my understanding that when people of the Muslim faith use the word peace, that “peace” to them means the elimination of Christians and Jews. [emphasis mine]

Let’s return to the screed:

Recently, I was in the courthouse, the new Public Safety Facility in Minneapolis, and I saw an Islamic mother, covered in fabric from head to toe, and walking 5 to 15 feet BEHIND her son….

What else have I heard about Muslims? Fort Hood. What was the result of the teachings of Islam on a Muslim, who was an officer in the United States’ military? Well, the result was him killing, I believe, 13 American soldiers, and injuring many others. Not one person killed or injured was a Muslim. In another book I am currently reading, entitled Muslim Mafia, it is suggested that Muslims want to infiltrate our police departments, our governments, etc., with the goal of Islamizing America.

You’d think the person espousing these beliefs would be a low-functioning nobody. But the lady is a lawyer, meaning she was smart enough to pass the bar, so her IQ can’t be so low as to allow her to plead innocent by reason of mental defect.

Me, I am a Christian. If someone criticizes Jesus, I am not going to go kill them. I may not even notice.

I’m glad you don’t kill people who criticize Jesus, Lynne, because I’m going to do so right now: Jesus Christ, what the f**k is wrong with you to allow this hateful monstrosity—with a belief system more repugnant than Michele Bachmann’s and a hairdo worse than Kate Gosselin’s—to be unleashed unto humanity?

Luckily, Lynne Torgerson appears to be incompetent. Her website is farcically amateurish: The part where she attempts to embed a YouTube video, but fails, is actually sad. Here is a screen grab of her homepage, which was designed by the same fourth grade militiaman who wrote her campaign platforms:

So she definitely won’t get elected. God help us if she ever runs for a smaller political office, like one where she is the only candidate. She has managed to cobble together opinions on a number of topics, unified by a thin fiber of self-righteousness and crazy—but ultimately, Lynne Torgerson is running an entire congressional campaign on bigotry, ignorance, and arbitrarily deployed pigheadedness. And finally, let it be known that, if you are working on your political website and find yourself needing this caveat:

Now, these are very sensitive subjects. And, I should apologize in advance for those who I offend or whose feelings I hurt.

What you actually need is to stop being in politics.
[HuffPo] [MNIndy] [Torgerson4Cong]

Only dhimmis eat shawarmas!

Fellow comrades, this week we sent a powerful message to the stealth jihadists by banning minarets in Switzerland.  This was truly a watershed issue, one which I believe saved the country from the imminent stealth jihadist takeover and their terrorist plot to store nuclear warheads in their minarets.

But we must not stop here.  Rather, it is time to ride this wave of awareness to pass further legislation to curb radical Islam–and by this, I mean Islam in general.

It has come to my attention that Muslims use cemeteries to bury suicide bombers–often plotting future attacks from such locations and other ground based areas.  Furthermore, several Muslim cemeteries were funded by groups connected to someone whose brother knew someone whose neighbor was an unindicted co-conspirator in the WTC bombing, who also attended the same mosque that the mother of a member of CAIR attended–and as we all know, CAIR is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda, a Wahhabist-Hezbollah and Al-Baik run organization, headed by Tariq Ramadan, Usama bin Ladin, and Haifa Wehbe.

The Jewish news source JTA.org reports:

Swiss leader calls for Jewish cemetery ban

December 3, 2009

BERLIN (JTA) — A mainstream Swiss political leader is calling for a ban on separate Muslim and Jewish cemeteries.

Christophe Darbellay, president of the Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland, made the statement in a television interview Tuesday, two days after Swiss voters passed an initiative to ban minarets.

The anti-minaret initiative came from the opposition ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party and other right-wing political organizations. Critics say Darbellay is starting a “crusade” to attract voters by proposing similarly xenophobic measures.

Mainstream politicians and religious leaders across Europe have reacted with dismay to the anti-minaret vote.

According to the Swiss online daily Tagesanzeiger, Darbellay also wants to ban the wearing of burkas, head-to-toe veils worn by some fundamentalist Muslim women.

Darbellay reportedly said that existing cemeteries would not be affected by a ban, but that there should be no separate cemeteries in the future.

The Swiss People’s Party called for crackdowns on expressions of Muslim fundamentalism in 2006. Observers said the demand for separate cemeteries is an escalation.

Yesterday, the minarets.  Today, the cemeteries.  Tomorrow, shawarmas.  My research indicates that shawarmas are the number one food source of terrorists, and cutting off this supply will cause them to suffer from severe hypoglycemia, which shall considerably weaken their capacity to commit terrorism.

Jewish bagels are very close to the burqa wrapped jihad-shawarmas, so those ought to be banned too.  We must not slacken in our resolve.

Cordially,
Obert S. Pencer.

Disclaimer: The letter by “Obert S. Pencer” is fictional but the news story about cemeteries is real.

The Swiss people will be going to the polls on Sunday to vote on a referendum on whether or not to ban Minarets. Amnesty International has stated that if a ban on Minarets passes it will be a breach of religious freedom.

Amnesty International: Ban would breach religious freedom

A ban on the construction of minarets would breach Switzerland’s obligations to uphold freedom of religion, Amnesty International said ahead of a referendum on Sunday 29 November on a constitutional amendment on the issue.

The proposal, which was initiated by members of two Swiss parties, will ask Swiss voters if they wish to add the sentence ‘The construction of minarets is forbidden’ to Article 72 of the Constitution.

The initiators of the referendum claim that the construction of minarets is not protected by the freedom of religion as they have ‘no religious significance’. They assert that minarets are ’symbols of a religious-political claim to power and dominance which threatens - in the name of alleged freedom of religion - the constitutional rights of others.’

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock said:
‘The people of Switzerland should reject this proposal outright. This would make a strong statement that they support equality of rights for everyone living in the country.

‘Freedom of religious belief is a basic human right and changing the Swiss constitution to ban the construction of minarets would clearly breach the rights of the country’s muslims.

‘Of course, someone building a mosque should be subject to the same reasonable planning restrictions as anyone else. But these must be applied equally to all. To specifically target minarets while, for example, allowing the construction of church spires would discriminate against muslims on the basis of their religion.’

Islam is the second largest religion in Switzerland after Christianity, and its followers represent over 4 per cent of the country’s population.

There are hundreds of places of worship (mostly in commercial buildings or private residences) in Switzerland but only four minarets have been built.

The Swiss government and all the other major political parties are recommending a ‘no’ vote in the 29 November referendum. Local Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have also joined forces to reject a ban on minarets.

They say that the referendum also poses a threat to peaceful relations between the religions and inhibits the endeavours of Muslims in Switzerland to integrate with the rest of the population.

Rajinder Singh first non-White BNP Member

The BNP, the openly anti-Muslim political party that is steeped deep in racism and hatred has under threat of being banned lifted its “White only policy” and allowed a non-white member into their ranks. The man, known as Rajinder Singh say he only joined the BNP because he hates “Islam.” (hat tip: Islamophobia Watch)

An elderly Sikh who describes Islam as a “beast” and once provided a character reference for Nick Griffin during his racial hatred trial is set to become the British National Party’s first non-white member.

Rajinder Singh has been sympathetic towards Britain’s far-right party for much of the past decade even though he currently remains barred from becoming a member because of the colour of his skin.

But last weekend the BNP’s leadership took their first steps towards dropping its membership ban on non-whites after the Human Rights Commission threatened the party with legal action. The move will be put to a vote of members soon.

Martin Wingfield, the BNP’s communications and campaigns officer, has already put forward the case for Mr Singh’s membership, telling members on its website: “I say adapt and survive and give the brave and loyal Rajinder Singh the honour of becoming the first ethnic minority member of the BNP.”

A BNP spokesman said last night: “He is perhaps the kind of immigrant you want if you are going to have them.” Mr Singh, a former teacher from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, says he would be “honoured” to become a card-carrying member of the BNP.

Mr Singh and another Sikh from Slough who goes by the pseudonym Ammo Singh have previously co-operated with the BNP and have been used by the party’s leadership to try to woo Asian supporters, particularly Hindus and Sikhs living in areas where tensions with Muslims run high. The party has had little success, however, with all mainstream Sikh and Hindu groups widely condemning the BNP.

But Rajinder Singh and Ammo Singh – who keeps his identity secret but is thought to be an accountant in his late thirties – have answered Mr Griffin’s call, thanks to the BNP’s staunchly anti-Islamic rhetoric since September 11.

Mainstream Sikh groups said they were appalled. Dr Indarjit Singh, director of the Network of Sikh Organisations, said: “Sikhism stresses equality for all human beings. Therefore Sikhs who are true to their faith, will having nothing whatsoever to do with any party that favours any one section of the community.”

Independent, 20 November 2009

The view that Nick Griffin’s promotion of Rajinder Singh and Ammo Singh was an attempt to “woo Asian supporters” is rather one-sided.

It is true that Griffin began making a pitch for support among Sikhs (and Hindus) on an anti-Muslim basis years ago. But this was not because he wanted to win large numbers of Asian supporters to the BNP. Rather, he aimed at attracting a few extreme right-wingers from the Sikh and Hindu communities because he thought this would help the BNP deflect accusations that it is a fascist organisation and that its campaign against Muslims is racist.

But the problem he faced was that Sikhs and Hindus were excluded from joining the party, because membership was restricted to white people. As the Independent article notes, even Rajinder Singh hasn’t been allowed to join the party, despite the fact that he has written for the BNP press, spoken at their meetings and appeared on their election broadcasts.

Griffin first tried to change the BNP’s rulebook to admit non-whites back in 2002, and again in 2004, but he got nowhere. The BNP’s fascist core cadre who have gone along with other aspects of Giffin’s “modernisation” strategy couldn’t be persuaded to swallow that.

Now, as a result of court action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission – together with the provisions in the Equality Bill, which will ban political parties from racially discriminating over who they accept as members – Griffin will finally get his way and the BNP will amend its constitution to admit non-white members. And then no doubt a handful of extremist Sikhs and Hindus will indeed join the party.

Griffin will make a big thing about this, just as he has over the fact that the BNP has a councillor of Jewish origin, in order to assert that the party has put its racist and fascist past behind it – all in the interests of more effectively pursuing its campaign against “mass Third World immigration” and “Muslim colonisers”.

Frank Schaeffer

There is a new prayer going around in Evangelical Christian circles and beyond for President Barack Obama. It is quite controversial as it seems to be calling for his death.

In this video Rachel Maddow discusses (at 57 seconds) the issue with former Evangelical Christian leader, Frank Schaeffer.

The Young Turks

Many of us here at LoonWatch.com are fans of The Young Turks, so we decided to post some of their videos on the Ft. Hood Shooting along with some commentary:

Crazy Conservative Bloggers on Fort Hood

My comments: There were two Muslim American soldiers who shot their fellow soldiers, compared to tens of thousands of Muslim Americans who serve in the military, and millions of Muslim Americans who live in the country.  But surely two of them define them all, right?

Fox “News” Un-American Take on the Fort Hood Shooter

My comments: At about four minutes into the video, the Fox “News” lady host argues that “political correctness” is the problem: the U.S. military knew about his radical postings online and didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to be PC about it.  Of course conservatives love to be politically incorrect–or rather, pathetically incorrect–and this is one of their favorite talking points.  They use the euphemism of “I’m going to be politically incorrect” instead of just saying “I’m going to be bigoted.”  Anyways, the entire theory is bogus because his military command already said that they didn’t know about his radical postings online.

Also, at the very end of the video, Cenk mentions the most important point: so many right wingers unfortunately think that they are “allowing” Muslims to be Americans.  We’ve had a few similar comments on LW, where a few posters would say something along the lines of “if Muslims want to be treated as Americans…”, not knowing that Muslims in this country are already Americans!  You didn’t “gift” that Americanness to them, and they are just as American as you are.  And your entire attitude of thinking that you get to decide who is and who is not a real American is the most un-American of all.

America was a country founded upon immigration, a melting pot by definition.  Unless you’re Native American, your ancestors were also immigrants to this country, and what difference does it make that they were from a European country as opposed to an Asian or African one?  Why is it that a third generation Arab American is treated as being a foreigner/immigrant, whereas an immigrant who just moved from Italy to the United States some three years ago is considered more American?  It’s absurd.  Get this through your thick skulls: you will treat every single American as a fellow American regardless of his race, religion, or ethnicity.  And if you don’t believe that, then you should be treated as being un-American.

Should Ft. Hood Shooter Been Racially Profiled?

My comments:  Cenk, I think you missed the point here.  There was absolutely no need for racial or religious profiling here at all.  The fact is that if anyone had said the things Major Nidal Hasan had said–be it his radical postings online or his rantings in person–then that’s a red flag no matter what race or religion he is.  So that’s not racial or religious profiling if you pull a guy aside for saying those things.

Let me clarify: if there is a guy going through airport security and he says something like “I love Al-Qaeda,” then you can and should pull him aside for saying that.  This is regardless of his race or religion.  On the other hand, if you simply pull aside those who are of a certain race or religion, then that’s racial profiling.  Nobody on earth would have a problem with the former, but the latter is racist and 100% un-American.

The thing that is being missed here, with the Ft. Hood Shooting, is that there was no reason to racially profile this guy!  He could have been caught and stopped if people had just paid attention to the numerous red flags.  Major Hasan was saying crazy things, and doing crazy things (giving absurd and out of place presentations at work)…It was just a matter of picking up on those numerous cues and then looking into that.

If you start racially or religiously profiling people, then you alienate the same community within which the problem exists.  It’s counter-productive.  Instead of wasting time trying to screen tens of thousands of Muslim Americans, why not just investigate those people that are saying and doing things that are questionable?  And that’s the American thing to do: judge people based on their words and actions, not their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.  It’s about judging people for the content of their character.

Crazy Conservatives on Ft. Hood

My comments: Of course, any sane person knows that it’s a lie that Muslims believe they must “kill all infidels.”  Pious Muslim Americans believe that they must obey the U.S. laws, and are thus not a threat.

The Islamophobe says “this is not Islamophobia, it’s Islamo-realism.”  That’s exactly what bigoted people say.  Cenk of TYT interviewed a racist guy earlier on his show, and that guy would call himself a “racial realist” instead of “racist.”

Anyways, the key point that Cenk raises is at 4:00 when he talks about how truly un-American these guys are, and how they really and truly don’t understand the ethics and purpose of this country.

UPDATE:

Pat Roberson: Islam is Not a Religion

My comments:  A bit over the top?  I don’t know.  But yes, I do agree that these right wingers shouldn’t throw stones when they live in glass houses.

Alright, that’s it for now.  Thanks a lot, TYT Nation!  Keep up the good work.

Debbie Schlussel

Debbie Schlussel, a self-obsessed wanna be Anne Coulter lays the smack down on fellow right-wingers and Islamophobes. It is delightful to see her throw her fellow travelers under the bus. This is the woman who Robert Spencer calls a “freedom fighter” but in reality is obsessed with her image and makes regular genocidal bayings against Muslims and Palestinians. Any perceived slight or miscalculation against Debbie can result in drawing her wrath. So far her victim list has included Walid Shoebat and Steven Emerson now you can add to that Zuhdi Jasser and Brigitte Gabriel.

Debbie Schlussel goes after the neo-Con, Cheney-Bush loving, Iraq war supporting Zuhdi Jasser for contradicting himself on the Flying Imam’s case and labels the Right Winger a “radical Muslim,” which kinda makes you think what can a Muslim do to not be considered a radical in Schlussel’s book? Debbie is correct to point out that when the Flying Imam case first broke Zuhdi denounced them, he even wrote a lengthy article condemning the Imam’s, now though since the Imam’s have settled their lawsuit he has changed his tune. Let Debbie tell it,

Today, Jasser  exposed himself, yet again.  While this sweaty snake oil salesman previously denounced the Flying Imams lawsuit and went all over TV to do so and make a name for himself, he had a different tone upon learning, yesterday, of the settlement of the lawsuit, with a US Airways pay out…

“People are going to wonder: Am I going to be another captain who will end up costing my employer X dollars because I made a bad decision that was a bit quick,” Jasser said.

Debbie also goes after radical extremist Brigitte Gabriel whose real name she claims is Hanan Tudor. Debbie’s own words on Gabriel,

Jasser’s lies and lack of sincerity remind me of another phony, Hanan Tudor, who goes by the porn name “Brigitte Gabriel” (unlike Jasser, she isn’t a radical or a Muslim, just a fraud, a complete ignoramus, and a liar).  Tudor/”Gabriel” also slips up, talking out of both sides of her mouth.

In speaking to a Black Detroit-area church, she gushingly praised Barack Obama and said how glad she is that he’s President.  On FOX News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” she praised Obama’s Muslim outreach (she repeated this on “Real Time” on HBO) and said he’s “doing a better job than Bush” did at it.  This was just after Obama pandered in several speeches and comments to Muslims in Turkey and called America a “Muslim nation.”  Then, Tudor/”Gabriel” sent a mass e-mail featuring an article someone ghostwrote for her (as they did her books), denouncing Obama on Islamic outreach.  (Yup, this woman isn’t just two-faced, she’s got several of them.)  But she’s a fraud, and, like Jasser, because she’s not a very good fraud, she slips up.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on her.  Stay tuned.

Rest assured Debbie we certainly will stay tuned.

Peter Gadiel

On September 11th of 2001, nineteen Al-Qaeda affiliated hijackers coordinated a series of horrific suicide attacks, killing almost three thousand innocent men, women, and children.  What motivated these young men to throw away their lives–and take away the lives of others–was a deep-seated and overwhelming hatred towards America.

The 9/11 attacks brought out the best–and at times the worst–in Americans.  Whilst certainly the desire to help out victims and their families reflected the best, there were other parts of society who co-opted the situation for their own nefarious hate-mongering purposes.  For Islamophobes, it became the casus belli against Islam and Muslims in general.  And so, in a horrible irony, the hatred of Al-Qaeda–of Muslim extremists–was internalized by some.  It is a truism–as trite as it sounds–that hate begets hate.

The rhetoric of the Islamophobes mirrors that of the Islamic extremists.  One merely needs to take out the word “Muslim” and substitute it for “Christian” and “Allah” with “Jesus.”  If one listens to the justifications Al-Qaeda gave for 9/11, they are remarkably similar to the justifications given by the Islamophobes to justify the excesses and casualties of aggressive wars.

It is unfortunate that many good meaning Americans may have been influenced by these Islamophobes.  Most impressionable and vulnerable to the hate-mongering are those directly affected by the Islamic extremists.  Nobody could be affected more by Al-Qaeda than the families of the 9/11 victims.  People often get emotional, and it is easy to substitute rage for rationality.  There is a desire to lash out at the other.  Simplistic answers seem comforting.

Peter Gadiel, a resident of Kent, Connecticut, suffered the loss of his son, who died in the horrific 9/11 attacks.  We here at LoonWatch extend our heartfelt condolences to Mr. Gadiel.  Furthermore, we understand that he is going through a difficult time, coping with the loss of a child, something that no parent should ever go through.  However, we urge Mr. Gadiel not to react to the hatred that killed his son with bigotry.

FoxNews reports:

KENT, Conn. — Peter Gadiel wants everyone to remember his son, James, who was killed during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

And he also wants people to remember how he died: “Murdered by Muslim terrorists.”

For Gadiel, any tribute to his son would be woefully incomplete without those words.

“I think it’s important, because I think there’s a nationwide effort to suppress the identity of the people who were involved in the attacks,” Gadiel told Fox News.

Eight years ago, 23-year-old James Gadiel worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center. He died when a hijacked plane crashed into the North Tower.

For years, Gadiel’s hometown of Kent, Conn., has wanted to honor the young man with a memorial plaque next to its town hall. But the tribute has hit a snag because James’ father wants to include the phrase, “Murdered by Muslim terrorists,” under his son’s name.

For Peter Gadiel, it is a central fact of the Sept. 11 attacks that is often left out.

“It isn’t just overlooked, it’s suppressed,” Gadiel said. “It’s simply wrong to imply that people just died. The buildings didn’t just collapse, they didn’t just fall down — they were attacked by people with a specific identity, a specific purpose.”

Town officials call the phrase too controversial for a small town memorial, and they recently voted against erecting the plaque if Gadiel insists on the language.

“We perceive ourselves as a very warm, loving town,” said Ruth Epstein, a Kent selectman and one of two town leaders to vote the plaque down. “To disparage any one ethnic group is just against everything that we stand for here.”

Epstein noted that other Sept. 11 memorials, like the one at the Pentagon, don’t mention Muslim terrorists, and she said she does not want to alienate any members of her small and close-knit community.

“We have at least one Muslim family living here with children and it — it would be just awful to have them see something like that,” Epstein told Fox News.

But for Gadiel, it’s an important message that he insists be present on any tribute to his son.

“Muslims have to acknowledge that it was their co-religionists who committed this act in their name,” he said. “I am offended that unlike so many others, they refuse to acknowledge that it was their people who did this.”

This would be a dangerous precedent.  Should the memorial plaques in honor of the Native Americans read “Murdered by White Christian Genocidal Butchers?” According to IraqBodyCount.org, over a 100,000 Iraqi civilians–including men, women, and children–have died due to the war.  Should the graves of the dead be emblazoned with “Murdered by Christian Crusaders?”  Hundreds of civilians died in Gaza due to Israel’s obscene offensive; should memorials be raised to honor them with the words “Murdered by Jewish Terrorists?”

The Islamophobes might ask “weren’t the 9/11 hijackers Muslims and terrorists, so what is wrong with having the plaque say exactly that?”  Well, on this line of reasoning, what’s wrong with erecting memorial plaques for white suburban kids “Murdered by Urban Blacks?”  Or if a Jew killed anyone, then plaques boldly saying that “Jews Murdered This Man.”  Maybe we should start identifying every race or religion in this manner?

The truth is that if all people did this, then there would be no religion–and no ethnic group–that would be left without “blood on their hands.” Luckily, most human beings agree with the principle enunciated in the ancient scriptures that, ‘there is no collective guilt.’ In the Quran it states, “Every soul earns only to its own account; no laden soul bears the sins of another” (6:164) and in the Bible: “Each is to die for his own sin.” (Deut. 24:16).

The phraseology chosen by Mr. Gadiel seems to associate the sin of the 9/11 attacks to all of the Muslims.  Any sensible person can see that, which is why the officials refused to include such an offensive and inflammatory inscription.  Ruth Epstein, one of Kent’s town leaders, said quite correctly: “To disparage any one ethnic group is just against everything we stand for here.”  In fact, it is exactly what the Al-Qaeda hijackers stood–and died–for.

Mr. Gadiel said: “Muslims have to acknowledge that it was their co-religionists who committed this act in their name. I am offended that unlike so many others, they refuse to acknowledge that it was their people who did this.”

The way he phrased the statement tells us a lot about Mr. Gadiel’s frame of mind.  It’s as if he sees Muslims as one monolithic group, as if Muslims are the Borg, with one master leader who makes all the decisions.  So somehow, in his mind, he sees all Muslims as collectively denying that they had anything to do with the attacks.  Even that idea–that somehow ‘they’ are involved because their co-religionists were involved–is certainly questionable.

And he’s just quite frankly wrong about this; all of the major Muslim organizations condemned Al-Qaeda (an Islamic extremist group) for what they did on 9/11.  Is that not acknowledging who did it? It is often erroneously claimed by some that Muslims have remained silent about 9/11 or terrorism in general.  Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.  The major Muslim organizations have issued statement after statement about their abhorrence of terrorism and condemnation of 9/11 in specific.  It is to the point of exhaustion.  Here is one non-exhaustive list of condemnations of 9/11 and terrorism, from the major Islamic organizations.

Many Muslims would argue that while they have bent over backwards to condemn the 9/11 attacks ad nauseum, few non-Muslim Americans have recognized the deaths of millions of Muslim civilians who have died as the result of interventionist policies, those that are in fact fueled by the same type of hatred that brought down the World Trade Center.  Would Mr. Gadiel like to admit that “his people” did that, or would he simply “refuse to acknowledge” it?  In Kent, there is a Mr. Gadiel mourning the loss of his son, who died at the hands of the Islamic extremist group Al-Qaeda.  In Kirkuk, there is a Mr. Gamal mourning the loss of his daughter, who died at the hands of the Christian extremist group Blackwater.

Of course, the dead of America have one advantage over the dead of Iraq.  The former have names and faces, whereas the latter are left by the mainstream media as nameless and faceless.  The former are recognized in memorial services and plaques (as they should be), whereas the latter are forgotten in the rubble that they died under.  One sees this double standard in the media quite clearly: the lives of those who died in 9/11 are covered in detail in order to personalize them (as should be done), whereas the death of Iraqis–of “Mooslims”–is just a meaningless statistic.

As for the phrase “their people” that Mr. Gadiel employed, that is questionable as well, since many Muslims in this country–nay, most–see themselves as Americans, so they are “our people.”  Our people and part of the pluralistic country we live in.  LoonWatch.com condemns all forms of bigotry and hatred.  We do not agree with the binary world view, the ‘us vs them’ mentality that fuels this holy war between Judeo-Christianity and Islam.  Yes Mr. Gadiel, a group of extremists killed your son, but do not let them kill American values: our pluralistic tradition that embraces people of all races and religions.

Mr. Gadiel, your son died.  Do not co-opt his death to spread hatred.  Use his death to spread love, compassion, and understanding–values that you no doubt preached to your son when he was alive.  Al-Qaeda wants you to hate Muslims in general.  What they don’t want is for you to embrace Muslims as brothers in humanity.

Lou Engle, a Joel's Army pastor

Fathima Rifqa Bary, has claimed that her parents are “radical Muslims,” yet the reality seems to be that it is actually she herself who has fallen into the ranks of radicals.  We’re already very familiar with the extremist church she is involved with, the Global Revolution Church, which preaches that there is today an Armageddon between good (the Christians) and evil (the Muslims).

Now, let’s look into a different group she has associated herself with, namely The Call, another End of Times Armageddon invoking group. Here she is on a conference call with Lou Engle, the fanatical leader of the cult:

Up until about four minutes into the video she sounds fairly sane,  but at about 4:20, suddenly she becomes possessed by what we can only assume is the Holy Spirit.  She enters a trance-like state that to us normal human beings seems bizarre, to say the least.  I’ve seen some preachers, Imams, and Rabbis have some crazy highs and lows in their speeches, but usually they build up to it.  On the other hand, Fathima Rifqa just turned on the crazy from the very start; one second she’s talking like a normal human being and the next she starts yelling in a crazed delirium, reaffirming the view that she’s been brainwashed by fundamentalists.

By 5:44, she does her best Glenn Beck impression, i.e. fake crying. When the initial story broke, I saw some YouTube users claim that Fathima Rifqa was fake crying.  I was skeptical, and gave her the benefit of doubt but when I saw the video of her talking to Lou Engle, I was really forced to reconsider my benevolence.  It does seem that she can turn on the fake crying at will.  It is therefore not so difficult to believe that she could also be faking this entire thing.

One other thing: in the Lou Engle conference call, pay close attention to the end of the video: they make it clear that Fathima Rifqa doesn’t care about her own safety; she will–as she says herself–go wherever God takes her.  The reason for all of this–according to these people–is not to protect Fathima Rifqa Bary (since she is ready to be martyred) but to advertise Christianity to 50 million Muslims who need salvation.  But wasn’t the entire court case about Fathima’s safety?  I think the video really shows that it’s not about that at all; it’s about publicity.

A writer for RightWingWatch.org wrote:

For the last few days, I’ve been covering the right-wing effort to mobilize it own Christian forces to counter the “dark spiritual content” of the upcoming Muslim prayer rally.  Tonight, activists gathered for a conference call/prayer rally hosted by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, headed by Shirely Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, Lou Engle of The Call, and featuring other activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Cindy Jacobs.

Tonight, this effort revealed itself to be part of the much larger Religious Right battle against Islam in America when the Religious Right’s latest cause célèbre, Rifqa Bary, joined the conference call.

At the beginning of the clip, Lou Engle is told by one of the other participants that “their little sister” is on the line, at which point Engle introduces Rifqa Bary to the conference call participants and asks her to share her story.  Bary, sounding like a somewhat nervous but otherwise perfectly average teenager, recounts her conversion to Christianity and her decision to flee from the home of her Muslim parents in Ohio.  Following that, Engle declared Bary to be “an Esther for such a time as this” and asks her to lead the call in prayer, which she agrees to do, at which point she becomes seemingly hysterical and rather incoherent while sobbing and praying, making it nearly impossible to understand what she is saying outside of her repeated cries to Jesus.

And then, just like that, she stops, seemingly catching the other participants off guard until Engle then chimes in with his own fervent prayers to God to “use Rifqa to be an Esther.” Soon Engle is joined by various others, all of whom pray for this modern day Esther who will lead Muslims out of Islam and into Christianity while asking God to spread Rifqa’s “so that the testimony of Jesus will go out to CNN, will go out to talk shows and use this little story so that all across America the Gospel will be preached” and to “expose the hidden darkness that is rolling into the nation through these ideologies.”

Eventually, Engle unmutes the conference call’s participants and asks them all to pray for Rifqa, at which point the call the descends into little more than chaos and static.

So this is all a publicity stunt to advertise Jesus.  Here’s what I think happened: Fathima Rifqa was attracted to some fringe Christian groups due to their rhetoric.  These Bible thumpers saw Fathima Rifqa as a tool they could use to boost their own publicity–a way to call the Muslim heathens to Jesus.  They convinced a young and impressionable Fathima Rifqa that she wasn’t just some ordinary high school student but a prophet sent to the heathen nations.

Let’s investigate Lou Engle and The Call to see what kind of company Fathima Rifqa keeps.  Engle is quite the loon.  At first, I thought he had what psychiatrists would call akathisia, or the inability to sit still–a common side-effect of anti-psychotic medications.  On closer examination though it seems that it’s malingering–part of his ploy to dupe impressionable young people that he speaks through the Holy Ghost.  One mainstream Christian critic of his wrote:

As he spoke, Lou Engle constantly rocked back and forth, as apparently he almost always does now when preaching, under what he would claim to be the anointing of the Holy Spirit. His spiritual manifestations are supposed to be a sign that he speaks under the unction of the Holy Spirit and when the jerks, grunts, twiches and miscellaneous experiences and feelings get stronger, they supposedly bear witness to him and the audience that what he says is true and prophetic and the ‘glory’ and ‘anointing’ of the Lord is there testifying to it.

To see this conman bobbing and rocking, watch this here (it’s long so just watch a bit of it to see what I mean):

And here he is doing the same even when nobody is in the room except for the camera:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, cites Lou Engle as a prominent Joel’s Army pastor.  Proponents of this theology (considered heretical by mainstream Christians) believe that the Christian youth will become a part of Joel’s Army that will physically “conquer the earth” and forcibly convert “the nations” to Christianity.  Democracy will be overthrown and a literalistic Biblical law will reign supreme.  Keep in mind that the Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller try to convince us that Muslims secretly want to conquer the entire world for Islam, overthrow democracy for a harsh understanding of Sharia, and convert the world to their religion.

Yet, here we have a girl (Fathima Rifqa Bary) associating with a man (Lou Engle) who is linked to a warlike theology that endorses the idea that Christian youth armies will conquer the entire world for Jesus, overthrow democracy, and forcibly convert non-believers to Christianity–and look at what side Spencer and Geller are on!  On pp.226 of his book The Pathetically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Spencer demands that Muslims must “renounce sharia’s expansionist imperative,” yet I don’t see him demanding that radical Christian dominionists must renounce their desire to conquer by force the entire world for Christ.   Well, it’s not surprising, since in his book, Spencer himself calls for a Crusade against Islam (Ibid., p.231), not unlike these Joel’s Army lunatics.  So we’re coming full circle here.  The nutters defending each other.

I urge you to read the article by SPLC, as well as this expose by another hate watch site known as the Box Turtle Bulletin.  Here is an excerpt:

Lou Engle also echoes Brown’s embrace of martyrdom. Engle, whose own ministry is known as “The Call,” is closely aligned with a militant Christian Dominionist movement known as Joel’s Army.

Going back to the earlier article, Casey Sanchez (of the Southern Poverty Law Center) describes Engles as follows:

Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers…

Joel’s Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they’re members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel’s Army…

“The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008,” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.”

‘Snorting Religion’

Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism…Joel’s Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city…

The atmosphere is less charged with violence at “The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel’s Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year’s event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August)…

As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time armyof invincible young Christian warriors. Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel’s Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he’s speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel’s Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.

This March, at a “Passion for Jesus” conference…Engle called on his audience for vengeance.

“I believe we’re headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground,” said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.

“There’s an Elijah generation that’s going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion,” Engle continued. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire.”

Although Joel’s Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger. In some of the most arresting images in “Jesus Camp,” a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers. “A lot of people die for God and they’re not afraid,” one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment.

“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” added another, “only in a funner way.”

Engle has a bunch of other views considered heretical by mainstream Christianity, such as the belief in “God men” and blood atonement.  It is strange that so many Christians would want to place their trust in Fathima Rifqa Bary who has made her bed with such shady groups and people.

Her fascination with Lou Engle began long before.  As Davi Baker of the SF Examiner notes, it was discovered that Lou Engle’s book entitled Digging the Wells of Revival was part of Fathima Rifqa’s reading material. Additionally, the group she found refuge in, the Global Revolution Church, has similar metanarratives. Baker writes:

On the pen drive found in her room was a reading list, and on that reading list was a book titled “Digging the Wells of Revival” by Lou Engle.  The final chapter of that book is titled “The Hinge of History: Raising up the Nazirites.” …Some have teased that Rifqa’s writings indicate that she wants to be a prophet, but this is exactly what Lou Engle has in mind. Lou writes that God said to him, “America is receiving Her apostles, prophets, and evangelists, but She has not yet seen Her Nazirites!” Lou Engle has a long history of claiming direct communication with God, as well as prophetic dreams…

They seem to imagine some kind of army of super Christians who will appear in a moment of National crisis and win the day. What’s the crisis? Consider these statements from Lou’s homepage, TheCall.com. “There is a great spiritual conflict with a rising tide of Islamic boldness being manifested… we must have spiritual discernment as to the spiritual dark powers that are being invoked into our nation.” Compare that with similar statements from Blake Lorenz, the pastor of Global Revolution Church who housed Rifqa, “These are the last days, these are the end times, and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater.”

The radical cult members and Fathima Rifqa are feeding off of each others’ delusions.  As one astute blogger wrote:

These Evangelical Fundamentalists see signs and wonders everywhere while they look for the new prophets among this last generation the Elijahs and the Esthers who will lead others into the battle against the Devil. So as we have noted Lou Engle,Bill Johnson & other Evangelicals who adhere to these beliefs read into certain situations what may be more than what’s actually there.

So enter Rifqa Bary a convert from a Muslim American family who refers to herself as an Esther chosen to play a special role in the last days by God.She says she has had visions of angels and demons of God and Satan and hears God speaking to her directly . So to some she is a prophet to others possibly just a rather enthusiastic convert to Christianity and to others they wonder if she is either just delusional or whether the Evangelicals with whom she was in contact encouraged and fed her delusions. For instance like any true prophet she too must suffer and be ridiculed and harassed and victimized by non-believers so she may exaggerate all out of proportion certain events and encounters and the speech of others. In her case with the help of these anti-Islamic Evangelical Christians she has come to believe her parents want to kill her or that other Muslims are looking for her so they can kill her.

These “True Believers” latch onto her narrative and so believe that Rifqa is being persecuted by her family by Islam and by those who are in authority in part because they recognize who Rifqa is though they may not know this on a conscious level. So all facts surrounding her case are seen through this prism of signs and wonders and the persecution of the “Real Church” or “body of Christ” so they are not going to be easily convinced that they are wrong about Rifqa that she may just be another confused impressionable anxiety ridden teenager with a touch of meglomania.

I think Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Global Revolution Church, and The Call have used the psychological defense mechanism known as projection: they themselves are the radicals and extremists, but they project that onto Fathima Rifqa’s parents and the Mooslims in general.  From what we can tell, Fathima Rifqa’s parents don’t seem too passionate, zealous, or dogmatic about their religion, not nearly as much as Fathima Rifqa and those she has joined.  So the real question is: who is the real extremist here?  Who is espousing the whole ‘holy war between Christianity and Islam’ ideology?  Ironically, the group that Fathima Rifqa has associated herself with is linked to a theology that dictates that non-believers should be forced into the faith of Christianity.

We can draw some broader conclusions from this: those Islamophobes who have taken up the Fathima Rifqa case as their casus belli–including Robert Spencer and Pam Geller–are the real extremists, not the vast majority of Muslims whom they always point the finger at.  It is after all Spencer, Geller, et al. who believe in a modern day Crusade, one they justify by fear mongering about the other.  What peace loving people should ask–when confronted by their rantings–is: who are the real extremists here?

Temple Protests Geert Wilders

The Geert Wilders speech at Temple University went ahead after some initial signals that it would be canceled. The University cited “free speech” as the reason they allowed Wilders to speak. This decision was over the objection and rejection of the student body and faculty who didn’t want a hate-mongering, David Duke like character on their campus. This was never about free speech but rather was about the principals of not giving a platform to a fascist. The speech was promoted and funded by David Horowitz who also funds JihadWatch.

Wilders was probably expecting to be greeted with warmth and applauds but he was surprised when protesters, employing their right to peacefully assemble and protest expressed their disdain for his backward, racist and anti-Democratic drivel. To give you a rough idea of how it all went down, take a gander at Wilders favorite supporters in the anti-Muslim blogosphere: the shrieking wing-nut Pamela Geller and her best friend Robert Spencer were both crying at the fact that protesters had gathered to counter demonstrate against the fascist. Pam, in her infinite wisdom summed it all up as “pearls before swine.” Spencer reported it as an attack on “free speech.”

It goes without saying that when these two individuals agree with each other on something it’s usually false or a lie. Whenever anyone opposes their hate, they label it “censorship,” an attack on free speech, submission to creeping-stealth-sharia-jihad of the highest order and dhimmitude, but when anyone, (like these Temple University protesters) chooses to then express how they feel about the anti-Muslim hate they get all Soddy and unleash tirades of how the sky is falling and evil is taking over the world. To say the least it is a simple case of double standards: Pam and Bob if you cant take the medicine then don’t try to dish it out.

I digress though, the event turned out to be one Geert Wilders would regret. He was seen for who he truly is, a xenophobic, anti-Muslim Euro supremacist peddling his hatred, and the crowd of protesters let him know it. Included in the Dutch parliamentarian’s profundities were his call for a ban on Muslim Immigration to the West, their deportation and calling the Quran and Islam “evil.”

PHILADELPHIA —  Amid tight security and a large turnout of protesters, Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders told an assembly of Temple University students that Europe and America must fight an ongoing “stealth jihad” that threatens democracy and free speech.

“Where Islam sets roots, freedom dies,” Geert Wilders told the students during his 30-minute address organized by a new student group called Temple University Purpose and funded by the California-based David Horowitz Freedom Center, a foundation that promotes conservative scholarship.

His remarks were met by a mixture of applause and boos, and occasionally gasps — particularly when he stated that “our Western culture is far better than the Islamic culture and we should defend it.”

He decried as a “disgrace” a resolution co-sponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, and backed by the U.N. Human Rights Council earlier this month, deploring attacks on religions while insisting that freedom of expression remains a basic right. Wilders also criticized President Barack Obama for his efforts to extend a hand to the Islamic world, saying that such appeasement marks “the beginning of the end.”

If the spread of Islam continues unabated in the Western world, “you might at the end of the day lose your Constitution,” he told the assembly. “Wake up, defend your freedom.”

He also touched on common themes in his speeches, including calling for an end to Muslim immigration and referring to the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as “an evil book” that promotes violence and intolerance.

A question-and-answer session was cut short after the tone of the event began to turn nasty, when some in the crowd of several hundred students began shouting jeers. Wilders’ security detail quickly ushered him from the room…

It would be nice if this article also reported on his call to ban the Quran, tax the hijab and his preference for a white dominated Netherlands. It may be that Wilders wanted to keep a lower profile and not repeat some of his more banal belief’s because he knew the reaction it would invoke in the media. One has to applaud the Temple University students for gathering together and freely expressing their revulsion and rejection at a fear mongering fascist such as Geert Wilders.

This video gives a good feel of the event and the protesters it inspired:

We get hate mail here quite often at loonwatch, this one comes from someone calling themselves “Ryan Reynolds.” His IP tracks him to Amsterdam. It isn’t a death threat but just someone who really hates us. He left this as a comment on the recent Geert Wilders piece.

Author : Ryan Reynolds
E-mail : ryan@reynolds.com
URL :
Comment:
F*** you and f*** your sick, twisted religion…

If you were wondering, yes, we did censure the curse words.

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

The latest in Pamela Geller looniness. An odd assortment of semi-literate and semi-conscious hyperbole.

Her reaction to Obama’s surprise win of the Noble Prize?

Obama’s Embarrassing Nobel Prize

Obama won what? This is embarrassing. Who’s next? Bill Ayers? Stuart just pointed out this Nobel Fun Fact: This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner (Our Esteemed President, peace be upon him) recently refused to meet with the winner of the 1989

Nobel Peace Prize (the Dalai Lama), in an attempt to suck up to China.

Of course Obama didn’t refuse to meet the Dalai Lama. Pamela, the self-proclaimed “greatest patriot” thinks it’s embarrassing that an American president wins the Noble Prize. She also continues the nutty theory of him being Muslim, by putting the honorific “peace be upon him” next to his title, as though that’s supposed to be some sort of put down. I say, yes, let there be peace upon him, nothing wrong with that.

Obama has sided with evil, abandoned the Jews, the Iranians, the Hondurans, the Eastern Europeans, capitalism, individual rights, American sovereignty — in under a year.

Obama is evil incarnate (sided with “Mooslims”), he is the cause of all the problems in the world. We are all victims of the insidious and ruthless guile of the one known as Barack Obama!

Some veiled racism from the queen of conspiracy theories, calling Obama a pimp who at the same time is funding “jihad” (Warning: Misspellings are Pamela’s).

Obama Pimps for Jihad Petrol Dollars

Part of Obama’s continuing plan tpo fund jihad

Here Pamela cheerleads for her close friend Robert Spencer and calls the German police “Nazi.” She links to an erroneous report at the wing-nut Israel News site that states, “American Islam Scholar Defies German Ban on Israeli Flag.” We actually covered that event and highlighted how Spencer was actually colluding with Euro supremacists. Also there was no ban on Israeli flags, nor is Spencer an Islam scholar.

Spencer Defied NaziGerman Police ban on Flying the Israeli Flag at Berlin Rally

Great piece and interview with Robert Spencer over at Israel National News:

American Islam Scholar Defies German Ban on Israeli Flag

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

(IsraelNN.com) Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology and law, author, and the director of Jihad Watch, defied a German police ban on flying the Israeli flag at a Berlin gathering against anti-Semitism and Islamization on October 3, 2009. He discussed the incident with Israel National News on Thursday.

On Obama aiding the Iranians nuclear program,

This is unconscionable. And Obama is assisting the nuclear weaponization of Iran. The world has gone mad.

On Obama being an anti-Semite,

All last year, I documented the numerous, heinous calls for Jewish genocide, incitement to hate, and filthy Jew hatred on Obama’s election blog. He knows the anti-semites post these blood libels on his website. So why did he he retain the platform as President of the United States? It’s evil. Why does he encourage it with his silence?

Her support for the kooky “Stop the Islamization of Europe” group which promote the discredited Eurabia theory. A group which has ties to racists,  and amongst other things equates Islam with totalitarianism and clearly calls for the defacing of Muslim symbols.

Stop the Islamization of Europe Rally December 13-Spread the Word, Save the World

BANNED FROM PROTEST

…3. Totalitarian symbols such as nazi swastikas, communist hammer and sickles, Islamic star and crescent, UNLESS CLEARLY CROSSED OUT OR DEFACED WITH A STOP SIGN.

If I were being generous with Pamela I would say she blogs in stream of consciousness but I won’t because reading her writing is like hearing the babbling of a human infected with the rage disease, transformed into a zombie and foaming at the mouth.

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., and Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz

TPM, which has been all over the story about the GOP pushing an anti-Muslim witch hunt based on a book by loons, David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry has reported that the lawmakers have still not contacted the Sergeant of Arms for an investigation into this “threat to our national security.” They also haven’t given a reason as to the delay.

GOP Lawmakers “Dawdle”

Four Republican lawmakers have not submitted a request to the House sergeant at arms to investigate a threat that one of the four described as a terrorist-linked group possibly “running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related offices.”

A spokesperson for the sergeant at arms told TPMmuckraker this morning that the office was aware of the charge by GOP members at a press conference Wednesday that the Council on American-Islamic Relations planted Muslim intern spies on the Hill for purposes of subversion. But, says spokesperson Kerri Hanley, the office hasn’t received a request for an investigation, and it wouldn’t launch any probe until such a request is made.

“We don’t have any information to form any kind of opinion to decide whether an investigation is warranted,” Hanley says.

The charges made by Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Sue Myrick (R-NC), and Trent Franks (R-AZ), are based on the new book Muslim Mafia, which is co-authored by a man who has labeled President Obama “Muslim.”

They demanded that the sergeant at arms investigate the possibility of a security breach by Muslim intern spies.

As Franks put it at the press conference five days ago:

“We live in a post-9/11 world where the coincidence of nuclear proliferation and Islamic terrorism pose a very dangerous combination and real threat to America’s national security. … . I take the charges levied against CAIR and laid out in this book very seriously because they affect our national security.”

Myrick’s office told TPMmuckraker Friday it would be submitting requests for investigations in the next few days, but did not explain the delay.

The offices of three of the four Republicans did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the national security risk of waiting to launch an investigation.

Sara Mueller, deputy press secretary for Shadegg, told us: “Unfortunately, the congressman can’t comment on that at this time. “

Meanwhile, the (supposed) cabal of Muslim intern spies can continue to ply their trade in still more sinister (but as yet undefined) ways.

Sue Myrick wrote the foreward for Muslim Mafia

Dave Gaubatz, who we reported on previously while covering a story on Tawfiq Hamid has surfaced again. This time teaming up with Paul Sperry (another Islamophobe) to write a book, Muslim Mafia which claims to uncover the secret, nefarious plot by CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) to supposedly “Islamize America.” This conspiracy theory is related to the kooky Eurabia theory which we debunked, and is another clear manifestation of anti-Muslim Islamophobia.

This time a few far right-wing GOP lawmakers (Sue Myrick, John Shadegg, Paul Broun, and Trent Franks) have used the book to call for a McCarthyist inquisition into Muslims who worked as interns in the Capitol to find out  if they were “planted” by CAIR. They rely on a CAIR memo obtained by Gaubatz’s son who claimed to convert to Islam and then interned with CAIR. The memo doesn’t say anything extraordinary but rather lays out a pretty straightforward PR and advocacy agenda. The key portion that is ringing the Islamophobia bell is, “we will develop national initiatives such as a lobby day and placing Muslim interns in Congressional offices.” So what’s wrong with that you may ask, isn’t that what every advocacy group does in Washingtion DC? Well, the message from the GOP lawmakers seems to be it’s okay as long as you’re not Muslim.

This hysterical McCarthyist drama is being fed to these lawmakers by Dave Gaubatz and Paul Sperry. These two make Orly Taitz of the Birther movement look like a paragon of rationality and senility. Gaubatz claims to have uncovered WMD’s in Iraq, calls Obama our “Muslim leader,” a “crack head,” he was also a member of SANE which stands for Society of Americans for National Existence and is in fact a supremacist organization which has stated amongst other things that “blacks are predisposed to violence,” and that “adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US.”

Some lawmakers have already condemned this most recent disgusting, hysterical and kooky initiative from the GOP. John Conyers, Loretta Sanchez and Andre Carson have all condemned this Islamophobic attack on American Muslims. Hopefully many more, including the leaders of both parties will speak out.

This video from Rachel Maddow’s show breaks the issues down pretty clearly:

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com gives a very good analysis of exactly who and what is behind this “despicable” political event.

This might actually be the most despicable domestic political event of the year:

A group of House Republicans is calling for an investigation into whether a leading American Muslim advocacy group tried to “spy” on congressional offices by placing interns on key security committees.

Rep. Sue Myrick, North Carolina Republican, cited an internal January 2007 memo in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discussed placing Muslim interns on Capitol Hill to “focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community.”

CAIR said it had a particular interest in influencing the judiciary, intelligence and homeland security committees. . . . Mrs. Myrick and Republican Reps. John Shadegg of Arizona, Paul Broun of Georgia and Trent Franks of Arizona called Wednesday for an investigation by the House sergeant-at-arms into whether CAIR was successful in planting congressional interns.

“If an organization that is connected to or supports terrorists is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related congressional offices, I think this needs to be made known,” Mr. Broun said.

CAIR is a non-profit organization of American citizens who are Muslim and their “mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.”  They stand accused of plotting to influence members of Congress and trying to help interns obtain positions in Congress in order to advance their political agenda.  That’s consistent with what virtually every political advocacy group in the nation does; it’s normally called activism and democracy.  But because, in this case, it’s a group of Muslims who are doing this, these House Republicans are depicting it as some sort of nefarious espionage plot against the U.S. that demands a criminal investigation.  The Fox News headline screams:

All that from an “internal memo” they uncovered which discusses how CAIR can help Muslim-Americans obtain internship positions with Congressional committees (click to enlarge):

“Muslim interns in Congressional offices” – frightening!  Look at this repulsive innuendo, from Rep. Franks:

While the Republicans said they did not know of specific legislation that CAIR had affected, Franks, a Judiciary Committee member, said he wouldn’t be surprised if it was trying to amend the Patriot Act.

“One of the target policies that they might be concerned about is the Patriot Act itself — those things that give us the greatest tools to be able to surveil those conversations outside of this country . . .  and I think organizations like CAIR would like to diminish that.”

Patriot Act reforms have long been advocated by what The New York Times called “an unlikely coalition of liberal civil-rights advocates, conservative libertarians, gun-rights supporters and medical privacy advocates.”  Several Senators — including the Democrats’ second-highest ranking member, Dick Durbin — just voted (unsuccessfully) to impose new limits on that law.  But when “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group” takes the same position, these crazed, blatantly bigoted House Republicans spit out McCarthyite smears trying to imply that they’re working from within to help Terrorists attack America.  It’s nothing less than an attempt to criminalize organized political activity by and on behalf of American Muslims.

Just to underscore how extremist the House GOP caucus is, this hysteria is all based on a new book entitled ”Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.”  That’s the source which these House members are using.  In fact, one of the GOP House members, Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, wrote the foreword to the book.  One of the two authors of that book, Dave Gaubatz, maintains this website, where he’s hocking the book through Paypal.  Here’s his mission statement at the top of the page:

The donations will assist in exposing Islamic terrorist operations in America. The goal of the organizations: An Islamic Ummah (Nation) Worldwide, Under Islamic Sharia Law. These goals are widely distributed across America, yet ignored by most of our politicians and the Department of Homeland Security.

The entire site is filled with the most extreme and repugnant anti-Muslim paranoia imaginable, claiming that “CAIR represents the ideology of terrorist groups”; warning that “CAIR places ‘insiders’ into Congressional offices in order to push the CAIR and Islamic terrorist agendas“; displaying a photograph of Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim-American elected to Congress, with this caption:  ”One of your leading elected officials (supporter of CAIR) with researcher Chris Gaubatz.  How much information do we have on Carson and Congressman Keith Ellison?; and warning that “Young Muslim children are being taught across America to engage in violence against non Muslims and Muslims who do not uphold Sharia law.”  It warns:

Unless we change the concerns I mentioned, our country will soon evolve into a Socialist country, Sharia law will continue to ‘creep’ into our society, Islamic based terrorist supporting organizations will continue the implementation of achieving the final objective of an Islamic Ummah in America and worldwide.

The website is filled with illiterate and unhinged rants like this:

Mr. Obama was a self admitted cocaine user, alcohol, and chose friends (Reverend Wright) who hated America and were terrorists (Bill Ayers). Note: More could be named. Based on this and this alone, this is not the role model we want our children to follow, nor to watch on TV at school. But why do leading media from the right and left never speak of Obama’s drug days? Because many of them have had their own drug days. . . .

It is time leaders in our country begin speaking out and simply telling the American people the basic truth why Obama and his friends are not repeted [sic] and American parents do not consider him to be a role model for our children. His primary method of resolving national and internatonal [sic] disputes he as generated) is to invite offended parties to the White House to conume [sic] alcoholic beverages. Again, not the method most parents would use to resolve serious situations and not what we want our children to view as an appropriate method. Dave G.

He previously called Obama a “crack head” and wrote that ”a vote for Hussein Obama is a vote for Sharia Law.”

Gaubatz — a civilian agent who worked for The U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations — was also the source for the “bombshell story” from supreme Muslim-hater Melanie Phillips, who wrote a 2007 piece for the British Spectator with this screaming headline, immediately promoted by leading right-wing blogs:  ”I found Saddam’s WMD Bunker!”  It details how Gaubatz personally found bunkers where Saddam’s WMDs were kept in Iraq, but “the [Bush] administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.”  As a result, Saddam’s WMD are now in the hands of Syria, and the world has been fooled into believing that he had none.

In 2006, Gaubatz created a project called “Mapping Sharia in America”, the purpose of which was to create a comprehensive map of every mosque and Islamic school in the U.S. This is what he wrote:

It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Sharib.

This investigation will also map the leadership of these Muslim organizations and their other affiliations. We will also attempt to uncover any related businesses used or run by the organizations as fronts for money laundering and other illicit activities.

Finally, we will examine and map any potential targets situated near these organizations, such as city, county, and federal government buildings, schools and universities, US military installations, major utility or infrastructure sites (i.e., nuclear installations, pipelines, water supply, etc.), and transportation hubs.

Back in 2007, the libertarian Jim Henley detailed more facts demonstrating that Gaubatz is a “paranoid, racist loon.”  Just read some of that.  Or this.

This is the ranting, insane hatemonger who House Republicans are now using as their expert source to demand an investigation into CAIR’s villainous plot to place interns on Congressional committees.  It would be darkly humorous if it weren’t so ugly and dangerous.  These House members highlight CAIR’s status as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Muslim charity case without noting that one of the most powerful groups in Congress has actually been directly involved in an espionage case against the U.S., while numerous other corporations which receive substantial largesse from Congress have been convicted of all sorts of serious wrongdoing.

This is the precise rank fear-mongering and compulsive need for an Internal Enemy that has driven American policy and political culture for the entire decade.  Brave Congressional Democrats love to spend their time formally condemning people.  If anything merits formal condemnation, it’s this foul Republican witch hunt.

UPDATE:  As sphodros notes in comments, here’s a chart reflecting the religious affiliation of members of the current Congress:

89.3 percent of the members of Congress are Christian, 8.4% are Jewish, and a grand total of 2 members (.4%) are Muslim.  Their representation on the chart (the green section) is so small they’re practically invisible.  Muslims comprise .6% of the American population.  Yet these people are running around screaming about the imminent “Islamization of America” and imposition of Sharia law and calling for criminal investigations because a few interns on Congressional Committees – American citizens — might be Muslim and are therefore “spies.”  These are members of the U.S. House of Representatives doing that.   And they’re not alone:

In another conversation, [Joe Lieberman] told me that he was reading “America Alone,” a book by the conservative commentator Mark Steyn, which argues that Europe is succumbing, demographically and culturally, to an onslaught by Islam, leaving America friendless in its confrontation with Islamic extremism [GG: that book also flirts with explicit advocacy of anti-Muslim genocide].

“The thing I quote most from it is the power of demographics, in Europe particularly,” Lieberman said. “That’s what struck me the most. But the other part is a kind of confirmation of what I know and what I’ve read elsewhere, which is that Islamist extremism has an ideology, and it’s expansionist, it’s an aggressive ideology. And the title I took to mean that we Americans will have ultimate responsibility for stopping this expansionism.”

They’re breeding like rabbits, want to take over everything (through the power of interns on Congressional Committees), and we must stop them.  It’s the solemn challenge of our generation.

Further reading:

Richard Silverstein: Republicans Gone Wild Muslim Spies on Capitol Hill

Raw Story: Muslim Spies

Media Matters Coverage

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller, the Looniest Blogger in the World (though her “close friend” Robert Spencer calls her a “freedom fighter”) this past week called for the destruction of the Golden Dome, or as Muslims know it the–Mosque of the Rock–one of the holiest sites in Islam. A crazy notion which would probably provoke World War III and is only supported by the most hardline, right-wing, end-of-times Israeli and American Zionists. She also implies Islam is “evil.”

The dome has got to go. It is sitting atop the great Jewish temple. The dome has got to go. It’s time to push back and stop indulging evil. Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (paraphrasing Rand).

The Golden "Dome of the Rock"

She also stated, per her modus operandi of painting all Mooslims guilty before proven innocent, that two “Middle Eastern men” who were taken off of a flight in Los Angeles were “terrorists.” She doesn’t know anything about the men, she doesn’t even know if they are Muslim, but she is all too happy to be judge-jury-and-executioner without any evidence. It reminds us of how she and her Islamophobe friends handled the Fathima Rifqa Bary case, insinuating that the parents were “evil,” and had “abused her,” shamelessly making up information as they went along.

In her piece titled, Jet Halted at LAX, Two Middle Eastern Men are Removed by Police she writes,

Were they Mormons? Christians? Jews? Hindus? Sikhs? Coptic Christians? Who is taking bets on who the terrorists are? I want some of that action.

In her crusade against Barack Obama, who she has proclaimed as “our first non-American Mooslim president” she continues the myth she has created that he is an “anti-Semite who loves it when Jews are hurt.” In this piece she claims that it is his fault that an Israeli Settler got shot. Can the unrelated-random-as-hell links and conclusions she creates between stories get any loonier?

They must be dancing in the White House. Looks like Obama’s policy is starting to bear fruit. Jews are hurt. Hurrah.

Where are the serious people in the right-wing to denounce this drivel, this incitement to hatred and violence? Instead of condemning Pamela Geller why are our elected officials giving her a platform to spout her vitriolic nonsense, straight from the sewers of New York? Why do self-proclaimed scholars on Islam such as Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom continue to lend her insanity credence thereby destroying whatever slender base of credibility they had? It is most likely because of the shared hatred that can be gleaned from their writings for Islam and Muslims, a hatred they attempt to mask in a thin veneer of false objectivity.

Conspiracy Theory of Muslim Demographic Take Over

You may have recalled recently that LW contributor Danios did an excellent rebuttal exposing the vapid pseudo-scholarship of self-declared “Islamic scholar” Bat Ye’or. Bat Ye’or’s principle contribution has been the propagation of the wild conspiracy theory known as Eurabia. She argues with the fervor of a misguided zealot that “Europe will be vassal [state], a satellite of the Arab world.” Her “Eurabia” conspiracy theory as summed up by Danios:

[T]he theory is that Arab and Muslim immigration (of “stealth jihadists”) will soon overwhelm Europe, destroy Western culture and civilization forever, and replace the democratic governments with Taliban style theocracies.   While that does sound like an interesting plot for a fictional movie, it is pure insanity to take this seriously.

(By “stealth jihadists,” Bat Ye’or and her pet proxies like Robert Spencer intend to capture the notion of a cadre of evil Muslims who are nonetheless non-violent and work through the system. That of course opens a pandora’s box. It gives them the freedom to redefine who is good and who is bad by mere allegation alone, since they have cancelled out any universally acceptable standard for illict behavior, standards such as “illegal” or “violent.” That raises the ironic question: would Bat Ye’or and her minion Robert Spencer characterize their campaign against Muslims by the pen and keyboard as “subversive stealth propaganda”? Could their infatuation with a “stealth Muslim” operation perhaps be little more than classic projection?)

Even more ironically, other Islamophobes have latched onto transforming Bat Ye’or’s paranoid theories of a “stealth Muslim” take over through  “stealth propaganda videos” distributed on unassuming  public social networks.

On YouTube, there is a video production worthy of Goebbels, that has gone viral. The video, titled simply Muslim Demographics, couples inaccurate facts about Muslim immigration and growth in Europe with ominous foreign sounding music meant to keep you on edge. Who created it remains unknown, but as of today it can be found on other video sharing sites and has received close to 11 million hits on Youtube alone, more than some of Michael Jackson’s most famous music videos.

The video can be summed up by the paranoid guy in our logo on the upper left of your screen, screaming “The Mooslims! They’re here!” As you can see the video makes wild (and patently false as will come to see) claims, such as “Muslims are reproducing a staggering 8 babies for every 1 French baby,” that “Europe as we know it will cease to exist” giving way to a “Europe dominated by Mooslims and Islamic Republics. ”

Seriously? Are they going to get rid of Sauerkraut in Germany? Are they going to tear down the Louvre or Big Ben? Is the Leaning Tower of Pisa going to be replaced by the “The Leaning Minaret?” Are books going to be burned in Amsterdam, next to the shops that sell cannibas?

I digress though, the thought that anyone can believe what is in this video should give people pause. What purpose does it serve at all if not to increase paranoia, ignorance and fear of the “other” scary “Mooslims?”

It is altogether depressing that Muslims immigrating to a society should automatically be viewed as a negative. It is the same right-wing tactic that was used to smear Barack Obama as being a “Mooslim.” The thinking went: if you convince enough people he is a Muslim then no one will vote for him because everyone knows being a Muslim is bad. Instead of viewing Muslim immigration to Europe as reason to fill the demands of Europe’s economy, it is automatically assumed to be evil — that my friends is classic text book Islamophobia.

BBC Radio did a pretty decent job in rebutting the arguments made by the video.

Watch it here:

The most thorough rebuttal of this inaccurate, racist, Islamophobic equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has come from a site called Tiny Frog, which laid bear all the inaccuracies,

Claim: “Historically, no culture has ever reversed a 1.9 fertility rate.”

They provide no source for this claim. However, birth rates do vary over time, and have increased. For example, here’s an image of France’s population over the past two centuries. As you can see, the population size barely changes between 1890 and 1945. Since 1945, the population has grown by 50%. The current fertility rate in France is about 2 children per person.

Wikipedia states:

After 1947 however, France suddenly underwent a demographic recovery that no one could have foreseen. It is a fact that in the 1930s the French government, alarmed by the decline of France’s population, had passed laws to boost the birth rate, giving state benefits to families with children. Nonetheless, no one can quite satisfactorily explain this sudden and unexpected recovery in the demography of France, which was often portrayed as a “miracle” inside France. This demographic recovery was again atypical in the Western World, in the sense that although the rest of the Western World experienced a baby boom immediately after the war, the baby boom in France was much stronger, and above all it lasted longer than in most other countries of the Western World (the United States being one of the few exceptions). In the 1950s and 1960s France enjoyed a population growth of 1% a year, which is the highest growth in the history of France, not even matched in the best periods of the 18th or 19th centuries.

Claim: “A rate of 1.3: impossible to reverse… There is no economic model that can sustain itself during that time.”

It’s true that declining birth rates cause a lot of problems for nations; it’s difficult for workers to pay enough taxes to support the retired generation. A lot of countries (including east-asian countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) are very worried about this problem.

These numbers are almost right. It’s true that these nations are declining in population. According to nationmaster (which took it’s numbers from the CIA World Factbook), the actual fertility rates are:

France	1.98
England	1.66
Greece	1.36
Germany	1.41
Italy	1.3
Spain	1.3

It’s also worth noting that the fertility rates of these nations have been rising slightly over the past five years. Here’s a look at the historical data:

Spain, historical fertility rates:

2003	1.26
2004	1.27
2005	1.28
2006	1.28
2007	1.29
2008	1.3

France, historical fertility rates: (*note: France reversed a fertility rate that dropped below 1.9)

2003	1.85
2004	1.85
2005	1.85
2006	1.84
2007	1.98
2008	1.98

Germany, historical fertility rates:

2003	1.37
2004	1.38
2005	1.39
2006	1.39
2007	1.4
2008	1.41

Italy, historical fertility rates:

2003	1.26
2004	1.27
2005	1.28
2006	1.28
2007	1.29
2008	1.3

(According to the nationmaster numbers, the UK’s and Greece’ fertility rate stayed relatively constant across the 2003-2008 time period.)

1.3-1.5 sounds approximately right. The highest fertility rate in Europe is 2.02 (Albania), and eastern Europe has some of the lowest fertility rates (Poland 1.27, Ukraine 1.25, Lithuania 1.22).

Claim: “France: 1.8 Children per family, Muslims: 8.1.”

They list of source for this claim, but it’s too small to read. This claim is almost certainly false. First, there isn’t a country in the whole world that has a fertility rate of 8 children, so I doubt that millions of Muslims in France’s are having that many children.

While it’s true that many Muslim nations have high fertility rates (Yemen 6.41, Gaza Strip 5.19, Saudi Arabia 3.89), not all of them do. While I have no source for Muslim birthrates in France, I do know where most of France’s immigrants come from: they come from France’s former colonies. Here’s a map of French immigration by nation:

You can quickly pick out that France’s Muslim immigration comes mainly from four countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Turkey.

What are the fertility rates in these countries?

Morocco	2.57
Algeria	1.82
Tunisia	1.73
Turkey	1.87

Now, it looks very suspicious when they claim French Muslims are averaging 8.1 children per person. In fact, the birthrates in their original countries are lower than birthrates in France. I have a hard time believing that they suddenly become hyperfertile when they live in France.

I had actually read an article a few years ago (again, by an Christian-Right author). He talked about how he met a Palestinian woman living in Paris who was raising her 6 children. He then implied that all French Muslims were having this many children. Of course, that was a huge generalization. It’s true that Palestinians (on average) have a lot of children, but it’s false to claim that most Muslims living in France (most of them not from Palestine) were having this many children. Yet, he tried to slide this claim past his readers.

Claim: “In the Netherlands, 50% of all newborns are Muslim.”

That same article I read a few years ago claimed that 50% of all newborns within a particular Dutch city were Muslim (which may or may not be accurate). I have to wonder if that claim was generalized to “In the Netherlands, 50% of all newborns are Muslim.”

There are approximately 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands, a nation of 16.6 million people. So Muslims makeup about 6% of the total population. Yet, we’re supposed to believe 50% of the children born in the Netherlands are Muslim? The fertility rate in the Netherlands is 1.66 children per person. Mathematically, Muslims in the Netherlands would need to have 26 children to makeup 50% of the births in the country.

Further, if we look at the countries of origin of these Muslims, we find that 2/3rds immigrated from Turkey (1.87 fertility rate) or Morocco (2.57 fertility rate).

Claim: “In only 15 years, half of the population of the Netherlands will be Muslim.”

It makes my head hurt to figure out how 1 million Muslims will outnumber 15.6 million non-Muslims in 15 years.

Claim: “In Russia, there are over 23 million Muslims, that’s 1 out of 5 Russians.”

According to Wikipedia:

According to the most recent estimates by the R&F Agency, there are more than 20 million officially self-identified Muslims in Russia, a number that has risen by 40% in the last 15 years, though no more than 6 million are truly orthodox. Roman Silantyev, a Russian Islamologist has estimated that there are only between 7 and 9 million people who practise Islam in Russia, and that the rest are only Muslims by ethnicity.

Also, Russia’s population is 140 million. Even if “23 million muslims” was accurate, that’s 16.4%, not 1 out of 5 (or 20%).

Claim: “Currently in Belgium, 25% of the population and 50% of all newborns are Muslim.”

Wikipedia states:

An 2008 estimation shows that 6% of the Belgian population, about 628,751, is Muslim (98% Sunni). Muslims cover 25.5% of the population of Brussels, 4.0% of Wallonia and 3.9% of Flanders.

Maybe they mixed up “Brussels” and “Belgium”. Regardless, they inflated the percentage of Muslims in Belgium from 6% to 25%.

Again, we see the same pattern of immigration as we saw in the Netherlands – 2/3rds are Moroccans and Turkish immigrants – whose home countries have relatively low birthrates (2.57 and 1.87, respectively).

Claim: “1/3rd of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025, just 17 years away.”

That doesn’t seem very likely considering that Muslims currently makeup “4 percent of the European Union’s population” (Source). This particular claim about “1/3rd of all European children” appears to come from the Right-wing Brussel’s Journal.

Claim: “The German Government, the first to talk about this publicly, recently released a public saying, ‘the fall in the German population can no longer be stopped. Its downward spiral is no longer reversible… It will be a Muslim state by 2050.”

Considering that Muslims makeup 4.0% of the German population, that statement seems over the top. More than 90% of them are Turkish (fertility rate in Turkey: 1.87). A quick google search credits Walter Rademacher, vice-president of the German statistics office, with the quote.

So, do you believe that the “German Government” issued that statement? Are you wondering what Walter Rademacher actually said?

BERLIN, Germany, November 9, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Germany’s downward spiral in population is no longer reversible, the country’s federal statistics office said Tuesday. The birthrate has dropped so low that immigration numbers cannot compensate.

“The fall in the population can no longer be stopped,” vice-president Walter Rademacher with the Federal Statistics Office said, reported Agence France-Presse.

Germany has the lowest birthrate in Europe, with an average of 1.36 children per woman. Despite government incentives to encourage larger families, the population is dropping rapidly and that trend will continue, with an expected loss of as much as 12 million by 2050. That would mean about a 15 percent drop from the country’s current population of 82.4 million, the German news source Deutsche Welle reported today.

…

Germany has one of the largest populations of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, with a Muslim community of over 3 million. That trend is expected to continue, leading some demographic trend-watchers to warn that the country is well on the way to becoming a Muslim state by 2050, Deutsche Welle reported.

The [Right Wing] Brussels Journal reported last month that one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families by 2025. There are an estimated 50 million Muslims living in Europe today–that number is expected to double over the next twenty years.

(Source)

Wow. There’s two major distortions here:

(1) They credit the “Germany Federal Statistics Office” with the statement that “[Germany] will be a Muslim state by 2050″, when it was actually a statement made by a vague group identified as “some demographic trend-watchers”. Immediately, in the next paragraph, they mention the right-wing Brussels Journal – leading me to suspect that they are the “demographic trend-watchers”.

(2) The quote was twisted from “is well on the way to becoming a Muslim state by 2050″ into “It will be a Muslim state by 2050″.

Claim: “There are currently 52 million Muslims in Europe. The German government said that number is expected to double in the next 20 years to 104 million.”

The EU population is 491 million, 4% (19.6 million) of which are Muslim (Source).

Claim: “In the United States, the current fertility rate of American citizens is 1.6. With the influx of the latino nations, the rate increases to 2.11; the bare minimum needed to sustain a culture.”

Considering that latinos makeup only 13% of the US population, it’s hard to believe they can single-handedly bring-up the fertility rate from 1.6 to 2.11.

Looking up actual data (1, 2) reveals this fertility rate for American women (2004):

White	2.05
Black	2.03
American Indian	1.73
Asian	1.89
Hispanic	2.82
Total	2.04

(I think the “White” category includes “non-hispanic white” and “hispanic white” into the same category. If that’s true, then the non-hispanic white fertility rate would be around 1.8-1.9.)

Claim: “Today, there are over 9 million [muslims in the United States]“.

Reality? No one really knows. Estimates vary between 1.1 million and 8 million.

Not very likely.

This wasn’t specifically argued in the video, but I should also add that the fertility rates among Muslims (in their own countries) is also declining.

For example:

Saudi Arabia, historical fertility rates:

2003	6.15 (* is this accurate?)
2004	4.11
2005	4.05
2006	4
2007	3.94
2008	3.89

And the three largest Muslim countries:

Indonesia, historical fertility rates:

2003	2.5
2004	2.47
2005	2.44
2006	2.4
2007	2.38
2008	2.34

Pakistan, historical fertility rates:

2003	4.1
2004	4.29
2005	4.14
2006	4
2007	3.71
2008	3.73

Bangladesh, historical fertility rates:

2003	3.17
2004	3.15
2005	3.13
2006	3.11
2007	3.09
2008	3.08

And let’s not forget that some Muslim countries have already fallen below the replacement number of 2.11 (and, supposedly, below the mythical 1.9 fertility rate that the video says is very, very bad). When you look at the three most populous countries of the Middle East (Egypt, 79 million; Turkey, 70 million; Iran, 69 million), you find that Turkey and Iran have already dropped below a fertility rate of 2.0. Egypt recently dropped below a fertility rate of 3.0, and the Egyptian government is aiming to get it down to 2.0 within 8 years. All three are experiencing a decline in their fertility rates.

Egypt, historical fertility rates:

2003	3.02
2004	2.95
2005	2.88
2006	2.83
2007	2.77
2008	2.72

Turkey, historical fertility rates:

2003	2.03
2004	1.98
2005	1.94
2006	1.92
2007	1.89
2008	1.87

Iran, historical fertility rates:

2003	1.99
2004	1.93
2005	1.82
2006	1.8
2007	1.71
2008	1.71

As you can see the video is littered with a number of factual errors, inflation and conflation of data on the pretext of furthering the makers’ odious agenda. It seems to be geared towards consumption by an American audience, for all effects and purposes attempting to scare the audience by saying, look what happened to Europe, it is going to happen to us if we don’t stop Muslims from coming here.

These sentiments are expressed by right-wing Christian Brenda Walker who writes in a piece Orwellianly titled, Dead Culture Walking: Muslim Immigration Should Frighten America that,

If there is anything that should make Americans’ blood run cold about immigration, it is the sight of Europe—and Britain, the home of Western civilization—being buried by millions of Muslim colonists. Europe is just hoping against hope that Islam isn’t going to explode into massive rioting (or worse), or impose total cultural Islamification.
…
Now the triumphs of Tours and Vienna are being trampled by immigrants, entering mostly legally. It’s a wonder the Muslims bother with terrorism at all when demography is working so well for them.

Europe’s swirl down the toilet bowl is little reported in this country largely because the Main Stream Media is not interested in showing it. The top media elites are still stuck on multiculturalism. But the European experience shows what a bogus ideology that is.

This smear against Muslims is nothing new and it really was only a matter of time before right-wingers here tried to employ the Muslim Demographic bogeyman to further their xenophobic nonsense. The truth is that Muslims in both Europe and especially America are largely integrating into their new societies. American Muslims for instance are considered the second most affluent and upwardly mobile community in America, only behind Jews. They also tend to be more educated than other citizens.

In Europe, as Dr. Tariq Ramadan noted there is a silent revolution in which Muslims have already integrated and reconciled their identities as Europeans. He says the important issue now is to move from the “integration dialogue” to a “post integration” dialogue. He also points out a double standard that Muslims are frequently subjected to, “when  you do something good and positive like Zinadine Zidane no one sees that you’re a Muslim, they see you as one of them but when they see something bad from a Muslim all of a sudden they question what you are doing here and say ‘you are not from here.’”

It is important to note that propaganda videos such as these will only increase as the visibility of Muslims in the West increases. Groups that previously saw themselves as part of the elite, such as the right-wing will paint the new multi-cultural societies they live in as oppressive, ghetto and backward. They will, and already have proclaimed victim status, and with that victim status will come a doubling of the efforts to advance one of the last accepted forms of bigotry and hate: Islamophobia.

Robert Spencer with loon Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller, that looniest of loons is about to take center stage for a one night extravaganza billed as An Intimate Evening with Pamela Geller. Intimate on what levels we just don’t know yet, but Pamela Geller attempting to get warm and cozy with a few Congressmen is not a big surprise.

What is surprising however is that this is even taking place. Do Congressmen Ralph Hall and Sam Johnson know who she is?

Granted we don’t want to give this event more publicity then it deserves but we would have never known about it had Robert Spencer not advertised it on his site with the usual, over the top, adulatory praise we are accustomed to seeing from him for Pam; in that sense it is quite instructional.

One of the most dynamic speakers and passionate advocates for the defense of the West that I know, my friend and colleague Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs is speaking November 7 at a gala event hosted by the Collin County Conservative Republicans. People are coming from all over the country to be at this event, two Congressmen and a Texas State Representative are going to be there, and tickets are going fast. You can tickets here, and here are more details about the event:

An Intimate evening with Pamela Geller
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Mckinney, Texas

Honorary Host Committee:
Congressman Sam Johnson (TX03)
Congressman Ralph Hall (TX04)
State Representative Jerry Madden (TX Dist. 67)
Collin County Judge Keith Self

“We thank our sitting elected officials who have served in the Armed Forces for serving on our honorary host committee.”

Join us early in the evening (5:00-700 p.m.) for the VIP Patriot Reception. The VIP reception allows you to meet Ms. Geller and the Honorary Host Committee, enjoy hors d’oeuvres from Texas’ own Eddie Dean, grab an autograph and photo, and toast a glass of champagne to the future of the GOP.

If you cannot attend the VIP Reception, please join us at 7:30 p.m. for Pamela’s speaking engagement.

Posted by Robert on September 30, 2009 10:58 AM

Pamela, if you don’t recall, is a blogger who once posted on her blog a piece which claimed Barack Obama was the illegitimate son of Malcolm X. This is what her Wiki page says about her,

Pam Geller’s blog has earned her a spot in the Conservative limelight. She frequently attacks Barack Obama, pushing and originating conspiracy theories that include: Obama is a secret Muslim, Obama is not American, Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, Obama is an anti-Semite. She writes in an August 1st blog about Obama’s travel to Pakistan in the 80’s, “I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad.”

Walid Shoebat

ThinkProgress, (hat tip:Ustadh) has an article on a recent conference that was titled “How to Take Back America.” It is pretty much a conference centered around the continuing effort to delegitimize President Obama. In this conference we had a convergence of some of the wackiest and conspiratorial figures in the right-wing. In a made for Hollywood train-wreck, the stars aligned to bring Frank Gaffney, Walid Shoebat and Bill Federer (!) together on the question of what religion is Obama.  As you well know that is a recipe for loonieness!

At the How to Take Back America conference last weekend, attended by several Republican lawmakers, former Reagan official and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney, right-wing historian Bill Federer, and Christian activist Walid Shoebat hosted a panel on “How to understand Islam.” An attendee of the panel asked the three speakers if they would consider President Obama a Christian or a Muslim, given his “roots.” While Gaffney gave a now familiar response linking Obama to the Muslim Brotherhood, Federer and Shoebat provided new theories, which elicited praise from the crowd:

GAFFNEY: If Bill Clinton, on the basis of special interest pandering and identity politics, was properly called the first Black American President, on that same basis, Barack Obama should be called the first Muslim American President. […] But there is evidence that a lot of Muslims think he is Muslim. But whether he is or whether he isn’t, the key to me, is is he pursuing that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen, we know from a trial in Dallas last year, is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand. That’s what we need to keep our eye on.

FEDERER: In Islam, if your father is a Muslim, you’re automatically a Muslim. Since Barack’s father, stepfather, and grandfather were all Muslim, the Muslim world views him as Muslim. Mohammad allowed his warriors to say they’re not Muslim to gain advantage and um, but he’s uh, Islam permits you to lie to advance Islam, Saul Alinsky allows you to lie to advance your communist agenda, you can put them together.

SHOEBAT: I came from an American mother, Obama came from an American mother. I came from a Muslim father, Obama came from a Muslim father. […] Did you know that your President knows how to do the call to the prayer in eloquent classical Arabic? […] No one can do this in classical Arabic language unless he grew up and was raised as a Muslim.

Watch it:

During the panel, Shoebat advocated entering Arab countries and converting Muslims to Christianity. He also went on a rant about how Muslims in meat packaging plants are contaminating America’s food supply because their hands are unclean.

Gaffney has a record of comparing Obama to Hitler — a major theme of the conference — and spreading other absurd reasons for why he thinks Obama is Muslim. As Matt Duss has noted, although it may be difficult to take Gaffney as a serious analyst, his “transparently bigoted” attacks are given a platform on major media outlets. This reason alone is why Gaffney’s smears shouldn’t be ignored.

In the past week alone, Gaffney has appeared as a pundit on Fox News and MSNBC, has been featured in an article in NewsMax, and wrote an opinion column for the Washington Times.

Canyon Clowdus:"No More Muslims"

If you want to see what kind of impact bloggers and self-proclaimed scholars such as Robert Spencer and his buddies like Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes are having on the discourse on Muslims in America then look no further than Canyon Clowdus. Clowdus employs terms and ideas coined by Spencer and company, such as “Stealth Jihad” and “creeping Shariah,” which are meant to be used as scare tactics to frighten Americans about their Muslim neighbors. Yet, they still have the gall to claim not to hate Muslims or Islam!

Congressional Candidate: No More Muslims to U.S.

WASHINGTON — Big Country congressional hopeful Canyon Clowdus wants no more Muslim immigration to America.

But the conservative Republican doesn’t want to stop at the stance he outlined to radical blog “Dr. Bulldog & Ronin,” which endorses him for 11th Congressional District representative.

“It’s not just them,” Clowdus told a reporter Sunday night. “They need to check all immigrants. They used to assimilate.”

Instead, immigrants retain their beliefs, weakening America, Marble Falls businessman Clowdus said.

The 11th Congressional District covers a wide swath of West Texas and stretches down to include Marble Falls. The city is about 200 miles southeast of Abilene and about 50 miles from Austin.

Clowdus wants to halt Muslim immigration to stop what the blog termed a “Stealth Jihad” and “creeping sharia” to replace the Constitution with Islamic religious law.

A civil rights advocate said he reads the blog and is disappointed a congressional candidate is lending his credibility to efforts to divide Americans instead of bring them together.

The blog pushes the wrongheaded idea that there is a huge clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam, said Eric Ward of the Chicago-based Center for New Community, a faith-based organization including Christians, Jews and Muslims.

“The truth of the matter is that the only clash that’s going on is amongst extremist elements in Christianity and Islam,” Ward said.

Christians and Muslims have much in common when it comes to values and the wish for an opportunity to work and better their lives, he said.

A San Angelo physician who is Muslim and immigrated to the United States 40 years ago said people with views like Clowdus’ have tunnel vision.

“One-fifth of the world’s population are Muslims,” Dr. Fazlur Rahman, an oncologist, said. “So for the benefit of Americans, we should understand them, learn their religion, culture and civilization for our benefit.”

Rahman said 6 million Muslims live in the United States.

“They worry about their own future and of their children just like everyone else,” he said.

Rahman became a U.S. citizen decades ago and raised a family in San Angelo. His writings on health care, science and other topics have appeared in The Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and other publications. He’s also a trustee of Austin College in Sherman.

Rahman said America has been successful because it is tolerant and multicultural.

There are bad Muslims just as there are bad Christians, Jews and people from all of the religious faiths, Rahman said.

“Every one of them has their fair share,” he said.

Muslims worry about their children’s future just like everyone else, he said.

A spokesman for an Islamic civil rights and advocacy group said the level of anti-Muslim rhetoric is rising, especially from the right.

“Our research has shown that this kind of rhetoric is coming from a minority of Americans, but it’s a very vocal minority,” said Ibrahim Hooper of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR asks mainstream leaders to challenge anti-Muslim talk if they hear it because silence equals consent or unspoken approval, Hooper said.

“That’s why it’s the responsibility of people of goodwill in our society and particularly leaders in our society to challenge this kind of hate-filled bigoted rhetoric when it’s used anywhere in our society,” Hooper said.

Dr. Bulldog & Ronin listed CAIR among organizations supporting a “Stealth Jihad” with “Islamic Supremacists.”

Dr. Bulldog and Ronin wanted to know how Clowdus would fight this “creeping sharia” that uses the constitutional rights to freedom of religion and speech against Americans.

Clowdus’ reply: “How about CREEPY Sharia? Fuse lit … back away from Canyon!”

Clowdus believes there are efforts to override national law with Islamic religious law, he said in an interview.

Hooper said that’s nonsense.

If a Muslim woman is allowed to wear a headscarf in the workplace or a Muslim man is allowed to go to Friday prayers — any accommodation of a Muslim in American society — then that vocal minority views it as a “creeping sharia,” he said.

“For some reason, it drives these people crazy when Muslims practice their faith,” Hooper said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security doesn’t track immigrants’ religions, said Pat Reilly, a spokeswoman for DHS agency U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

People are identified by country of origin — not religion or ethnicity — in the DHS “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.”

Neither U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway of Midland nor a second challenger, Chris Younts of San Angelo, share Clowdus’ views on Muslim immigration.

“Congressman Conaway is a strong proponent of immigration reform,” Conaway campaign spokesman Richard Hudson said. “But he does not have an immigration policy based on religion.”

Younts, a businessman, opposes illegal immigration, but he “believes that any law abiding citizen of another country should be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. as long as they abide by our immigration policies and honor our Constitution,” Younts’ campaign spokesman Ken Burton said.

Conaway and Younts are also conservative Republicans.

Clowdus said that he e-mailed back and forth to Dr. Bulldog & Ronin for the interview posted Aug. 22 and that he doesn’t know the identity of the blog’s authors. The blog bills itself as “Conservative News, Views & Analysis of Events.”

Earlier in August, the blog endorsed Clowdus as a “non-politician in Texas who is fed up with all the Lefturds in Washington.”

The blog describes “Doctor Bulldog” as a theoretical physicist and electronic engineer who has served in the Air Force. He’s worked for private aerospace companies and moved recently from Silicon Valley to the Midwest, the blog said.

Its visitor count lists more than 1.2 million “Infidels.”

Ward said the blog’s definition of America and American-ness is very narrow and not embraced by most in the United States.

Muslims and Christians have cultural and religious differences, he said. But they don’t outweigh the common ground between them.

Fathima Rifqa Bary

Mike Thomas is a journalist with the Orlando Sentinel which has been following and reporting on the Fathima Rifqa Bary case. The case of the young runaway has garnered much attention and many of the Islamophobes and anti-Muslims have much invested in it. Recently, conservative attorney John Stemberger who volunteered to represent Rifqa is now claiming that the real danger to the girl comes from the Mosque that her father attends.

Mike Thomas wanted to check if these sentiments were truly held by the neighbors of the Mosque or those who knew it, in a blog titled This is a Terrorist Mosque?, Thomas writes,

Attorney John Stemberger, who volunteered to represent Rifaq Bary, now claims that the real danger to the girl is her father’s mosque - the Noor Islamic Cultural Center - which he says is radical and has ties to terrorism.

I checked that with Rabbi Misha Zinkow, of Temple Israel, who spoke at the Noor center earlier this year at an inter-faith gathering.

“Their presence in the community is a positive one,” he said. “My interaction with the Muslim community has been very positive.”

I then asked the Rabbi if Columbus was a hotbed of Islamic extremism, another charge I frequently hear.

“I don’t think I would echo those sentiments,” he said.

The Noor Islamic Cultural Center also is a member of B.R.E.A.D., a social justice organization that includes a number of Protestant churches (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc) , Catholic churches, Episcopalian churches, Temples and even the Unitarians.

Earlier this month, the Center had an interfaith session on homeland security.

Here is a promo the Center put out on Youtube. You can see all those middle-aged, crazy terrorists flipping burgers and hot dogs on the grill.

Mike Thomas shows that this Mosque is far from the “terrorist Mosque” that it is being painted as by Rifqa’s attorney, but will it be enough for those who are using the Fathima Rifqa Bary case for their own agenda to stop their crusade to paint the Mosque as a haven for terrorism whose members will kill Rifqa if returned?

LoonWatchers might have noticed that the anti-Muslim blogsphere with the likes of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have been reporting on this case constantly and have invested a lot in it, pushing full throttle to see to it that Fathima R. Bary does not end up with her parents and instead stays in Florida. Just today Robert Spencer posted a blog requesting his supporters to contact (pressure) the Florida court to keep Rifqa there. For them it is a high stakes game in the war against Muslims, so if Fathima is returned to her parents and the courts find that her life  is not in threat they will end up with major egg on their faces.

Frank Gaffney

Frank Gaffney is at it again, this time he’s writing for that favorite of warmongers everywhere, The Washington Times. Gaffney stuck a real “unbiased” note right off the bat by titling his article Understanding Islam’s Threat to the U.S. Vital. Yes, in case you didn’t know, that Faith that holds sway over 1.8 Billion people around the world is a threat to the USA. For this former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy nuance is synonymous with unnecessary. It isn’t extremism or radicalism but Islam itself that is to blame for all the problems we face.

The article takes umbrage at the new policies ushered in by the Obama administration. In fact, it starts out by stating that John Brennan, the assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism was wrong when he approvingly recalled a key point in Obama’s speech, “America is not and never will be at war with Islam.” To most reasonable people that statement just sounds like common sense but for Gaffney the real question is whether or not “Islam is at war with us?”

The obvious question is: how does a belief system which has been around longer then America, which has many interpretations and practitioners get cast as the antagonist in a war against America? How do you pit a religion against a whole nation, a nation which itself has many Muslim citizens? The nuanced answers coming from Obama and John Brennan is that we are not at war with Muslims and Islam but against “violent extremists” such as Al’Qaeda. This not only makes more sense but is also more accurate which means it will also be more effective in combating extremism and violence around the world.

The other point of Gaffney’s article, borrowing a term from Robert Spencer, is that even those Muslims who are not violently propagating their murderous vision for the world are engaged in a “stealth Jihad” to undermine America. This is a common and dangerous tactic by those in the Muslim-bashing industry. It asks you to suspend your better judgment and believe that you still have to be aware and afraid of those peaceful Muslims who are law abiding citizens because they are secretly planning to take over America and the world. It is the same kind of rhetoric that was used by Jew haters to further propagate anti-Semitism. The argument went that the peaceful Jew is plotting behind the scenes to destroy the gentiles, this kind of thinking gave birth to the infamous blood libels which eventually contributed to the horrific Holocaust.

Pew Global Studies Survey

Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are on the rise in Europe according to the Pew Global Attitudes survey (2008). Negative perceptions and views of Muslims range from 32 percent in Britain to 52 percent in Spain. As Muqtedar Khan writes,

There are many consequences for Muslims as a result of the growing Islamophobia, all of them impinging on the quality of the rights they enjoy. New laws that are being instituted or considered as a consequence of Islamophobia are undermining the liberal democratic culture of Europe and making Muslims second-class citizens.

At the same time there has also been a sharp rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, with increasing attacks and vilification of the Jewish community.

Anti-Semitism, too, has grown rapidly in the last three years in Europe. The same Pew survey reports that negative views of Jews are now held by more than a third of the population in Germany and France and by by almost half in Spain. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that anti-Semitism has been on the rise. It cites a study by the European Jewish Congress that found that in the first three months of 2009, there were twice as many attacks on Jews as in the previous year. The study pointed to Israel’s war in Gaza and a resurgence of old stereotypes blaming Jews for the current economic crisis as the main causes for the rise in anti-Jewish sentiments in Europe.

Most interesting is that the same Pew study also highlights that those who are Islamophobic are also anti-Semitic, which further strengthens a point that we have made many times over about Islamophobes; when you find one they are not just bigoted against Muslims and Islam but other groups as well. It also proves the lie to the claims by many in the Islam-bashing industry such as Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or (!) and neo-fascist European politicians like Geert Wilders who state that the rise in anti-Semitism is correlated to the increase in the population of Muslims due to both birth rates and immigration. Again Muqtedar Khan writes,

Some commentators have tried to link the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe to a growing Muslim population there. But in Hungary, where there is hardly any Muslim presence, anti-Semitism is both more rabid and crude than anywhere else in Europe.

The fact that these two expressions of bigotry and racism are on the increase in Europe should be a clarion call to concerned citizens that these phenomenons must be challenged. It should also serve as an impetus for Jews and Muslims to work together so that Europe does not further slip into the abyss of extreme nationalism and discrimination against minorities that will slowly corrode the fabric of it’s democratic system — echoing ominous events from the early 20th century.

In a new case of corruption and political intrigue a group of Mayors from Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus New Jersey, and five Rabbis were among 44 people charged by the US with public corruption and money laundering.

The corruption probe, based in Hudson County, netted many public officials accused of pledging assistance for bribes. A cooperating witness in that probe also infiltrated a “pre- existing money laundering network” that moved “at least tens of millions of dollars through charitable, nonprofit entities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey,” according to a release by acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra…The rabbis were charged with laundering money that often was sent to Israel.

The attorney was on the record stating that though they arrested a “number of Rabbis” it did not make this a “religiously motivated case.” These should be comforting words to practitioners of the Jewish Faith and of course reaffirms what is well known in American justice, “You are innocent until proven guilty.” It does, however, highlight the contradictions within our society. Contradictions that are all too apparent to American Muslims.

Let us consider what would have happened if those arrested were not Rabbis, instead, let us say that they were Imams. What would have happened? At the very least, the rabid anti-Muslim blogosphere would be in a fit, Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer would be linking it to selective pages of 8th century Muslim law books and proclaiming it as all part of Islam’s attempt to take over the world through “Stealth Jihad.” Debbie Schlussel, would be decrying the “inherent criminality” of Islam, while Steven Emerson would proclaim that he has been warning of the “Islamic financial threat” to the West for years. Even in the mainstream media there would be some form of discussion revolving around Islam’s role in influencing the criminal enterprise.

The evident double standards here are hardly noticed in any news outlet. The Rabbis’ faith was not disparaged, nor was any insinuation made that their religion had any bearing on their involvement with the alleged criminal actions — rightly so. But is it too much to ask that when the Islamophobes and other loons come across a similar case in which there are allegations of criminality against Muslims that they should give the same “benefit of the doubt” that they would give to other Faiths such as Judaism and Christianity?

It is a tall order, I know, because the anti-Muslims are motivated by nothing other than a hate for Muslims, and applying a consistent methodology that would distinguish between Faith and Faithful hurts their argument that Islam is the boogey-man monster underneath your bed.

Rep. Steve King who recently cast the sole vote against a memorial for slavery which unanimously passed the house believed that if Obama got elected AlQaeda would be dancing in the streets. He also believes that Obama’s middle name matters because Muslims will be dancing in the streets.

Click on the above image

I am never amazed by the Republicans or the Democrats, their mundane and consistent descent into a sort of ritualistic behavior reminds one of visiting the zoo and seeing the zoo animals go about their daily routine without nary a change.  You might say, ‘What did you expect, their symbols are the Elephant and the Donkey?’ Well let’s just say I am tired of them.

First ritualistic behavior: It occurred when Audra Shay who at the time was running to be the Chairman of the Young Republicans responded to one of her friends bigoted and racist remarks on her Facebook page by acknowledging and supporting it. Her friend, Eric S. Piker wrote at 1:54 pm (grammatical mistakes his),

“Osama bin Lauden is the new terrorist….muslim is on there side …..need to take back this country from all these mad coons………and illegals,” eight minutes later at 2:02 Shay responded with “You tell em Eric! lol”

Some young Republicans on her page took exception to her response to the bigotry and racism. When Shay realized her mistake and that it might hurt her chances for the Chairmanship she released a statement,

I immediately deleted the derogatory and outright disgusting comments and subsequently posted a statement on my Facebook Status stating that in no way, shape or form are the comments posted by other individuals a reflection of me or my beliefs as an American, a Veteran, a Mother or a Candidate. I do not, nor would I ever, condone that type of language or behavior.

Did she also delete her comments in immediate response to Eric? She claims that she was unaware of the racial comments until later and that she was replying to her friend’s other comment. This doesn’t make much sense considering she had at least eight minutes to see and read her friend’s comments and what she was replying to. Even if this were the case it is highly suspicious considering that she has made equally ugly remarks in the past.

The Daily Beast noted, after an effigy of Sarah Palin was hung, she said,

What no ‘Obama in a noose? … I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose.” She’s also written that President Obama “attacks white people” and posted a video claiming Obama believes he has to help African-Americans over whites to “ensure his own salvation.”

The ritualistic aspects in this is another Republican caught saying or supporting racist and demeaning things about minorities. Also the knee jerk response when feeling the heat to apologize and distance themselves from views that they have a track record of holding.

Second ritualistic behavior: The Democrats in their usual reactionary manner jumped all over this to score political points. In reality, they have a right to jump on this and mock the Republicans but what they fail to do because either they don’t see it as a problem, or they see that they can’t score any political points off of it, is condemn not just the racist reference to remove “coons” and “illegals” but also the implication that all Muslims are with “Osama bin Laden.” No one, not the Huffington Post or any other liberal commentator even brought that up.

It continues the passive and narrow reactionary behavior of the Democrats — to feed off of the present sentimental feelings in culture while not being consistent on their principles by condemning bigotry in all its form and not be selective. We saw this during the Democratic primary in which accusations were leveled at Barack Obama that he was a Muslim. Instead of responding to these charges properly like Colin Powell did when he said, “the proper answer is he isn’t Muslim, but even if he was it shouldn’t matter” the Democrats reacted by in effect saying it was a “smear” to be a Muslim and called on supporters to “combat this smear.”

The lesson is that not much has changed with Republicans or Democrats and their perpetuation, enabling and disregard for anti-Muslimism and Islamophobia needs to be brought to their attention. Most importantly it highlights the fact that Islamophobia is not disconnected from other forms of prejudice. Many times, and this seems to be the rule, when you see an Islamophobe he is also a racist and vice-versa.

Clarion Fund

The Clarion Fund has released a new film following up on their 2005 movie Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West called The Third Jihad.  Third Jihad paints a picture of a nefarious plot by a cabal that includes all mainstream Muslim organizations to take over and dominate America. The movie, reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, centers around the purported discovery of a document describing a strategic secret plot by Muslims to undermine Democracy and replace it with Sharia’ laws (More on the movie below).

Unless you were sleeping in a cave during the 2008 Presidential election you’re probably aware that the mysterious Clarion Fund is the same organization that distributed 28 Million DVD’s of their controversial film Obsession, which compares Islam to Nazism, in newspapers in swing states across America.

The movie was widely discredited for its cast of radical and extreme pundits, some of whom (Daniel Pipes, Brigitte Gabriel, Walid Shoebat, Steven Emerson) we have featured on LoonWatch.  As our articles showed, these Islamophobes have a history of bigoted and derogatory statements regarding Muslims and Islam.

The film itself was compared to Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 pro-Nazi film Triumph of the Will. Broward-Palm Beach New Times called it “misleading and dangerous.” Jeff VanDenBerg, director of Middle East Studies at Drury University, called the film “a blatant piece of anti-Muslim propaganda.”

During the campaign to distribute Obsession, news reports at the time quickly revealed that their main motivation was to shift the focus during the Presidential election from the Economy to the issue of National Security, the area in which John McCain lead in polls:

“An editorial in the Palm Beach Post outlined the apparent political motivation behind the Clarion Fund campaign:

“Distribution of the DVD…was timed with the post-Labor Day start of presidential election season. About 95 percent of the papers that contained the DVD are in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire.

“Notice a pattern? Right, those are the swing states that most analysts believe will determine the election. The issue on which polls consistently show John McCain ahead of Barack Obama is national security. One way to make voters worry less about the economy and more about national security would be to send out a DVD that opens with clips of 9/11 and includes scenes of Muslims chanting ‘Death to America!’”

The Clarion Fund is linked to Aish HaTorah, an Israeli educational and advocacy group. During the election there was a wide outcry as to whether or not the Clarion Fund violated its non-profit status by promoting John McCain on its website.

According to the Delaware Department of Corporations, Robert (Rabbi Raphael) Shore, Rabbi Henry Harris and Rebecca Kabat incorporated Clarion Fund. All three of whom are reported to serve as employees of Aish HaTorah International.

This is the track record with which we are confronted when it comes to the Clarion Fund,  dishonest techniques stripped of any context in an attempt to further their own right-wing agenda.

The Third Jihad

This leads us to the Clarion Fund’s newest hit job that paints mainstream American Muslim organizations as a fifth column, insidious secret society looking to rule the United States. The Third Jihad is essentially an updated and reconfigured version of Obsession or as some have called it “Obsession on steroids.” Instead of the overt comparisons of Islam with Nazism, or of a cosmic battle between good and evil, the object this time is to warn against a threat they term  “Cultural Jihad” carried out from within by American Muslims.

In Third Jihad, just as in Obsession, there is the cliche disclaimer at the start of the film that the movie is not about the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful, yet i