How many of you have heard of taqiyya?  It’s a religious belief of Muslims where they can lie to infidels.  Read all about this fundamental Islamic doctrine right here.

Basically, it allows them to lie about what religion they belong to, among other things!  I didn’t believe it when I read Robert Spencer’s book, but just today a prominent Muslim-American named Wajahat Ali, known for drinking goat milk (that’s what Muslims drink), spilled his guts and wrote a tell-all piece for The Guardian.  Hear it straight from his own words how all Muslim-Americans know that President, or should I say Imam Barack Hussein Obama, is doing taqiyya and has the seed of Islam in him!  Wajahat Ali demands that Obama return the seed if he is not using it.  Will a fleet enema be sufficient to flush out the seed that Obama swallowed?

Check out the amazing article for yourself:

Great blog from Matthew Yglesias at ThinkProgress. He also links to Inconnu’s piece on Taqiyyah.

Obama’s Porkilicious Taqiyya

by Matthew Yglesias

Steve M at No More Mr Nice Blog falls for the White House spin hook, line, and sinker:

Anyone remember when candidate Barack Obama was getting grief for going to Philadelphia and sampling expensive Spanish ham? Doesn’t sound like something a secret Muslim would eat — nor is the honey-baked ham the Obamas served along with the turkey last Thanksgiving. The half-smoke he got at Ben’s Chili Bowl a couple of weeks before Inauguration Day is a sausage that’s half-pork, half-beef. Oh, and the beer at that beer summit didn’t quite comport with the teachings of the Koran, did it? But all that was just weaving a web of deceit, right?

I’ll admit that for a long time my own views were along these lines. After all, the very first time I met State Senator (and US Senate candidate) Barack Obama we were at a hotel in Boston (I believe it was the Westin Copley Place) on line at a breakfast buffet fighting for the tongs to grab some bacon. But then I learned all about taqiyya which proves that counter-evidence to the “secret Muslim” thesis only demonstrates how far the conspiracy goes.

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.”

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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.

Robert Dreyfuss

Robert Dreyfuss, contributing editor to the Nation Magazine and also a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones has a great blog post about anti-Muslim bigot Robert Spencer of SIOA-fame training and explaining Islam to the FBI and Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force.

This is how Robert Spencer will react: “Robert Dreyfuss is a leftard, dhimmi, who is tarnishing and libeling me!! Wah! Wah!”

Dreyfuss also links to us, and I urge our readers to take time out and comment on Dreyfuss’ blog piece, or at the least thank him for bringing this to light.

Anti-Muslim Bigot and Fanatic Explains Islam to the FBI and the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force

By Robert Dreyfuss

The Council on American Islamic Relations is making noise about the fact that an extremist, right-wing anti-Muslim rabble rouser was “invited to offer training to state and federal law enforcement officers.” It sounds like something that might have happened under the administration of President Bush, but no – this happened on Obama’s watch.

Robert Spencer, co-founder of the group Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), is the culprit.

According to CAIR, Spencer was called in recently to pontificate to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force. (The JTTF’s are law enforcement and intelligence coalitions that began Washington. Soon every jurisdiction wanted the federal dough for a JTTF, and after 9/11 the number of JTTF’s exploded.)

Says CAIR:

“Our nation’s law enforcement personnel should not receive training from the head of a hate group that seeks to demonize Islam and to prevent American Muslims from exercising their rights as citizens,’ said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Robert Spencer is the same individual who claims in his new book that President Obama is waging ‘war on America.’”

He noted that Spencer recently co-authored the book, “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America,” that sounds a “wake-up call for Americans to stop the Obama administration from limiting our hard-won freedoms, silencing our democratic forming in the 1990s in key areas thought to be vulnerable to terrorism, such as New York and voices, and irreparably harming America for generations to come.”
According to Loonwatch, the SIOA is so extreme that it seems almost satirical. Like a Tea Party phalanx of radical anti-Muslim bigots, the SIOA says that its goal is educate Americans “about about the threat that Islamic doctrine and those who support it present to our freedoms, and the future of our democracy and country.”  Its  organizers call themselves “scholar warriors/ideological warriors in the cause of American freedom and Constitutional government,” as well as in “the defense of… our society of liberty, knowledge, and human decency.”

Spencer’s co-founder, Pamela Geller, is a piece of work, too. Notes CAIR:

“Geller has posted images on her blog that include a fake photograph of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a Nazi uniform, another fake image of President Obama urinating on an American flag and drawings purporting to depict Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a pig. In a June 25 blog entry, Geller posted a video claiming that Muslims engage in bestiality.”
This needs repudiation – or, as Sarah Palin would say, refudiation – from the Justice Department, and quick.

By Glenn Greenwald

There are many bizarre aspects to Obama’s decision to try to suppress evidence of America’s detainee abuse, beginning with the newfound willingness of so many people to say:  ”We want our leaders to suppress information that reflects poorly on what our government does.”  One would think that it would be impossible to train a citizenry to be grateful to political officials for concealing evidence of government wrongdoing, or to accept the idea that evidence that reflects poorly on the conduct of political leaders should, for that reason alone, be covered-up:  “Obama and his military commanders decide when it’s best that we’re kept in the dark, and I’m thankful when they keep from me things that reflect poorly on my government because I trust them to decide what I should and should not know.”  It’s the fantasy of every political leader to have a citizenry willing to think that way (“I know it’s totally unrealistic, but wouldn’t it be great if we could actually convince people that it’s for their own good when we cover-up evidence of government crimes?”).

But what is ultimately even more amazing is the claim that suppressing these photographs is necessary to prevent an inflammation of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world generally and Afghanistan specifically.  That claim is coming from the same people who are doing this:

Up to 100 civilians, including women and children, are reported to have been killed in Afghanistan in potentially the single deadliest US airstrike since 2001. The news overshadowed a crucial first summit between the Afghan President and Barack Obama in Washington yesterday. . . .

This week’s airstrikes took place in the Taleban-controlled area of Bala Baluk, in Farah province. US military officials in Kandahar said that the number of fatalities was nearer 30, but the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that the death toll was far higher.

Jessica Barry, an ICRC representative, said that an international Red Cross team in Bala Baluk saw “dozens of bodies in each of the two locations” on Tuesday. “There were bodies, there were graves, and there were people burying bodies when we were there,” she said. “We do confirm women and children.”

And doing this:

The Obama administration has told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.

In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital. The Obama team determined that the Bush policy was correct: such prisoners cannot sue for their release.

And this:

American soldiers opened fire and killed a 12-year old boy after a grenade hit their convoy in Mosul on Thursday. . . .

“We have every reason to believe that insurgents are paying children to conduct these attacks or assist the attackers in some capacity, undoubtedly placing the children in harm’s way,” a U. S. military spokesman wrote in an email on Saturday.

But eyewitnesses said the boy, identified as Omar Musa Salih, was standing by the side of the road selling fruit juice – a common practice in Iraq — and had nothing to do with the attack.

And this:

The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil — indefinitely and without trial — as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And this:

In a federal court hearing in San Francisco this morning, a representative of the Justice Department said it would continue the Bush policy of invoking the ‘state secrets’ defense, which has been used in cases of rendition and torture.

And this:

The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday. . . .

Israel received approval from Congress to purchase 1,000 units in September and defense officials said on Sunday that the first shipment had arrived earlier this month ..

We’re currently occupying two Muslim countries.  We’re killing civilians regularly (as usual) — with airplanes and unmanned sky robots.  We’re imprisoning tens of thousands of Muslims with no trial, for years.  Our government continues to insist that it has the power to abduct people — virtually all Muslim — ship them to Bagram, put them in cages, and keep them there indefinitely with no charges of any kind.  We’re denying our torture victims any ability to obtain justice for what was done to them by insisting that the way we tortured them is a “state secret” and that we need to “look to the future.”  We provide Israel with the arms and money used to do things like devastate Gaza.  Independent of whether any or all of these policies are justifiable, the extent to which those actions “inflame anti-American sentiment” is impossible to overstate.

And now, the very same people who are doing all of that are claiming that they must suppress evidence of our government’s abuse of detainees because to allow the evidence to be seen would “inflame anti-American sentiment.”  It’s not hard to believe that releasing the photos would do so to some extent — people generally consider it a bad thing to torture and brutally abuse helpless detainees — but compared to everything else we’re doing, the notion that releasing or concealing these photos would make an appreciable difference in terms of how we’re perceived in the Muslim world is laughable on its face.

Moreover, isn’t it rather obvious that Obama’s decision to hide this evidence — certain to be a prominent news story in the Muslim world, and justifiably so — will itself inflame anti-American sentiment?  It’s not exactly a compelling advertisement for the virtues of transparency, honesty and open government.  What do you think the impact is when we announce to the world:  ”What we did is so heinous that we’re going to suppress the evidence?”  Some Americans might be grateful to Obama for hiding evidence of what we did to detainees, but that is unlikely to be the reaction of people around the world.

If we’re actually worried about inflaming anti-American sentiment and endangering our troops, we might want to re-consider whether we should keep doing the things that actually spawn “anti-American sentiment” and put American soldiers in danger.  We might, for instance, want to stop invading, bombing and occupying Muslim countries and imprisoning their citizens with no charges by the thousands.  But exploiting concerns over “anti-American sentiment” to vest our own government leaders with the power to cover-up evidence of wrongdoing is as incoherent as it is dangerous.  Who actually thinks that the solution to anti-American sentiment is to hide evidence of our wrongdoing rather than ceasing the conduct that causes that sentiment in the first place?

* * * * *

For a discussion of why the release of these photographs is so imperative and the very real value they could generate, see here and here.

* * * * *

Finally, here’s Rachel Maddow and Jonathan Turley last night excoriating Obama for relying on core Bush/Cheney rhetoric and reasoning to justify the cover-up of this torture evidence:

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UPDATE:  Federal District Judge Alvin Hellerstein (.pdf) and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (.pdf) have both rejected the Bush arguments — now the Obama arguments — for suppressing these photographs, and held the the law clearly requires their public disclosure.

For those wishing to defend Obama’s decision here (and, again, were any of you who are doing so criticizing Obama two weeks ago when he announced he’d release these photos?), please read these three paragraphs from Judge Hellerstein’s decision explaining why the Bush/Obama arguments in favor of suppression are so bankrupt, along with his quotation of a passage from Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s book arguing that “secrecy is for losers” and documenting how citizen trust in government secrecy is the linchpin of abuses of power.

UPDATE II:  The Washington Post‘s Dan Froomkin:

In trying to explain his startling decision to oppose the public release of more photos depicting detainee abuse, President Obama and his aides yesterday put forth six excuses for his about-face, one more flawed than the next.

Read Froomkin’s full column as he indisputably documents the truth of that claim.

UPDATE III:  Compare this excellent article in today’s New York Times by Carlotta Gall and Taimoor Shah about the effects of our ariel bombings in Afghanistan to Obama’s claim that concealment of these detainee abuse photos is necessary to avoid spawning “anti-American sentiment” in Afghanistan, and see how persuasive you find that claim to be.

Federal Judge Hellerstein, rejecting the Bush/Obama argument for suppressing the photographs:

Click here to read.

Judge Hellerstein, quoting Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  ”secrecy is for losers”:

Click here to read.

Glenn Greenwald

By Glenn Greenwald

What is wrong with this picture?

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Pamela Geller is up to her old antics, employing more over the top hyperbole peppered with frequent cases of verbal diarrhea.  Now she is saying that the Holocaust was the fault of the Mooslims, and that the Nazis were just adopting “Jihad.”

Nazis adopted the Muslim idea of Jihad –  total destruction and complete annihilation in the spirit of a Holy War.

Of course this was the next step for Pam, demonize the Muslims and Islam to its logical end, next she will be saying that Hitler was a Muslim. Where does she get this wild stuff, and then she claims that she isn’t a conspiracy theorist?

Pamela Geller seems to have stumbled on something that World War II scholars and Holocaust historians didn’t know, a fact that has been “suppressed” by the world in a conspiracy to further Islamic Jihad,

As the leading role the Islamic world played in the Holocaust comes out of the shadows and into the fore, and decent peoples recoil in repulsion, it is necessary for Islamic media, “scholars” and asshats-in-residence to rewrite history — as Islam has done so exceedingly and singularly well all throughout history.

Pam wants us to believe that the colonized Muslims in Africa and Asia somehow made the regular trip to Concentration Camps to gas Jews, and then went back home to be ruled by Europeans? Insane.

Other Insane stuff on her blog:

The not so new crusade against Muslim Chaplains in prison is also making the rounds on the anti-Muslim sites, and Pamela Geller is no exception. She lays it out succinctly as only a proud bigot can,

All Muslim Chaplains are Jihadists

Her insanity on Barack continues, calls him an “Usurper,” “Megalomaniac”, and something called “L-Dopa.”

This is the face of the Tea Party right wing, and Conservative blogs love her because she gives them what they want to hear; hate.  At least it’s a good laugh.

Here is a blast from the past from Keith Olberman who recognized the insanity of Pamela Geller a long time ago.(hat tip: Pamela Geller)

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Robert Spencer next to his Perpetual Serf Pamela Geller

Terry Krepel had an excellent piece on Pamela Geller in the Huffington Post, though what is “pretty” about Pamela?

Check it out:

Pamela Geller’s Pretty Hate Machine

Newsmax has had a bad run of late with its columnists.

Longtime writer John L. Perry penned a column advocating a military coup against President Obama; Newsmax removed it after a public outcry, and Perry hasn’t written for Newsmax since. After giving Bernard Kerik a column and spending months trying to rehabilitate his reputation amid corruption allegations, quietly put him aside after he pleaded guilty to several of the charges.

Then Pat Boone, in a Nov. 2 column, described Obama and his administration as “political voracious varmints” who must be dealt with, “figuratively, but in a very real way,” by “tenting” the White House the way one does with a house infested by rodents; Newsmax had to pull that one too, though Boone has continued as a columnist. (WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, does not object to Boone’s eliminationist rhetoric, as the column still resides there.)

So who’s next? We nominate Pamela Geller as the next Newsmax columnist most likely to have a claim quietly retracted.

Pamela Geller

Newsmax officially added Geller as a columnist in August. Her bio claims that at her regular blog, Atlas Shrugs, she is “bringing you the news you will not hear from the mainstream media, covering little-reported events of great import.” But of course, there’s no attention given to the wacky extremist views she holds.Geller — a former associate publisher of the New York Observer formerly married to a New York car dealer that owned a dealership linked not only to an alleged fraud scam but the killing of two police officers (the dealership is listed as partly owned by Geller, who has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the alleged scam) — is rabidly anti-Obama, anti-Islam and pro-birther. She has also had dalliances with European fascists and promoted the far-right British National Party. (Geller doesn’t think these folks are “neofascist,” apparently feeling that their anti-Islamic activism excuses their political leanings.) Geller’s Newsmax columns reflect these views.

Indeed, Geller — who once notoriously published a video blog of herself in a bikini — is one pretty hate machine.

Her very first Newsmax column, on Aug. 4, went deep into birther territory, rehashing discredited and irrelevant conspiracies regarding Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Geller spent a needlessly large amount of space on the case of Jay McKinnon, who in July 2008 posted what he claimed to be Obama’s birth certificate on the Daily Kos website that, according to Geller, “even to the layman’s eye, it was obvious that the Kos COLB had been altered.” Geller touted how the Israel Insider website broke the news that McKinnon “implicated himself in the production of palpably fake Hawaii birth certificate images.”

Missing from Geller’s account is McKinnon’s side of the story. In an interview posted on Daily Kos, McKinnon said that he posted the fake certificate to serve as a magnet for conspiracy theorists (like Geller). McKinnon also discussed Israel Insider, a right-wing, anti-Obama blog with ties to WorldNetDaily’s similarly right-wing, anti-Obama reporter Aaron Klein:

Opendna: Reuven Koret, publisher of Isreal Insider, has written that you admitted to forgery.

Jay McKinnon: Reuven Koret wrote me a number of emails before he published his article. Using a kind of Good Cop/Bad Cop style he alternatively offered to keep my statements off the record, and threatened to report me to DHS and CSIS and reveal my identity before an audience larger than DailyKos. When I asked for his questions, he sent me five which required that I both admit to a crime and suggested I implicate other innocent people (including Markos Moulitsas and unidentified members of the Obama Campaign staff) in a conspiracy. I regarded his overtures as a form of journalistic blackmail, in which I either told him what he wanted to hear or he would libel me on his website.

I informed him that I believed his article was based on libel and provided him with this statement: “I believe there is overwhelming evidence that Senator Obama is a natural born US Citizen, and I have no evidence to contradict that belief.”

Evidently that wasn’t what he wanted to hear because a few days he published his article omitting that quote.

Opendna: What do you think of Reuven Koret?

Jay McKinnon: He appears to write under his own name and is skillful at his craft: smearing his ideological opponents. I would not call him a journalist, investigative or otherwise. An internet pundit, maybe. Probably just a blogger who thinks writing scurrilous things about Senator Obama is good for site traffic.

Geller then went on to claim that the birth certificate posted on Obama’s campaign website is a “horrible forgery,” according to the analysis of “Techdude.”Geller summarized “Techdude’s” credentials:

He is an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the American College of Forensic Examiners, the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, the International Information Systems Forensics Association — the list goes on.

He is also board certified as a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. He has been performing computer based forensic investigations since 1993 (although back then it did not even have a formal name yet) and he has performed countless investigations since then.

Only, not so much. Not only has “Techdude’s” analysis of the birth certificate been discredited, his credentials have been called into question as well.

Geller also referenced other baseless Obama conspiracies, such as “the passport on which he traveled to Pakistan in 1981.” Surprisingly, though, she dismissed the Kenyan birth certificate that WorldNetDaily desperately wanted to believe was real as an “obvious forgery.”

Geller then complained about the “veritable birth certificate circus” for distracting right-wingers, blaming not ringleaders like herself for this situation but … Obama:

Let’s not cloud the issue. Obama’s COLB was altered. He should produce the vault copy. Then the opposition can get on with the business of stopping his destruction of the economy and his weakening of American hegemony as he pursues his disastrous foreign policy.

Geller doesn’t seem to comprehend the possibility that the “circus” could easily end when circus clowns like herself choose to stop telling lies.

When a report surfaced in October purporting to describe a college thesis Obama wrote, Geller was among the right-wingers to promote it at her blog — at least, until it was proven to be a fraud. Writing about it in her Oct. 27 Newsmax column, Geller not only embraces the fake-but-accurate defense — that Obama could have plausibly written it — but also invents a way to blame Obama for the whole thing:

If Barack Obama would release his Columbia thesis, this latest media pseudo-controversy would never have happened. But now the tittering hyenas on the left are howling at the moon over the satire of Obama’s thesis that was taken for the real thing by Rush Limbaugh, as well as by Denis Keohane at The American Thinker and Michael Ledeen at Pajamas Media.

The fake thesis has Obama criticizing the Constitution, saying that “the so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

That sounded to me like something Obama would have said, so I cited it and ran it with it at my blog AtlasShrugs.com. But when I couldn’t find the actual link to what purported to be the “first ten pages” of Obama’s thesis, I took it down.

But bear in mind one thing: as Michael Ledeen says, “it worked because it’s plausible.”

Funny how the same defense right-wingers hated when CBS employed it in the case of the Bush National Guard papers is embraced by them when they’re caught repeating bogus information.

Geller went on to falsely portray Obama’s statements in a 2001 radio interview in order to fit her preconceived script that Obama wants to redistribute the nation’s wealth:

He said that it was a tragedy that the Constitution wasn’t radically reinterpreted to force redistribution of the wealth: “I am not optimistic,” he said, “about bringing about redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.” He praised the civil rights movement and its “litigation strategy in the court” for succeeding in vesting “formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples.”

In fact, as ConWebWatch documented when other right-wingers did the same thing, Obama never claimed it was a “tragedy that the Constitution wasn’t radically reinterpreted to force redistribution of the wealth.” What Obama called a tragedy was the civil rights movement’s reliance on the court system to bring about change instead of grassroots work.

Geller went on to write:

This was the fault of the Supreme Court and the Constitution itself: “But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical.”

And that was because of the constraints of the Constitution: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.

“It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.”

That’s a false interpretation as well. Obama never expressed a desire for the court to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” during that interview, as Geller claimed; he was merely pointing out that it didn’t.

Sometimes Geller just explodes with visceral hatred for Obama, as she did in a Nov. 17 column on the decision to try suspected terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court instead of a military court:

President Obama is dropping another O-bomb on America with the decision to try the masterminds of the shocking attack of Sept. 11, 2001, in a New York courtroom.

That’s right: Obama is trying to reduce the Sept. 11 act of war to a law enforcement issue. So our wartime enemy is going to face a civilian trial in New York City. It’s another O-bomb on American leadership.

[...]

America going on a witch hunt and prosecuting those who kept this country safe from people like Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, as Obama has announced he intends to do, sets back our moral authority. America turning her back on the jihad against women, Christian, Jews, and non-believers has set back America’s moral authority. America electing a radical for a President has set back America’s moral authority.

America electing an America-hater for president vanquished our moral authority.

[...]

This is yet another vile chapter in the Obama presidency. As long as he is president, the man will never stop punishing America for being so foolish as to elect him.

Geller hates Obama as much as she hates Islam. Here’s one of her anti-Muslim rants, from a Nov. 12 column:

We are witnessing an Islamized America. This is well beyond political correctness. We are enforcing Shariah. We will not insult Islam. That is Shariah. We self censor. That is Shariah. We disrespect ourselves, our nation, so that we might respect Islam. This is dhimmitude.

[...]

Every “Soldier of Allah” who goes jihad is an enemy combatant. Every devout Muslim who believes in the word of the Quran has his duty to Islam, her call to jihad. Hence this terrible act of war, the 14,363 Islamic attacks across the world since 9/11, and all of the relentless plots and plans to take down America in the past month alone. Devout Muslims should be prohibited from military service. Would Patton have recruited Nazis into his army?

One of Geller’s biggest cause celebres in her Newsmax column is Fathima Rifqa Bary, an Ohio teen who fled to a Florida pastor claiming her parents want to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity. But Geller took a one-sided view of the Bary case, ignoring exculpatory evidence.

In an Aug. 13 column, Geller hyperbolically asserted: “Rifqa’s testimony is a plea to the free world to stand for its values and its principles. How far we have fallen when a young woman is pleading to be free in the land of the free, home of the brave. Rifqa Bary’s life hangs in the balance. The West should do everything in its power to save her.”But the full facts of the case diverge greatly from what Geller wrote. As Christianity Today reported, Bary’s story is being promoted by the pastor who whom she fled, Blake Lorenz, whom the girl found through Facebook, and the parents are telling a much different story:

The attorney representing Bary’s mother told Orlando-based 10TV News that they were “allowing [Bary] to explore her Christianity,” and that Bary wasn’t fearful until she met Pastor Lorenz, who holds Bary tightly throughout the video.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Jerry Cupp with the Columbus missing persons bureau disputes Bary’s claims, telling The Columbus Dispatch that Mohamed Bary has known about his daughter’s conversion for months and appears to be caring. And today, the attorney for Bary’s parents issued a statement that they have never threatened Bary: “If this case is perceived as a clash of religions, it is because Mr. Lorenz recklessly and without authorization put someone else’s child in front of television cameras to publicly renounce her previous faith,” McCarthy said in the statement. “The parents who love Rifqa are in the best position now to protect her from the mess that Mr. Lorenz has made.”

Further, as religious blogger Richard Bartholomew points out, the pastor to whom Bary fled, Blake Lorenz, “believes that he receives special personal messages from God about the imminent end of the world,” which raises questions about whether he’s exploiting Bary to promote his own ministry.

Christianity Today concluded:

Of course, believers can rejoice that this teenager has come to Christ in a cultural context in which it would be difficult to betray her parents’ teaching. And if Bary’s claims are true, we can also hope that her legal case is handled fairly and wisely, and that she finds support from Christian mentors and friends. But none of this requires that Christians be quick to use Bary’s claims to prove that Muslims — in this case, her parents and mosque leaders — are intent on killing Bary because their beliefs make them inherently violent.

That last point is exactly what Geller appears to want to push by ignoring the full story. indeed, Geller used an Aug. 17 column to defend Lorenz via misdirection: She doesn’t deny the accusation, asserting instead that Islam, “the group that silently approves of the murder of a daughter who shames her family by not wearing the proper head dress … or by choosing another religion (like Rifqa Bary),” is the real cult and not “the group that offers sanctuary to a poor threatened girl.”

Geller didn’t note that the claim of receiving personal messages directly from God is arguably de facto evidence of a cult leader, nor did she mention that Ohio police have said that Bary’s parents have known about Bary’s conversion for months and “appear to be caring.”In an Aug. 24 column, Geller accused the “media shills and Islamic machinery in the United States” of distorting the Bary case. But of course, Geller was still hurling her own distortions.

Geller’s main target of ire is Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, whose column pointing the anti-Muslim bias surrounding the Bary case Geller immediately distorted: “Thomas got nothing right. Not one detail. Further, at no point did he consider Rifqa’s testimony. At no point did he consider the consequences of Rifqa’s testimony. At no point did he consider the risk to Rifqa’s life.”

Actually, Thomas got numerous facts correct — facts Geller would rather not have get out, such as pointing out that Bary’s father is “a middle-class jeweler with no documented history of abuse and no record of radical actions or beliefs” and noting pictures of Bary in a cheerleader outfit: “Somehow I can’t imagine a Muslim extremist allowing his daughter to wear short skirts and shake pompoms in front of a crowd of infidels.”

Geller responded to that last point with the nonsequitur: “Thomas knows nothing of honor killings in the West.”

Geller went on to complain: “The media reported only the parents’ Islamist narrative — giving Rifqa’s story no air time or ink. They repeated the lies over and over again.” But Geller does not know that the parents are lying, or that Rifqa is telling the truth. (Nor do we, for that matter.) Yet Geller has already made up her mind to promote her anti-Islam agenda, which of courses he denies she’s doing, insisting instead that “there was an anti-Christian bias. The mainstream media vilified the good Christians who provided sanctuary to Rifqa, who sought only to escape her father’s threat to kill her.” Again, Geller failed to mention the cult-like tendencies of the “good Christians who provided sanctuary to Rifqa.”

Further contradicting herself, Geller concludes with an anti-Islamic rant:

Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Geert Wilders: these truth tellers live under 24-hour guard because of Islamic death threats, which they received because they spoke the truth about Islam. Rifqa Bary has committed a far worse crime from the Islamic perspective: the crime of apostasy. Her testimony is far more dangerous to the stealth jihadists in America.

Rifqa Bary is the highest value target in America. She should be under 24-hour guard. And she should be given a fair shake in the media.

And she’s accusing other people of distorting the case?

Similarly, Geller’s Sept. 14 Newsmax column is one long screed against Newsweek for doing what Geller won’t — tell both sides of the Rifqa Bary story. Geller complained that the Newsweek stated that “Muslim scholars say that in Islam, there’s no such thing as an honor killing for apostasy,” asserting that “Newsweek was conflating two distinct Islamic practices: honor killing and the killing of apostates.” She didn’t mention that it appears that Bary herself is the one conflating the two, as news reports featuring references to “honor killings” indicate. As Richard Bartholomew noted in August:

The girl gives a rather strange interpretation of what an “honour killing” is for; rather than being the remedy for a perceived dishonour suffered by a family, she tells the journalist that to kill her would be an especially ”great honour” because she is the the first Christian in her family for “150 generations” and it would show her family’s love for Allah (Lorenz concurs with a “yes” at 5:03). This seems to me to be a garbled “Christianized” understanding of the phenomenon, making it into something like a human sacrifice.

Geller went on to complain that Newsweek described a “33-page memorandum that Rifqa’s attorney, John Stemberger, filed about the Noor Islamic Center’s connection with Islamic terrorists and radical elements” as being filled with “innuendo and provocative allegations.” In fact, Newsweek supports its claims:

Among them: that the center is connected to an FBI terror probe (which the FBI denies) and that its CEO has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (which, along with every other allegation, the Noor Center denies). The mosque is actually regarded as mainstream and regularly hosts interfaith events.

Geller’s sole source for contradicting the Newsweek article is “Jamal Jivanjee, Rifqa’s friend and confidante.” But Geller offered no independent confirmation of these claims; Jivanjee is clearly too close to the situation to be an objective source of information. Yet Geller treated his claims as incontrovertible truth.

Why is Geller so afraid of the other side being told? That she is so intent on trying to discredit an article that commits the apostasy (as far as Geller is concerned) of telling both sides of the story belies a certain insecurity about the side of the story she’s on.

Geller again declares of Rifqa: “As a high-profile apostate, she is Islamists’ highest value target right now.” If she’s “high-profile,” it’s anti-Muslim activists like Geller that made her one. Which means she’s partially culpable for any harm that comes Rifqa’s way.

Geller’s Dec. 2 column purported to be outraged that Bary — who by this time had been returned to Ohio and placed in foster care — is “in imminent danger of being returned to her family” and is being “deprived of access to the phone and Internet as well as “pastoral guidance,” adding, “Convicts, murderers, rapists, and pedophiles all have access to ‘pastoral guidance.’” Given that the pastor to whom Bary fled believes that he receives special personal messages from God about the imminent end of the world, a lack of “pastoral guidance” is probably a good thing. Of course, Geller is silent about the pastor’s beliefs.

Geller also repeated unsupported claims of hostile Muslims, alluding to “powerful and influential Islamic supremacists” and “myriad busts for jihad activity in recent weeks.” She also again treated “close friend and fellow ex-Muslim” Jamal Jivanjee as a credible source, even though he’s clearly too close to the case to be objective. Indeed, Geller quoted Jivanjee aping her: “If you are incarcerated in an American prison today, you have the right to have a visit from a pastor. Rifqa Bary does not have this most basic right that most criminals have today.”

Geller summed up by claiming that Bary is “isolated, alone, and in danger of being returned to Islamic jihadists who believe apostates from Islam should be killed. What has happened to America?”

The facts, however, are different than what Geller suggests. As the Columbus Dispatch has reported, no credible threats to Bary have been found by authorities in either Florida or Ohio, and Ohio officials are attempting to work out a solution between Bary and her family. A caseworker wrote that there are “severe differences between the parents’ and Rifqa’s perceptions of what has occurred.”

Putting fearmongering before the truth, however, is what Geller does. And that — coupled with her hyperbolic attacks — makes Geller the odds-on favorite to be the next Newsmax columnist to write something her publisher will have to walk back or retract.

The conspiracy theories swerving around Barack Obama continue, now right-wingers are claiming Obama and MoveOn are working with CAIR to harm America. A book needs to be written about all these conspiracy theories.

Obama, MoveOn working with CAIR

Daniel Pipes: Bizarre Fixation on the Hijab

(Read an UPDATE here)

In a running column entitled, “Hijab on Western Political Women,” failed academic turned zaney anti-Muslim blogger, Daniel Pipes, sets out to (in his own words):

For fun, how about collecting those instances when female political leaders, especially leftist ones, don the hijab (Islamic headscarf)?

(What normal person sitting before a computer thinks up of such a bizarre thing to do when trying to “have fun” anyway? Welcome to the world of Pipes I guess. )

Pipes then includes photos of princess Diana, queen Elizabeth, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Angelina Jolie, among others, wearing a Hijab when at various mosques.

This caused us to wonder, surely Mr. Pipes is not sexist. Surely, he would invite the same scrutiny to the men in their lives: princess Diana’s husband and queen Elizabeth’s son (prince Charles, heir to the British throne), Laura Bush’s father-in-law and husband (George H.W and George W., both U.S. Presidents), Chelsea Clinton’s dad and Hillary Clinton’s husband (Bill Clinton, U.S. President) and Angelina Jolie’s dad (actor Jon Voight). Surely Mr. Pipes would not want to give those men a pass, especially given all of them (but the last) are far more important politically than their women.

Well since Daniel Pipes is not very good at holding a mirror up to his face, we here at loonwatch volunteered to do that for him. Seeing that Mr. Pipes is Jewish, we put together the following photo display (true to a Daniel Pipes style presentation) – one that is relevant to his own religion not someone else’s – to see what he thinks of it and what he reckons it signifies.

So “for fun”, Mr. Pipes, how about  collecting those instances when Western (and Eastern) male political (and non-political) leaders, especially leftist (and rightist and centrist) ones, don the kippah or yarmulke (Jewish skullcap)?

We start with the most politically powerful men on the planet, U.S. presidents:

U.S. President Bill Clinton wearing a yarmulke

U.S. President George Bush wearing a yarmulke, flanked by Israeli ministers Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert

U.S. President Barack Obama wearing a yarmulke while praying at the Western Wall

U.S. President George Herbert Bush (the father) wearing a yarmulke as he kisses the Western Wall

U.S. President George Bush wearing a yarmulke as he prays at the Western Wall

President George Bush wearing another yarmulke

American senator Joe Lieberman puts a yarmulke on the head of then presidential candidate, senator John McCain

And other politically powerful world leaders:

British prime minister, Gordon Brown, wearing a yarmulke

Then British prime minister Tony Blair wearing a yarmulke

French president Nicolas Sarkozy wearing a yarmulke

Then Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi wearing a yarmulke as he prays at the Western wall

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin wearing a yarmulke

Prince Charles of Wales, regent to the British crown, wearing a yarmulke

And other American political men:

"America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City, wearing a yarmulke as then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon looks on

Clinton's Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross wearing a yarmulke

US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, wearing a yarmulke - not in a temple but at a Republican National Convention

And to match Angelina Jolie, how about some entertainers including her own father:

Evangelical Christian actor Stephen Baldwin wearing a yarmulke - not at a temple but at a Republican National Convention

Actor Jon Voight (Angelina's dad) holding up his yarmulke at a Republican National Convention

The king of pop, Michael Jackson, wearing a yarmulke

And how about other world faith leaders:

His holiness, the Dalai Lama, wearing a yarmulke as he prays at the Western Wall

And speaking of political mixing with religious:

The "Mccippah", a play on "McCain" and "Kippah" (yarmulke), a feature at the Republican National Convention 2008

Now, we have a few simple questions to ask Mr. Pipes:

First let’s get real: clearly, Mr. Pipes is not interested in some irrelevant, uneventful “fun” on that merry temple of love and good times of his, danielpipes.com. Everything he writes and puts on there he does so with a purpose in mind. It seems that his “little fun” hijab photo display was yet another sorry attempt to cry “Islamization” and “dhimmi” and all of the favorite concepts he and his friends love to evoke.

So here goes the questions:

1. Do you believe that non-Muslim Western women who wear a hijab when visiting mosques or other Islamic religious settings are doing it as a sign of respect, or a sign of capitulation and a consequence of Islamization?

If the former then what’s the point of your running photo display? And if the latter which more logically seems to be the case, then:

2. Do you believe that non-Jewish Western men who wear a skullcap when visiting a temple or other Jewish religious settings are doing it as a sign of respect, or a sign of capitulation and a consequence of Judaization?

If the former, then why the double standard? And if the latter then why haven’t you sounded the alarm to save the West from Judaization.

More questions:

3. What would you say and how would you react if Western political women not only wore the hijab at the mosque but prayed there while they are at it? Would you see it as a lovely sign of camaraderie, an expression of tolerance, a sign that we all share a common God? Or would you cry “dhimmi”? Just curious.

(If the latter then kindly educate us: what is the “dhimmi” equivalent of a Western political man – a head of state no less – who does the same but within the context of Judaism rather than Islam?)

4. You seem to gloat about the reporter who took off the “Chador” (a traditional Islamic dress worn in conservative Iran) and threw it at Imam Khomeini whom she was interviewing. Now, I personally believe that Khomeini was a loony Imam. But I am just curious, would you also gloat if a reporter threw a yarmulke at some loony rabbi like say, Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef or Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira or Rabbi Jon Hausman? Just curious.

5.  Are you aware that Eritrea is not an Islamic country and that it has as many Christian citizens as it does Muslim. Are you aware that Hillary Clinton is not necessarily wearing a hijab in the photo of her in Eritrea, but a traditional Eritrean loose shawl worn by both Muslims and Christians there? Are you aware that every other American woman in that photo (and there are at least three) are not wearing a similar shawl clearly proving that it is Hillary’s choice not some enforced evil Islamic spell on Western women as seems to be implied. Q: So if it’s neither enforced, nor a hijab to begin with, why do you use that photo. A: expediency. Typical of Mr. Pipes.

6. Lastly, if some blog put up a display like the one above with the insinuation that there is some insidious force at play, would you not cry anti-Semitism? SO, given your photo display and the accompanying shady commentary, aren’t readers then well within their rights and the bounds of reason to cry Islamophobia? Just curious.

Mr. Pipes, we await your response to our questions. For the rest of our dear readers, this has been a little peek inside the  paranoid mindset of an Islamophobe and the convoluted, often petty, ways in which it processes our world.

(For the record, LoonWatch, unlike Mr. Pipes, takes the consistent position that both non-Muslim women wearing hijabs in Islamic religious settings and non-Jewish men wearing yarmulkes in Jewish religious settings is a sign of respect and nothing more. And that wearing them outside religious settings is indeed strange but a personal choice that is no cause for alarm or geopolitical analysis).

- Zingel

Author’s Note: Daniel Pipes makes a lame attempt to address the hijab/yarmulke comparison in a 2008 addendum to his article in which he “rejects” the comparison altogether, stating in typical Pipesian delusional style that such a comparison is irrelevant, and positing that the “tallit” the Jewish prayer shawl is instead more comparable to the Hijab.

This is nonsense.

The tallit is not worn in public everyday life the way Muslim women wear the Hijab in daily public activity (for Hijabis); however, Jewish skullcaps are worn in daily public living (for Jewish Orthodox men). The yarmulke, not the tallit, is the closest Jewish analogy to the Hijab.

He also implies that half the pictures of Western women wearing the Hijab is not in a mosque while most Western men who wear the skullcap are in a temple. Not true, they are exactly analogous and proportional. Most of the pictures of the Western women wearing a Hijab is in fact in a mosque or mosque setting and it is usually a simple headscarf not some full body chador as he implies but even his collection of pictures clearly contradict (Iran, a conservative theocracy, being the exception not the norm). On the flip side, our photo display has photos that debunk his insinuation that Western men wear yarmulkes only in temples.
READ AN UPDATE HERE

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.

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Note to LW Readers: Please Welcome our newest blogger, “Darter” who will be contributing regularly to the site.

We continue our coverage of the looniest blogger in the world, Pamela Geller, with a collection of her paranoid delusions and distortions from this past week.

First up, the SIOE (Stop the Islamisation of Europe) protest against the building of a new mosque in London. The event garnered an impressive fifteen “freedom fighters”, but Pamela’s outrage was reserved for the local Jews who refused to take part in the divisive event.

KAPO Mentality Takes Hold In The Face Of Islamic Annihilationists’ Second Holocaust

Rabbis attacked the campaign. “The show of unity from the Jewish community is in defiance of a website appeal by SIOE for 1,000 Jews carrying the Israeli flag to turn up.” Even the Rabbis abandon Israel when the going gets rough.

Stop the Islamisation of Europe held a rally protest in what can only be described as an Islamic fortress in the heart of Harrow. I strongly urged Jews to attend. Islamic anti-semitism is more poisonous, more dangerous than even Nazism was to the Jews. This promise of Jewish genocide is made “sacred” by Islamic texts.

As loonwatch has documented before, Euro-supremacists often use the Israeli flag to conceal their anti-Semitic tendencies, believing it gives them a free pass for their anti-Muslim bigotry. Pamela assumes that support for Israel is the only issue concerning Jews. Obviously the rabbis did not appreciate the misuse of the flag of Israel for Islamophobic propaganda.

Next up, a bizarre “stealth jihad” delusion from Pamela, Sharia Coke: 

This is Sharia going global. They are using local Muslims the world over to demand Sharia adherence by corporations and by the market place.

This is slowly leading to Nuremberg like Jewish laws as products are being branded as Jewish.

We all know that taking over the soda industry is one of the keys to the Mooslim domination of the world! Per her modus operandi, anything Muslim related can be assumed to be part of a global plot to impose Shari’ah law on unsuspecting dhimmis. And you can always throw in a Nazi reference for good measure.

Along the same lines, Pamela is upset that a Muslims group in Minnesota has put up an innocuous billboard  inviting people to ask questions about Islam. Ignorance keeps Pamela in business, so I can understand her strong opposition. I say, why can’t Muslims be allowed to educate the public about their faith? Do these same people who rail against Muslims have a problem when Christian groups put up billboards calling people to find Jesus? I imagine not. But with Muslims, it must be a jihadi plot.

Islam: This is Defamation of Religion

As a Jew, I am offended to my core. Muslims have no right to invoke Moses and Abraham. This is a delegitimization of Judaism. It is offensive and vile. And while Jesus is not my guy, the same thing goes for him. It is a delegitimization of Christianity. These are not Muslim prophets.

If people want to convert to Islam, goodbye Charlie. But leave my shiz alone. Vultures.

The belief that all the prophets, from Adam to Muhammad, carried the same message of Islam is a central belief for Muslims. Why not use this to bridge gaps between Muslims, Christians, and Jews? Certainly common ground can be found between the Abrahamic faiths.  But Pamela has such a knee-jerk reaction to anything Islamic that her loony mind can only see it as a delegitimization of Judaism and Christianity.

She then turns her attention to one of her favorite targets, President Barack Obama. Some veiled racism from Pamela the international relations expert, Obama acts “gangsta” but is really buddies with Iran, North Korea and the Mooslims.

Obama Threatens

He gets all tough and gangsta to those who don’t bend to his will, but he kisses the ass of Iran, North Korea and the OIC.

Her thoughts on the GITMO transfer to Illinois?

Outrage: GITMO Comes to Chicagoland

Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois. Has anyone asked the people of Chicago if they want KSM’s soul mates in their state? Obama’s treachery is breathtaking. A killer’s paradise.

In fact, the town of Thomson, Illinois is looking forward to the economic boost from the prisoner transfer. The filling of the maximum-security prison would bring 3000 jobs to an area where 11% are unemployed. But why let facts get in the way of a good story? Such are the delusions of Pamela Geller. We will continue to expose her Islamophobia despite her efforts to call it common sense.

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.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wo1tw6RvfM 300 250]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze5dbxPO8cU 300 250]

More myths about Barack Obama being a Mooslim and other nonsense from Tel Aviv streets documented by Max Blumenthal.

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:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ORnwDS7Deg&feature=player_embedded 300 250]

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.

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.

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:

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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.

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Talk about having an agenda, in this case the shameless attempt to play on people’s fears to make a few bucks. It is only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from the next episode when TownHaller’s like Pamela Geller have their veiws of Obama being a Muslim parroted by Bill Keller.

Pamela Geller

What do you get when you combine the most outlandish gaffes of Anne Coulter, the most awkward monologues of Sarah Palin, the senility of the crazy McCain Lady, filter any remaining logic out of it and give it a keyboard in the Bronx?

The answer is the looniest blogger ever: Pamela Geller. If you are unaware of who Pamela Geller is then we apologize for bringing her being into your world, but she is all too familiar to those of us who browse the internet and have come across her shrill and plainly insane blogging on Atlas Shrugs. (Given the amount of hallucinations on that blog, Atlas Shrugs should properly be renamed Atlas Drugs).

What is it though that Pamela believes in? What does she blog about?

Pam has the distinction of being the originator and pusher of some of the most vile and obscene conspiracy theories on the internet. Mostly dealing with Islam and Muslims but also Barack Obama, and the two are combined — A LOT. In one of her recent tirades titled, CNN Tells, Sells More Lies About Palin — it’s Time to Expose the truth about Obama, Geller writes,

So why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections? My question is, it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff. Why aren’t they pursuing that story? Find the ho, give her a show!

Here she calls on CNN to investigate Obama’s “strange sexual predilections.” She also says that it is “well known” but then sneaks in “allegedly” that Obama was “involved with a crack whore in his youth.”  This is just the beginning of the craziness. She then goes on to state that she believes that President Obama’s trip to Pakistan in the 80′s was originally to go for drugs but that he became indoctrinated into Jihad.

Back in the early 80′s, there were only two reasons to travel to Pakistan. Jihad or drugs. I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad. (He did, after all, change his name to Barack Hussein Obama from  Barry Soetoro, upon his return from that trip).

Real good investigative work Pam! He changed his name to what had always been his name and that shows that he is a Jihadist? For the uber-racist Pam Geller, drugs is a connotation for Black and Jihad is a connotation for Muslim; a Black man can only travel to get drugs, and a Muslim country can only offer travelers Jihad.

Additionally, Pam Geller has an unhealthy obsession with Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. For Pam the old adage do not speak ill of the dead has no resonance, in fact she can’t even stop her self from speaking slanderous lies about the dead.

Pam, that ever-vigilant firecracker of a reporter broke a story that “even CNN didn’t care to touch.” What was this highly neglected breaking story? Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcolm X!  In her 50,000 word rant, Pam Geller toys with all sorts of theories including the suggestion that Obama’s mom somehow had an amorous hook up with Malcolm?

Barack Hussein Obama Jr Malcolm X Barack Hussein Obama Sr. Barack Hussein Obama Sr., Tom Mboya, and Philip Ochieng, all share common physical features of the Kenyan Luo tribe: Modest stature under six feet, round faces, small chins, wide set eyes, slanted back foreheads, and retracted hairlines…none of these features are shared by Malcolm X and Barack Hussein Obama Jr.

She then goes on a long and wide conspiratorial line trying to link Barack’s mother with Malcolm X, and all the possibilities of how they could have hooked up. If you read the post, beware that it is long, like sleuthing through a swamp.

In a most bizarre jab at Obama’s mom, Geller wonders aloud why CNN isn’t pursuing some “story” about the “alleged” nude “pornographic” pictures taken of Obama’s mom by Frank Marshall Davis!

Why isn’t CNN pursuing the nude pornographic photos of Obama’s mom…I never ran the pics, as it was unseemly and wasn’t relevant. But this assault on Palin is too disgusting. It’s time to tell the ugly truth about the enemy in the White House and his whores in the media.

Maybe CNN and the “whores in the media” aren’t running this story because it is a non-story with no news value? Or maybe because it is a figment of a loony blogger’s imagination with no thread of truth in it? Or maybe because it has nothing to do with the job performance of that “Negro Mooslim enemy” in the White House?

That is another card in the loonieness that is Pamela Geller. She believes Obama is an enemy, i.e. according to her he is a Muslim. On the end-of-times loon website World Net Daily, Geller wrote this hysterical post titled Obama’s Islam: Now He Tells Us,

We should have seen all this coming. Obama deceitfully hid his Muslim background and schooling and his agenda. I started writing about Obama’s religious Muslim background in January 2007, and throughout 2007 and 2008 I presented evidence of Obama’s identification as a Muslim when he was a child, his extremist Muslim family and his Islamic schooling. In December 2007, I wrote, “Barack Obama went to a madrassa in Jakarta. A madrassa in a Muslim country. Whether he was devout or secular, he knows what was taught. He knows what is in the Quran. Even if he is ambiguous, he knows the stakes involved. His father was a Muslim who took three wives (without divorcing). His stepfather and close members of his family are devout Muslims. Not an unimportant influence.” And who can forget Obama’s bald-faced lies to the Jews? In February 2008, Obama told Jewish leaders: “If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim.” Yet he was registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school…And so now we have our first Muslim presidency, just eight years after 9/11. The media can spin their subjugation and adulation a million different ways, but America did not vote for a “Muslim presidency,” which is what this is. Everything this president has done so far has helped foster America’s submission to Islam.

If that weren’t enough then you could predict what comes next. Not only is Obama the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, not born in America, on top of all that it is obvious that since he is a Muslim he must also be an anti-Semite!

Every decision, every move, every policy decision the President has made in regards to Israel has been the act of …. an anti-semite.

So there you have it the Mooslims are taking over! In fact they have already taken over America, so much so that we have a Mooslim president, who is anti-Semitic, sired by the fire breathing Malcolm X, his mom was a whore, and oh yeah somewhere in there he is also a socialist! That comes to you courtesy of the Looniest Blogger Ever!

Her blog remains “popular,” the adjective “popular” however may be a bit misleading as it seems to be popular only with crazies who espouse openly bigoted views. A glance at her comments section demonstrates this,

Posted by: jj | Sunday, August 30, 2009 at 01:24 AM , “Pigs are more humane than Muhammad. And cleaner, too.”

Posted by: En français | Monday, August 31, 2009 at 07:56 AM

What is a man with the name Matthew Polombo doing as the secretaey general of something called the Somali Youth Action? To build this big Islamic style complex exclusively for Moslem Somalis in Minneapolis means someone thinks they are there to stay ….. but as soon as we get rid of the Monster in the White House, we will get rid of them. Since they were imported, the crime rate has soared. They were criminals in Somalia, so they are also criminals in America and have no idea of American ideals and way of life. This sport center would be a hatching center for more crimes against Americans who don’t want them, didn’t ask them to come and want to get rid of them. The people of Minneapolis are insanely stupid if they allow this Obamanation to materialize.

Posted by: Sarastro | Monday, August 31, 2009 at 07:57 AM

WTF?!?!? How many dang Somalis do we have here that they need a frickin’ Youth Center? WhoTF needs Somalis here anyway? What? Are they the world’s best meat-packers?!?!?

Yeah, and I know. . . when the Muslims say “prevent” violence they mean “promote” violence.

Yeah, right. Separate gyms and pools, a place to get married, and maybe a hall or two in which to teach hatred and strategy for Islamic Supremacy?

This article is just more evidence that Muslims, (may their prophet be damned,) have no desire to assimilate or become Americans in support of America.

These comments are just a sampling of what passes as polite discourse on Atlas Shrugs, to get further acquainted with her and the loonieness of her commenters just parse through the comment section there, you will be truly mortified.

Update: Pamela Geller now claims she never penned the Malcolm X article, and that she doesn’t support the theory that Malcolm X is the father of Barack Obama. However, she never made any such qualifier when she originally posted the piece on her site. Which begs the question, why, if she didn’t believe what was written did she post it under her name? How can she not understand how insane it is, even for someone who believes Obama wasn’t born in America, to think he was the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, let alone give credence to such loony conspiracies by posting it on her site?

Update II: Pamela Geller calls for the destruction of the Golden Dome.

Update III: Obama is a Mooslim, Jihadist, Pimp, anti-Semite who is aiding the Iranian Nuclear program

Update IV: Sharia Coke is taking over the world, it is defamation of Judaism and Christianity for Islam to include Moses and Jesus as Prophets of Islam.

Update V: Pamela Geller is a Holocaust Revisionist who claims that Hitler and the Nazis adopted Jihad

Update VI: Not only is Obama a secret Muslim, but according to Pamela Geller, “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois…Obama’s treachery is breathtaking.“

Update VII: Pamela Geller calls for the nuking of Mecca, Medina, and Tehran

Update VIII: Pamela Geller promotes a genocidal video

Update IX: Pamela Geller shows sympathy towards white supremacist

Update X: Screenshot of Pamela Geller’s post on June 25th wherein she posted a video claiming that Muslims engage in bestiality

Update XI: Pamela Geller left speechless when called out for drawing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad with a pig’s face

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.

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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.

Have you ever walked down the grocery aisle and been intrigued or even bemused by the tabloids on the shelf? I can remember as a kid in the check out aisle staring at such titles as Swamp Monster Stalks Outskirts of Town or Michael Jackson Weds Alien but rarely have I ever seen a heading such as the below,

Bigotry on the Checkout

As Kabobfest contributor Mohammad noted the National Examiner is obviously a rag piece of paper but the title is still shocking and if it were any other group, Jews, Blacks, Latinos, Gays who were labeled as the “enemy” there would be a tremendous uproar and response. The other sad truth to note is that a lot of people in fact believe that magazines such as The National Examiner that deal and trade in yellow journalism are legitimate sources of information and news.  Edward J. Streb who has been studying tabloids for the past 17 years says,

many regular readers of the National Enquirer do believe what they read in the pages of the oldest and most successful of the tabloids [and that] tabloid readers- especially those who peruse the National Enquirer-find such papers credible.

So though I don’t want to overblow this obviously ridiculous and strange front page tabloid article it is worthy to note that this wouldn’t happen with any other group and that people who read these papers aren’t doing it for simple entertainment but really believe what they’re reading.

Michael Goldfarb

President Barack Obama is an iconic figure that inspires heated discussion on many topics as he is not easy to pigeonhole into one category or label. One topic that has and will continue to strangely garner absurd and heated discussion is the topic of Obama and his relation to Islam and Muslims.

In a recent manifestation of such absurdity, a blog post by Michael Goldfarb on The Weekly Standard surmised that Obama’s use of the Arabic word Shukrun, which means ‘thank you,’ somehow denoted that Obama knows more about Islam than he is letting on,

Obama has said before that he speaks “barely passable Spanish” and “a smattering of Swahili,” as well as some Bahasa from his youth in Indonesia. But Obama has at other times denied speaking a foreign language, saying in July of last year, “I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!“…One wonders if the president hasn’t been concealing some greater fluency with the language of the Koran.

The bigotry is on live display in the above quote and Eric Boehlert at Media Matters rightfully pointed out that “Goldfarb does his best to to raise doubts about whether or not Obama secretly speaks Arabic.” Goldfarb doesn’t pause to consider that not only is Arabic the “language of the Koran” but it is also the language of millions of Christians from various denominations, many of whom sing their prayers and recite their liturgy in Arabic — i.e. no one has a monopoly over a particular language.

Goldfarb also might have missed, probably because he doesn’t speak Arabic, that Obama mispronounced the Arabic word Hijab (veil) incorrectly as Hajib during his speech in Cairo.

So continues the theater of looniness in which Obama is considered a closet Muslim and because he used an Arabic word we should now be even more suspicious of him.

The truth is that this is just another manifestation of the unconscious hatred felt by many in the right-wing for all things Islam. The hope is to secure some cheap political points by somehow tainting all percieved enemies of the right-wing with associations to Islam and Muslims — the new boogey men of America. How long will the right-wing believe they can pull this on Americans? Only fellow Americans can answer that one.