I am not even sure if Shifren is still a Jew, how can he say this and remain a Jew, perhaps he is a “self-hating” Jew?:
… I AM an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11! I believe in peace and justice for everybody – but that’s not why they’re here…. We’re getting sucker-punched because we as white – yes I said it! – as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow WE are to blame for all the problems.
Clearly he didn’t mean to say that he is a “Christian,” maybe he forgot to add the “Judeo” part?
San Mateo, CA — In the US Senate primary in California on June 5th, where 23 candidates vie to challenge Senator Dianne Feinstein in November, conservative candidates were recorded on videoverbally attacking teachers, Muslims, and minority groups to excite their base at GOP and Tea Party venues.
The video was recorded at a “Get to Know Your Candidates” event hosted by the San Mateo GOP at the American Legion Hall here. Dr. David Levitt, the candidate who recorded the event, reports unmasked homophobia, Islamophobia, and racism in the Republicans’ speeches.
In the video Republican candidate Rabbi Shifren cries, “… I AM an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11! I believe in peace and justice for everybody – but that’s not why they’re here…. We’re getting sucker-punched because we as white – yes I said it! – as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow WE are to blame for all the problems.”
In October 2010 Nachum Shifren visited the UK to express his solidarity with the English Defence League, joining them for ademonstration in support of Israel and against “Islamic fascism” at which he was the main speaker. Fired up by Shifren’s Islamophobic rhetoric – he described Muslims as “dogs” who were trying to “take over our countries” – three EDL members attacked an Islamic literature stall and were later convicted of public order offences, with one of them receiving a seven-day prison sentence and a five-year CRASBO.
Omar Baddar and a host of other organizations responded to the hateful anti-Islam and anti-Arab conference put on by professional bigots Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. The founders of SIOA crassly titled the event, “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.” Seeking to manipulate and abuse the memory of a young Muslim girl who was murdered by her step-father.
Her murder had nothing to do with Islam, but the hate-mongerers insist on trying to smear Islam at any opportunity.
In the following video we get the facts. We see how discriminatory and racist to the core the anti-Islam brigades behind the “conference” really are! We also see how scared they are of confrontation and being challenged on their hateful bigotry:
SACRAMENTO, Calif., March 24, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – The Sacramento Valley office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SV) today called on the FBI and local law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for vandalism targeting a West Sacramento mosque.
Vandals reportedly threw three rocks through a window of the almost-completed Masjid Aisha (formerly the West Sacramento Islamic Community Center) last night as two worshippers prayed inside.
“Whenever a house of worship is targeted in this manner, the possibility of a bias motive must be considered,” said CAIR-SV Executive Director Basim Elkarra.
In 2009, vandals broke into the back door of the previous mosque on the site and damaged religious wall hangings and a bookshelf that held Qurans. The vandals also stole items from the mosque.
Earlier this year, a man was sentenced in federal court for vandalizing a Madera, Calif., mosque in 2010. He placed a sign in front of the mosque that read “No temple for the god of terrorism at ground zero.” The man also threw a brick at the front of the mosque and damaged its facade.
A hijab wearing Iraqi woman has been severely beaten and is not expected to recover from a violent attack on her inside of her home near San Diego.
Apparently this was a premeditated attack. A similar note to the one found by Shaima Alawadi’s body was found by the Alawadi family earlier this month, but the family dismissed it as a “prank.”
A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, told the newspaper UT San Diego that the attack apparently occurred after the father took the younger children to school.
Was someone scoping the house out before the attack, waiting for an opportune moment to strike?
A woman’s life has most likely been taken as she is not expected to survive the gruesome attack. What motivated this individual to do something so grisly? If what Alzaidy told the newspaper is true, and we see no reason why it wouldn’t be, clearly we are witnessing an attack motivated by hatred and bigotry.
Islamophobes will try and claim another Muslim did this, but how then do they explain the note?
*I want to point out that we cannot conclude anything at this point, some facts have been presented, such as the note but we will have to wait for the police investigation to relay more information on this crime.
A 32-year-old woman was critically injured and not expected to survive after an assault in her El Cajon home on Wednesday, police said Friday, and a threatening note telling the mother of five to go back to her home country was found near her, a family friend said.
The woman’s 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious in the dining room of the house on Skyview Street off Lemon Avenue about 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, said El Cajon police Lt. Steve Shakowski. Police identified her as Shaima Alawadi.
“Based on the type of injuries Alawadi sustained, and other evidence retrieved at the scene, this case is being investigated as a homicide,” Shakowski said.
Police did not disclose the contents of the note. Sura Alzaidy, a family friend, said it told the family to “go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.” The family is from Iraq, and Alawadi is a “respectful modest muhajiba,” meaning she wears the traditional hijab, a head scarf, Alzaidy said.
El Cajon police Lt. Mark Coit said the family stated they had found a similar note earlier this month, however did not report it to authorities.
The daughter who found her mother told KUSI Channel 9/51 on Friday night that her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron. She said her mother had dismissed the previous note, found outside the house, thinking it was a child’s prank.
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Update I: Shaima Alawadi has succumbed to her injuries according to this youtube user who uploaded video of Alawadi’s daughter being interviewed:
Update II:EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) — A 32-year-old woman from Iraq who was found severely beaten next to a threatening note saying “go back to your country” died on Saturday.
Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he met with Shaima Alawadi’s family members in the morning and was told that she was taken off life support around 3 p.m.
“The family is in shock at the moment. They’re still trying to deal with what happened,” Mohebi said.
Alawadi, a mother of five, had been hospitalized since her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious Wednesday in the family’s house in El Cajon, police Lt. Steve Shakowski said.
The daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron, and that the note said “go back to your country, you terrorist.”
Addressing the camera, the tearful daughter asked: “You took my mother away from me. You took my best friend away from me. Why? Why did you do it?”
Police said the family had found a similar note earlier this month but did not report it to authorities.
Al Himidi told KGTV-TV her mother dismissed the first note, found outside the home, as a child’s prank.
A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, told UT San Diego (http://bit.ly/GYbfB7) that the attack apparently occurred after the father took the younger children to school. Alzaidy told the newspaper the family is from Iraq, and that Alawadi is a “respectful modest muhajiba,” meaning she wears the traditional hijab, a head scarf.
Investigators said they believe the assault is an isolated incident.
“A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that,” Lt. Mark Coit said. “We don’t want to focus on only one issue and miss something else.”
The family had lived in the house in San Diego County for only a few weeks, after moving from Michigan, Alzaidy said. Alzaidy told the newspaper her father and Alawadi’s husband had previously worked together in San Diego as private contractors for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.
Mohebi said the family had been in the United States since the mid-1990s.
He said it was unfortunate that the family didn’t report the initial threatening note.
“Our community does face a lot of discriminatory, hate incidents and don’t always report them,” Mohebi said. “They should take these threats seriously and definitely call local law enforcement.”
El Cajon, northeast of downtown San Diego, is home to some 40,000 Iraqi immigrants, the second largest such community in the U.S. after Detroit.
Update III:Reporting from San Diego— El Cajon police are asking for the public’s help in its investigation into the fatal beating of an Iraqi immigrant and have not ruled out the possibility that Shaima Alawadi was the victim of a hate crime.
“We’re investigating all aspects of this crime,” Lt. Mark Coit said Sunday. “The minute you rule out a possible motive, you start to get tunnel vision. As of now, we have not ruled out any of the motives for why people kill people.”
Near the body of the 32-year-old Alawadi, police found what has been described as a threatening note. Police have declined to release the text, but relatives and friends say the handwritten note warned Alawadi to “go back to your own country” and labeled her a terrorist.
The family told police they had received a similarly threatening note several days earlier but considered it a prank by teenagers.
Alawadi was found unconscious Wednesday morning in the dining room of the family’s home by her 17-year-old daughter. She was taken to a hospital, where she was diagnosed as brain-dead. Her family decided on Saturday to discontinue life support.
Police said that whatever the motive, the attack appears to be “an isolated event,” not part of an overall pattern of violence toward immigrants.
Coit said police are unsure about the murder weapon but that Alawadi was beaten with a large object.
Alawadi’s husband had reportedly left earlier to take the couple’s younger children to school.
Alawadi and her husband had moved to El Cajon from a Detroit suburb several weeks ago. The two areas are considered the most popular destinations for Iraqi immigrants to the United States.
Faith in Public Life (FPL) just interviewed Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer. I’ve reproduced their excellent article below, which is where you can see the video yourself. In it, Spencer endorses a special loyalty test for Muslims:
FPL: Do you think Muslim appointees to office deserve a special test or a special kind of investigation before they are appointed?
Spencer:Well, I think it’s entirely reasonable.
In light of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is, in its own words, dedicated to eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house, then certainly any Muslim official that [sic] has ties to the Brotherhood organizations in the United States–of which there are very many–should be vetted very carefully.
FPL: So you think any Muslim that is appointed should be investigated for any of those ties before they are appointed?
Spencer:Yes, certainly.
FPL also points to Robert Spencer’s double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to Islam and his own religion, Christianity (specifically, Catholicism). Those of you familiar with my writing know that whenever I point this out, Spencer starts crying “tu quoque, tu quoque fallacy!” That’s because his own religion can’t withstand the same standard he applies to Islam.
FPL asked Spencer if he found it problematic when Muslims called themselves “Muslims first, Americans second.” Spencer responded emphatically in the affirmative, saying: “It’s a big problem.” Then, FPL asked Spencer if he himself was American first or a Christian first. Spencer was caught off-guard and tried to evade answering the question. When FPL pushed him further on the issue, he refused to answer the question, saying: “Neither one.” Then, he finally admitted that he in fact placed his faith first, even above American law.
Anybody see the glaring hypocrisy here? It’s in fact the same double standard applied by pro-Israel Islamophobes who attack American Muslims for having “dual loyalty” to their ancestral homelands and “the Ummah”, when in fact they themselves have “dual loyalty” to America and Israel, often placing the latter’s interests above the former.
Spencer tries to justify his double standard by arguing that Christianity “isn’t incompatible with the constitutional freedoms” whereas Islam is “is manifestly incompatible” with them. In other words, it simply hasn’t been an issue with his Christianity.
Yet, Spencer contradicts himself in the very next sentence:
FPL: So would you describe yourself as an American first and a Christian second, or Christian first and American second?
Spencer: Neither one. I think it’s a distinction when it comes to Christianity that thus far, there has not been a problematic issue of allegiance. If it comes down to the new Obama directives with the Catholic Church, for example, forcing it to go back on its own policies and its own doctrine…then obviously those are unjust laws that ought not to be passed.
Spencer is here alluding to the issue of abortion. It should be noted that “the Supreme Court ruled that women had a constitutional right to abortion”, yet Catholics like Robert Spencer want to deny this right to women. Isn’t this exactly the sort of conflict that Spencer found to be “a big problem” when it comes to Muslims? Isn’t this, using Spencer’s own standard, “a problematic issue of allegiance” between Catholic doctrine and the Constitution?
But remember: don’t dare apply the standard Spencer does to Islam to his own religion! Only a leftist dhimmi would do that!
Anti-Muslim activists often complain that Muslims living in this country don’t effectively assimilate into American culture, that they consider themselves Muslims first and Americans second. Despite the fact that polling has found that Muslim Americans are actually the most loyal religious group in the nation – 93 percent of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to America, and Muslims have the highest confidence in the integrity of the US election process – far-right pundits continue to further the myth that Muslims lack commitment to this country because their faith puts them in conflict with constitutional law.
In fact, the concept of prioritizing faith principles before the law is not unique to Muslims. Prominent Christian figures such as Pat Robertson have publicly remarked that they consider themselves Christians first and Americans second. Perhaps even more telling is the extent to which the current contraception mandate controversy is dominating the political conversation, with some Catholic leaders suggesting they would shut down their hospitals and schools or perform civil disobedience instead of complying with a law they believe conflicts with their faith.
At the recent CPAC conference here in Washington, Nick interviewed prominent anti-Islam activist Robert Spencer and found this exact double standard. Spencer criticizes Muslims for prioritizing Islam over US law, while going on to say he would put his Christian faith first in a situation where Christianity came into conflict with the law:
FPL: A lot of people point to polls that Muslims in various countries suggest that they’re Muslims first and then loyal to that country second – American second, or Spanish second. Do you think that’s a problem and are you worried about that?
Spencer: It’s a big problem, and it’s something that has to be taken into account…when it comes to Islamic law and the constitution, there are many, many ways in which Islamic law contradicts the constitutional freedoms. Then if somebody has a loyalty to Sharia, to Islam first, then that’s very problematic.
FPL: And would you describe yourself as American first, or as a person of faith first?
Spencer: I’m an American and a person of faith. And I believe that my faith, as a Christian, isn’t incompatible with the constitutional freedoms. But Islamic law is manifestly incompatible with constitutional freedoms.
FPL: So would you describe yourself as an American first and a Christian second, or Christian first and American second?
Spencer: Neither one. I think it’s a distinction when it comes to Christianity that thus far, there has not been a problematic issue of allegiance. If it comes down to the new Obama directives with the Catholic Church, for example, forcing it to go back on its own policies and its own doctrine…then obviously those are unjust laws that ought not to be passed.
FPL: So if there was a conflict between your faith and the law, you would choose your faith?
Spencer: Yeah.
The hypocrisy is apparent. If conservatives are concerned with religious liberty, then that liberty ought to be applied to faith traditions across the board, including Islam. At the same conference, conservative paragon Grover Norquist made this same point (around the 2:42 mark):
FPL: So do you think it harms the conservative argument for religious liberty…when [Republican candidates] have previously expressed some similar concerns to extending this [liberty] to Muslim Americans?
Norquist: You can’t be for religious liberty for some people and not others, or the whole thing falls apart. No one in court is going to rule that way. The court will either go with, yes you can ban synagogues, mosques, missionaries and Catholic hospitals– or you can’t do any of that…I’ve noticed that all faith traditions recognize that an attack on one is an attack on all.
As Norquist points out, Spencer’s duplicitous arguments about Islam fall flat. When it comes to religious freedom, the far right cannot have its cake and eat it too.
“Price tag” graffiti was spray-painted in Jerusalem again Sunday night, with vandals this time targeting a downtown church.
The attack on the Narkis Street Baptist Congregation marks the latest in a series of price tag attacks that have targeted Muslim, Christian and leftist institutions in the capital over the last two months. But police believe most of the vandalism is not the work of an organized group; rather, they say, the spray-painted slogans are largely copycat actions carried out by lone individuals.
The original price tag attacks, in contrast, were thought to be the work of a group of settlers seeking to set a “price tag” on house demolitions in the settlements via retaliatory attacks on Palestinians and/or Israeli soldiers.
The attacks during the past two months have included the torching of cars belonging to Arab residents of Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood; spray-painting slogans on a Christian cemetery on Mount Zion; spray-painting slogans on Peace Now’s office in the capital, as well as the house of Peace Now activist Hagit Ofran; threats against Peace Now secretary general Yariv Oppenheimer; and an arson attack on an ancient mosque in the city’s Geula neighborhood. Over the last week alone, a bilingual school and two churches have been vandalized, including the Baptist church vandalized Sunday.
In both church attacks, the vandals spray-painted slogans denouncing Christianity, Jesus and Mary, such as “Jesus is dead,” “Death to Christianity” and “Mary was a prostitute.” They also included the by-now customary “price tag” slogan.
The Jerusalem police said they have arrested several suspects in this spate of attacks, including one for the attacks on Peace Now and one for the vandalism of the bilingual school. The latter suspect, arrested last week, said he vandalized the school to avenge the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team’s loss to two Arab teams two weeks ago, according to police. Police believe that many of the other attacks are similarly motivated by ordinary hooliganism, rather than ideology.
“It’s intolerably easy,” one senior Jerusalem police officer said. “Any child can take a spray can and spray it, and people know it will be broadcast. Not every case is really nationalistic.”
But to victims, the motive is irrelevant. Jerusalem’s Christian community increasingly feels under assault, and that is especially true for Christians living in Jewish neighborhoods. Priests in the Old City, especially Armenian priests who must often transit the Jewish Quarter, say they are spat on almost daily.
“It’s almost impossible to pass through Jaffa Gate without this happening,” said a senior priest at one Jerusalem church.
The spitting has become so prevalent that some priests have simply stopped going to certain parts of the Old City.
The Baptist church has been attacked twice before: It was torched in 1982 and again in 2007. “We mainly feel sad” about the attacks, said the church’s pastor, Charles Kopp. “It hurts us that anyone could even think we deserve such treatment. They don’t know us, but they apparently oppose anyone who doesn’t identity with them. I wish them well; I have no desire for revenge.”
Baptist priests don’t normally walk around in priestly garb, but Kopp said he would be afraid to walk through the Old City if he did.
Jacob Avrahami, the mayor’s advisor on the Christian community, visited the Baptist church on Monday to condemn the attacks. “They feel besieged; you can see it on them,” he said.
Dr. Gadi Gevaryahu, whose Banish the Darkness organization works to combat racism, said his big fear is that “one day, they’ll attack a mosque or a church with people inside and there will be a terrible conflagration here.”
“Over the last two years, 10 mosques have been torched here, and today it’s clear that it’s not just aimed at Palestinians or Muslims, but at foreigners in general,” he said.
Gevaryahu also offered a practical suggestion: Security cameras, he said, should be installed on every sensitive building in the city.
It wasn’t too long ago that Robert Spencer went on a speaking tour in Australia. Did he inspire the Aussie “gentleman” below? What we do know is that this guy is a creep who hates Islam and Muslims and is willing to use violence to make his point, including intimidating elderly women. Of course, in the feverish minds of the Islamophobes this man was just practicing “free speech.”(H/T: Nasser AlK):
VIC Melbourne, 04.02.2012: The Bosnian mosque in Deer Park has been attacked, a man went on a rampage ripping the Qur’ans (around 50) and flushing them down the toilet.
Lowes has been at the center of the All-American Muslim controversy for having caved to anti-Muslim bigotry and pulling its advertisements from the show. But there is another company that is also just as guilty: Kayak.
So far, Kayak has been flying under the radar, with Lowes absorbing much of the heat. That may change after Kayak’s Chief Marketing Officer Robert Birge issued what can only be called the world’s worst “apology” ever. It was not only dishonest and rude, but it was also simply a “non-apology,” shifting most of the blame to TLC and the show itself!
The “apology” begins with this gem:
Our team includes people who are descended from early Europeans who came here escaping religious intolerance, and newer Americans who include many religions. We get what America is about.
So basically, his team consists mostly of white people. Oh, it also has some non-white people, who Robert Birge considers “newer Americans.” Does his “150-person team” not have a single black, American Indian, or Hispanic person? Apparently, Mr. Birge does not realize that black people are as old as this country (they were brought here in chains and the country was built on their backs), that American Indians were here long before Birge’s ancestors were, or that Mexicans lived on the land long before Europeans invaded their country. Does his company not have any Japanese-Americans, who have been in this country for generations? Even many Arab-Americans in Dearborn itself have been in the U.S. for three generations. To Robert Birge, I suppose these are all “newer Americans.”
Then, Mr. Birge issues his non-apology:
When we decided to give our money to TLC for this program, we deemed the show a worthy topic. When we received angry emails regarding our decision to advertise, I looked into the show more thoroughly.
The first thing I discovered was that TLC was not upfront with us about the nature of this show. As I said, it’s a worthy topic, but any reasonable person would know that this topic is a particular lightning rod. We believe TLC went out of their way to pick a fight on this, and they didn’t let us know their intentions. That’s not a business practice that generally gets repeat business from us. I also believe that it did this subject a grave disservice. Sadly, TLC is now enjoying the attention from this controversy.
What exactly didn’t TLC disclose “about the nature of this show”? A New York Times article counters this lame excuse:
A reporter who received an e-mail from Kayak with Mr. Birge’s blog post was puzzled because there was considerable publicity about “All-American Muslim” before its debut. Articles outlined the contents of the show and its focus on the Muslim-American community of Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb.
Exactly. Contrary to what Mr. Birge insinuates, there was nothing mysterious about the show or its intent: it was clear to everyone, even the Islamophobic bigots themselves, that it was about showing how American Muslims are regular people just like you and me: they have jobs, mortgages, children, dreams, etc. What was unclear about this?
Read between the lines and it is clear what Robert Birge is saying: he is arguing, just like the anti-Muslim bigots, that this show about American Muslims had an ulterior motive and a secret agenda. You know those swarthy and stealthy Muslims always have some secret Islamic agenda and can’t be trusted!
The NYT article goes on (bold is mine):
The reporter e-mailed Kayak to ask why Mr. Birge believed TLC kept information from the company. In an e-mail response, Mr. Birge replied: “When TLC pitched ‘All-American Muslim’ to advertisers, it was characterized as a fair-and-balanced look at the life of an American Muslim.”
“However,” he continued, “what was not disclosed was the pre-existing controversy surrounding race, religion and specifically the divide between the Muslim and Christian communities in Dearborn, Mich.”
Dearborn “has been a center of controversy for right or wrong,” he added. “However, that was omitted by TLC when it pitched the show.”
Here, the Kayak executive regurgitates the arguments raised by the Islamophobes. For example, Florida Family Association argued that the show did not depict “a fair-and-balanced look at the life of an American Muslim” since it didn’t deal with certain issues, such as how Muslims (supposedly) want to impose Sharia on non-Muslims. Mr. Birge says almost the exact same thing, arguing that the show fails to depict “a fair-and-balanced look at the life of an American Muslim” because “what was not discussed was the pre-existing controversy surrounding race, religion and specifically the divide between the Muslim and Christian communities in Dearborn, Mich.” He stops just short of saying that the Muslims of Dearborn are subjecting the Christians of the city to Islamic values. (Only Christians are allowed to impose their views on others in this country.)
Instead of denouncing the FFA, Robert Birge focuses his wrath on FFA’s target, TLC and the show.
Can you imagine if Kayak had pulled ads for a black reality show because of a controversy (created by Neo-Nazis) that it failed to depict “a fair-and-balanced look at the life of” black people–you know, all those “pre-existing controvers[ie]s surrounding” crime, drugs, and violence.
Just imagine if Kayak had treated Jewish-Americans this way. What kind of apology do you think Kayak would be issuing then?
Furthermore, as the NYT article points out:
There seems to be nothing from TLC in the way of news releases or other material from the channel that would suggest it wanted to be inflammatory on the issue of Muslims in America or take advantage of the ensuing controversy over the advertising on the show.
Might I ask Mr. Birge: if Kayak had known that anti-Muslim bigots would protest the show for showing American Muslims as normal people, would they simply have not advertised on the show, using “controversy” as an out? Isn’t that the very definition of “cav[ing] to hatred”?
Robert Birge concludes with this infuriating line:
Lastly, I watched the first two episodes. Mostly, I just thought the show sucked.
Mr. Birge, you are the Chief Marketing Officer of a major company and this is how you issue a formal apology when your company royally screws up? Is this what you consider professional behavior? Your company’s choices, which we see as the endorsement of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry, have seriously offended and hurt American Muslims and Arab-Americans. And this is how you end your “apology”? If I were in charge of you, sir, I would fire you, because you lack common sense.
Do you think it is wise for you to end your non-apology with your personal opinion that the show–the first reality show about American Muslims (the same group your company sided against along with anti-Muslim bigots)–sucks? The truth is that you are only so flippant about this matter because the demographic you have insulted is currently the lowest on the social totem pole. I doubt you’d be so callous about this topic if you had been accused of siding with anti-black racists or Anti-Semites. You’d be grovelling to keep your job in that case.
More importantly, since when has your company pursued a policy of only advertising on shows that you, Robert Birge, specifically enjoy?
Kayak will hide behind the claim that they pulled their ads because of the “controversy” surrounding All-American Muslim, even though this “controversy” was all manufactured by anti-Muslim bigots. There is absolutely no evidence that TLC or the show seeks to be controversial. In fact, they depict the very mundane lives of regular American Muslims to show that they are not all that different from you and I.
The only “controversy” is that created by anti-Muslim bigots. So by citing this as their reason to pull out, Kayak has sided with them.
As for me, I’m not going to give one cent to Kayak ever in the future and I encourage you all to do the same. Not until they issue a real apology. If they wanted to show sincere contrition (instead of an insincere non-apology), Kayak would back it up with action and renew their ad contract with the show.
Admit this much, Mr. Birge: if this controversy had been about a show called Black America or All-American Jews, can you honestly say that you wouldn’t be falling all over yourselves renewing your ad contract with the show? But because it’s Muslims–the most discriminated segment of society right now–you could care less.
I doubt Kayak will do the right thing, but I can guarantee you this much: in one generation or two, American students will study about this time–just as today’s students study bigotry towards Japanese-Americans during World War II or racism against blacks in the 1950′s–and look back at amazement and utter disgust at those who sided with the forces of hatred.
Shame on you, Robert Birge. And shame on you, Kayak.
Note to readers: I would recommend sending a strong but courteous email of disapproval to Kayak, which can be done here. If anyone can find Robert Birge’s email address, please post it and I will update the article with that information. Also, make sure to hyperlink to this article in your email. I would also appreciate your help in spreading this article by linking it on your Facebook walls, so that we can let it be known to the world: Kayak, you suck.
The following is a guest post for Sami H. Elmansoury.
As one proud American, I have frankly reached my pinnacle in the near-tacit acceptance of the rising tide of fear-mongering by un-American groups that are once again washing in the most heinous types of bigotry across our great nation. My now aging American grandfather proudly came to the United States in the late 1960s at the heels of war to seek liberty and freedom — things that he deeply cherishes until today. But his occupational purpose in being brought here was to help ensure that the United States beat the Soviet Union in the Space Race, by rocketing Neil Armstrong to the moon, as a brilliant engineer with NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. He was a patriot then, and he is a patriot now. And his love for country throughout the years has consistently fueled my own.
So as I learned of the success this past week of these fear-mongering groups in coercing our American companies [like Lowes] into taking bigoted stands [by withdrawing advertising from TLC's "All-American Muslim], I helped to create this petition in order to say “enough is enough” and to bring back some sanity to our national conversation. And what a remarkable day yesterday became. In just hours, we collected nearly 3,000 signatures — which will continue into next week — from Americans of ALL walks of life.
We have gained the stellar support of Congresspersons and Air Force personnel; we have had unsolicited outreach from conscientious leaders and citizens across our country, we have further isolated the bigots, and we have seen media presence from well-known activists such as Russell Simmons, who has pledged that his support and that of other influential figures will only increase in the coming days. We have even seen an apology - albeit one that lacked any reversal of the bigotry – from the Lowe’s corporate office.
As the petition states, “It is these same critics who have often touted the question: ‘Where are the mainstream Muslims?’” So when a television station seeks to portrays just that, one would think that these critics would have celebrated the effort, rather than have condemned it. Yet their reactions left no more proof necessary of their actual, bigoted, money-driven, and self-interested intentions as the most dangerous thing for many who oppose this show out of personal bigotry or out of egregious self-interest is to see a far-reaching portrayal of the reality and truth of average American Muslims: That they are human, are prone to normalcy, cherish liberty, and are working for the best interests of their respective communities. And that “danger” is the reasonable human being’s victory.
So if there was ever a moment to say “enough” to those who continuously question how “American” you, I, or your neighbor are – I believe that this can be it. Now is the time to throw un-American, hate-mongering bigotry back into the hole from which it disturbingly emerges every few decades. We are all in this together as Americans — whether we are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist – whomever we are, and whatever belief system we espouse. And, while we must strive to protect the homeland, together, we are one country. Personally, I will continue to work throughout my life to see that we remain that way.
This petition and the surrounding activism are only the beginning of an end, God willing, to this continuing absurdity. The next step will be upon our leaders, upon our politicians, upon our media, and upon all of us who continue to seek peaceful coexistence and American unity, to take back the microphone — and to put the bigots on notice.
For the outpouring of support seen yesterday, and for every day that I have lived on this Earth, I say God bless the only homeland that I have known — and God protect its freedoms and its values, for both our children, and for theirs.
To learn more about the petition protesting the advertising boycott against “All-American Muslim,” click here. To sign the petition, click here. [link fixed]
Sami H. Elmansoury serves Immigrant Rights Task Force for the Office of the Borough President of Manhattan and as an invited member of the Generation Change initiative for the United States Department of State.
We did a piece on the despicable anti-Muslim bigotry spewed by Professor Maurice Moshe Eisenstein a few days ago. Sadly, it seems we did not capture the full breadth of his hate-mongering. While we were able to expose his linking and liking Pamela Geller’s genocidal anti-Muslim website Atlas Shrugs, we failed to show some more of the direct and insidious comments he has posted in the past, both on his blog and on his personal Facebook page.
In this screen shot, Eisenstein calls Muslims barbarians, and says there is no future in Arab countries run by Muslims:
Here Eisenstein curses Prophet Muhammad, and says Muslims look upon the Earth as flat:
Here Eisenstein reveals what he thinks about those Muslims at Purdue who are part of the MSA:
This is radical extremism. Period. Imagine if Eisenstein’s last name was Abdul, and replace Muslim with Jewish in the above comments, how long would such a professor last at the said institution? This is a serious breach of the integrity Purdue University by a faculty member and should not be condoned, as it has thus far by the university administration.
There is more to the hate filled banter of Eisenstein, just visit his ironically named blog, Speaking Truth to Power.
Here he sounds more like Halal Pork with all the talk of “snakes”:
Spring and Arabs, i.e. Muslims, is like talking about friendly cobra snakes. There is no such thing.
…
Egypt is under the greatest influence of Islam as a terrorist religion than it has ever been, with no countervailing force.
…
Arabs are only friends of Arabs. (If you doubt that ask any Hindu.) There is no option in the Arab world of supporting so called human rights. The only place that it came close was in Turkey (I know it is not Arab; but, it is Muslim.)
If one thinks that this is relegated to Facebook, think again, he is spewing the same stuff in the CLASSROOM. He states below that Arabs and Muslims haven’t contributed anything to society in 2,000 years, is that what they want professors teaching at the university?:
According to one YouTube commenter this wasn’t recorded by students but was shamelessly put online by Eisenstein himself:
nasserorion Its not recored, he shares all the lectures on his online courses
Anti-Muslim comments made by a PUC professor on his public Facebook page and during his class lectures have led to campus-wide outrage and student protests.
Energetic chants such as “No more Eisenstein, Eisenstein must go!” and “They say get back, we say fight back!” echoed throughout the courtyard between the Gyte and SUL buildings on Nov. 9 and 10. Students held signs and handed out transcripts of Eisenstein’s Facebook comments while expressing their opinions as others came and went between classes. Approximately 50 to 70 students took part in the protest.
PUC students Wala Issa, Jessica Tabor and alumni Chris Ramirez started the protests by organizing with other students in response to the anti-Muslim comments and alleged religious harassment from Eisenstein. During the exchange of comments on Facebook, Eisenstein called Issa a “Jew hater” after she posted a separate link in defense of Muslims and the Islamic religion. Issa said her intentions were to show that anyone can take an article and misinterpret it.
“He believes that we are targeting him as an orthodox Jew, [but] this has nothing to do with that. We are just offended about things that he said, which were calling Muslims terrorists and saying that the prophet Muhammad was an idiot,” said Issa.
Aside from the comments made on Facebook, Issa has previously filed two personal complaints to PUC officials against Eisenstein. The first complaint was filed on Aug. 31, to History and Political Science Department Head Richard Rupp, Dean of Liberal Arts and Social Science Ronald Corthell and Linda Knox, associate director of Affirmative Action at PUC. The second was filed with Corthell on Sept. 21.
…
The first incident involving Issa and Eisenstein occurred on Aug. 30, the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. Issa said Eisenstein made comments during a classroom lecture where he allegedly stated “Muslims are corrupting the world and the only thing Muslims are good for is their food.”
Representatives of PUC’s Social Justice Club and the Muslim Student Association both said they plan to file separate complaints in the days to come.
Alshammari said he and the MSA joined the protests after they saw the comments made by Eisenstein on Facebook and said he believes Eisenstein should be fired over his remarks. He said that students came to the protest and told him Eisenstein has not only insulted Muslims, but Hispanics, blacks and other minorities as well.
Sociology Professor Alan Spector attended the protest on Nov. 10 and gave his opinion of Eisenstein’s comments.
“Professors have a right to their own opinion, but the question is whether or not it creates a situation in the classroom where students feel like they’re not going to be judged fairly or graded fairly,” Spector said.
Tabor, who described Eisenstein’s comments as “hateful,” said, “The university has policies on student academic honesty, yet it appears that faculty members are not held to the same standards. Clearly, Eisenstein believes his university protected “bully pulpit” gives him the freedom to promote his bigotry.”
Loonwatchers should continue to support the students with letters, emails and phone calls to the university. This sort of hate filled bigotry and racism is damaging not only to the school but most importantly to the students who deserve a real education.
Crockett Keller is a right-wing gun-nut in Texas who owns Keller’s Riverside Store. Keller is certified by the Department of Public Safety to teach people how to obtain and use a Concealed Handgun License. He paid for an “interesting” radio ad, which ran for six days, in which he specifically says he refuses to teach “socialist liberals” and “non-Christian Arab[s] or Mozlem[s].” In the ad, Crockett Keller says:
If you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class with no shame; I am Crockett Keller, thank you and God bless America.
He said later:
The fact is if you are a devout Muslim then you cannot be a true American. Why should I arm these people to kill me? That’s suicide.
It’s a stance Keller isn’t alone on. During this interview the instructor fielded nearly 40 calls congratulating him for the ad.
In fact, Keller’s anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry will no doubt be a boon for business, something that speaks volumes about how prevalent Islamophobia has become.
Keller and his supporters claim he has a right to discriminate against Muslims, but the Department of Public Safety, the same government agency that certified him to teach, says otherwise; they released the following statement:
The Texas Department of Public Safety certifies individuals to teach coursework and provide training required to be taken by individuals seeking to qualify for a Texas concealed handgun license. Certified instructors are required to comply with all applicable state and federal statutes. Conduct by an instructor that denied service to individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion would place that instructor’s certification by the Department at risk of suspension or revocation. The Department became aware of the statements in question yesterday and has begun an investigation into the matter. The Department will take appropriate administrative action based on the findings from the investigation.
Here’s a video of the ad, which would normally be amusing but we must take seriously the fact that many Americans feel the same way as him:
What’s not getting as much attention is the fact that this radio ad is shamelessly being promoted by radio host Michael Berry:
Berry gushed over this ad, calling it “the best gun commercial ever” and promised viewers “you’re gonna love it.” This is the same Michael Berry who said he hoped someone would blow up a mosque. Can you imagine, just for a second, a Muslim-American radio show host still on the air if he said he thought a synagogue should be blown up or if he promoted the same radio ad except it was “Jews” instead of “Muslims?” How fast do you think such a person’s career would be over?
Muslim artist Kenny Irwin has been featured on our site in the past when he unveiled he “Ultra Christmas Decorations” on Conan O’Brien’s show. This time he microwaves an anti-Muslim 9/11 coloring book and turns it into the “anti-bigotry slug.” (hat tip:pigeonyolk)
Artist microwaves “The We Shall Never Forget 9:11 The Kids’ Book of Freedom” coloring book by Publisher Wayne Bell.
In response to Wayne Bell’s islamophobic coloring book geared at impressionable young children called “The We Shall Never Forget 9:11 The Kids’ Book of Freedom” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nJlk_Em7xY , nationally & internationally acclaimed artist Kenny Irwin & founder of the famous dOvetastic Microwave Theater series has produced Episode #602 in which the coloring book gets microwaved inside a powerful hand built giant microwaving robot called the MALIK 11000 Five Ton Microwaving Robot standing twenty feet tall. The resulting art is transformed into the “AntiBigotSLUG” available on Ebay.
The artist makes a anti-hate statement explaining the hateful content issues at hand in the video & the real facts that the villains that caused the 2001 attacks were not representives of islam. That muslims condemn the attacks whom also lost loved ones & were also first responders. Muslims have been plagued for years by false stereotyping, bigotry & hate as a result of the attacks that occurred in 2001. The artist feels the book is inflammatory showing a narrow perspective of the 2001 attacks, that is hateful against muslims & has included educational links with the video that will hopefully educate people more about muslims & the faith of islam.
On the same day the country gathered together to recognize the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) launched two F-16 jets to tail a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver after the crew reported “suspicious activity on board.” That “activity”? The existence of three dark-skinned passengers. Two Indian men and one self-described “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife” from Ohio — all unknown to each other — made the mistake of boarding a plane on Sept. 11, 2011.
After the crew reported that two people had spent “an extraordinarily long time” in the bathroom, the jets escorted the plane to its destination in Detroit, Michigan. Then, according to reports and the “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife” Shoshana Hebshi, a SWAT team of about 10 police boarded the plane with machine guns and three dogs, approached Hebshi and the men’s aisle, handcuffed them, and escorted them off the plane:
Before I knew it, about 10 cops, some in what looked like military fatigues, were running toward the plane carrying the biggest machine guns I have ever seen–bigger than what the guards carry at French train stations.
My last tweet: Majorly armed cops coming aboard
Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.
After interrogating and strip-searching the three passengers, the FBI determined hours later that “there was no real threat,” excusing the wildly disproportionate response by stating, “The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.” When Hebshi asked her interrogator what sparked the concern, he replied “that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity.” Hebshi noted that the “activity” was two Indian men “going to the bathroom in succession.”
Hebshi’s situation is an all-too-common example from one of 9/11′s salient legacies: racial and ethnic profiling. Multipleminorities — Muslim or not — have been banned from flights or subjected to humiliating searches solely because of their appearance. Indeed, U.S. officials even spurred diplomatic tension with India last year for detaining its U.N. envoy and demanding to physically check his turban.
Living through this era of Islamophobia, Hebshi wondered whether the mere fact that three minorities “who didn’t know each other” but were dark-skinned will always be “suspicion enough.”
GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain has revealed himself to be, for various reasons, the biggest bigot and buffoon in the race. He kicked up a firestorm with his recent comments on Fox News Sunday in support of the “right” to ban American mosques. Apparently, Cain thinks that freedom of religion means freedom to ban religions:
CAIN: They could say that. Chris, lets go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying they’re objecting to. They’re objecting to the fact Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, Sharia law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes. The people in the community know best, and I happen to side with the people in Murfreesboro.
WALLACE: You’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque?
CAIN: Yes. They have a right to do that. That’s not discriminating based upon religion.
Discriminating against Muslims is not discrimination because they’re Muslims! Kind of like the argument we hear from racists that discrimination against black people is not discrimination because black people are more likely to be criminals.
Many religious leaders took Cain to task for his comments, but not everyone. In fact, more than enough far right wingers are gleefully embracing his call to deny American Muslims their fundamental American rights.
Permits, in my judgment, should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.
Did you get that? Each Islamic mosque is “dedicated” not to the pillars of Islam (faith, prayer, charity, and fasting) but to the “overthrow of the American government.” As if all the Muslims of every denomination (Sunni, Shi’ite, Sufi, liberal, conservative, etc.) are acting with one will, one goal, like the Borg (resistance is futile, you will be assimilated). He must have read that somewhere in the Protocols of the Elders of Mecca.
Anyway, it is this last point that has Bryan Fischer super excited: he is no longer alone in his Bigotry now that a big shot GOP candidate has legitimated his effort to ban all mosques. On what grounds can they so brazenly defy the First Amendment? The bogus talking point about Islam being a political ideology, not a religion:
In point of fact, in Islam the church IS the state. And since Islam allows no room for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience and equal rights for women, it’s view of culture is so bizarrely un-American as to be dangerous and destructive to civilized society in all its forms.
This is quite ironic coming from a man whose goal in life is to impose his backward religious opinions on an unwilling society. Don’t mind our homegrown Christian fundamentalists who reject separation of church and state. They don’t count.
•Large majorities cite the equal importance of democracy and Islam to the quality of life and progress of the Muslim world. They see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles.
•Political freedoms are among the things they admire most about the West.
•Substantial majorities in nearly all nations say that if drafting a new constitution, they would guarantee freedom of speech.
•Most want neither theocracy nor secular democracy but a third model in which religious principles and democratic values coexist. They want their own democratic model that draws on Islamic law as a source.
•Significant majorities say religious leaders should play no direct role in drafting a constitution, writing legislation, determining foreign policy, or deciding how women dress in public.
Egyptians… express little interest in recreating their country in the image of Iran, as has been the fear among some Western commentators. Less than 1% say the Islamic Republic should be Egypt’s political model, and most Egyptians think religious leaders should provide advice to government authorities, as opposed to having full authority for determining the nation’s laws. The majority of residents in the Arab world’s most populous nation desire a democracy informed by religious values, not a theocracy.
•Majorities in most countries believe that women should have the same legal rights as men: They should have the right to vote, to hold any job outside the home that they qualify for, and to hold leadership positions at the cabinet and national council levels
•Majorities of men in virtually every country (including 62 percent in Saudi Arabia, 73 percent in Iran, and 81 percent in Indonesia) agree that women should be able to work at any job they qualify for.
•In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote, 58 percent of men say women should be able to vote.
•While Muslim women favor gender parity, they do not endorse wholesale adoption of Western values.
So, while scientific polling of the Muslim world (not to mention American Muslims) reveals broad support for democratic principles, a rejection of theocracy, and support for women’s rights, that won’t stop the far right from parroting the thoroughly debunked but politically potent talking point that Islam is somehow uniquely anti-democratic, oppressive to women, and dangerous.
Bryan Fischer is the face of the grassroots prejudice to which Herman Cain is appealing and which will not likely be criticized by the rest of the GOP candidates. American right-wing politics has sunk to a new low. No longer is shredding the First Amendment considered fringe, crazy talk.
Fischer is not a lone anti-freedom bigot anymore. The GOP is right there with him.
It is time to stop giving Herman Cain’s unapologetic bigotry a free pass. The man and his poison need to be seen clearly and taken seriously.
Imagine the reaction if a major-party presidential candidate — one who, like Cain, shows actual support in the polls — said he “wouldn’t be comfortable” appointing a Jew to a Cabinet position. Imagine the outrage if this same candidate loudly supported a community’s efforts to block Mormons from building a house of worship.
But Cain’s prejudice isn’t against Mormons or Jews, it’s against Muslims. Open religious prejudice is usually enough to disqualify a candidate for national office — but not, apparently, when the religion in question is Islam.
On Sunday, Cain took the position that any community in the nation has the right to prohibit Muslims from building a mosque. The sound you hear is the collective hum of the Founding Fathers whirring like turbines in their graves.
Freedom of religion is, of course, guaranteed by the Constitution. There’s no asterisk or footnote exempting Muslims from this protection. Cain says he knows this. Obviously, he doesn’t care.
Cain’s remarks came as “Fox News Sunday”host Chris Wallace was grilling him about his obsession with the attempt by some citizens of Murfreesboro, Tenn., to halt construction of a mosque. Wallace noted that the mosque has operated at a nearby site for more than 20 years, and asked, sensibly, what the big deal is.
Cain launched into an elaborate conspiratorial fantasy about how the proposed place of worship is “not just a mosque for religious purposes” and how there are “other things going on.”
This imagined nefarious activity, it turns out, is a campaign to subject the nation and the world to Islamic religious law. Anti-mosque activists in Murfreesboro are “objecting to the fact that Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, sharia law,” Cain said. “That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes.”
Let’s return to the real world for a moment and see how bogus this argument is. Presumably, Cain would include Roman Catholicism among the “traditional religions” that deserve constitutional protection. It happens that our legal system recognizes divorce, but the Catholic Church does not. This, by Cain’s logic, must constitute an attempt to impose “Vatican law” on an unsuspecting nation.
Similarly, Jewish congregations that observe kosher dietary laws must be part of a sinister plot to deprive America of its God-given bacon.
Wallace was admirably persistent in pressing Cain to either own up to his prejudice or take it back. “But couldn’t any community then say we don’t want a mosque in our community?” Wallace asked.
“They could say that,” Cain replied.
“So you’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque. . .,” Wallace began.
“Yes, they have the right to do that,” Cain said.
For the record, they don’t. For the record, there is no attempt to impose sharia law; Cain is taking arms against a threat that exists only in his own imagination. It makes as much sense to worry that the Amish will force us all to commute by horse and buggy.
This demonization of Muslims is not without precedent. In the early years of the 20th century, throughout the South, white racists used a similar “threat” — the notion of black men as sexual predators who threatened white women — to justify an elaborate legal framework of segregation and repression that endured for decades.
As Wallace pointed out, Cain is an African American who is old enough to remember Jim Crow segregation. “As someone who, I’m sure, faced prejudice growing up in the ’50s and the ’60s, how do you respond to those who say you are doing the same thing?”
Cain’s response was predictable: “I tell them that’s absolutely not true, because it is absolutely, totally different. . . . We had some laws that were restricting people because of their color and because of their color only.”
Wallace asked, “But aren’t you willing to restrict people because of their religion?”
Said Cain: “I’m willing to take a harder look at people that might be terrorists.”
Generations of bigots made the same argument about black people. They’re irredeemably different. Many of them may be all right, but some are a threat. Therefore, it’s necessary to keep all of them under scrutiny and control.
Bull Connor and Lester Maddox would be proud.
Eugene Robinson will be online to chat with readers at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Submit your questions before or during the discussion.
Herman Cain, it’s probably safe to say, has already peaked. For reasons that remain unclear, hewowed Republicans in the primary season’s first debate but was quickly forgotten when Michele Bachmann wowed Republicans in the second debate. His national polling average of 10.2 percent in late June has gradually dropped over the past couple of weeks to 6.5 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. His numbers have steadily declined in polling of the Iowa caucus as well, and some of his staff in Iowa and New Hampshirerecently abandoned ship. But Herman Cain does still have one card up his sleeve: More than any other candidate, he’s willing to say heinous, bigoted things about Muslims.
Cain has said he wouldn’t appoint a Muslim to any position within his administration because of fears that Muslims are trying to “gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.” He later softened his position slightly, allowing for the potential hiring of Muslims that pass some kind of loyalty test that only Muslims have to take. And now Cain is speaking out against the never-ending controversy over a proposed Islamic center and mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee:
“It is an infringement and an abuse of our freedom of religion,” he said. “And I don’t agree with what’s happening, because this isn’t an innocent mosque.” ….
“It is another example of why I believe in American laws and American courts,” Cain said. “This is just another way to try to gradually sneak Shariah law into our laws, and I absolutely object to that.”
You read that correctly: Letting Muslims practice their religion is an infringement on our freedom of religion. Let that argument sink in for a second. Or don’t. It’s actually uncomfortably farcical.
Rep. Peter King held his second round of Homeland Security subcommittee hearings on the radicalization of Muslim Americans. This time the focus was on radicalization in our prison system and the threat it poses to the USA, some witnesses and Congressmen termed the concept “prislam,” a silly neologism that gives me headaches just hearing. Here’s hoping the word doesn’t take off.
It must be repeated from the very beginning that King is tarnished by his past Islamophobic and anti-Muslim comments. A point which has been made by countless journalists as well as by fellow Congressmen/women during the first hearing. He hasn’t apologized for, or retracted, any of those comments, which makes the present populist exercise he is involved in even more deplorable.
King also lacks all credibility considering he supported IRA terrorists for over a decade. Only in the magical realism world of Washington politics would someone who supported terrorists be the chairman of a committee discussing homegrown terrorism and radicalization, unless King is now going to argue that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?”
Now that we’ve established the serious problems with King chairing such a committee, lets get to today’s hearing. The hearing was less of a circus than the first one in March, mainly due to the absence of such clowns and non-experts as Zuhdi Jasser, MelvinBledsoe, and co., but that doesn’t mean that it was any better.
Aside from the contribution made by Prof. Brent Useem much of the testimony was unsubstantial. Prof. Useem essentially summed it all up when he said, “Prisons are infertile ground for the growth of radicalization.” He had a mountain of evidence to back this quote up, which he submitted to the committee.
The most eloquent, touching and thoughtful questions and comments came from Rep.Hansen Clarke, Rep. Jackson Lee and Rep. Richardson, who did excellent jobs in questioning the premise of the hearings, highlighting its discriminatory nature and also providing perspective when it comes to violence and radicalization at large in our prison system.
Here are some choice cuts:
Rep.Hansen Clarke:
“You know what pisses me off? It’s not about Islam. It’s about the prison system,” …”It’s about the prison culture. We’ve got to change it.”
Rep. Jackson Lee:
“If we look to the informational, we should include an analysis of how Christian militants are intending to undermine the laws of this nation.”
“My political correctness is based on this document, ‘the Constitution’”.
Rep. Laura Richardson:
“I disagree with the scope of this committee, I deem that these hearings are discriminatory.”
Patrick Dunleavy:
“In the Attica and Sing-Sing prison riots, Muslims helped decrease violence and stem deaths.”
The WTF comment of the day from Michael Downing:
“Gangs as urban terrorists, the distinction is that they don’t target innocent civilians”
Peter King attempted to defend these hearings and the scapegoating that him and his colleagues are parlaying by saying,
“I have repeatedly said the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans”…“Yet, the first radicalization hearing which this committee held in March of this year was met with much mindless hysteria — led by radical groups such as the Council of Islamic Relations and their allies in the liberal media personified by the New York Times.”
He thereby effectively made it about CAIR once again, which actually stands for Council on American Islamic Relations not Council of Islamic Relations. By doing so he dodged addressing the core criticisms leveled at him and the premise of these hearings, by not only CAIR, but a wide range of groups.
Such a hearing, aside from stigmatizing a whole group of people is also a waste of time, resources and energy,
Last year, the bipartisan Congressional Research Service determined that only a single example of homegrown terrorism stemmed from an individual who was radicalized in prison. CRS concluded that prisons, “while seen by some as potential hotbeds of radicalization, have not played a large role in producing homegrown terrorists.”
So whats all the fuss about?
Peter King wants to sharpen his hawkish GOP credentials, pander to the anti-Muslim base of his party and present an image of being tough on terror, while also continuing the scapegoating and fear-mongering of Muslim Americans.
These hearings only reinforce the point that Muslim Americans have been making the past few years, they are being unfairly targeted and feel besieged as a community. Rep. Mike Honda, a Japanese-American sympathizes, drawing on his own experience of having been interned by the USA during World War II,
Make no mistake. Growing up in internment camp Amache in Colorado was no joy ride — just look at the pictures. We were treated like cattle in those camps…We look back, as a nation, and we know this was wrong. We look back and know that this was a result of “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” We look back and know that an entire ethnicity was said to be, and ultimately considered, the enemy. We know that internment happened because few in Washington were brave enough to say “no.”
We know all this, and yet our country is now, within my lifetime, repeating the same mistakes from our past. The interned 4-year-old in me is crying out for a course correction so that we do not do to others what we did unjustly to countless Japanese-Americans.
This time, instead of creating an ethnic enemy, Rep. King is creating a religious enemy. Because of prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of Republican leadership, King is targeting the entire Muslim-American community. Similar to my experience, they are become increasingly marginalized and isolated by our policies.
Mike Honda’s words are like a clarion call to our political elites to recognize the dangerous path this nation is headed toward. Lets hope it won’t take another internment camp scenario for our leaders to wake up.
The Young Conservative’s Hip Hop Guide to Muslims is social commentary through satire on the gross, yet common misconceptions perpetuated about Muslim people. Cutaways to competing facts are provided to help fight ignorance and intolerance.
Sources:
Statistic in Open - 3 of 4 people Republicans believe “Islam teaches hate”
Chapter 5, verse 32 – “We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person — unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land — it would be as if he slew the whole people; and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”
Step 6 – “They hate women” – 4 of 5 most populous Muslim-majority nations have elected female heads-of-state
On the 700 Club today, Pat Robertson once again spoke out against American Muslims, singling out the construction of mosques and the purported threat of creeping Sharia law. Robertson likened critics of Muslims to opponents of Nazis and rejected claims that his opposition to rights for Muslims is bigotry, asking, “I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis, were they bigots?”
“Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?” Robertson said. “But oh it’s bigoted if we speak out against a force that slowly but surely is trying to exercise domination over the world.”
Social conservative Bryan Fischer said Thursday that centuries of inbreeding has resulted in “an enormous cost in intellectual capacity” among Muslims.
Fischer, the “Directory of Issues Analysis” for the American Family Association, said on his Focal Point radio show that “Muslims have been [inbreeding] for fourteen hundred years and because this is what Muhammad did, they always will do this, they will always defend it, they will always practice it.”
“And this kind of inbreeding results in an enormous cost in intellectual capacity, intellectual quotient among the Islamic people,” he continued. “It’s just a plain fact. You can’t argue with it, it’s just simply the truth. And you get hammered for saying it, but that’s because the truth has now become hate speech, the truth has now become bigotry.”
Watch:
Fischer, aside from being staunchly anti-bear, is also a frequent purveyor of anti-Islam sentiment. He once argued that the U.S. should restrict immigration of Muslims, and deport some of those already in the country. Fischer’s also said that Muslims don’t deserve First Amendment rights, and that the U.S. should havee “no more mosques, period.”
That hasn’t stopped a number of conservatives from appearing on his show (and alongside him at the Values Voter conference), including Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty.
Texas is now joining over15states that have introduced bills to guard against the non-existent threat of Islamic Sharia law. In proposing legislation to ban state courts from considering foreign religious or cultural laws like Sharia, Texas state Rep. Leo Berman (R) — the bill sponsor — said, “We want to prevent it from ever happening in Texas.”
Berman insisted one U.S. city offered unquestionable proof of this supposed threat:Dearborn, MI. Dearborn is home to one of the largest Muslim populations and the largest mosque in North America. Therefore, according to Berman, Sharia law necessarily is being implemented there. “It’s being done in Dearborn, Mich., because of a large population of Middle Easterners,” Berman said, “and the judges in Dearborn are using and allowing to be used Sharia law.” He mentioned the city six times throughout his testimony. However, when pushed for details, the only actual evidence Berman could offer was, “I heard it on a radio station”:
Rep. Berman himself acknowledged knowing nothing about Dearborn.
“I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day,” Berman said Monday in an interview. “I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan but I heard it (Sharia is accepted law here) on the radio. Isn’t that true?“
No, says Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly (D), who must repeatedlydebunk Islamophobic theories about the city. “These people know nothing of Dearborn and they just seek toprovoke and enflame their base for political gain,” he said. But such cultural ignorance doesn’t stop “Dearborn-Sharia theorists” from citing the city as proof of a Muslim threat. Likely GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich cited the arrest of four Christian missionaries during a Dearborn Arab festival as an example of “radical Islamism” to argue against the Islamic Center in New York City. Perpetual candidateSharron Angle (R-NV) said Dearborn faces “militant terrorist situation” and is ruled by Sharia law.
But even Berman, who is no stranger to outlandishextremism, must realize “I heard it on a radio station” fails as evidence for anything. Unless, of course, he’s planning an anti-Martian bill in response to War of the Worlds.
Loon Lawyer David Yerushalmi is behind the surge of anti-Sharia bills
It might be a good idea for us LoonWatchers to begin to contact these state senators and representatives and provide them with information about the Loons who are behind these proposed anti-Sharia bills. Sure, they may not care, but at the very least I think it could lead some of these officials to reconsider sponsoring these bills once they find out that 1) there is no threat posed by Sharia to our legal system, and 2) that the people pushing these bills are wacked out crazies who foam at the mouth at the mentioning of Islam and Muslims (i.e. they’re bigots).
One of the more striking things about the current anti-sharia craze is how often state legislators who introduce anti-sharia bills can’t answer basic questions about Islamic law or why they see it as a threat.
In Alabama, for example, when the state senator who sponsored an anti-sharia bill was asked by a reporter to simply define sharia, he responded: “I don’t have my file in front of me.” In Florida, anti-sharia bill sponsors couldn’t name a single case where Islamic or international law had been used in a troubling way in U.S. courts. When, on Wednesday, I interviewed a Nebraska state senator behind a similar bill, I asked him about what cases were causes of concern to him. He responded: “I’m not in my office to look them up.”
How could all these legislators be so uninformed about their own bills? A big part of the reason is that most of them did not actually write the legislation in question. Rather, many of the anti-sharia bills being considered around the country are either based on or directly copied from model legislation created by an obscure far-right Arizona attorney and activist named David Yerushalmi.
The Nebraska case is instructive. State Sen. Mark Christensen introduced a bill(.pdf) in January to bar the use of any foreign law in Nebraska courts. When I spoke to Christensen on Wednesday, he acknowledged he did not have a deep understanding of the issue, referring me back to his office when I asked him what cases involving sharia or foreign law were troubling to him.
He summed up his reason for sponsoring the bill: “This is America. We use America’s law.” (For more on what sharia actually is, see here and here.)
It turns out Christensen introduced the bill after his office was approached by the head of the local chapter of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America, Christensen aide Dan Wiles told me. ACT! for America is a Florida-based group led by Brigitte Gabriel. In a profile last month, the New York Times detailed Gabriel’s strategy of selectively quoting the Quran to paint most or all Muslims as violent extremists.
“They came and talked to several different senators, and Sen. Christensen decided to introduce the bill,” Wiles said, adding that he was presented with model legislation. “It pretty much was exactly what was drafted and introduced,” he said. “Everything substantive was the same.”
The model legislation in question originates with Yerushalmi, the Arizona lawyer who is associated with several organizations including the American Public Policy Alliance. The model anti-foreign law bill on the Public Policy Alliance’s website has been used in states including Florida, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri and South Dakota. It is called “American Laws for American Courts.”
Who is Yerushalmi? His background leaves little doubt that these anti-”foreign law” bills are designed to target sharia.
He has written, for example, that “The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.” A group he founded, the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), has reportedly advocated for a law making it a felony “punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.” The Anti-Defamation League has also called out Yerushalmi for his “anti-black bigotry.” (Mother Jones also has a good profile of Yerushalmi here.)
So next time the sponsor of an anti-sharia bill can’t answer basic questions about Islamic law, it’s a good sign Yerushalmi’s role deserves more scrutiny.
The protester's banner reads 'the veil in front of your eyes is much more dangerous than the veil on my hair'
It is not enough to ban face veils and have that law implemented on April 11, 2001 but Islam as a religion has to be criticized and debated. (hat tip: Europeans Against Islamophobia)
UMP members hold criticised debate about Islam’s place in secular France, days before ban on face veils is implemented.
France’s conservative ruling party has held a controversial debate on the practice of Islam, rejecting charges of bigotry and saying that airing the issue could help stem the rising popularity of the far-right.
President Nicolas Sarkozy had called for Tuesday’s discussion on Islam and secularism to address fears that some overt displays of Muslim faith - including street prayer and full-face veils - were France’s secular identity.
The UMP party were considering 26 ideas officials said were aimed at bringing France’s stringent laws decreeing the separation of church from state into step with the times.
Even before it began, the debate had been tarnished by criticism from religious leaders, a boycott by France’s largest Muslim group, and the absence of Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
“For weeks, everything possible has been done to stop this meeting taking place … but we have not yielded to those pressures … because it is the French people who asked us for it,” Francois Cope, the secretary-general of the UMP party, said.
“One less problem is one less electoral argument for Marine Le Pen,” he said.
With his popularity at record lows a year before a presidential election, Sarkozy has been accused of seeking to woo back right-wing voters increasingly drawn to the National Front party under its new leader Marine Le Pen.
Controversial proposals
The proposals discussed on Tuesday include banning the wearing of religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves or prominent Christian crosses by day-care personnel and preventing Muslim mothers from wearing headscarves when accompanying school field trips.
Another proposal would prevent parents from taking their children out of mandatory subjects including gym and biology.
The debate could lead to a legislative bill in the National Assembly, where the UMP has a majority.
Under the ban, women who wear the face-shrouding veils risk a fine, special classes and a police record.The round-table came as a new law banning garments that hide the face is to take effect on April 11.
Islam is France’s second biggest religion after Roman Catholicism. Interior Minister Claude Gueant says there are five to six million Muslims in the country.
Tuesday’s discussion brought together several ministers, chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim and representatives of other religions, but no Muslim clerics.
Muslim groups have accused the conservative UMP of stigmatising their faith.
Critics from the opposition Socialist party contend the debate is an electoral ploy aimed at appealing to voters who could be swayed by the National Front.
Jean-Francois Cope, the UMP leader, insisted on Monday that France needs clearer rules about how Muslims should adapt their religious practices to French society.
“The practice of Islam in France is not the burqa. It is not prayers in the street,” he said.
‘Easing’ social tensions
In some neighbourhoods with large Muslim immigrant communities, the lack of mosques or prayer rooms means crowds gather on sidewalks and cobblestone streets at prayer times.
Cope tried to distance himself from the National Front. “They denounce [Muslim practices]. We are making proposals” to ease social tensions, he said.
The leaders of France’s main religions have expressed concern about the debate, saying it is not the right forum for such a discussion.
“We were not for this debate in the format that was presented,” France’s chief rabbi, Gilles Bernheim, told reporters. France has western Europe’s largest Jewish population.
Singh Ranjit, of the group Sikhs of France, said, “This concerns all of us because we all have difficulties as religious minorities when it comes to the relationship we have with the authorities.”
The debate has also taken on an international dimension.
A former foreign minister of the Comoros Islands, a largely Muslim nation in the Indian Ocean, said on the sidelines of the debate that France’s influence goes beyond its geographical limits.
“Unfortunately because of what they call quarrels within France, people don’t measure the impact that France has all over the world.”
Like most in the anti-Muslim business, Nonie has a greatly exaggerated personal sob-story backed up by book deals and speaking engagements in all the typical “hating on Muslim” venues. She sells herself as a “human rights activist,” as do so many other virulent Muslim-bashers, though she doesn’t seem to care too much about the human rights of Muslims. This time, however, she will be using the pseudonym “Nahid Hyde,” perhaps as a not-so-clever way of avoiding government inquiry into her association with other bigots and white supremacists. Yet, even a cursory view of her ridiculous book titles should cause any serious security official to question her credibility as a fair and impartial witness.
In her estimation, Islam is a backward and authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century Bedouin life. For Darwish, Islam is a sinister force that must be resisted and contained.
It must be difficult to pack so many stereotypes into 272 pages, but Ms. Darwish has done it, making such bold generalizations and demonstrably false claims as:
Sharia is incompatible with any state that has as a foundational principle the equality of the sexes before the law.
Egypt’s religious tradition is anchored in a moderate, tolerant view of Islam. We believe that Islamic law guarantees freedom of conscience and expression (within the bounds of common decency) and equal rights for women. And as head of Egypt’s agency of Islamic jurisprudence, I can assure you that the religious establishment is committed to the belief that government must be based on popular sovereignty.
But disclosing some enlightening and nuanced facts about contemporary Islam or the multivalent, non-monolithic view and relationship Muslims have with Islamic Law would ruin her book sales and speaking tours, wouldn’t it?
Like other Islamophobes, she is careful to make a distinction between Islam and Muslims, so as not to appear like the plain bigot she is:
Darwish is careful to distinguish between people and ideas: “The purpose of this book is not to spread hatred of a people but to tell the truth about the wickedness of Islamic Sharia law.”
Such distinctions are disingenuous, pro-forma statements that only fool the naïve into thinking she isn’t a professional hate-monger. (Right, just like how Pam Geller loves those Moozlims so much she wants to drop nuclear bombs on them, out of love, of course.)
Contrary to her assertion, Ms. Darwish regularly engages in dehumanizing rhetoric about all Muslims, not just extremists. She even told the New York Times:
A mosque is not just a place for worship. It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.
That was one of her tamer statements dressed up before a liberal audience. Such sweeping outright lies have been instrumental in the spread of anti-Muslim, anti-Sharia, and anti-Mosque hysteria in our country, materializing in over 800 documented cases of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination. When confronted about her lies, she will likely attempt to dismiss her critics as agents of the Mad Mullah Conspiracy, rather than owning up to the falsity of her claims.
So I don’t believe her for a second when she says she is not spreading hatred. She is spreading hatred, blatantly, and making a buck while doing it, this time at the expense of hardworking New Yorkers’ taxes. In less than a week she is going to tell the New York Senate that basically every Muslim is a suspect, thereby misdirecting valuable law enforcement resources away from violent extremists and onto the majority of peaceful, law-abiding American Muslim citizens. We will all be less safe as a result.
The citizens of New York deserve better than this. The American people deserve better. They have the right to know why the government is funding clearly biased, hateful individuals who have absolutely no credibility. For this reason, a coalition of civil rights and interfaith organizations will hold a news conference on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan to challenge this expected anti-Islam bias in the State Senate, Thursday, April 7th, at 1pm.
The American people deserve testimony from impartial security experts, not this Islamophobic nonsense about stealth Jihad and Islamic boogeymen hiding under every bed. It’s time for the government to be held accountable and to stop playing these dangerous political games with our security.
One of the driving forces behind Shari’a-related conspiracy theories and growing efforts to ban or restrict the use of Shari’a law in American courts is David Yerushalmi, an Arizona attorney with a record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.
In recent years, Yerushalmi has created a characterization of Shari’a law (i.e., Islamic law) that declares there are “hundreds of millions” of Muslims who are either “fully committed mujahideen” or “still dangerous but lesser committed jihad sympathizers” who, because of Shari’a law, would be willing to murder all non-believers unwilling to convert, in order to “impose a worldwide political hegemony.” Meanwhile, Yerushalmi asserts, the U.S. government itself has consciously chosen to turn a blind eye to this threat.
To combat this alleged threat, Yerushalmi has vigorously opposed all perceived “inroads” of Shari’a law in the United States, even entirely innocuous measures such as American financial institutions creating financing packages designed to be compatible with Islamic restrictions against loaning money at interest.
“American Laws for American Courts”
Yerushalmi’s latest weapon is model anti-Shari’a legislation he has titled “American Laws for American Courts,” developed for a group called the American Public Policy Alliance (APPA). The group claims that “one of the greatest threats to American values and liberties today” comes from “foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines,” including “Islamic Shari’ah law,” that have been “infiltrating our court system.”
Yerushalmi’s proposed legislation, which claims to “protect American citizens’ constitutional rights against the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shari’ah Law,” has been the basis for anti-Shari’a measures introduced by state lawmakers in several states in recent years.
For example, a bill introduced by Sen. Alan Hays and Rep. Larry Metz in Florida to outlaw Shari’a (and other non-secular or foreign laws) in March 2011 is strikingly similar to Yerushalmi’s model legislation. Both Tennessee and Louisiana actually passed variations of Yerushalmi’s legislation in 2010.
On its Web site, the APPA cites 17 cases where it claims that Shari’a has been introduced in state courts; this is its evidence of “creeping” Shari’a law within the United States.
Yerushalmi has testified in support of the anti-Shari’a legislative efforts based on his proposal. For example, in a hearing before the Alaska House State Affairs Committee in March 2011, Yerushalmi claimed that “today, we are far more likely than ever before to have foreign laws in American courts…There are plenty of occasions in which foreign law informs what Alaskan law could be.”
Demonizing Islam
Yerushalmi has not only actively promoted his conspiratorial vision of Shari’a law, but has also sought to portray all Muslims as a threat. In one March 2006 article, for example, Yerushalmi even went so far as to claim that “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.”
That same year, Yerushalmi founded the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), a “think tank” that has published anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and anti-black materials, as well as New World Order-style conspiracy theories. In 2007, SANE, declaring itself “dedicated to the rejection of democracy and party rule and a return to a constitutional republic [of the original founders of the US],” launched a campaign fueled by suspicion of all Muslims.
That campaign, “Mapping Shari’a in America: Knowing the Enemy,” sought to determine exactly what type of Shari’a every single mosque and Muslim religious institution in the U.S. was advocating. A June 2007 press release announcing the campaign indicated that SANE would work to “test the proposition that Shari’a amounts to a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government” by investigating and ranking the adherence to Islamic law of mosques and their associated day-schools throughout the U.S. The statement also promised to “advocate for the criminalization of Shari’a” if it felt its targeted investigation into mosques and Islamic day schools proved such a measure necessary.
SANE also proposed legislation that furthering or supporting adherence to Shari’a “shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison.” It called on Congress to declare war on the “Muslim nation,” which it defined as “Shari’a-adherent Muslims,” and further asked Congress to define Muslim illegal immigrants as alien enemies “subject to immediate deportation.”
Yerushalmi’s Allies and Associates
Since founding SANE, Yerushalmi, who received his law degree from Arizona State University College of Law, has been involved with several notable anti-Muslim groups and campaigns, often providing legal services for them:
Yerushalmi works closely with Pamela Geller, head of the anti-Muslim Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). For example, in September 2010 Yerushalmi represented Geller and Florida attorney John Stemberger when Omar Tarazi, a Columbus, Ohio, attorney sued them for allegedly saying he had contacts with terrorists. Tarazi had represented the parents of Rifqa Bary, a Christian teenager who fled to Florida, saying she feared harm from her Muslim mother and father. In his lawsuit, Tarazi said Geller wrongly linked him to Hamas. Yerushalmi reportedly incorporated the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the non-profit organization through which Geller and Robert Spencer publish their blogs. He also defended AFDI ads on New York City buses opposing a planned mosque near Ground Zero that juxtaposed an image of an airplane headed toward the burning World Trade Center with another building labeled “WTC Mega Mosque” and the words “Why There?” Yerushalmi and Geller were also involved in a bus ad campaign in Miami that read: “Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you?”
Yerushalmi was the attorney for the Stop the Madrassa Community Coalition in New York City, which lobbied for the Bloomberg administration to shut down the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an Islamic school, and requested the firing of its founding principal, Debbie Almontaser.
In December 2008, the Thomas More Law Center filed suit against the federal government, claiming the government’s loan to American International Group (AIG) was illegal because the insurance company had financial products that the group claimed promote Islam and are anti-Christian. Yerushalmi handled the case for the Center. In an article written around the same time, Yerushalmi even went so far as to suggest that U.S. companies that offer Shari’a-compliant finance measures might violate the Sedition Act.
Yerushalmi is General Counsel to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, founded by Frank J. Gaffney. Gaffney has been active in opposing mosque construction and has made several statements about Islam that raise concerns. For example, in a 2009 article in the Washington Times, Gaffney claimed that “there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself.” In 2010, the Center for Security Policy published the book Shari’ah: The Threat To America, An Exercise in Competitive Analysis, Report of Team ‘B’ II, co-authored by Yerushalmi. The book repeated Yerushalmi’s theories about a vast Shari’a threat to America.
Yerushalmi has for many years been associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS), a right-wing think tank based in Israel and the United States, even serving as its chairman for five years, as well as writing a number of articles for it. IASPS now primarily supports the projects of SANE.
Other Hostile Views
Yerushalmi’s main instrument, SANE, is also openly hostile to undocumented migrants in the United States. It advocates somehow sealing all American borders and building “special criminal camps” to house undocumented migrants, where they would serve a three-year detention sentence, then be deported. SANE also argues that the “immigration debate” should take into account that America was “founded and made strong by immigrants from western European countries with Judeo-Christian roots.”
Yerushalmi has also claimed, as he wrote in a 2006 article, that the United States is in trouble because it “rejected its Christian roots, the Constitution and federalism,” and because it “embraced democracy” and multi-culturalism. This has rendered it “incapable” of “overcoming the World State ideology of the Liberal Elites.” These beliefs have caused Yerushalmi to defend people accused of anti-Semitism such as Mel Gibson and Pat Buchanan because they “have the potential to save the West from itself and from Islam.” Liberal Jews, on the other hand, according to Yerushalmi are “the leading proponents of all forms of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Christian movements, campaigns, and ideologies,” and to argue otherwise one would have to be “literally divorced from reality.” Liberal Jews, according to Yerushalmi, have also destroyed “their host nations like a fatal parasite.”
Nor has Yerushalmi neglected the subject of race. Articles Yerushalmi has written for the SANE Web site argue that the “most of the fundamental differences between the races is genetic.” In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled, “On Race: A Tentative Discussion,” Yerushalmi claimed that “some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones.” He also contended that African-Americans are a “relatively murderous race killing itself.” For Yerushalmi it was obvious: “If evolution and the biologists who espouse the theory are correct, then the idea that racial differences included innate differences in character and intelligence would[,] it seem[,] be more likely than not.”
Bryan Fischer, the “Director of Issues Analysis” for the social conservative group the American Family Association, says that when it comes to Islam, the First Amendment is a privilege, not a right. “Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam,” Fischer wrote today.
“The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. They were making no effort to give special protections to Islam. Quite the contrary,” Fischer wrote on his Renew America blog.
He continued:
Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.
Fischer took it a step further, calling Islam a “treasonous ideology” and adding that “from a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked.”
Fischer, also known for his frequent anti-gay, anti-bear rhetoric, has previously called for the U.S. to have “no more mosques, period,” because “every single mosque is a potential terror training center or recruitment center for jihad.” He’s also suggested that we should “handle Muslims just like we handle neo-Nazis.”
And his show is a frequent stomping ground for conservative politicians, including potential 2012 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and actual 2012 candidate Tim Pawlenty.
Robert Spencer is still trying to peddle the myth that 80% of American mosques are radicalized. In a heated post on JihadWatch on March 19, Spencer said the following in reply to Reza Aslan’s claim that all of the studies Spencer cited to support the claim that 80% of American mosques are radicalized have been debunked:
In any case, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani’s 1998 study was not based on his personal opinion, as Aslan claims. Kabbani actually visited 114 mosques in this country before giving testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999 that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.” Has Reza Aslan investigated 114 mosques in the U.S.? Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.
Let’s break this down one by one. Kabbani said in 1999 that extremists “took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the US.” How did he come up with this number? He didn’t say in his testimony. After the testimony Kabbani began to feel heat from many who were curious as to how he arrived at this “figure” and that is when he finally decided to offer up some “evidence” for his claim.
An under-fire Kabbani explained in 1999 exactly what he meant when he told the State Department that 80 percent of American mosques had been taken over by extremists. His point, he said, was that a “few extremists” were taking over leadership posts, despite a “majority of moderate Muslims,” thus “influencing 80 percent of the mosques.”
Today, he sticks even closer to his guns and adds embellishing data: Kabbani visited 114 mosques in the United States. “Ninety of them were mostly exposed, and I say exposed, to extreme or radical ideology,” he said.
Kabbani bases his exposure conclusion on speeches, board members and materials published. One telltale sign of an extremist mosque, said Kabbani, was an unhealthy focus on the Palestinian struggle.
Alright – let’s be real here. This is not a “study” as Spencer claims. It’s an insult to actual studies out there to call what Kabbani did a “study,” it doesn’t even reach the basic standard of research, documentation or analysis. He conducted a subjective investigation of American mosques, plain and simple. Mosques he went to and where he found or heard things he didn’t agree with were labeled “extremist.” Just because there was a “focus on the Palestinian struggle” at a mosque doesn’t mean it’s “extremist.” What type of absurd methodology is that? It’s remarkable that Spencer would try to pass this off as a “study.” I know, it’s hard to prove that Muslims in America are bloodthirsty jihadists, but even Spencer should be ashamed of himself for trying to pass off Kabbani’s flawed investigation as a “study” to bolster his claim that 80% of mosques are run by extremists.
The next study that Spencer claims proves that 80% of American mosques are radicalized is from the Center for Religious Freedom. What is the methodology and scope of this study?
In undertaking this study, we did not attempt a general survey of American mosques. In order to document Saudi influence, the material for this report was gathered from a selection of more than a dozen mosques and Islamic centers in American cities, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Washington, and New York. In most cases, these sources are the most prominent and well-established mosques in their areas. They have libraries and publication racks for mosque-goers. Some have full-or part-time schools and, as the 9/11 Commission Report observed, such “Saudi-funded Wahhabi schools are often the only Islamic schools.”
From their own words, the Center for Religious Freedom says that it “did not attempt a general survey of American mosques.” The study itself was designed “to document Saudi influence.” They went to fifteen mosques to complete this “study.” Fifteen mosques! According to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, there are at least 1,600 mosques and Islamic centers in the United States. This, too, is not much of a study.
Further eroding Spencer’s point, this study does not even claim that 80% or even a high percentage of American mosques are radicalized in any way. Let me repeat that – the study makes NO claim that 80% or some other percent of American mosques are radicalized. It simply does not say what Spencer claims it says. Spencer is making it up. He is lying. But LoonWatchers shouldn’t be surprised by that.
Spencer’s deception and lack of intellectual integrity in this instance is blatant, he not only cites the Center’s “study” as proof of the 80%-percent-of-mosques-are-extremists-conspiracy-theory, but he also fails to mention that the only semblance of what he claims in the study is a regurgitation of Kabbani’s (false and discredited) assertion,
Sheikh Kabbani, perhaps the U.S.’s leading moderate Muslim leader, says that a substantial percentage of American mosques have Wahhabi-funded Imams
Isn’t this interesting? What sort of credible “study” perfunctorily sites the non-evidentiary based assertions of a lone individual without questioning his methodology? The language in the above sentence is also cause for alarm, anytime a claim such as “the U.S.’s leading moderate Muslim leader” is made we should view it not only with caution but skepticism. This sort of heavily biased and subjective language is employed now by Right-Wingers and Republicans to describe “Zuhdi Jasser” the Islamophobes favorite Muslim.
Spencer’s last piece of evidence to back up his bogus claim comes from the Mapping Sharia Project led by the loony racist anti-Muslim lawyer David Yerushalmi, David Gaubatz and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney. The only thing I could find on this “study” was a Jihad Watch link reporting the findings of the Mapping Sharia Project. The Jihad Watch article reports that “An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism…”
Spencer relying on “undercover survey’s” by radical Islamophobes with pseudo-racist beliefs? Just par for the course.
Firstly, there is no web page allowing us access to examine the methodology employed by this study. When I went to the link to the Mapping Sharia Project, I was taken to the web site for David Yerushalmi’s organization, SANE (Society for American National Existence). To gain access, I had to become a member. I did not want to join this loony web site’s membership list, as I am spammed enough as it is. So Spencer’s third study does not even exist, at least out in the public. Even the link he places for the Mapping Sharia Project just takes you to another JihadWatch web page reporting the findings of the study. Guess we’ll just have to take Yerushalmi, Gaubatz, Gaffney and Spencer’s word for it that 80%… err, three out of four American mosques are radicalized.
Actually, we won’t. Spencer tried his best it seems to pass off these “studies” as evidence to support Rep. Peter King’s claim that 80% of American mosques are radicalized. None of these “studies” does that.
Kabbani’s “study” is based simply on his own opinions of the mosques and their leadership, not any objective metric gauging radicalism. If he did not agree with the viewpoints of the mosque, then he deemed them radical. That’s not a study. Spencer, someone who went to graduate school, should know better than that.
The Center for Religious Freedom study says itself that it “did not attempt a general survey of American mosques.” So how does Spencer cite this study as evidence that 80% of American mosques are radicalized? Because he’s not interested in the truth – he just needs something to cite to so he can bamboozle those who won’t actually check his sources. Sorry, Robert, but we did. And this so-called “study” does not even say what you claim it does.
The final piece of evidence Spencer clings to is the Mapping Sharia Project’s “study,” which apparently does not exist in the public domain. But considering its authors – David Yerushalmi, David Gaubatz and Frank Gaffney – I would venture to say that this “study” will not only not be very academic but thoroughly bigoted and prejudiced. Just consider some of the proposals Yerushalmi and his friends at (in)SANE have come up with:
WHEREAS Islam requires all Muslims to actively and passively support the replacement of America’s constitutional republic with a political system based upon Shari’a.
Whereas, adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari’a on the American People.
HEREFORE, IT IS RESOLVED THAT: It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Shari’a.
The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation.
(BBC)
Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Tory Party, will warn against dividing Muslims into moderates and extremists.
The baroness, the first Muslim woman to serve in the cabinet, will say such labels fuel misunderstanding.
She will use a speech at Leicester University to accuse the media of superficial discussion of Islam.
Baroness Warsi will say anti-Muslim prejudice is now seen by many Britons as normal and uncontroversial, and she will use her position to fight an “ongoing battle against bigotry”.
In extracts of the speech, published in the Daily Telegraph, the peer blames “the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media”, for making Britain a less tolerant place for believers.
She is expected to reveal that she raised the issue of Islamophobia with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Britain last year, urging him to “create a better understanding between Europe and its Muslim citizens”.
‘Social rejection’
The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said Baroness Warsi is to say publicly what many Muslims privately complain about – that prejudice against them does not attract the social stigma attached to prejudice against other religious and ethnic groups.
“She told the 2009 Conservative Party conference that anti-Muslim hatred had become Britain’s last socially acceptable form of bigotry, and claimed in a magazine article last October that taking a pop at the Muslim community in the media sold papers and didn’t really matter.”
In her speech, she is expected to say the description of Muslims as either moderate or extremist encourages false assumptions.
“It’s not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of ‘moderate’ Muslims leads; in the factory, where they’ve just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: ‘Not to worry, he’s only fairly Muslim’,” she will say.
“In the school, the kids say: ‘The family next door are Muslim but they’re not too bad’.
“And in the road, as a woman walks past wearing a burka, the passers-by think: ‘That woman’s either oppressed or is making a political statement’.”
Baroness Warsi will say terror offences committed by a small number of Muslims should not be used to condemn all who follow Islam.
But she will also urge Muslim communities to be clearer about their rejection of those who resort to violent acts.
“Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law,” she will say.
“They also should face social rejection and alienation across society and their acts must not be used as an opportunity to tar all Muslims.”
Asked about Baroness Warsi’s speech, a No 10 spokesman said she was expressing the view that there needed to be a debate “about the issue of radicalisation in Great Britain and terrorism”.
David Horowitz’s NewRealBlog is (like FrontPageMag) a lightning rod for people who want to justify their preconceived prejudices about Islam and Muslims. Today, we find an article by Paul Cooper, a pastor, which allegedly purports to expose the reality of women under Sharia law. Of course, we’ve come to expect the usual dose of anti-Muslim bias from David Horowitz’s cash for hate scheme which regularly dehumanizes Palestinians and inspires right-wing terrorists.
Mr. Cooper exposes the “left-leaning” (what most call mainstream moderate) journalists who refuse to describe Sharia law in terms of pure evil:
Every week new articles come out from left-leaning journalists about how great Sharia law is and how we have nothing to fear. Yet we at NewsReal have written on many sad cases of how children are treated under Sharia all over the world. You don’t hear the whole story of the dangers of Islamic law unless you see how it affects women. This past week in Pakistan, for example, two women were falsely accused of blasphemy and almost beaten to death.
Cooper follows classic far right-wing tactics by using Islam as a political wedge issue; that is, to divide Americans according to their position on Islam. I’ve written before about right-wing activists using Islam as a stick to bash the Left. One wonders if his primary target is his political enemies (Democrats), not necessarily Muslims themselves.
Historically, Muslims had done away with harsh blasphemy laws in 1839 during the Reformation of the Ottoman Empire, specifically by a decree known as the Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber. For Mr. Cooper, though, a small troublesome detail like that need not prevent him from claiming that such severe laws are essential Islamic traditions practiced all over the Muslim world.
Admittedly, there are problems with Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law. But Muslims have been voicing their criticism of the Pakistani government’s heavy hand for quite some time. Yursil Kidwai, in an excellent piece for the Huffington Post, describes how so-called Sharia laws are actually tactics used by corrupt governments to distract people from their endemic corruption:
It seems more than coincidental that these ‘Sharia’ incidents occur in states that are run by atheistic/communist dictators (i.e. Saddam Hussein) or ridiculously corrupt ‘Islamo-democratic’ governments.
In Pakistan’s case, the International Crisis Group provided a report last year stating:
“Decades of mismanagement, political manipulation and corruption have rendered Pakistan’s civil service incapable of providing effective governance and basic public services. In public perceptions, the country’s 2.4 million civil servants are widely seen as unresponsive and corrupt, and bureaucratic procedures cumbersome and exploitative. Bureaucratic dysfunction and low capacity undermine governance, providing opportunities to the military to subvert the democratic transition and to extremists to destabilize the state.”
Ridiculous distractions such as modern ‘Islamic’ states opinions on blasphemy, adultery, and theft allow Islamophobes to target their favorite religion, while allowing corruption and real problems to go under the radar. These laws today serve a purpose that they never had in what was the most authentic Islamic state (now only a memory): a means to prove a government’s religiosity in a midst of lies, deceit, money and total corruption which make up most of its actual administration.
Yursil is correct that the misguided policies of unelected dictators to enforce only the most harsh Sharia laws are nothing more than superficial attempts to legitimate illegitimate governments. Islamophobes like to focus on these irregular examples as a typical day of Sharia law. However, this belies the sophisticated Ottoman legal system which, using Sharia’s own internal mechanisms (such as ijtihad and istihsan), had done away with severe punishments like stoning and blasphemy. Yursil continues:
Islamic laws which reward charity, promote honesty, promote tolerance have been forgotten in these states, while a handful of ‘Shariah’ punishments were mixed in with brand-new torturous and oppressive policies and procedures.
Interestingly enough, these selected ‘Sharia’ punishments were frowned upon under the centuries of Ottoman rule and by its end had become completely unpracticed. In Ottoman lands where Sharia was the be-all, end-all official state law, these laws were unenforced as a matter of practice. This was not through denouncing or revising Islamic Law, but by putting into practice the complete and holistic set of checks and balances built into Islamic Sharia.
Of course, most Muslim law makers are following precedents similar to the Ottoman reforms. Yet, all this history and context is simply too much information to consider before David Horowitz and company declare Sharia law a threat to all women. After recounting in detail a single anecdote from Pakistan, Cooper concludes that such events are representative of the entire Muslim world (over 1 billion people):
Sadly such stories are common in many Islamic regions. Yet news agency [sic], women’s groups, and human rights organizations continue to turn a deaf ear. Despite their indifference, some of us are listening and committed to getting the word out on the true dangers of Sharia law.
We are left to believe that women everywhere in the Muslim world, without exception, are suffering every day under Sharia law. I am curious to see how Mr. Cooper explains the fact that Pakistan, allegedly under misogynist Sharia law, has twice elected a woman Prime Minister. But what do you expect from someone who links his article to Nonie Darwish, among others, as his “resource” for Sharia?
Mr. Cooper, perhaps those “news agencies, women’s groups, and human rights organizations continue to turn a deaf ear” because they don’t pay attention to exaggerated politically self-serving claims about women and Sharia law from non-experts like yourself.
A Gresham man accused of harassing and threatening a local Muslim woman is behind bars for allegedly violating an anti-stalking order.
Gresham police arrested Martin Cervantes-Gracida, 30, of Gresham at his home in the 17400 block of Southeast Stark Street at 6:37 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 9.
He also is being held on a United States Immigration hold at the Multnomah County Inverness Jail.
The arrest comes a month after the alleged victim, a 52-year-old woman who lives in the same apartment complex, was granted a protective order against the man.
A Muslim advocacy organization – The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – also requested on Dec. 21 that the FBI investigate a series of alleged hate crimes that led to the anti-stalking order being issued.
FBI Special Agent Craig Mueller is investigating the case after the woman alleged local police did not take seriously her complaints of verbal threats and physical intimidation.
According to court documents, the threats began in early November when the suspect, Cervantes-Gracida, reportedly pushed the woman, trapping her with his body against a wall in their apartment complex’s laundry room.
Two weeks later, he allegedly threatened to shoot her dog and rape her “while you pray with your head on the ground,” the woman reported. He also reportedly confronted her in the parking lot and threatened to kill her, adding, “You snitch, called the cops on me.”
The woman had lived at the complex for a year without any problem until she converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf.
She also expressed concern that while police helped her, they did not arrest Cervantes-Gracida. She alleges that one police officer told her she should consider not wearing her religious headscarf to avoid angering the neighbor.
On point piece from Sarah Posner, another writer who was an extraordinary “anti-Loon” in 2010. It goes to show that despite all of Rep. King’s protestations that his hearings are innocent of bigotry his statements prove otherwise.
Lee Fang at Think Progressreports that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee who plans on holding hearings on the “radicalization” of American Muslims, said on Frank Gaffney’s radio program last week that Muslims aren’t real Americans in combatting terrorism:
Joining anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney on Gaffney’s radio program last week, King doubled down on his promise to launch a witch-hunt against Muslims. He repeated a falsehood that he stated earlier — that American Muslims never cooperate to combat terrorism. But in addition to this claim, King made the extraordinary smear that American Muslims aren’t “American” when it comes to war. “[W]hen a war begins,” King said, every ethnic and religious group unites as “Americans.” “But in this case,” King continued, referring to Muslims, “this is not the situation. … Whether it’s cultural tradition, whatever, the fact is the Muslim community does not cooperate anywhere near to the extent that it should.”
As I reported last week, Gaffney has disgusted some conservatives with his anti-Muslim bigotry; one Muslim conservative activist, Suhail Khan, told me that is why Gaffney has beenexcluded from next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Yet that doesn’t stop CPAC from including a group like the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which supportsFront Page magazine, which has promoted Gaffney’s work, including Gaffney’s smear of Khan.
As King’s willingness to appear on Gaffney’s radio show and affirm his notions that Muslims can’t be real Americans shows, Gaffney is not the pariah some in CPAC might contend he is. By way of another example, as I reported, Gaffney was appointed to the advisory board of the Clarion Fund, whose Islamophobic propaganda films have been promoted by current and former elected officials and the Republican Jewish Committee, and which plans to screen its latest documentary, Iranium, to lawmakers early next month.
Gaffney has been peddling the bogus claim that shari’ah law represents a real threat to the Constitution, and has called on Congress to “investigate” that as well. He employs someone who believes being Muslim should be criminalized. He brought that dog and pony show to Capitol Hill late last year for the benefit of House staffers, and spoke to a room of about 50 people. It surely is a deeply troubling development that King is cavorting with Gaffney and pontificating about the “Americanism” of American Muslims, in light of Gaffney’s agitation about fifth columns of shari’ah proponents bent on undermining the Constitution.
"Atheist Muslim reformer" Wafa Sultan with anti-Muslim loon Pamela Geller
Wafa Sultan or as she is better known Wafa Stalin was recently on Russia Today (RT) news network. We have previously linked to episodes from the Alyona Show, in which the host tore apart Pamela Geller. We also linked to an episode of Crosstalk in which Professor Norman Finkelstein debated an Israeli official and utterly pulverized him.
This time Wafa Sultan was on Crosstalk with Ibrahim Ramey to discuss the Quran, Muslims and foreign policy. Wafa may have had expectations that this video would also get the MEMRI treatment, thereby recapturing those 5 minutes of fame she procured previously, but Ibrahim Ramey wasn’t having it.
Ramey came across as the more cool, collected, comprehensible, reasoned, articulate and objective in this encounter, and Wafa…well…more Stalin-ish than ever.
One more thing, dear Asra Nomani, after watching this how can you still stand by your glorifying article of Sultan in TIME magazine? Asra, come to your senses, if not not on profiling Muslims at airports than at least on supporting anti-Muslim Islamophobic bigots.
We were also sent this video, which though a little annoying due to its tedious repetitions, captures Wafa in the midst of what can be deemed a bold faced lie or the kindest word perhaps “old lady dementia.”
Wafa Sultan Lies about her niece (hat tip: Yahya):
Greeneye recently did a great piece on Pascal Bruckner, a (wanna-be) “philosopher” who made the very poor and contradictory case that the word Islamophobia was “invented” to silence critics of the Koran, while at the same time minimizing bigotry against Muslims.
Much to our delight Marty Peretz wanted to help make our case that Pascal Bruckner’s article was not only woefully anemic intellectually, but thoroughly Islamophobic. Peretz of “Muslim lives are cheap fame” latched onto Bruckner’s article hoping that in some way another fake liberal might exonerate him of his lewd beliefs and laughingstock position, in doing so he just made our point even stronger. Good company you are in Pascal!
Faux liberal and pro-occupation advocate, New Republic editor Martin Peretz is back at it again.
Last fall, he caused a firestorm with his racist comments that “Muslim life is cheap” in a piece lambasting the New York Times for speaking out against anti-Muslim prejudice and defending constitutionally-protected religious rights.
Sounding more like a slumlord than a former Harvard assistant professor, he wrote at the time:
I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.
Peretz, who was slated to be honored by Harvard prior to the controversy, was roundly rebuked for his offensive comments, with Harvard put under intense pressure for honoring a bigot. Harvard students rallied outside his ceremony which several professors and staff boycotted; disgusted alumni returned their certificates to the university. Though the ceremony took place, his acceptance speech was cancelled.
But that humiliation has not stopped Peretz from his downward spiral to kookdom. On Monday, he dished out some raw Islamophobia-denial in a gullible column entitled “The Invention of Islamophobia”:
Anyone who suggests that there is a war being waged by Muslims in their own lands and in the lands in which they have settled–these last, by the way, are the really aggressive “settlers”!–against rationalists and true liberals, traditional conservatives and Islamic dissenters, Christians and Jews is likely to be labeled an “Islamophobe.” I have been, and thousands of you out there, perhaps millions, have been so labeled…or almost. And, at dinner with friends, have anyone of you just raised questions about the tyranny of silence which the “politically so correct” are trying to impose on those who are fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs and then not found yourselves attacked as at least “intolerant” and perhaps even a bigot? Or, yes, even an Islamophobe.
He goes on to claim:
Islamophobia–that is, the word itself–is meant to silence you. It has already silenced President Obama, hasn’t it? He hasn’t even spoken up for his fellow Christians who in recent weeks have been victimized in Iraq (where maybe we still wave some sway), Egypt (our very expensive ally), Nigeria, Pakistan et al.
(Actually that’s a lie. “President Obama, in a statement, called the attack ‘barbaric and heinous,’” the AP reports. But that’s not our topic.)
Allow me to clarify a few things for the confused, self-victimizing Peretz.
Firstly, being “fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs” does not constitute Islamophobia.
In fact, most Muslims in the world would admit to being afraid of this admixture.
I understand that it is difficult for stereotype-minded individuals to understand that other people are largely just like their own – that is, with their share of some bad who do bad things and a good majority who fear bad things – but that is what makes them bigots.
Bigots, by definition, tend to not only fear the bad apples in “other” group – which would be understandable – but they tend to go further by propping them up as the headline for the entire group, even if the bad apples are a small percentage.
And so for a certified bigot, all Blacks are street criminals, all Latinos are gang bangers, all Jews are greedy, and all Muslims mix faith with bombs.
As such Islamophobia is just another form of bigotry – in this case, bigotry against Muslims. But here’s the point Mr. Peretz, like other forms of bigotry, it is not so much about criticizing something as negative (as you cheekily posit), but the generalization of what is negative to all members of the group (which you and others demonstrably indulge in).
So when Peretz talks of a war being waged by “Muslims in their own lands and in the lands in which they have settled … against rationalists and true liberals, traditional conservatives and Islamic dissenters, Christians and Jews” without context, scope or qualification – as if all 1.4 billion Muslims are waging a war against all the billions of liberals, conservatives, Christians and Jews in the world – then Peretz is engaging in simplistic and vitriolic generalizations against Muslims that certainly constitute Islamophobia.
There is another related indicator of Islamophobia: selectivity.
So when Peretz is “fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs” only when that faith is Islam, but not when that faith is Christianity, Hinduism, his native Judaism or some other faith, then chances are Peretz is mired in Islamophobia.
Funny enough, there is one more common indicator of Islamophobia: criticizing those who resist the trigger-happy generalizations of Muslims as supposedly “succumbing to political correctness.” In that warped world view, the bigoted are the courageous freedom fighting patriots, and those responsible souls who say “no thanks” to generalizations are the weak-kneed politically-correct liberals who are going to bring America down.
So no, Mr. Peretz, before you start crying victim and feeling sorry for yourself as someone who is ridiculed for daring to speak out against the evils of Islam and Muslims and against the oversensitivity of the poor old politically correct masses, perhaps you can explain to us how opposing an American Muslim mosque for the alleged transgressions of Muslims in medieval Muslim lands is not a double generalization across time and space for which you should rightly be ridiculed and dismissed?
Islamophobia – that is negative stereotyping, bigoted expressions, and rampant generalizations against Islam and Muslims – is not only a sad reality in America today but one that is hard to miss just reading through the news headlines in 2010, let alone the third page. Not coincidently, those who are leading the Islamophobic movement in this country are the same people now leading the Islamophobia-denial movement. And in truth, Martin Peretz, though a member of the club, is not at the top of the list.
Whether anti-semitism or Islamophobia, those who coined the phenomenon did not “invent” the phenomenon, they simply called it out. It is an insult to Harvard, that someone like Peretz does not possess the requisite intellectual fortitude to tell the difference.
Once on the opinion scene, Debbie Schlussel has spat and snorted her way into irrelevance. No one really cares about her over-the-top rantings anymore. Today, she’s widely seen as an irrelevant foul-mouthed hatemonger who thinks that she’s important just because she was on FOX a couple of times. Desperate for attention, Schlussel has become increasingly erratic and extreme hoping to shock her way into the realm of public attention. But like a flasher lurking in an overall at dark corners of the park, when she strikes, it’s only cause for more people to be turned off. So much for “shock” therapy.
Recently, she posted a diatribe applauding a terror attack against innocent Christian victims at an Alexandria church, saying she’s happy they were killed and that she hopes more of them get blown up. The reason for her raving mad commentary? That they are not pro-Israel enough for her liking.
Schlussel’s hatred and bitterness seems to be mostly driven by her personal inadequacies and insecurities. Jealous of Oprah’s success, the unsuccessful Schlussel routinely refers to her as HO-prah; jealous of Rima Fakih’s charm (Miss USA), the not-so-charming Schlussel refers to her as “Hezbollah’s Sharmuta” (whore), Elizabeth Hasselbeck gets called “hag,” and Kentucky Fried Chicken can’t escape her wrath getting labeled “Kentucky Fried Sleaze.” Even her old pal and now a frequent target of her ire, Pamela Geller is called Scamela Geller (not without merit in this case at least).
Recently, Schlussel’s actions have become more eccentric (bordering on delirium);
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has sued controversial Southfield lawyer Debbie Schlussel in federal court for trademark infringement, saying Schlussel incorporated several similarly-named groups to confuse its donors.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, urges U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn, to stop her from using the names she incorporated.
“There are people in our community who contacted our office thinking she actually was named executive director of CAIR Michigan,” the group’s executive director, Dawud Walid, said today. He said he fears supporters of his group are making charitable contributions to Schlussel, believing she runs the real CAIR organization.
Schlussel countered that CAIR abandoned its name in Michigan by failing to file annual reports to the state of Michigan beginning in 2004. She said she filed articles of incorporation last year, at the behest of a client who she wouldn’t identify.
“They abandoned it,” Schlussel said. “The state of Michigan sent them notices, but they never once responded.”
Walid says Schlussel spews anti-Muslim hatred on her website. Schlussel counters that she seeks to point out the intolerance of Islam.
A hearing on the case is set for 9 a.m. Friday.
Schlussel’s blog piece on her latest lunatic move is a laughable cry of victimization, faux claim at free speech and most reprehensible of all asking for money to support it.
I have some important information to share with you. I was recently appointed the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Michigan a/k/a CAIR Michigan, Inc. CAIR Michigan is and will continue to be educating residents of Michigan–through various activities, in the courts, in the media, and everywhere you can imagine–about Islam and the true state of “American-Islamic relations.” Check out our website, which is in development. (Thanks to Fred Taub of Boycott Watch for his help in that endeavor.) We have a lot of projects in store, in terms of educating the public about Islam in America and elsewhere. We will be mixing things up. We are applying for tax-deductible status and are in the process of filing all of the official paperwork to raise money as a non-profit.
Until that process is complete, you can help me in this and my other endeavors in exposing the real Islam and stopping it from further changing the American way of life by donating to these efforts. Donating even just $5-$20/month can really add up to significant support in the ongoing operation and expansion of these activities. You can either use the yellow Paypal buttons on the upper left hand side of the site, or you can prevent the PayPal fees by going to PayPal and sending it directly to: writedebbie@gmail.com. Any amount is appreciated, and we can really use your help to make a bang as the new year approaches.
My first official act as CAIR-Michigan Executive Director was the letter below to the Michigan Attorney General’s office in opposition to a federal appellate lawsuit filed by an imposter group of Muslims using our name to fight a Michigan judge who asked a woman, Raneen Al-Baghdady–to remove her Muslim headscarf in court. And a few weeks ago, the appeal lost. The judge was upheld in asking the woman to remove her Muslim headscarf.
Can it get any more creepy and pathetic than that?
Dawud Walid, the Executive Director of the real “CAIR-Michigan” has an excellent blog piece on this farce as well as some hilarious broadsides at the comedic and goofy character of Debbie Schlussel:
For years, the Muslim community, its leaders including myself and the organization which I lead have been subjected to fallacious allegations, distortions and smears from “xenophobic loon” Deborah (Debbie) K. Schlussel. Despite her incessantly bigoted blogging, we have virtually ignored this “know-nothing nut”, and I haven’t really blogged about her over the years because she is frankly an irrelevant, fringe in my book. In other words, she’s simply been a Class A, minor league annoyance unlike major league Islamophobes that can cause serious harm to civil liberties.
In regards to the current complaint that has been made against Schlussel for her commandeering the name Council on American-Islamic Relations – Michigan, she is trying to frame her bogus argument that the legal complaint against her is to silence her freedom to criticize Muslims. This, however, is a classic straw man argument. Our complaint against her, though it mentions that she is an anti-Muslim blogger in showing her motive, focuses on her attempt to represent herself as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the state of Michigan, an organization devoted to protecting the civil rights of Muslims and challenging Islamophobia. This is the issue at hand, not her bigotry.
If Schlussel wishes to state that President Obama is an uncover Muslim who can’t be trusted, let her do so. If she chooses to continue to mislabel Dearborn as “Dearbonistan” (Arabs, by the way, don’t use “stan” behind their lands; those are Central Asians ), she is free to do so. If she even chooses to state that Christian Arabs such as Coptics deserve to be bombed because of their “anti-Semitism” (Arabs are Semites too by the way ), she can also say such.
It appears in this situation that her disdain for Muslims caused her to make some crucial lapses in her attempt to “drive the Muslims crazy.” (To DS: We have the entire blog saved, so no need in trying to erase the post now. :)) And like any organization or business with a trademark and name recognition which has offices or stores in other regions, we signed an affiliation agreement to use the trademark with our national office kind of like how franchisees sign a contract with Burger King for instance with its corporate office to use the name Burger King. Burger King would never allow its trademark to be used by a store that is strictly vegetarian and against selling hamburgers in America, nor would a civil rights organization such as CAIR allow an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot to use its name in any state, be it Alaska, Colorado or Michigan. Even my 9 year old son grasps this simple logic.
Anyway, I have bigger fish to fry for now. I have talks to give at area mosques today and tomorrow as well as have official business with government officials to conduct. This will all work itself out in court.
Cut & paste below to view complaint filed against Schlussel:
Update: The website for Schlussel’s “CAIR-Michigan” no longer stands for “Council on American Islamic Relations” if you visit it now it reads “Council on American Israeli Relations.” A fitting description perhaps. Maybe Schlussel started feeling the heat?
DAKOTA CITY, Neb. — Dakota City councilman Bob Lane whipped up a controversy when he placed a sign on his property reading “Never Trust a Man Named Mohamed.”
Lane, well-known in Dakota City for his strong opinions primarily on local and county government, placed the sign near a multiplex rental unit he owns in the 300 block of North 14th Street, a high-traffic route into the Dakota County town of 1,827. The sign led several residents to lodge complaints at City Hall.
Lane told the Journal he had removed the Mohamed sign after it had been up for more than a week and replaced it midafternoon Monday with a holiday message. He didn’t specify what the Mohamed name referenced.
“It is freedom of speech. Whenever we have a problem in the nation, the first name, the middle name or the last name is often Mohamed,” said Lane, a multi-term councilman who was re-elected this year.
Kathy Bruyere lives in South Sioux City and owns rental property in Dakota City near the sign.
“I find this very offensive,” Bruyere said. “We have a lot of East African workers who come to Tyson (Foods packing plant), and they are going to see this every day. A city councilman should not be representing the city of Dakota City in this manner. It is a manner that promotes hate and fear.”
Bruyere said she called the city of Dakota City in the morning and heard there had been several complaints. Yet, the city has no control over the sign because it is on private land and is an expression of free speech.
John Fickler of Dakota City said the Mohamed reference was mystifying in his circle of friends. Fickler said it is unclear whether the name reference was general or specific. Others wondered whether the reference was to a man named Mohamed who perhaps didn’t pay rent to Lane or the prophet (commonly spelled Muhammad) who is central in the founding of the Islam religion.
Some of Lane’s previous messages have criticized Dakota County government decisions, and others have been humorous or seasonal.
“Sometimes they are on local politics, whatever hits the moment. We haven’t quite figured (the new) one out yet,” Fickler said.
A person who lives in Lane’s complex with the sign said the city councilman has a right to express his opinion but worried that people might think the Mohamed reference came from one of the renters and retaliate against them.
Others said they thought the Lane reference was to the Prophet Muhammad and will stir prejudice, while some said there are problems with Islam, since some followers are openly hostile to Christians.
How sad can Robert Spencer get? My colleagues at LoonWatch have termed him an Internet Psychopath. Perhaps a more fitting description would be a Cyberpath.
Cyberpath: People that possess a Narcissistic , Sociopath , or Psychopath personality disorder where they use the Internet as a tool against others on the Internet (their victims) in order to harm, bully, abuse, provoke, troll, torment, created conflict, destroy, damage, deceive, flame and inflame others for their own gratification , for example, seeking personal or financial gain.
This describes Robert Spencer to a tee. He has graduated from being a psychopath to being an all out Cyberpath. His narcissistic image of himself doesn’t allow for him to let any perceived slight or blight (even if it doesn’t exist) against his person go.
This has manifested itself in his recent Crusade against two Muslims who don’t really fit the extremist mold as far as any discerning viewer can note: Reza Aslan and Ahmed Rehab.
Spencer has stooped to calling the two “Islamic Supremacists.” Their crimes, aside from blasting Spencer as belonging in the “trash bin of history” seems to be that they “look metrosexual” (I didn’t know Spencer the flobby anti-Muslim polemicist was also a fashion expert, his attire would suggest otherwise), won’t entertain Spencer and his arguments as serious but view him as a bigoted clown, and that they are active in protecting the rights of Muslims.
In a little over 48 hours Spencer has produced 7 pieces of varying length and verbiage against both Aslan and Rehab, essentially confirming himself as their cyberstalker.
-Islamic Supremacist Reza Aslan: “Nothing can stop the spread of Islam” (Spencer relies on one of his followers, Evan Mark, for this “quote.” No one in the media reported it, but when we look at the actual speech we see that what Aslan is saying is that there are fundamentalists (such as Spencer) who wish to destroy Islam and to go to war with Islam and strip Muslims from practicing or preaching their religion, Aslan said that this is stupid and is not going to happen because Islam is a great world faith and all indicators are it is going to keep growing.)
-Bill O’Reilly Fawns over anti-Semitic Islamic Supremacist Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR (I sense a bit of jealousy and envy on the part of poor ole’ irrelevant Spencer. No longer able to bask in the 5 minute glory of the ginned up “NYC Ground Zero Mosque” controversy, no one wants him on air. In fact they don’t want to be near him with a ten feet pole because he is just that ludicrous. He is sad that O’Reilly, a hardcore Right-winger, had a Mooslim with some intelligence on his program and not awkward self-proclaimed academic Robert Spencer.)
-Pro-Democracy Movement of Iran protests State Department’s Sending lobbyist for Islamic Republic on tax-payer-funded jaunt to Saudi Arabia (By pro-Democracy what he means is the anti-Islamic and neo-Conservative organization PDMI, an Orwellian organization that includes one Amil Imani whose vitriol against Muslims would put Geert Wilders to shame. Not to mention that it is so “pro-Democracy” that it hosts a portrait of “His Majesty Mohammed Reza Shah,” a real scion of Democracy!.)
-Juan Williams and the Left’s Intellectual Bankruptcy ( a Human Events piece that continues his worn out attacks of Leftist/Mooslim stealth conspiracy to advance Jihad)
State Department sponsors Saudi trip of apologist for Islamic Republic of Iran(Trita Parsi, the reason they dislike him, an individual who supported the Green Movement that called for Reforms in Iran, and who are the real Pro-Democracy advocates is because he isn’t a hysterical anti-Muslim bigot)
CAIR’s Ahmed Rehab and the Use of Ridicule(a hypocritical piece in which Spencer whines about being ridiculed by Ahmed Rehab while at the same time previously and in this blog piece calling Ahmed Rehab a “metrosexual who uses lipstick and eyeliner.”)
CAIR’s Brave Ahmed Rehab, who ran from debate with me, claims never to have run from a debate(The “objective scholar,” very “scholarly” slings personal attacks and lies against Ahmed Rehab. O’ Little Cyberpath (to include a variation on an Andrew Bostom quote) how can someone “duck” a debate with you when they didn’t agree to one in the first place? I guess facts don’t matter to faux-scholars!)
On the heels of the Salon.com article that traced the Ground Zero mosque controversy back to Pamela Geller, CNN ran a special segment on the anatomy of this story. In it Pamela Geller is called out for who she is, an “anti-Muslim blogger.” The evidence for that abounds,
Geller: Obama “is a third worlder and a coward” who’s “appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords.” In an April 13 blog post, Gellerwrote: “Obama is a third worlder and a coward. He will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords. All this is going down while Obama plays footsie at his nuclear nonsense campfire — sucking up to Iran’s enablers while beating up our allies.”
Geller: Liberal Jews are “lost souls,” “self-hating wretches.” In her January 25 Newsmax column, Geller wrote that Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League “has come out against a great and wonderful friend of the Jews, Rush Limbaugh.” Geller added that this “is symptomatic of a deeper problem: I have for years derided Jews in America and the Jewish lay leadership for tolerating and supporting clear and present enemies of the Jewish people among our senior ranks. It is a sickness of the soul.” She further wrote, “The liberal Jew worships at the church of human secularism. These lost souls are married to their liberal dogma” and asked, “Which Jews support deleterious characters like Foxman? Which Jews give blood money to these self-hating wretches?”
Geller on Obama’s Israel policy: “Jews Refuse to Get on Obama’s Trains.” In a post apparently responding to Obama’s opposition to settlement growth, Geller wrote, “Jews refuse to get on Obama’s Trains.” She added: “Obama is pressuring Jews to “evacuate” from parts of Israel? And what Warsaw ghetto does the muhammadan [sic] president have in mind? I think I am gonna hurl. The Jews will not go. The Jews will not submit to this century’s nazis [sic] and Mansourian poser. No way, bloodsuckers. Not again. Never again.”
Geller on transgender Obama appointee: “What a freak show this presidency is.” In a January 4 blog post, Geller responded to a report that Obama named a transgender appointee to a Commerce Department position by stating, “Does Obama know anyone who isn’t wacky, radical, militant, judeophobic, socialist, marxist, pedophilic? …… Does he chill with anyone who is normal? Isn’t there one Marilyn Munster in the family? What a freak show this presidency is.”
Geller: Obama “wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing.” In an April 1 blog post titled, “”President Jihad: Obama Encouraged Violent Palestinian Muslim protests against Israel,” Geller claimed Obama “is agitating Muslims against Jews” and stated, “The President of the United States is advancing jihad against the oath of office that he took.” Geller also stated in an April 11 post, “President Sarkozy called [Obama] ‘a madman,’ ‘a lunatic.’ Perhaps, I don’t know — but one thing is for sure: Hussein is a muhammadan. He’s not insane ………..he wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing. Of course, to the western mind, the rational mind, the logical mind, the American mind, that is insane.”
Geller called Democrats “National Socialists.” In a March 13 blog post, Geller wrote, ”National Socialists [Democrats] Obamacare: Sheeps to ‘Slaughter Solution.’” She added, “The buzz on Capitol Hill is that the Democrats are now considering what is being called the ’Slaughter Solution’ that will allow ObamaCare to be signed into law WITHOUT HOUSE MEMBERS EVEN HAVING TO VOTE.“
Geller: Senate Democrats supporting health care reform voted “to rape the American people.” In a December 21, 2009, blog post, Geller wrote of the cloture vote for health care reform: “The moochers and the looters, the crooks and degenerates voted at 1 am this morning to rip the constitution to shreds, to rape the American people and to nationalize medicine.” She added that passing the bill on Christmas Eve would be “an act of treason and blasphemy.”
Geller declared “VICTORY!” after Swiss established ban on minaret construction. In a November 29 post to her Atlas Shrugs blog — headlined “VICTORY! SWISS BAN MOSQUE MINARETS IN A LANDSLIDE VOTE” — Pamela Geller commented: “The Swiss have hand [sic] enough. They actually had the spine to take back their country. I wonder how the religion of peaceniks will react…in their usual tolerant and pacifist manner?”
Geller: “Obama Goes Full On Nazi.” Geller headlined a November 9, 2009, post “Obama Goes Full On Nazi: Subject: “Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after appearing on Fox News.”
Geller: ” ‘Kick a Jew’ days … are part of this growing evil Evil unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.” In a December 14, 2009, post, Geller wrote:
It’s as if the floodgates of hell have been thrown open. The moratorium on the holocaust is officially over and all the savages are free to incite, hate and destroy. Clearly those “Kick a Jew” days discussed here and here in schools are part of this growing evil Evil [sic] unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.
Geller: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois.” In a December 15, 2009, post, Geller responded to reports that Guantanamo Bay detainees may be housed at the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois by stating: “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.”
Geller: “It is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth,” and he only visited Pakistan while in college because of “jihad or drugs.” In an August 1, 2009, post, Geller discussed rumors of a Palin divorce being spread by bloggers, including one supposedly tied to CNN and stated:
Let’s understand this. CNN won’t touch the birth certificate issue, the Rezko/Auchi corruption, Obama’s anti-semitism, his ACORN/SEIU ties and corruption, and other legitimate stories that need investigation. But they write fiction about Palin. Daily. 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! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices. Where’s the investigation?
Geller further stated of Obama’s trip to Pakistan during college: “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.”
Geller on Dome of the Rock: “The dome has got to go.” On September 27, 2009, Geller posted an image of Muslims praying at the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holy sites, and stated, “On Erev Yom Kippur, Muslims attack Jews in Jerusalem. 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).”
There is more where this came from, please read our profile of Geller, The Looniest Blogger Ever. The sad thing is that this segment on CNN had Pamela Geller on unopposed. The host, John Roberts, obviously didn’t do his research and didn’t press her enough with the tough questions that Geller should be asked.
Instead, the show in effect gave Pamela Geller an opportunity to lie and cover up the fact that she is a Muslim hater. It is now common to see Pamela in her TV appearances claim that she “loves Muslims,” though the type of love she seems to be talking about is some twisted love in which the only good Muslim is one who doesn’t practice Islam, or believe in the Quran or the Prophet Muhammad.
The fact is she is against the building of mosques. Even in this CNN program she exposes herself by equating terrorists as representatives of “pure Islam,” echoing her friend, Euro-supremacist demagogue Geert Wilders who wants to tax the Hijab, ban Muslim immigration and outlaw Islam in the Netherlands.
The truth is Geller is opposed to the building of mosques, as is clear when she triumphantly claims victory after the Swiss ban minarets and when she calls for the destruction of mosques like the Golden Dome.
How a strip club “at” Ground Zero doesn’t cheapen the sanctity of Ground Zero, while an Islamic cultural center does, is only something a wannabe conquistador could fathom.
Robert Spencer is enraged at the wording used by Politico’s Ben Smith in describing the so-called Ground Zero mosque as “actually a few blocks north of the site…” For Spencer, anywhere you can see Ground Zero may be hallowed ground.
In the first place, the mosque will not be a few blocks away. I have been to the site, and can tell you: walk half a block down the street from the Burlington Coat Factory that is set to be the site of the mega-mosque, turn left, and you will see Ground Zero. Smith and Haberman have apparently never been to the site, as no one who has could characterize it as “a few blocks north.” It is actually just 600 feet away from Ground Zero.
See, since you can walk a half-block down from the proposed mosque site and then turn to your left and see Ground Zero from 600 feet away this means that the mosque is actually “at” Ground Zero. Right.
So next time you’re looking over the New York skyline from the Empire State Building, remember that you’re standing on hallowed ground even though you’re a mile away from Ground Zero. Or hey, looking at Ground Zero from Google Maps could even make your bedroom hallowed ground.
This is a game of semantics. Spencer is arguing that the mosque is not a few blocks away from Ground Zero, but a mere 600 feet away. So? The implication is that by being 600 feet away, the mosque “near” Ground Zero is in fact “at” Ground Zero. Therefore, the mosque shouldn’t be there. What’s silly about all this is that “the actual mosque location is surrounded by delis, coffeeshops, bars, offices — not to mention a strip club a few feet away from the proposed site,” as Danial Luban points out. None of these trivial and even erotic sites enrage Spencer like the mosque does. How a strip club “at” Ground Zero doesn’t cheapen the sanctity of Ground Zero, while an Islamic cultural center does, is only something a wannabe conquistador could fathom.
In theory, the first purpose of boycotts is to cause people to think. To discover or reconsider an issue.
In theory, the first purpose of the Anti-Defamation League is the same. To cause people to discover, to rethink, to become aware of and combat bigotry, within themselves as well as in others.
This week a boycott campaign caused me to rethink boycotts against Israel. And a campaign by the Anti-Defamation League caused me to rethink the Anti-Defamation League.
The boycott was the decision by the Olympia, Washington Food Co-op, to remove Israeli products from the shelves of its two stores.
In a move as courageous as it was overdue, the co-op also featured and published online a pamphlet strongly opposing manifestations of anti-Semitism in leftist movements.
“Unfortunately,” the co-op’s blog observed, “anti-Semitic statements have abounded in a lot of the ‘support’ that the co-op has received in regard to the Israeli-products’ boycott.”
A protester calling for a boycott of Israel.
Photo by: AP
The Olympia Food Co-op has taken an important step in distinguishing between opposition to the policies of Israel on the one hand, and anti-Jewish hatred on the other.
It has also worked to identify and distance Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry from the wider discussion of boycotts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Which makes it all the more curious that when longtime ADL National Director Abraham Foxman chose to publicly oppose the construction of a mosque and Muslim cultural center near the Ground Zero site, his rationale was troubling, to say the least:
“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” Foxman, himself a survivor, told The New York Times.
“Referring to the loved ones of Sept. 11 victims, he said, ‘Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.’”
There is something at once refreshing and destructive about Foxman’s words. Refreshing, in the sense that this sounds like unfiltered honesty. Destructive, in the sense that this is precisely the rationale under which many on the left have justified or excused non-progressive, at times overtly bigoted, statements and actions by militant Palestinians.
It is high time to strike bigotry of all forms – by both sides – from the debate over the Mideast conflict.
It is time, as well, for the Jewish community as a whole to relate differently to those in their midst who have a serious difference of opinion with Israel.
In this regard, it is time for the Jewish community to engage those who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, rather than effectively excommunicating them.
Perhaps what is most profoundly needed is for those who care about the Mideast equation to genuinely say what they think, and to abandon the time-honored codes in which each side attacks the other.
Allow me to begin.
I fully recognize as valid the opinions of those who oppose the idea of a specifically Jewish state. I would only ask that they be honest and open about it.
If you think a Jewish state is a bad idea, an institution that should be disbanded, I believe that it is the honest thing – honest to yourself, before all else – to come out and say so.
As a supporter of the idea of a truly democratic Jewish state alongside an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, what I cannot accept is the idea that formally Muslim states are acceptable, where a Jewish state is not.
In the past I have been vociferous in opposing boycotts. I now realize that it was not the boycott per se that cause me rage, but the tolerance for a double standard that said “While others – including our own United States – commit war crimes, engage in oppression, and have a long history of subjugating, disenfranchising and dehumanizing minorities, Israel will be our sole target.”
Something else angered me as well – not the fact that some of the people who advocated boycotting Israel were actually against the idea of having a state of Israel, but the fact that for tactical reasons, they refused to come out and say so.
In general, I oppose boycotts as a tactic, first because I oppose collective punishment of all kinds, whether practiced by Israel against Gazans, or by progressives against Israelis as a whole. I also believe that boycotts against Israel tend to be self-defeating.
Having said that, I recognize that nearly everyone tends to boycott those they do not care for, while making efforts to support those whom they do. Moreover, some of those who most strongly oppose the BDS movement continually launch boycotts of their own.
I want to thank the Olympia Food Co-op Israel boycott. Something extremely valuable is happening there. Something truly radical. An awareness that people who are truly in favor of social justice must take a stand against bigotry, no matter the target.
The mayor of New York has set an example in this regard, saying of the mosque and its critics, “What is great about America, and particularly New York, is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us?”
It’s a lesson that Abraham Foxman needs to relearn.
Yesterday, May 20th was the Draw Muhammed Day which is extending into today, ostensibly put together to defend freedom of expression/speech. The original creators of the day have backed out, including Molly Norris, due to the tremendous amounts of bigotry and hate that it engendered, but others continued with the campaign.
Taking a glance at the Facebook page, most of the freedumb expressions are hateful and bigoted depictions of Muhammad meant to anger Muslims. Is it a coincidence that the ones who are reveling most in this day are racists and Islamophobes?
Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have both been utterly gleeful over the event. Unconditionally supporting it, Spencer got in the act himself drawing Prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his head, though the depiction looks a little bit like Spencer himself, and Geller added to the fray by drawing Prophet Muhammad with the face of a pig.
As Shahed Amanullah said, this is pretty much collective punishment on the whole Muslim community for the actions of a few. The inspiration for this event was the threats that the South Park creators received from a group called Revolution Muslim.
We reported at the time that this group is composed of four or five individuals, all with dubious backgrounds. Not only are they on the fringe in terms of their beliefs, they are completely rejected in the American Muslim community. Yet for some curious reason the media took this story and ran with it as if these Revolution Muslim characters represented or had any clout amongst American Muslims. It is as though anyone can say they are Muslim or represent Muslims and they will get airtime if they do or say something crazy.
The event itself was a mixture of self-righteous internet warriors who cared less about free speech and more about offending and disparaging Muslims. The initial fan page was deleted by Facebook, shortly after that another one was started.
There were pictures of Quran’s in toilets, of Muhammad depicted in all sorts of ways which I won’t repeat or reproduce here because they are vile and disgusting, and go beyond any justification of free speech and into the realm of outright hostility and bigotry towards Muslims. People can view the site and judge for themselves.
However, I must say that if this event was put together to defend freedom of speech it has failed. Freedom of speech, the freedom to offend, to be a racist is not in dispute but when you get called out for it don’t begin whining. There also seems to be a level of incitement, the strange and morbid wish to receive death threats, as the moderator put it, “Did you receive any death threats? If so, post them online and share the fun. ”
Interestingly enough, a few participants in the Draw Muhammad Day expressed disappointment at not receiving death threats, one Jack Burns wrote,
The trouble seems to be one of communication. American Muslims say, “we respect free speech, and to begin with we don’t care about the South Park cartoon which was a media storm created from a small group of wing-nuts who got way more attention than they deserve.”
Unfortunately, as when Muslims condemn and fight terrorism no one cares or is paying attention. A day such as this isn’t about criticism or defense of free speech, it is more like a day when people can stroke their own egos and have some excitement in otherwise boring lives.
The Pakistani government has blocked access to Facebook and YouTube over a campaign encouraging users to post images of the Prophet Muhammad online.
A group of free speech advocates declared May 20 “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” to protest censorship of an episode of South Park that featured illustrations of Muhammad. In 2006, the show poked fun of a controversy over Danish cartoons with images of Muhammad. For Muslims, it’s blasphemous to show an image of him, but the episode aired without much notice.
That’s part of the freedom of speech. It’s not always neat and clean. It’s not always nice and smooth. Sometimes it’s a little ugly and a little bit dirty, but it’s free speech.
- Liam Fox, NewsJunkiePost.com
Then last month the prophet appeared on South Park, again, this time in a bear suit. In response, a radical Muslim website posted a warning to the show’s creators saying they could end up like Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death after making a film that protested domestic violence in Islamic cultures. Comedy Central censored all references to Muhammad in the following South Park episode.
That sparked cartoonist Molly Norris to establish “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” in protest; a Facebook page was created for people to post drawings, and the campaign spilled over into YouTube.
“The reaction of people drawing cartoons and encouraging people to draw cartoons is to make the point that one group cannot impose its ideology or its theology on others simply by saying we don’t allow that or it offends us,” says Liam Fox, who writes for the website News Junkie and says he supports the protest.
But many of the drawings and comments posted on the Facebook page weren’t just depictions of Muhammad; there were some very anti-Muslim comments. That prompted Norris and many other professional illustrators to withdraw their support for the protest.
“It may be a sincere attempt at trying to make a statement about free expression,” says Rex Rabin, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. “It just kind of strikes me as unnecessary and childish.”
Rabin says he believes in free speech and he thinks cartoons can be a great way to make a statement. But he says he sees no point in cartoons that are simply meant to offend an entire religious group.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has condemned the threat of violence against the creators of South Park. But a spokesman for the organization, Ibrahim Hooper, says the protest has created a worse situation.
“It was being taken up by Muslim bashers and Islamophobes and those who have a deep hatred for the faith of Islam and that’s what we’re seeing today,” he says.
Still, Hooper and CAIR are asking Muslims to respond to the situation by organizing educational events about Islam.
Fox thinks all groups have to have a thick skin in a free society, so he stands behind “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”
“That’s part of the freedom of speech. It’s not always neat and clean. It’s not always nice and smooth,” he says. “Sometimes it’s a little ugly and a little bit dirty, but it’s free speech.”
Facebook briefly took down the “Draw Mohammed” page, but then put it back up. By Thursday afternoon it had more than 100,000 members.
Jason Linkins has this post in the Huffington Post on the American Family Association’s call for American Muslims to leave or be expatriated to other countries. (hat tip: Abdullah)
It seems like only a week ago that the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer (who is the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, perhaps because he has so many personal issues that need to be analyzed by professional psychopharmacologists), was saying that the Christian thing to do would be to round up all Muslim American citizens and deport them to Muslim countries, because surely that would solve a lot of problems? You know, by sending happy American citizens to other countries?
The most compassionate thing we can do for Muslims who have already immigrated here is to help repatriate them back to Muslim countries, where they can live in a culture which shares their values, a place where they can once again be at home, surrounded by people who cherish their deeply held ideals. Why force them to chafe against the freedom, liberty and civil rights we cherish in the West?
Well, naturally, such remarks call for a clarification, and, in keeping with the traditions of “clarifying,” Fischer basically swaps out one ridiculously abhorrent statement for another statement of equal ridiculous abhorrence, without really retracting the first.
Muslims who have become naturalized citizens, of course, would need to commit an act of treason to forfeit their citizenship and become eligible for repatriation. Based on the Constitution’s definition of treason in Article III Section 3 ["adhering to (the) Enemies (of the United States), (or) giving them Aid and Comfort"] treasonous acts are likely committed on virtually a weekly basis here in the U.S. in many mosques and Islamic organizations.[...]
Muslims continue to have as their objective the Islamization of the entire world, including the U.S., and are taught by their god to use force where necessary to accomplish the goal. The current objective of Muslim activists is to create a brand new Islamic state – meaning a state like New Jersey or Montana – out of existing jurisdictions and establish a virtual Islamic homeland in our midst.
[...]
Many Muslims are on our shores on student visas and such and have not yet become citizens. We must politely decline their request for naturalization (becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a right) and use the money we would otherwise spend on their welfare, their education, their medical care and their incarceration to graciously assist them in returning to their countries of origin.
Those who are willing to convert to Christianity and renounce Islam, Allah, Mohammed and the Koran may be welcomed, for they can become not just good Christians but true Americans.
Meanwhile, I am reliably informed by the Constitution of the United States that one of the freedoms we cherish in America is the right to worship whatever faith we bloody well please, so maybe it’s Fischer who needs to sail away on a little sloop in search of a land more to his liking?
The Foreign Policy Research Institute and Mason Crest Publishers have come out with a 10 volume series of textbooks titled “World of Islam” which is littered with fearmongering, anti-Muslim sentiment, inaccuracy and bias.
The Pennsylvania chapter of a Muslim-rights group accused a Philadelphia think tank and its Broomall publisher yesterday of “fearmongering,” inaccuracy, and bias in a 10-volume series of textbooks titled World of Islam.
The 64-page volumes, produced and edited by the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Mason Crest Publishers, are aimed at middle and high school students.
At a news conference at its Center City office, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-PA) cited passages it deemed inflammatory. Among them: “Muslims began immigrating to the United States in order to transform American society, sometimes through the use of terrorism.”
The group contended that such language obscured the reality that most people, Muslims included, come to America simply for better lives.
“When you finish reading these books you walk away with the impression that Muslims are inherently violent, that Islam is a second-rate religion, and that one should be wary of Muslims in any society,” said Moein Khawaja, civil rights director of CAIR-PA.
Alan Luxenberg, vice president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that the allegations were “without basis” and that CAIR had “misconstrued the intended meaning of the books.” Founded in 1955, the nonprofit institute conducts research and education on international affairs.
No one from the publishing house was immediately available for comment, although the company has offered to send complimentary copies for review “to any journalist on request.”
Khawaja said he did not know which, if any, school districts had bought the series. But he said complaints from other CAIR chapters suggested the books were in public and academic libraries in more than 20 states.
“The Free Library of Philadelphia” has a set, he said, “and we thought it better to speak out now” before the series gets wider distribution.
Khawaja urged schools and libraries that have the books to replace them with another 10-part series, Introducing Islam, which is also published by Mason Crest. That series, he said, “does what a schoolbook is supposed to do: educate.”
Khawaja said he would donate a set of that series to the Free Library.
Library administrators were not immediately available for comment.
Revd. Peter Mullen (pictured), Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church in the City of London, offers a further sampling of his bigoted views on Muslims in a recent column in the Northern Echo.
Mullen, commenting on the attempted Detroit airplane bombing, writes:
‘…we are not fighting the murderous Islamic fundamentalists where they are at their strongest – and that is in Britain. We have not followed up the promises we made after the July 2005 London tube bombings.
‘For instance, the authorities still tolerate the informal operation of sharia law in Muslim areas. We support the Muslim Council of Great Britain which gives aid and comfort to Islamic extremism. The Government has refused to outlaw the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation which preaches jihad. We have not prosecuted the fanatics in mosques and madrassas who advocate terrorism.
‘Our junk universities have allowed freedom of speech to the promoters of terrorism and provided sanctuary for Islamist students who shout the hate-filled slogans of al Qaida.’
Does the good Reverend not realize that voluntary Shari’ah councils in the UK are not an ‘informal operation’ but are mandated by the Arbitration Act, as are orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts?
And on what grounds does Mullen defend his assertion that ‘We support the Muslim Council of Great Britain which gives aid and comfort to Islamic extremism’?
He doesn’t substantiate the claim with any evidence, largely because nothing from the MCB would lead one to believe that it ‘gives aid and comfort to Islamic extremism’.
And had Mullen read the TaxPayers Alliances’ extensive study on the distribution of Prevent funds, or read Hansard for ministerial statements on allocation of various funds to Muslim organisations, he’d have known that the MCB is not financially supported by any body other than itself.
Mullen continues:
‘Effectually, our intelligence services are fighting this war with one hand tied behind their back. What is the use of their identifying extremist agitators and terrorists in the making if legislators do not allow them to take vigorous action against these enemies?’
What ‘vigorous action’ is Mullen proposing that legislators stand in the way of? Banning HT even though the Justice Secretary has acknowledged that there are no legal grounds for doing so? Torture, detention without trial, or the imposition of control orders? Or rendition perhaps?
‘All this official talk of young Muslims being “radicalised” – as if taking up terrorism were something passive – is particularly irritating.
‘As if these incipient mass-murderers were victims. They are not victims, but perpetrators of evil acts committed according to the dictates of their own perverted ideology.
‘They should be weeded out by all rational means; imprisonment or deportation. The so called educational institutions operating as schools for terrorism should be closed down’, he says.
It’s not the first time Mullen has courted controversy. ENGAGE had cause to write to the Bishop of London for comments Mullen made last year about Muslims on Hajj, to which we, sadly, got no reply. He wrote:
“They usually manage to stampede and slaughter quite a few hundred of their coreligionists. Just imagine for a moment what a field day the BBC and the leftwing press in England would have if anything even remotely as bad as that happened in Vatican Square at Christmas or Easter.”
In a different blog on Muslim prayer, Mullen wrote:
“[Muslims] certainly lend themselves to ridicule: sticking their arses in the air five times a day. How about a few little choruses, ‘Randy Muslims when they die/Find 70 virgins in the sky’?”
Last year he was forced to apologise for making derogatory, offensive comments about gays on one of his blogs yet, somehow, he managed to keep his column at the Northern Echo.
You can write to the editor of the Northern Echo, Peter Barron, (email: peter.barron[at]nne.co.uk) and ask why, despite these persistent displays of despicable bigotry and anti-Muslim sentiment, the Revd. Mullen continues to be offered a column in the paper to spout his venom?
Judith Townend on Journalism.co.uk remarks, ‘if you now search priest + sodomy, on Google most the results return articles about Peter Mullen. Ironic, that.’
Perhaps searches for ‘priest + bigot’ will return the same results.
We get hate mail here quite often at loonwatch, this one comes from someone calling themselves “Ryan Reynolds.” His IP tracks him to Amsterdam. It isn’t a death threat but just someone who really hates us. He left this as a comment on the recent Geert Wilders piece.
Author : Ryan Reynolds
E-mail : ryan@reynolds.com
URL :
Comment:
F*** you and f*** your sick, twisted religion…
If you were wondering, yes, we did censure the curse words.
Try and debate the semantics as much as you will, call it: Muslimphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim. The below is one of the more “pleasant” pieces of hate mail that we get weekly, sent to us via our “send-us-a-tip” feature. We have edited some of the most vile curse words, but you can pretty much make out what “Ed Clark” is trying to say.
Your website seems shamefully stupid. Or maybe psychotic & arrogant would be more appropriate descriptors. I think all you scumbags should immigrate to Islamic countries, where you’ll get buggered physically to complement the mind-f*** you’ve already had, & where the women among you can be gang-raped daily, kept enslaved in squalor & receive clitoral excision in unsanitary conditions to celebrate your induction into the wonderful world of Islam. Wishing you vile jerkoffs all the worst,
Sincerely,
Ed Clark
The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.
A sensible commentator voiced LoonWatch‘s opinion:
“Isn’t the charge (and belief) that the Palestinians are a defeated people, however true, incendiary, at worst; taunting, at best? And to what purpose?”
The dwelling of the Palestinian "defeated people"
Amazingly, Pipes sees nothing wrong with his comment, saying: “The world may quote me on it…” Racists and bigots in general have this problem: they say something completely offensive and inappropriate, and then not only do they refuse to rescind what they said, but are actually completely unable to see what is wrong with it to begin with. This is because their mind operates differently than the rest of us: they are oblivious to the obvious. They say what we could never say due to human decency.
However, Pipes’ comment is not without precedent. In fact, there was another ethnic group which was constantly referred to by white racists as “a defeated people.” I’m talking about the Native Americans. This idea–that Native Americans are a “defeated people”–was started by the American settlers who wished to steal Native American land. We read (emphasis is mine):
Iroquois delegates at Fort Stanwix tried to argue for the Ohio River as the boundary to Indian lands, but the American commissioners would have none of it. “You are a subdued people,” they lectured the delegates..When chiefs of the Wyandots, Chippewas, Delawares, and Ottawas said they regarded the lands transferred by Britain to the United States as still rightfully belonging to them, the American commissioners answered them “in a high tone,” and reminded them that they were a defeated people. At Fort Finney, when Shawnees balked at the American terms [for peace] and refused…one of the American commissioners…told them to accept the terms or face the consequences.
I must of course thank Daniel Pipes for using the exact same phrase and of providing the perfect analogy, as the Palestinians are in a similar situation as the one the Native Americans found themselves in when the American settlers tried to steal their land. Just like there were American settlers back then stealing land, there are today Israeli settlers trying to steal Palestinian land.
The dwelling of the Native American "defeated people"
The above quote fits the analogy perfectly: the Palestinians define their land as West of the Jordan River (consisting of the West Bank and Gaza with the right of return), just as the Iroquois argued for the boundary of the Ohio River. The Native Americans regarded the land as theirs, despite the fact that the British had “transferred” the land to the American settlers; again, the Palestinians still regard the land as theirs, despite the British transfer of the land to Israelis after the mandate period. And of course the American settlers were of the view that the Native Americans “must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” It was necessary for the occupier and colonizer to imbue in the natives a learned helplessness, a feeling of absolute demoralization and self-loathing, so that they would accept terms of peace that were completely slanted against them.
It is the language of the white supremacist and colonizer which Daniel Pipes has adopted. The object of denigration has simply changed from the “warlike” Indian “pagans” to the “warlike” brown Muslims. The American settlers indoctrinated the Native Americans with the idea that they are “a defeated people,” until they started believing it themselves:
In the past, many Indians saw themselves as a defeated people whose land was occupied and whose lives were dominated by their conquerors…[which] caused major psychological problems in Indian communities. In some ways the Native Americans shared a defeated status with Mexican-Americans…
Their reservations became virtual prisons…At an Indian conference held during the 1950s, the speakers concluded that as far as the Siouan peoples of the Plains were concerned “most Indian assumptions are negative, unenthusiastic and fearful–the outlook of a beaten people.”
…[Whites] recognized the Indians’ precarious status…as “Persons of little worth…”
This concept of “a defeated people” is intrinsically imperialistic and offensive, and is no longer appropriate to use in the post-colonial era. People should not be conquered. One can only imagine the reaction if the American president taunted the Iraqi people by saying that “the Iraqis are a defeated people.” Governments and regimes may be defeated; but should we seek to defeat an entire people? This idea of one people defeating another is archaic and incendiary.
Nowadays, Native Americans are fighting these horrible stereotypes of being “a defeated people”–a label placed on them by the settlers. A writer for The Native American Community Explorerwrites:
It was recently said by a commentator that American Indians are “a broken and defeated people” …In actuality, American Indians are probably the most stalwart people in the United States. Consider this – the American Indians as a group of people have suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of an unjust civil and criminal system that began with Manifest Destiny and continues through today and are still a proud and strong people that are carrying on their traditions and culture with laughter and life. Despite concerted efforts by the colonizers and the US Government to eradicate all traces of the Indigenous population – we are still here.
Palestinians can also claim to be a “stalwart people” who refuse to disappear despite the concerted efforts of another form of Manifest Destiny, i.e. Eretz Israel or “Greater Israel.” The Palestinians can proudly proclaim: “we are still here.”
A member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Nationlamented that the racist attitudes towards Native Americans as “a defeated people” persists:
[They] see us as nothing more than a defeated, broken down race of people who constantly complain about being victimized.
In a similar vein, Pipes and company view Palestinians as a “defeated, broken down race of people who constantly complain about being victimized.”
So this is the racially loaded and highly offensive terminology that Daniel Pipes uses; in fact, it is the same language used by white supremacists. Emmeric, a senior member and active donor to the Stormfront forum, says of the Native Americans:
They are a defeated and broken race.
Bravo, Dr. Pipes! You are in good company!
The undertones in Daniel Pipes’s statement are racist. His use of the demeaning phrase “a defeated people” is purposeful, and it is a slur that has a history of abuse by racists. Therefore, he cannot hide behind the claim that it is merely a definitional understanding. Rather, it has a deeper historical connotation, and an imperial “high tone” to it.
Many of the stalwarts of anti-Muslim agitation and hysteria complain that Islamophobia isn’t real, they do so because they themselves are almost always Islamophobes. The following case in Oregon, like the other recent violent and tragic attacks on innocent Muslims because of their faith or their “Mooslim looks” highlights the true reality of Islamophobia and the hate it engenders.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Investigators said Wednesday that shots fired at a family’s home was motivated by hate.
There were no injuries in the shooting but police said there were children and adults in the home at the time.
Police allege that Vadim Ignatov fired multiple shots at the home of Suzanne Hachem. She and her family are Lebanese and Muslim. Police arrested Ignatov on multiple counts of intimidation, unlawful use of a weapon, reckless endangerment of another person, and criminal mischief.
Police said their investigation revealed the motivation of the shooting was because of the family’s religion and national origin.
The 43-year-old Ignatov is a neighbor of the Hachem’s and police said Ignatov fired several different guns into their Northwest Portland home on several different occasions.
Upon searching his SUV, police said they found more than $200,000 in U.S. and foreign currency hidden in a pickle jar along with gold and platinum.
Suzanne Hachem said her family has had run-ins with Ignatov before.
“He said, ‘Oh, they’re praying loud,’” she said. “And he started saying f-words.”
She said she’s still worried about her family’s safety even though Ignatov is behind bars.
“We have to find a way to protect our family,” she said. “He’s in the jail now, but we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
The investigation is continuing and police said if anyone has information to the whereabouts of Ignatov’s Isuzu Trooper on Aug. 29 between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. to call 503-261-2847.
So will the loons and the haters still exclaim that Islamophobia doesn’t exist?
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.
), she is free to do so. If she even chooses to state that Christian Arabs such as Coptics deserve to be bombed because of their “anti-Semitism” (Arabs are Semites too by the way 
”
