The Passions (And Perils) Of Pamela Geller

Doug Chandler

Pamela Geller had had enough.

The right-wing blogger, whose vehement opposition to the planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero (a “mega-mosque” in her parlance) has earned Geller national headlines, rose from her seat at a Midtown diner last week and, fed up with the line of questioning, stormed out of a Jewish Week interview.

“Shame on you,” she shouted, “shame on you. Stop slamming the good guys.”

A journalist’s offense? Asking questions about her accuracy and her red-meat rhetoric.

The sense of drama seems, in part, to define Geller, who can be seen on the Internet frolicking in a bikini and posing in a skin-tight Superwoman outfit. Her blog “Atlas Shrugs” has referred to Democrats as “National Socialists,” has sided with Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian president charged with war crimes, and has claimed that Elena Kagan, the country’s newest Supreme Court justice and a Jew, admired “an architect” of Nazism. She has also likened President Barack Obama’s opposition to settlement growth on the West Bank to preparations for the Holocaust and has provided space to one writer’s view that Obama is Malcolm X’s love child.

Geller’s politics and tone have drawn a growing number of visitors to her blog, which she uses to promote other projects, including a provocatively named group, Stop Islamization of America, and her recently published book, “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.”

But it’s her opposition to the proposed Islamic center — an effort she helped fuel and now helps to lead — that has arguably won Geller the most attention. Recent articles in the Washington Post and on Salon.com have noted that Geller was among the handful of people calling attention to the project nine months ago, before it hit the national radar and when the host of a Fox News show could still interview Daisy Khan, wife of the center’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and wish her well.

Since then, Geller’s right-wing fans have hailed her as prophetic, especially for warning of the dangers posed by Muslims in this country, while progressives, moderates and at least some embarrassed conservatives see her as something entirely different: a radical activist who comes across as shrill, crude and offensive and who fails to distinguish between Islamic fanatics and the religion itself.

Those emotions are bound to escalate in the next week, as Geller plans a Sept. 11 rally in Lower Manhattan to protest the Islamic center, known as Park51.

But few people are likely to guess that the woman who has stirred so much passion is also a Jewish day school mom raised by a Yiddishkeit family in the Five Towns enclave of Hewlett, L.I.

For her part, Geller dismisses any suggestion that she put the whole story in motion as “nonsensical” and as “condescending to the American people, as if they don’t know their own minds. It’s an issue of common decency,” she said while sitting in the back of a Midtown diner. “And you can see that in the [polling] numbers,” which show 70 percent of Americans opposed to the project.

The one thing Geller does acknowledge is that “no one else was talking” about the center as she began addressing the issue on Atlas Shrugs. But no one should assume that Geller’s blog posts made the story the one it is today. Instead, as she sees it, awareness of the matter simply grew and, with it, opposition to the center.

But Geller has done more than simply write about the project. She has also organized much of the opposition, showing up at the May 25 community board meeting that heard public debate over the issue, convening the first rally against the center, in early June, and now, of course, planning next week’s rally. Geller attended the community board meeting with Robert Spencer, an author and fellow blogger with whom she often partners, where they and others often shouted down speakers in favor of the center, creating an atmosphere that reminded one board member, the son of a German Jewish refugee, of the Brown Shirt movement.

She has also debated the issue on Fox News, “The Joy Behar Show” and other TV programs, where she often raises her voice and talks over the other guests.

In person, though, the 51-year-old blogger comes across as charming, demure and even subdued, as long as she isn’t questioned or challenged too vigorously.

Like many New Yorkers, Geller appears to divide her life between “Before 9/11” and “After 9/11.” Before the terror attacks, she worked on the business side of the newspaper industry, spending the 1980s at the Daily News before moving to the New York Observer. She was mostly apolitical, although, if anything, she said, she leaned left, seeing everything “through the prism of abortion.”

All that changed after 9/11, Geller recalled, saying she “felt guilty that I didn’t know who attacked my country.” She began reading all the material she could about Islam, Geller said, citing such authors as Martin Gilbert, the British historian; Bat Ye’or, an Egyptian-born scholar whose politics are decidedly right wing; and Ibn Warraq, a former Muslim from Pakistan.

“I spent years studying the matter before I started blogging,” Geller said, adding that the more she read, the more she realized that journalists and historians were “whitewashing Islam.”

Today, Geller describes herself as a keen believer in individual rights — “the well from which all things spring” — and says the name of her blog, launched in 2004, reflects that. The name refers to the title of Ayn Rand’s most famous book, which is an inspiration for Geller. She also calls herself an ardent Zionist.

Much of her blog’s focus, though, springs from Geller’s view of Islam, which, is portrayed as a monolithic religion that can only be interpreted in a single way — the one most scholars associate with radical, Wahhabi Muslims.

“It’s not like Judaism, where you have these different levels of observance,” Geller said. “Islam is Islam. … There’s no way you can be a devout Muslim and not support jihad.”

The only moderate Muslims are those who are secular, Geller said. And she dismisses any Muslim who claims otherwise by insisting that he’s a liar — a follower of taqiyya, the Islamic principle that allows Muslims to mislead their enemies, according to Geller.

Comments such as those, by Geller and others, leave at least one local Muslim in disbelief.

“They talk about Islam as if it’s monolithic,” said Qanta Ahmed, a British-born physician who often writes about religion for the Huffington Post and other sites. “We’re 1.5 billion individuals from 57 countries and countless cultures.”

“‘Devout’ means devotion to one’s faith, and you can be very devout without being radical,” said Ahmed, whose articles have concerned such topics as the friendship and inspiration she has drawn from a number of Jews, including a rabbi; the admiration she often feels for Israel; and the hatred toward Jews conveyed in Palestinian textbooks and TV shows.

Discussing jihad, a word that means “struggle,” Ahmed said it’s not even mentioned in the five pillars of Islam, “the absolute basis of being a Muslim,” and there are three kinds of jihad to which Muslims refer. The most important, known as the “greater jihad,” is the internal struggle within each individual to be good, while the “lesser jihad” concerns the religious permission Muslims need to defend themselves against military attack.

“There is no such thing as a holy war in Islam,”Ahmed continued. “There are only just and unjust wars, and Islam is very clear about that.”

On the matter of faith, Geller herself is not especially observant, calling her children far more religious than she is. She sends two of her children to Jewish day school, although she prefers that any further information about her kids remain private — a consequence, she added, of the death threats she says she has received.

She grew up in a Conservative Jewish home — “more Yiddishkeit than by the book,” she said — and has visited Israel twice: once during college and, again, in 2006, when she blogged about Israel’s war with Hezbollah. But her views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are just as right-wing as her views on American politics.

In Geller’s eyes, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] are Jewish land; there are no settlers, only Jews living in the Jewish homeland; and the area’s Muslims should return the Temple Mount to Jewish hands.

Geller has also taken aim at Jewish leaders in the United States, comparing mainstream organizations to Jews before the Holocaust who ignored all the danger signs. She has also called J Street and the National Jewish Democratic Council “kapos,” a reference to the Jews in Europe who aided the Nazis.

Geller’s fans include Lori Lowenthal Marcus, founder of the right-wing, pro-Israel Z Street, who said “she’s definitely serving a need. She’s an indefatigable fighter and very brazen, which is necessary to raise the profile of the issues.”

Another view comes from Todd Gitlin, a progressive scholar who teaches journalism and sociology at Columbia University, who considers Geller part of “a long history” of firebrands devoted to “this sort of agitation. … These are people who have a fixation on some paranoid scenario,” he said, and they often become a focal point for wider passions.

While not discussing Geller specifically, Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a neoconservative think tank, said the tenor of the conversation regarding Islam in recent months has distressed him. The “good part” is that Americans are now pushing back against Islamacists, or radical Muslims, but the “bad part” is that many are now doing so “in a crude way,” calling Mohammed a pedophile and referring to all Muslims as terrorists.

Many of today’s bloggers, Pipes said, “came of age on 9/11” and haven’t done the serious study of Islam that he and others have. As a result, he added, much of what they write is based on ignorance.

For her part, Geller defends the tone of her blog, calling Atlas Shrugs “my living room and kitchen” — a place where she can kick back and yell, like some people shout at their TV. Her book and opinion pieces “are more studied and more measured.”

“There’s no gray area with me,” Geller said. “I know why I think what I think.”

(cross-posted from The Onion)

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was “perfectly happy” to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world’s second-largest religion.

“I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11,” Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam’s approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. “What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?”

“And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero,” continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. “No, I won’t examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people’s universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell.”

“Even though I am not one of those people,” he added.

When told that the proposed “Ground Zero mosque” is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, “I know all I’m going to let myself know.”

Gentries explained that it “didn’t take long” to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

“All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts,” said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country’s armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. “Period.”

“If you don’t believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka,” Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. “Or worse, a rape camp. That’s right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps.”

Over the past decade, Gentries said he has taken pains to avoid personal interactions or media that might have the potential to compromise his point of view. He told reporters that the closest he had come to confronting a contrary standpoint was tuning in to the first few seconds of an interview with a moderate Muslim cleric before hastily turning off the television.

“I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn’t want to hear,” Gentries said. “But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of ‘other’ to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities.”

Added Gentries, “That really put things back into perspective.”

Two takes on the issues revolving on Islamic cultural center that has been dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque.” One is a very serious toned and heart felt monologue from Keith Olbermann,

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0&feature=player_embedded 350 300]

The other is a satirical and hard hitting segment of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show called “Mosque-erade,”

If you listened to Pamela and company who would’ve thought there were New Yorkers for the mosque and cultural center?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBzK-bSkKzU&feature=related 350 300]

Barack Obama commented on the Cordoba Center that will be near Ground Zero, reaffirming freedom of religion as an essential American value.

Islamophobes were furious about this. For many of them this probably confirmed their belief that Obama is a Muslim.

Robert Spencer was on record writing,

Obama is in effect saying that you can build a triumphal mosque marking Islam’s superiority and victory — which is how the Ground Zero mosque will be viewed in the Islamic world — and you can lie about your funding, and lie about your commitment to interreligious dialogue and harmony, and refuse to denounce jihad terrorists, and all that is just fine with him.

Pamela Geller had this to say through an SIOA news release,

Obama “has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists and told the ummah (at an Iftar dinner on the third night of Ramadan) that he believes in and supports what will be understood in the Islamic world as a triumphal mosque on a site of Islamic conquest.”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvFUakL-bqw 350 300]

Obama throws support behind controversial Islamic Center

Washington (CNN) — President Obama threw his support behind a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center and mosque near New York’s ground zero, saying Friday that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.”

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” Obama said at a White House Iftar dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The president’s remarks drew praise from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced his support for the Islamic center last week.

Bloomberg compared Obama’s speech to a letter President George Washington wrote in support of a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. “President Obama’s words tonight evoked President Washington’s own august reminder that ‘all possess alike liberty,’ ” Bloomberg said in a statement.

“I applaud President Obama’s clarion defense of the freedom of religion tonight,” he said.

To learn more about the “ground zero” mosque, see CNN’s Belief Blog

Critics of the proposed Islamic center quickly denounced Obama’s remarks. “President Obama is wrong,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). “It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero. Unfortunately, the President caved into political correctness.”

“While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much,” King said in a statement. “The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from Ground Zero.”

What do you think about this issue? Tell us on video

Obama, who said he was speaking both as a citizen and as president, invoked the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which critics of the Islamic center cite as the main reason for preventing its construction.

“We must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan,” Obama said, according to his prepared remarks. “The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.”

“The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable,” he continued. “So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”

But Obama said one “reason that we will win this fight” against terrorism is “our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us — a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”

Repeatedly invoking the nation’s founders and examples of religious tolerance from American history, the president argued that national ideals and the Constitution demanded that the project proceed.

He noted that Thomas Jefferson hosted the the first Iftar dinner at the White House more than 200 years ago and said that the country had previously seen “controversies about the construction of synagogues or Catholic churches.”

“But time and again,” he said, “the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues.”

“This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” Obama said. “The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.”

The proposed Islamic center has provoked vocal opposition from some families of 9/11 victims and other groups. Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the plan, according to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Wednesday.

“Obama came out for the Islamic supremacist mosque at the hallowed ground of 911 attack,” Pamela Geller, a leading foe of the Islamic center, wrote on her blog Friday night. “He has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists.”

Muslim Americans, meanwhile, applauded the speech. “It was pitch perfect and it was cut and dry,” said Eboo Patel, executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core and a Muslim adviser to the White House on faith issues. “He said that our Founding Fathers built a nation on religious freedom where people from different faiths can pray and thrive and that is that.”

Some Muslims said they were surprised to hear the president weigh in on the controversy.

“It’s such a hot potato and he’s already got so much on his plate and people jumping on him for any hint of an Islamic connection,” said Akbar Ahmed, an American University professor who attended Friday’s White House dinner. “But he plunged in and took a very bold position.”

The Islamic center’s leaders say they plan to build the $100 million, 13-story facility called Cordoba House three blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks. The developer, Sharif El-Gamal, describes the project as an “Islamic community center” that will include a 500-seat performing arts center, a lecture hall, a swimming pool, a gym, a culinary school, a restaurant and a prayer space for Muslims.

On Wednesday, the project’s developers declined an offer by New York Gov. David Paterson to relocate the project to a state-owned site.

Earlier this month, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously denied landmark status for the building where the proposed Islamic center would stand, allowing the project to move forward.

Dennis A. Lipkin, an Israeli author, lecturer and future political hopeful thinks Israel is too socialist and wants it to be more like America. He also believes Islam is a “pyschosis” and that there is going to be a final battle between Judeo-Christians and Muslims.

Speaker wants to change Israeli policy

By CALEB SOPTELEAN/The Daily Inter Lake

Although Sept. 11, 2001, was a tragedy, “God sent the Muslim threat as a blessing because it brought together the Jews and Christians,” Lipkin said.

He said he believes many Jews will be killed leading up to the final battle, which he called “Mecca vs. Jerusalem.” The final battle is between Judeo-Christians and the Muslims, he said. “Islam is not a religion, it’s a psychosis,” he said.

“Bring them to the Lord or they’ll bring you to the sword,” he said, citing political scientist Samuel Huntington’s book, “Clash of Civilizations.”

Citing the Biblical book of Deuteronomy 11, Lipkin said God will defend Israel and its borders will run from Lebanan to Saudi Arabia.

At least *this* was a better stereotype...

Reuters reports:

Pakistanis pose as Indians after NY bomb scare

(Reuters) – Pakistani merchants and job seekers in the United States, still reeling from economic hardship since the September 11 attacks of 2001, are posing as Indians to avoid discrimination in the wake of the Times Square bomb attempt.

…

“A lot of Pakistanis can’t get jobs after 9/11 and now it’s even worse,” said Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of Brooklyn’s Pakistani American Merchant Association. “They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job.”

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, creating hostilities that ordinarily would lead a Pakistani to resent being mistaken for an Indian.

…

Merchants in New York, many of whom declined to be named, still remember reprisals after September 11. Soon after the attacks, there was a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn at a Pakistani restaurant, which is now closed.

The local merchants association has shrunk to 150 members, from about 250 merchants almost a decade ago.

The FBI also arrested many undocumented workers in the neighborhood, leading to a wave of deportations, and residents would call law enforcement to make claims against their neighbors, including many false claims, Choudhri said…”We are embarrassed that the name of Pakistan came up.”

Is this the back of some neo-Nazi's truck, or the cover of Robert Spencer's next book?

Everyone please welcome Rousseau, the newest addition to LoonWatch.  He will be a powerful addition to our already stellar team.  This is his first piece…

Robert Spencer, arguably the lead loon of the loon universe, has been caught defending a neo-Nazi. The whole ruckus started when the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained to the Virginia Department of Transportation about the license plate of Douglas Story. Story had a mural made on his truck of the World Trade Centers burning after the 9-11 attack, with the words “Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11.”

CAIR picked up on this loony truck driver’s mural and then apparently noticed his license plate number, which read “14CV88.” Ibrahim Hooper, communications director of CAIR, argued that this number was code for neo-Nazi white supremacist ideas; Hooper explained: “…Among neo-Nazis, 88 refers to ‘Heil Hitler,’ because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. White supremacists sometimes use the number 14 as shorthand for the 14-word motto, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’”

But Story shot back and claimed that the numbers were in honor of his favorite NASCAR drivers: Tony Stewart (who drives car No. 14) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (who drives car No. 88).

Story’s story wasn’t finished there. He went on to say that: “There is absolutely no way I’d have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis.” Story even argued that it would be outright crazy to call him a white supremacist or neo-Nazi, invoking the old “I-can’t-be-racist-because-I-have-a-Jewish/black/Muslim-friend” routine, saying: “My sister-in-law and my niece are Jewish. I went to my niece’s bar mitzvah when she turned 13 three years ago. Does that sound like something an anti-Semite would do?”

Robert Spencer demanded Ibrahim Hooper to issue an apology, saying:

Hamas-linked CAIR smears anti-jihad Virginia driver as Neo-Nazi

…CAIR’s whole story was false in the first place: the driver in question, Douglas Story, is not a neo-Nazi at all, but a racing fan. The alleged code numbers for neo-Nazi slogans were actually favorite race car drivers’ numbers.

Will Honest Ibe Hooper apologize to Douglas Story? Come on, Ibe! It would be the decent thing to do!

Spencer also argued the entire episode was a ploy by CAIR to link “anti-jihadists” like Spencer to neo-Nazi white supremacists:

The implication of the story, of course, was that anti-jihadists are neo-Nazis — which, despite the febrile fantasies of libelblogger Charles Johnson and his cohort, CAIR’s amiable stomach-stapled beekeeper Honest Ibe Hooper, flies in the face of the facts…

Facts?  Here are the facts, sir.  It looks like CAIR got the story right after all.  The Washington Post’s Brigid Schulte reported just a couple of days later that Douglas Story’s Facebook page was replete with white supremacist associations:

Arguing that his license plate was purely about NASCAR and had nothing to do with race, Story told me that he had a Jewish sister-in-law and had attended his niece’s bat mitzvah. He denied being anti-Semitic.

But here’s how he describes himself on Facebook:

“100% WHITE MAN, 100% ARYAN, 100% PRO-LIFE (Children are innocent), 100% PRO DEATH PENALTY (Criminal Scum aren’t innocent).
Over the past 28 years; I, like David Duke, have had an Awakening.”

Note to self: In these days of social media, Twitter and personal oversharing on the web, always check Facebook…

When I called Story to ask about the Facebook page, he continued to maintain that his license plate message had nothing to with racism. He stuck by his NASCAR story. “Southern white men. Southern white sport. What else needs to be said?” he said.

Story acknowledged that he thinks of himself as 100 percent Aryan. “Aryan is a Sanskrit word that means noble,” he said, “no matter what spin the liberal media tries to put on it as being a racist, hate word.”

He said he is an admirer of David Duke, who, he said was “reamed by the media because of his Klan affiliations.” “I am a white nationalist,” Story said. “I am in favor of the whites having their own homeland.” When I asked him where that homeland would be, he said he didn’t know. “The Pacific Northwest maybe. Alaska. Denmark. Greenland. Iceland.”

I asked if he really thought that the Holocaust was a hoax. “I don’t know what to think,” he said.

Well, well, Mr. Spencer. It seems you bit off more than you could chew by coming to the aid of this neo-Nazi white supremacist.  The facts seem to lend support to CAIR’s “febrile fantasies” that there is a relationship between so-called “anti-jihadists” and the neo-Nazi crowd.  (Did the Confederate flag painted on Story’s back window not alert Robert Spencer!?)

This is not the first time that Facebook has exposed Robert Spencer.  Remember when Spencer was caught joining a genocidal Facebook group?  And how many times will we catch Robert Spencer et al. associating with neo-Nazis and fascists!?  The connection is certainly there.  While we’re not equating the “anti-jihadists” and neo-Nazis, we are saying that they hang out in the same circles, something altogether unsurprising considering that both groups are fueled by bigotry and hatred towards “the other.”  Is it not interesting that “anti-jihadists” and neo-Nazis can agree on so much?  Certainly, the rhetoric of the “anti-jihadists” mirrors that of neo-Nazis and fascists.

In any case, will Robert Spencer eat his own words now?  The ferocious Spencer bellowed:

Will Honest Ibe Hooper apologize to Douglas Story? Come on, Ibe! It would be the decent thing to do!

Will Spencer have the decency to apologize to Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR? Will he post a correction to his anti-Islam hate blog about these developments to this story? Will Spencer do anything meaningful and respectful at all? Ever?

I, for one, am not holding my breath.

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.