by Garibaldi

Remember Daniel Pipes, the guy who former President George W. Bush nominated to lead the “US Institute of Peace,” and who was supported in that endeavor by the AJC, ADL and Neo-Con outfits such as his buddy Johnathan Schanzer‘s Foundation for the Defense of Democracies?

Well, here he is on the conservative news portal “Real News” (Glenn Beck affiliated) in a segment hosted by S.E. Cupp relaying his “peaceful words” on the conflict in Syria:

In the days when Pipes was nominated to that silly “Peace” institute he was supporting the Iraq War (before that, in 1987 he supported Saddam), remarking that the invasion would “reduce terrorism,” today he supports prolonging the civil war in Syria for as long as possible–”for strategic reasons.” Apparently, he’d be whistling Yankee Doodle if the Syrian civil war were to continue until the apocalypse!

He says, “I don’t want to see this end. I don’t want to see them turn their guns on us or our allies.”

His logic?

As long as they are not aiming their guns at “us,” such bloodshed, while really, really, oh so terrible (believe him for godsakes, he says “his hearts bleeds for all the suffering of the Syrians”) is in “our strategic interests.” Strategic interests is the lie that is pushed in every one of our interventionist wars, in our support for genocidal maniacs and our history of blocking attempts at peaceful conflict resolution.

This sick mentality is what produces future uses of the Orwellian term “imminent threat,” it also produces real “blowback,” and increases “anti-Americanism,” one of our gravest national security threats.

Does Philadelphia have a ‘burqa crisis’?

Daniel Pipes has written an article claiming that his home town of Philadelphia has “become the capital of the Western world as regards female Islamic garb as an accessory to crime”.

According to Pipes, “the Philadelphia region has witnessed 14 robberies (or attempted robberies) of financial institutions in the past six years in which the thieves relied on an Islamic full-body cover”. His solution? “Ban the niqab and burqa in public places, as the national governments in France and Belgium have recently done.”

Joel Mathis points out some flaws in this argument:

It’s important to understand, though, that Pipes’ “crisis” looks a little less disturbing when looked at closely. He justifies a ban because, by his count, at least 14 robberies have been committed in Philadelphia using Muslim garb … since 2007. That’s less than three a year. If you need more perspective, consider this: The 14 robberies that Pipes counts adds up to maybe one really busy shift for the police department. In the 28-day period ending Feb. 17, there were 507 robbery reports to city police – if 14 of those robberies had been committed by burqa-wearing assailants, that wouldn’t even be 3 percent of the total. Trying to calculate what those 14 cases look like compared to six or more years of robberies? You couldn’t even see a number that small with the naked eye.

So one doesn’t have to be politically correct to respond to Pipes by saying we don’t have a “burqa crisis.” All one needs, really, is math.

The Philly Post, 26 February 2013

Nathan Lean

How can Wall Street deny the existence of Islamophobia? (h/t: Tanveer K.)

Nathan Lean: Wall Street Journal Denies Existence of Islamophobia

(Huffington Post)

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past 10 years (or write book reviews for the Wall Street Journal), you may have noticed that anti-Muslim sentiment in the past decade has recently spilled out into some of this country’s nastiest displays of hate.

In August, a Sikh temple was shot up in Oak Creek, Wis.; the gunman couldn’t distinguish between Sikhs and Muslims, and so, frightened just the same by the presence of brown-skinned Americans with foreign names and beards, killed seven people.

That same month, as Muslims prayed inside a mosque in Hayward, Calif., four teens drove by the house of worship, hurling lemons and firing shots from a BB gun. In Panama City, Fla., a Mason jar filled with gasoline was thrown at the home of a Muslim family.

Two months later, in Ohio, Randolph Linn, a white, middle-aged Muslim hater, upped the ante on the lemon and Mason jar throwers, entering a Toledo mosque, pouring gasoline on the prayer area, and torching the building. Later, he said that all he knew about Muslims came from Fox News(surprise, surprise!).

More recently, commuters on buses and metros in some of the nation’s major metropolitan cities have comes across advertisements by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an anti-Muslim hate group. The ad campaigns equate Muslims with “savages” and cherry-pick violent verses from the Quran, plopping them alongside some predictable gory imagery of 9/11.

No wonder, then, in late December, Sunando Sen, a Hindu man living in New York, was pushed onto the tracks on of oncoming subway train and killed by a woman who later admitted that shehated Muslims and Hindus.

The FBI has reported that hate crimes against Muslims in the United States, which include vandalism, intimidation, assault, rape and murder, have continually risen in the past few years. In 2011, 157 cases were reported — an insignificant drop from the some 160 cases reported in 2010.

Any reasonable person would look at this growing phenomenon and conclude that we’ve reached an ugly new level of prejudice against religious minorities in this country. But not Jonathan Schanzer, a hawkish Bush-era terrorism analyst whose predictable (and unethical — I’ll get to that later) review of my book, “The Islamophobia Industry,” in the Wall Street Journal last week denied the existence of Islamophobia entirely. These episodes of violence against Muslims are, for him, apparently unimportant and easily justified by the continued political ferocity of Islamist groups acting overseas.

Schanzer apes the extremist voices on the right (including hate group leader Robert Spencer) and calls Islamophobia a “vaguely medical sounding term” that is “simply a pejorative neologism.” Strikingly, he doesn’t suggest that we should be concerned about increased anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S., and seems to indicate that because some people may abuse the term “Islamophobia,” we should simply dismiss it altogether. That’s a dangerous deficiency in logic. Some people also abuse the terms “anti-Semite” and “racist,” but imagine his outrage if those terms were swiped from usage.

As I point out explicitly in my book, Islamophobia is a complicated term and one that has been parsed thoroughly throughout history. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we have and is the only real word that exists in public discourse to describe an irrational fear of an entire religious faith, Islam, based on the actions of a fraction of zealots. There’s not a person in this world — myself included — who would conclude that every critique of Islam or the violent actions of some Muslims constitutes Islamophobia (of course, that point didn’t configure in Schanzer’s review because it obviously undermined the attack that he hoped to level).

But what the Wall Street Journal doesn’t seem to get is that at the core of Islamophobia is the belief that there is something about the religion of Islam itself that is evil and dirty and bad — that groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah and others are motivated only by the tenets of their faith and not by their political grievances or ambitions. That unbalanced view places the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims under the magnifying glass, and that’s not OK.

It is also that belief — that Muslims possess, as a result of their religious faith, some inherently violent characteristic — that links discussions of racism and Islamophobia. Schanzer scoffs at the possibility that Islamophobia may be a distant cousin of racism.

But what does he say about Ahmed Sharif, the New York City cab driver who was slashed in 2010 because of his brown skin? How does Schanzer explain Sunando Sen, the brown-skinned Hindu who was pushed to his death in New York City subway station? Or how about the brown-skinned man from Queens, who in November of last year, was beaten to a bloody pulp by two attackers who asked if he was Muslim or Hindu? There was also a trio of shootings in Brooklyn that same month that killed an Egyptian Jew, an Iranian Jew and an Egyptian Muslim. According to law enforcement authorities, the victims, all shot by the same .22 caliber gun, were targeted as a result of theirMiddle Eastern descent.

Schanzer is silent on these issues. And his inability to grapple with these serious questions is just as unsurprising as the fact that his review does not even address the central thesis of my book to begin with: that there exists within this country an active and well-funded cottage industry of anti-Muslim fear mongers. Schanzer does not critique that uncontestable point; he does not deny the money lines, the relationships, nor does he reject my contention that Islamophobia is largely a fixture of the political right. (Consider, for instance that in 2011 and 2012, 78 Congressional bills or amendments aimed at interfering with Muslim religious practices were considered in 31 states; Of them, a whopping 73 were introduced by Republicans, four were bi-partisan, and only one by a Democrat.)

That’s because Schanzer is a part of that right-wing industry — a product of the grandfather of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, Daniel Pipes. It’s a relationship he doesn’t mention (one must believe, intentionally) in his review. In the spirit of fair journalism, the WSJ could have at least added that line of disclosure, especially since I attack Pipes in my book. But given that Fox News tycoon Rupert Murdoch owns the paper, such an expectation is merely a pipe dream.

Speaking of pipes, Daniel Pipes once employed Schanzer as a researcher at the Middle East Forum (he is still listed on the site as “staff”), his neoconservative think tank, and he wrote the foreword for Schanzer’s 2008 book. The two have authored numerous articles and appeared in public together.

Ironically, while Schanzer throws a public temper tantrum about the linkage between Islamophobia and racism, his former boss, Pipes, is the author of what is, perhaps, the most blatantly racist sentence ever uttered by someone claiming to be a serious scholar of these issues:

“West European societies,” he once wrote, “are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene.”

(Since that time, Pipes has tried to wriggle his way out of that statement, practically begging his audience to just see things his way — he’s not really a racist, just someone who misplaced a quotation mark or two!)

The great irony in all of this is that Schanzer, by the very nature of his career as a neoconservative terrorism analyst and vice president of a hawkish pro-Israel think tank in Washington, actually depends on these types of “all Muslims are suspicious” narratives. It’s what prevents his paycheck from bouncing each month. The more he, and others like him, can dismiss Islamophobia as some imagined mental state and continue to conflate the actions of a few violent Muslims with all adherents of the global faith, the more he can legitimize his presence within a neoconservative clique that thrives on such discrimination.

If there ever was proof of the existence of the “Islamophobia Industry,” Jonathan Schanzer is it.

Islamophobia

by Garibaldi

Enter the surreal and absurd world of a former technocrat of the American empire turned  book reviewing ‘vice president for research’ at the Orwellian “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.”

It is unsurprising that the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal would publish an op-ed by Jonathan Schanzer, a former Bush Jr. US Treasury Department “terrorism finance analyst,” that attacks Islamophobia as a nasty “pejorative neologism”; as they say, birds of a feather flock together. Murdoch of course is the owner of Fox News, an entity that the supposedly misdefined (according to Schanzer) Islamophobe Randolph Linn cited as inspiration for his views on Islam and Muslims; Linn was recently convicted on hate crime charges for an arson attack on a Toledo, Ohio mosque in October.

Schanzer’s “book review” of Aslan Media editor Nathan Lean’s well argued and factual book “The Islamophobia Industry” is a denial of Islamophobia, or since he does not prefer the word: it is an attack on the reality of the pervasive and irrational anti-Islam/Muslim ideologies that exist amongst a significant segment of the populace.

Schanzer’s book review begins by paying homage to war criminal President George W. Bush, who he lauds as a ‘protector of Muslim Americans.’

“The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends,” President George W. Bush declared soon after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush’s statement set the tone for the tumultuous decade to come, one in which the nation prosecuted a war on terrorism in two Muslim lands while taking great pains to protect the rights of Muslim Americans.

Schanzer’s claim has some merit, a tiny bit that is, when it comes to Muslim Americans, though not for the rest of the world’s Muslims, particularly those forgotten dead Iraqis and Afghani victims of Bush Jr.

After the attacks of 9/11 Bush did state “Islam is a religion of peace” and several other self-serving platitudes, such as the one cited by Schanzer, partially tempering growing acts of jingoistic terror by enraged “Patriots” who wanted to grab the closest brown-looking ‘diaper head,’ but it is untrue to state that those declarations set the “tone for the tumultuous decade to come.”

Crimes against Muslims/Muslim looking people increased 1700% the year after 9/11

Schanzer omits the fact that President Bush Jr., in calculated fashion, used the term “Crusade.” He used Crusade even with its well understood historical and theological import to describe the “War on Terror,” which curiously came to be understood by the less discerning “Patriots” as a “War on Islam.”

Bush also used the term “Islamofascism,” equating and conflating the religion of Islam with fascism, in the process displaying the extent of influence on the administration of the developing Islamophobia industry. He was proceeded in the usage of the term by David Horowitz, it’s most popular advocate through staged college campus events known as “Islamofascism Awareness Week“; coordinated with the Young Republicans and pro-Israel groups.

Schanzer himself was likely instrumental in the concerted Bush Jr. era effort at vilifying mainstream Muslim organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, MPAC and others as “un-indicted co-conspirators,” i.e. linking them falsely in the public imagination with terrorism; he conveniently leaves out the fact that he was part of a regime that illegally made public the “un-indicted” label.

The prosecutorial designation provided Islamophobes with a propaganda coup that they employ until this day, casting the aforementioned groups as “Hamas terror fronts.” It has also heightened suspicion of Muslim Americans as subversive “fifth-columnists.”.

Not to mention the fact that the Patriot Act has deleteriously impacted the civil rights of Muslim Americans. Who can forget the psychosis displayed by the Bush Jr. regime when they started deporting Muslim immigrants without citizenship status willy-nilly after 9/11, despite many of them having lived in the US for decades. As award winning author, Georgetown law professor, and civil liberties lawyer David Cole noted in his book Enemy Aliens,

In the war on terrorism, the federal government has detained over 5,000 nationals, engaged in guilt by association and ethnic profiling, and conducted secret searches and wiretaps without probable cause of criminality…

Cole argues that,

…in balancing liberty and security we have consistently relied on a double standard, imposing measures on foreigners that we would not tolerate if they were applied more broadly to us all.

I guess Schanzer means Muslim Americans should be thankful that the Bush Jr. regime didn’t take up Michelle Malkin’s “defense of internment camps” rhetoric.

Schanzer continues,

if the author Nathan Lean is to be believed, Americans today are caught in the grip of an irrational fear of Islam and its adherents.

Despite the well documented rise of anti-Muslim bigotry in the form of hate groups, hate crimes and overall discrimination, Schanzer conveys the idea that America is not suffering from an appreciable level of hatred of Islam and Muslim Americans. This is frankly delusional–members of SIOA are not phantom ghosts, they are Americans. The man who shot Cameron Mohammed was not a djinn, his name was Daniel Quinnell.  Muslim woman, Hani Khan, fired for wearing the hijab is real.

It is completely accurate to state that a significant portion of Americans, most strikingly on the Right, are “caught in the grip of an irrational fear of Islam and its adherents.” Clearly, Schanzer is feigning ignorance of the rantings and ravings of Right-wing cable TV, talk radio, the looniverse of the anti-Muslim web, the neo-Con think tanks such as his that provide cover for the hate industry.

Schanzer writes,

In his short book on the subject, Mr. Lean, a journalist and editor at the website Aslan Media, identifies this condition using the vaguely medical sounding term “Islamophobia.” It is by now a familiar diagnosis, and an ever widening range of symptoms—from daring to criticize theocratic tyrannies in the Middle East to drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad—are attributed to it.

In reality, Islamophobia is simply a pejorative neologism designed to warn people away from criticizing any aspect of Islam. Those who deploy it see no difference between Islamism—political Islam and its extremist offshoots—and the religion encompassing some 1.6 billion believers world-wide. Thanks to this feat of conflation, Islamophobia transforms religious doctrines and political ideologies into something akin to race; to be an “Islamophobe” is in some circles today tantamount to being a racist.

Schanzer’s glib sneering about the term Islamophobia sounding “vaguely medical,” makes one wonder if he would use similar language about homophobia? One doubts it, even though Schanzer’s time in the Bush Jr. regime was punctuated by many instances of anti-Gay discrimination.

Schanzer’s silly parroting of the tired mantra that “Islamophobia” is a “pejorative neologism” is quite old now. Islamophobia has unretractable momentum on the global cultural scale and as I’ve written before is no longer a “neologism.” Does Schanzer know that the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff employed the word in her last UN speech!? Is he really accusing her of conspiring to conflate “Islamism” and the religion of Islam?

Nevertheless, Schanzer asserts the serious allegation that Islamophobia is familiar most of all for being a term that is flung about to diffuse those ‘daring to criticize theocratic tyrannies in the Middle East to drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.’

Of course we know who Schanzer is referring to here, Iran and not the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). KSA after all was a stalwart ally and priviliged friend of the US during his time in the treasury–where was his belated voice against the KSA’s theocratic tyranny during his time in the administration, even as they were rounding up and jailing dissidents in the name of the “War on Terror?” Will he utter a word against KSA even now? No, because he is a neo-Con schmuck more interested in the next nightmare of war, the wet-dream of destruction favored by the chicken hawks that butter his bread at the Foundation For the Defense of Democracies.

For sure, Islamophobia suffers just like any term describing a phenomenon of bigotry from unfortunate instances of conflation. Matt Duss points this out quite well,

Do some use accusations of Islamophobia to stifle legitimate criticism of Islam? Yes, certainly, just as some use accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel (as we’ve seen in therecent smear campaign against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel). But the fact that some use such accusations cynically and recklessly doesn’t mean that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism aren’t real existing problems.

Schanzer’s dishonesty is also clearly evident in that he can’t “understand” what part race plays in Islamophobia. Sunando Sen must be as invisible to him as the Iraqi civilians massacred in Haditha. If Schanzer can’t see the racist implications of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb replacing a turban then what we should really be asking is: what the hell is he doing writing about a topic he has zero ability to grasp?

The reasons for his umbrage at the role of racism in Islamophobia become clearer as we read on, Schanzer writes,

Mr. Lean tars with the same brush the likes of the scholar Daniel Pipes and the Muslim activist, physician and U.S. Navy veteran Zuhdi Jasser. Mr. Pipes, the author writes, is “deeply entrenched in the business of selling fear.” He portrays Dr. Jasser as a puppetlike figure, “a ‘good Muslim,’ one that openly and forcefully denounced various tenets of his faith.”

Daniel Pipes has been well documented on Loonwatch, claims of his “scholarship” are exaggerated, for instance he has erroneously and repeatedly stated that the Quranic verse, “there is no compulsion in religion” is abrogated because, as he falsely asserts ‘it was revealed in pre-hijra Mecca.’ The fact that Pipes is a racist who fears “Muslim American enfranchisement” and believes the USA is ill-prepared for the “strange customs of brown skin Muslims” seems no impediment to Schanzer’s attempted whitewashing. What do you expect though from a former Bush Jr. regime technocrat, his boss did after all laughably nominate Pipes to the “US institute of Peace,” an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

The “good Muslim vs. bad Muslim” frame that Schanzer indulges in his defense of Zuhdi “strip Muslim American civil rights” Jasser is comical. For more on this pro-murder of Iraqi babies and Israeli occupation/settlement expansion “Muslim reformer” see: Zuhdi Jasser.

This bygone former technocrat in the Bush Jr. regime actually engages in what he accuses those who fight Islamophobia of doing, conflation and prejudice.

He writes,

Mr. Lean also can’t seem to tell the difference between Islamist organizations and ordinary Muslims.

…

Islamist states and groups have been at the forefront of promoting the concept of Islamophobia.

…

According to anti-Islamophobia crusaders, though, even questioning the origins of the concept is itself a form of Islamophobia.

Schanzer’s exercise in book review is an overly generalizing attack on the facts regarding an industry of anti-Muslim hate; relying on proven false conspiracy theories about Islam, that among other things influenced the terrorist atrocities of Anders Behring Breivik.

He recycles familiar tactics, attempting to undermine the abundance of evidence regarding anti-Muslim hate and the Islamophobia industry that produces it. At the same time Schanzer attempts to sanitize to the best of his abilities those in the Islamophobia Movement he admires, his fellow: Neo-Cons, proliferators of war, violence, hatred and yes–Islamophobia.

Old Persian miniature of Virgin Mary and Jesus

by Emperor

Haroon Moghul, who was recently interviewed by Garibaldi wrote an essay published in the Boston Review that reflected on the Muslim view of Jesus, aka the “Son of Mary.” It was an intriguing essay that pointed out that it is in respect to the person of Jesus that the three Abrahamic faith traditions significantly part ways (a point we’ll get to later). The essay mentions Jesus’ central role as a mighty Prophet of God, eschatological figure and crucial character of emulation for Islamic Sufism and more. I urge Loonwatchers to read the entire article.

One tantalizing episode that Moghul recounts is Prophet Muhammad’s taking of Mecca and demolition of the idols that were housed in the Ka’ba, excepting two portraits, one of Jesus and the other of Abraham:

For Muslims, Mecca is the holiest city, while Jerusalem comes third, after Medina. When Muhammad arrived in Mecca from Medina in the year 630, Mecca voluntarily surrendered to his superior army. Thus victorious, he cleansed the Ka’ba of all its idols. But he stopped his followers from touching two paintings: one of his ancestor Abraham, and the other of Jesus and Mary. Though it was lost over time, the painting of the virgin mother and her child remained there, inside the building toward which Muslims pray, for years.

I wonder if militant Salafists who in the past few months have demolished historic heritage sites in Mali have some sort of collective amnesia regarding the above tradition!

The reaction to Moghul’s article was overwhelmingly positive as one would expect, but there were a few of the usual Muslim haters who showed up, ranting and raving about evil Islam and Muslims.

One such comment was from Daniel Pipes, who wrote:

#3 Historian
I am surprised by the Boston Review’s publication of this nonsensical article. It is filled with historical inaccuracies and tries to divide Christians and Jews. Shame on you Haroon Moghul and shame on you Boston Review!
— posted 12/26/2012 at 02:31 by Daniel Pipes

Is this renowned neo-Con Muslim hater Daniel Pipes? The language and tone is altogether consistent as is the lack of any sort of rebuttal based on facts.

Another commenter, Gene, hit it on the head when when he wrote in reply to “Pipes”:

#17 What people share

I hope comment #3 is actually Pipes, by the way. The hysterical accusation of trying to divide Christians and Jews sounds like him. In particular, the knee-jerk defense of Jews (where none is called for), suspicion of the author’s motives, and assumption of bad faith are hallmarks of Pipes’s style. Either this is a spot-on parody or it must be Pipes, who is just sufficiently reality averse to read that ridiculous conclusion into this article. And I use the word “ridiculous” advisedly. That statement, and its putative author, are worthy of ridicule.

— posted 12/27/2012 at 16:58 by Gene

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

by Garibaldi

We recently posted an article written by Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch concerning controversy over Islamophobic remarks by anti-Muslim speakers that led to several walk-outs at a symposium in London sponsored by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA).

The walk-outs are a welcome development but a few of the condemnations of the disgusting and blatantly anti-Muslim remarks by speakers Bat “Eurabia” Ye’or (whose insane hatred of Islam and Muslims Danios covered) and Manfred Gerstenfeld left much to be desired. Take Dave Rich of the Community Trust’s response to Ye’or’s statements; Rich said Yeor’s words “could be construed as Islamophobic.”

No, Rich, they can’t be construed as Islamophobic, they are Islamophobic,

The controversy was prompted by contributions from two of the speakers. One was Bat Ye’or (the pen name of Gisèle Littman) who informed her audience that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is “the source of antisemitism” and that “Islam is denying the root of Judaism and Christianity with a profound belief in Jihad”

Manfred Gerstenfeld for his part “asserted that Muslim culture is inferior to Western culture.” In response to the controversy the JSA has this post on its home page: Drs. Richard Landes and Manfred Gerstenfeld’s responses to the British Left’s walkouts and criticisms. London Dec 2 2012.

What is the esteemed doctors’ response? An article with the tired, cliched supremacist title Why the West is Best that reads like it was picked out of the terrorist Anders Breivik’s manifesto. A little less than one hundred years ago the reasons White Westerners were giving for why the “West is best” was the racist claim that they were genetically and racially superior to non-White, non-Westerners, an idea that in part was central in leading to the Holocaust.

A strange thing to publish in a journal that is supposedly devoted to analyzing one of histories most pernicious forms of bigotry don’t you think?

Another fact that remains unanswered and which has been brought up by critics of the symposium is: why, when loony bigots such as Bat Ye’or and Manfred Gerstenfeld were invited, and displayed prominently on the blurb for the symposium, did those who eventually walked out even attend? Why didn’t they protest and demand the bigots’ exclusion beforehand?

Pitt noted,

Yet Dave Rich, Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and others happily attended a seminar that included these speakers. It’s not difficult to imagine how different their response would be to a seminar featuring individuals who asserted that Jews are conspiring to take over Europe or made claims about the inferiority of Jewish culture. The CST would demand that the speakers should be banned or that the institution hosting the event should cancel it. But when it’s a case of Zionist extremists promoting bigotry against Muslims, then the CST evidently thinks it’s enough to go along to the seminar and politely raise their “concerns” that such hate-speech is “incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating”.

Jews Sans Frontiers also commented in a different article covering the event,

And here’s the bit I just don’t get.  Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and Dave Rich must have known about the other speakers because they were listed in the information blurb for the event.  How offended can they really have been when they only heard what they must have expected to hear?

…

the bottom line of what the symposium was all about: “At the end of the event, the former Labour MP, Denis MacShane, was given an award for his work in fighting antisemitism”. Yup, that Denis MacShane.  No walkouts on him reported.  There’s a certain consistency to that inconsistency.

It’s brought to our attention later in Pitt’s article that the editorial board of the JSA is staffed, through-and-through, by a familiar cast of anti-Muslim bigots and anti-Arab racists,

Gisèle Littman was hardly some randomly invited speaker. She is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (along with the likes of Daniel Pipes, Andrew Bostom – and Philip Spencer, for that matter).

The combined effect of this disturbing information led me to research a little more into the JSA, and what I immediately learned was very problematic. One does not have to go far to see that the true intent of the JSA is unfortunately to demonize Muslims and Islam and to forward a narrative on the so-called “New Antisemitism,” that couches in academic terms what loons such as Pamela Geller spout daily in their crazed rants about Muslims. The “New Antisemitism” narrative reflects a cottage industry of “experts” who often present out-of-context and or exaggerate the degree/extent of “Muslim antisemitism,” specifically the role of “Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini,” in effect providing fodder and intellectual cover for the Islamophobia Movement. I will say more about this aspect of the “New Antisemitism” in a future article.

What I will note is the contradiction that is apparent between the actions of mainstream Jewish leaders in the UK during the 2012 symposium and their counterparts in the USA with regards to association and participation in events with the JSA.

In the United States, in 2010, a conference held by the JSA specifically on the topic of “Muslim antisemitism” featured well known anti-Muslim bigots and anti-Arab racists alongside mainstream Jewish leaders from organizations such as the ADL, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Anti-Israelism Initiative for the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, Baruch College and the American Jewish University.

First Annual Conference on “Muslim Antisemitism”: October 2-3 2010 at the Doubletree Hotel, NYC

At this 2010 JSA conference you had several individuals who featured prominently in the anti-Muslim movie produced by the Clarion Fund and director Rabbi Raphael Shore titled, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” as well as noted right-wing, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Melanie “Mad Mel” Phillips:

Awards

• Richard Rubenstein Best Book: Muslim Antisemitism
  Jihad And Genocide (Rowman & Littlefield)
• Anthony Julius Best Book: Uk Antisemitism
  Trials Of The Diaspora (Oxford University Press)
• Kenneth Marcus: Best Book: Jewish Civil Rights
  Jewish Identity And Civil Rights In America (Cambridge University Press)
• Melanie Phillips Best Book: Anti-Zionism
  The World Turned Upside Down (Encounter)
• Robert Wistrich Best Book: Historical
  A Lethal Obsession (Random House)
• Martin Gilbert Best Book: Forgotten Refugees
  In Ishmael’s House (Yale University Press)
• Efraim Karsh Best Book: Israel
  Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press)
• Paul Berman Best Book: Overview
  Flight Of The Intellectuals (Melville House)

As Well, JSA Would Like To Honor The Following JSA Writers:

• Best Original Article:
  The Jewish Genocide Of Armenian Christians And Other Outrageous Claims Of Christopher Jon Bjerkness. Steven L Jacobs
• Best Original Essays:
  Riga And Remembering Clemens Heni
  Silencing Canadian Jews Andrew Bostom
• Best Book Review:
  A Lethal Obsession Frederick Schweitzer
• Best Film Short:
  The Mufti David Sokol

The titles of the books, articles and movies as well as the individuals mentioned as part of the conference are quite revealing. However the details of the 2010 conference are even more disturbing as we see Oren Segal who is “director of Islamic Affairs and terrorism expert at the Anti Defamation League,” Kenneth L. Marcus of “Baruch College and director of the Anti-Semitism & Anti-Israelism Initiative for the Institute for Jewish & Community Research,” and Mark Weitzman of the “Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the New York Tolerance Center” sharing the stage with the likes of Daniel Pipes, Bruce Bawer, Andrew Bostom, Phyllis Chesler and other professional hate-mongers.

Details from the 2010 Conference:

Panel Participants: Steve Baum, Paul Bartrop, Bruce Bawer, Michael Berenbaum, Andrew G. Bostom, Phyllis Chesler, Florette Cohen, Sam Edelman, Clemens Heni, Daniel Goldhagen, Steven L. Jacobs, Gil Kahn, Lesley Klaff, Neil J. Kressel, Richard Landes, Alyssa Lappen, Kenneth Lasson, Elizabeth Midlarsky, Marcia Sachs Littell, Kenneth L. Marcus, Daniel Pipes, J. Christopher Pryor, Neal E. Rosenberg, Richard L Rubenstein, Frederick Schweitzer, Oren Segal, David Sokol, Marcia Sokolowski, Mark Weitzman.
Panel Biographies
Paul Bartrop is teaches comparative genocide studies at Bialik College, Melbourne. His latest book is Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (Routledge, 2010).BARTRP@bialik.vic.edu.au

Steven K. Baum is co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. His book Antisemitism Explained (UPA/Rowman & Littlefield) is scheduled for release at the end of the year. www.stevebaum.com

Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept (Anchor, 2007) was a national bestseller. His latest book is Surrender:Appeasing Islam Sacrificing Freedom (Anchor, 2010) www.brucebawer.com

Michael Berenbaum is a rabbi, director and professor of Jewish Studies of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University. He is the author of The World Must Know (Johns Hopkins 2005) and editor of Not Your Fathers Antisemitism (Paragon, 2008) and the Encyclopedia Judaica. www.berenbaumgroup.com

Andrew G. Bostom is a professor of medicine at Brown University and the editor of Legacy of Jihad and Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Prometheus, 2008).www.andrewbostom.org

Phyllis Chesler is director of the Phyllis Chesler Foundation. She is emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at CUNY. Her books include The New Antisemitism (Jossey-Bass, 2003) www.phyllis-chesler.com.

Florette Cohen is an assistant professor of psychology at College of Staten Island/CUNY. She is lead researcher with Lee Jussim and others of: Modern antisemitism and anti-Israeli attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2009, 97, 290-306.florette.cohen@csi.cuny.edu

Sam Edelman is executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME). He is former dean at American Jewish University and emeritus professor at California State University, Chico. www.spme.net

Daniel J. Goldhagen is a political scientist at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Knopf 1996), A Moral Reckoning (Knopf 2002) and Worse Than War (PublicAffairs 2009) which served as the basis for the PBS special of the same name released this year. He is currently writing a book on antisemitism. www.goldhagen.com

Clemens Heni is a Berlin based political scientist who is a regular contributor to Journal for the Study of Antisemitism and has published in Jewish Political Studies Review. He has two books on German antisemitism. His first English language edition Antisemitism – A specific phenomenon will be published shortly. His latest work is a MEF funded project of German Middle Eastern Studies and Islamism after 9/11.

Steven L. Jacobs is a rabbi and associate professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies University of Alabama. He has written Dismantling the Big Lie (Ktav 2003) and Fifty Key Thinkers in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Routledge, 2010). sjabobs@bama.un.edu Gil Kahn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kean University, in Union, NJ. His academic interests focus on decision-making with an emphasis on executive-legislative relations and the institutional tensions between Congress and the President. Kahn has been a consultant to the Council for the Rescue of Syrian Jews, the domestic affairs department of Hadassah, the Synagogue Council of America and Shvil Hazahav. gkahn@kean.edu

Lesley Klaff is a senior lecturer in law at Sheffield Hallam University, England, and an affiliate professor of law at Haifa University, Israel. She advises mulit-faith chaplaincy on issues of Jewish religious observance and serves as the book review editor for the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. Her article, Anti-Zionist Expression on the UK Campus: Free Speech or Hate Speech? appears in the Jewish Political Studies Review Fall 2010.

Neil J. Kressel is a professor of psychology and director of the Honors Social Science Program at William Paterson University. His latest book is Bad Faith: Dangers of Religious Extremism (Prometheus Books, 2009). kresseln@wpunj.edu

Richard Landes is a professor of Medieval History at Boston University. His forthcoming books include Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience, and The Paranoid Apocalypse: The Protocols of the Elders 100 Years Later co-edited with Steven Katz.rlandes@bu.edu

Alyssa Lappen is as free lance journalist who specializes in Islamic history. Her book reviews and articles such as What Really Happened in Mumbai? have appeared in the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.

Kenneth Lasson teaches law at University of Baltimore. His latest book includes Trembling in the Ivory Tower, (Bancroft, 2003) and related articles: Bloodstains on a “Code of Honor” The Murderous Marginalization of Women in the Islamic World, 30 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 407 (2009). klasson@ubalt.edu

Marcia Sachs Littell, is a professor and founding director of the MA Program in Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College of NJ and Executive Director of the Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. DrLittell@aol.com

Kenneth L. Marcus is the Ackerman Chair in Equality & Justice in America at the School of Public Affairs, CUNY/Baruch College and director of the Anti-Semitism & Anti-Israelism Initiative for the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. His book Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press) was published in September 2010.klmarcus@aim.com

Elizabeth Midlarsky is a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College Columbia University. Her publications include Personality correlates of heroic rescue during the Holocaust. Journal of Personality (2005) 73, 907-934. and Courageous rescue during the Holocaust. Journal of Positive Psychology, (2007) 2, 136-147. em142@columbia.edu

Daniel Pipes is Director of the Middle East Forum, which publishes the Middle East Quarterly and DanielPipes.org. He is a Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University His books include Militant Islam Reaches America (2002)www.danielpipes .org

J. Christopher Pryor holds a J.D. from Ave Maria School of Law and is practicing civil litigation in Kansas City. He has written on Bishop Richard Williamson and is a contributor to the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. jcpryor@hotmail.com

Neal E. Rosenberg is an attorney with an MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies He co-edits the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. nerosenberg@aol.com

Richard L Rubenstein is a rabbi and president emeritus University of Bridgeport. He is the author of the critically acclaimed After Auschwitz. His latest book is Jihad and Genocide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). rlr@bridgeport.edu Frederick Schweitzer is a professor emeritus of history at Manhattan College and is co-author with Marvin Perry of Anti-Semitism (Palgrave,Macmillan 2005) and Antisemitic Myths (Indiana Univ, 2007)frederick.schweitzer@manhattan.edu

Oren Segal is Director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, and oversees the Islamic Affairs Department. He edits Terrorism Update, ADL’s Web site and newsletter dedicated to domestic and international terrorist activity, and trains federal, state and local law enforcement on homegrown Islamic extremist issues. osegal@adl.org

David Sokol received his M.A. in psychology from Sonoma State College, Rohnert Park, California. He has held teaching positions at Goddard University and University of Vermont Medical School. In 1998 he retired from psychology to become an artist and write and has since published the critically acclaimed short animation The Mufti. He also has written The Golem Church Street: An Artist’s Reflection on the New Anti-Semitism. davidsokolo@aol.com

Marcia Sokolowski is an ethicist at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and the Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto. She is an Ontario psychotherapist and serves as ethics consultant for the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.

Mark Weitzman is the Director of Government Affairs and of the Task Force against Hate and Terrorism for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Chief Representative of the Center to the United Nations and Founding Director of the SWC’s New York Tolerance Center. Weitzman is a member of the official US delegation to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. He was lead co-editor for Antisemitism, the Generic Hatred which won a National Jewish Book Award. His latest Magical Logic is available. mweitzman@swcny.com

One has to question whether the purpose of the JSA is to fight Antisemitism or to promote anti-Muslim Islamophobic propaganda. If their board and past events are any indications then there is no doubt their purpose is to push anti-Muslim propaganda.

An important question that must be raised is that: while in London David Rich, Mark Gardner and David Hirsh walked out or condemned the Islamophobes what is the excuse of mainstream Jewish American leaders such as Oren Segal, Kenneth Marcus and Mark Weitzman who participated on a similar panel with noted racists and bigots? Why did they attend and why didn’t they walk out? What do the organizations they represent have to say?

Antisemitism is a real scourge and the way to combat it is not to align yourself with another growing phenomenon of hate: Islamophobia.

UPDATE 1/7/12: Oren Segal of the ADL responded to our article, saying,

I declined the invitation to attend the conference and did not participate in the event in any capacity.

If that is the case Mr.Segal should contact the JSA and ask that his name be taken off the list of those who participated in the 2010 conference.

Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch reports on the conflict that erupted over anti-Muslim bigots Bat Ye’or who we profiled in the article, “Bat Ye’or: Anti-Muslim Loon With A Crazy Conspiracy Theory Named “Eurabia” and Manfred Gerstenfeld at a symposium sponsored by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism in London.

Some shocking revelations in this article:

Controversy at London seminar on antisemitism

The Jewish Chronicle has published a report on conflicts that arose during a one-day symposium sponsored by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism which was held at the Wiener Library in London last weekend.

The controversy was prompted by contributions from two of the speakers. One was Bat Ye’or (the pen name of Gisèle Littman) who informed her audience that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is “the source of antisemitism” and that “Islam is denying the root of Judaism and Christianity with a profound belief in Jihad”. Another speaker, Manfred Gerstenfeld, asserted that Muslim culture is inferior to Western culture.

David Hirsh, editor of the pro-Israel, anti-boycott website Engage, was so outraged that he even “left the room during Dr Gerstenfeld’s lecture”. Hirsch told the JC that he was “appalled” by Gerstenfeld’s views. Other participants who reportedly walked out were David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute, and Philip Spencer, director of research in politics at Kingston University.

Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust, who was also a speaker at the event, went so far as to offer the penetrating insight that Gisèle Littman’s remarks “could be construed as Islamophobic”. Another leading figure in the CST, Mark Gardner, stated at the conclusion of the seminar that “a minority of speakers said things about Britain, Europe and Muslims that we found to be incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating”, adding that “we made our concerns clear with a number of interventions”. There is no indication that the CST representatives joined any walk-out.

However, Gisèle Littman was hardly some randomly invited speaker. She is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (along with the likes of Daniel Pipes, Andrew Bostom – and Philip Spencer, for that matter). Nor can the views she expressed have come a surprise to the CST or any of the other participants at the seminar.

Littman is a notorious Islamophobe, one of the most signficant figures in the so-called counter-jihad movement. She is the author of the “Eurabia” thesis – a conspiracy theory according to which European governments have done a secret deal with the Arab world to facilitate the Islamic takeover of Europe, which will result in non-Muslims being reduced to a state of “dhimmitude”, treated as second-class citizens subservient to their Muslim conquerors. This paranoid fantasy has been dubbed “The Protocols of the Elders of Mecca” and indeed the parallels with classic antisemitic conspiracy theories scarcely need underlining.

The Eurabia theory was a major source of inspiration to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, whose manifesto contains over 1,500 references to it. In fact Breivik includes “implementation of the EU’s Eurabia project” on his list of the “recent and ongoing acts of treason” that led him to carry out the massacre on Utøya. (Typically, Littman’s response was to issue a statement suggesting that Breivik’s manifesto was likely to be a fabrication and that the police might well have allowed him to go ahead with his murders as part of some plot to suppress criticism of Islam.)

As for Manfred Gerstenfeld, his opinions are hardly a secret either. Earlier this year he contributed an op ed to the Israeli newspaperYedioth Ahronoth in which he complained that it was regarded as “highly politically incorrect” to point out that “while Western culture is problematic, contemporary Islamic culture is inferior to it”. He added that Western Muslims should be happy to accept his views on the inferiority of their culture:

“If the two cultures were equal, the West could theoretically act toward Muslims in their countries like many Muslim countries behaved toward their Jews in the decades after the Second World War. If the West acted in a similar way, it could restrict civil rights and confiscate the Muslims’ passports and belongings. Thereafter, it could force them out. If the West followed the 1967 Libyan acts against Jews they could even kill some.”

Yet Dave Rich, Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and others happily attended a seminar that included these speakers. It’s not difficult to imagine how different their response would be to a seminar featuring individuals who asserted that Jews are conspiring to take over Europe or made claims about the inferiority of Jewish culture. The CST would demand that the speakers should be banned or that the institution hosting the event should cancel it. But when it’s a case of Zionist extremists promoting bigotry against Muslims, then the CST evidently thinks it’s enough to go along to the seminar and politely raise their “concerns” that such hate-speech is “incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating”.

Finally, let us note that the JC also reports that another speaker at the seminar, disgraced former MP Denis MacShane, was “given an award for his work in fighting antisemitism”. MacShane is no stranger to Islamophobic fantasies himself. He was jointly responsible for the 2006 All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, which made the ridiculous claim that a dangerous alliance had been forged between fascists and Islamists on the basis of a common hatred of Jews and Zionists – at a time when it was clear that the far right in Britain was increasingly embracing Zionism and even proposing an alliance with right-wing Jews on the basis of a common hatred of Islam and Muslims.

Massimo Palazzi (with the white beard) converts to Hinduism

by Ilisha & Garibaldi

Self-proclaimed Muslim Zionist and looniverse pet “Sheikh” Adbul Hadi Palazzi has always struck us as a bit of a kook and a charlatan. Many have expressed their suspicion that his conversion had more to do with the politics of Islamophobia than it did with a sincere religious awakening.

The question that always arose was how did Palazzi become, all of a sudden, a “scholar” of Islam immediately after his conversion?* Islamic scholarship, just like any attempt to achieve a level of scholarship in other religious traditions such as Judaism or Christianity takes many years of devotion and rigorous study, a path that has been described as intellectually and spiritually exhaustive. It is indeed a symptom of our age that many self-proclaimed scholars and “experts” are appearing seemingly out of the blue with no academic or religious training/credentials! This is compounded by the fact that when such self-proclaimed scholars do emerge they tend to expose themselves by aligning with extremists and expressing sympathy and agreement for radical projects.

Last month, Italian language sources reported the news that Palazzi has apparently embraced Hinduism, and is now part of the Hindu reformist movement, Arya Samaj.

Is this a sincere conversion? Is Palazzi going to propagate some form of Hindu Zionism now? Perhaps this is another Palazzi publicity stunt and he will later claim that he is only treading the path of religious relativism and trying to cloak himself in popular post-modernist new-age interpretations of the schools of thought of Sufi giants Ibn Arabi and Rumi?

In either case the Hindu “reformist” formerly known as “Sheikh” Palazzi is not the only “Muslim Zionist” who has been exposed as a fraud.  Last summer, fellow “Muslim Zionist” Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was exposed as a swindler and all-round kook:

Brenda West, a self-described “Jewish woman and patriotic American who became very involved in counter-jihad work after 9/11,” told JTA that “subsequent research, easily available to anyone who bothered to do a little bit of reading, showed that he was a total fraud with criminal ties. He had swindled not just two ardent Jewish supporters but everyone in the Zionist and counter-jihad movement who believed in him.”

So far the story of Palazzi’s conversion to Hinduism cannot yet be confirmed in the major English language media. A similar Italian language article can be found here. Religious conversion is a matter of individual conscience and we support anyone’s right to embrace whatever religion or ideology they so desire. Also, while a further article exploring the place of “Muslim Zionism” in relation to the politics of Islamophobia is necessary it must be stated that as counter-intuitive as it seems to most it is possible for one to be a Muslim and a Zionist, again a matter of conscience. However, when such an embrace of Zionism comes at the expense of another people (in this case the dispossession and occupation of Palestinian land) coupled with a membership in the Islamophobia Movement it strikes us as a glaring red flag.

This following was translated from Italian to English by Google Translate.

Maximum Abdul Hadi Palazzi the Moderate Muslim Satyaprakash Shankar becomes a Hindu 

by Miguel Martinez, Kelebek Blog

Someone will remember our old friend Massimo Palazzi, an ex-Mormon Roman until recently called himself Dr. Prof Mawlana Shaykh Abdul Hadi Palazzi Maximum Abu Omar al-Shafi’i , Grand Chancellor and Grand Preceptor for Italian language of the Supreme Order of Solomon of Principles of Shekal.

Maximum Abdul Hadi Palazzi has even invested in an unlikely knightly honor a small journalist, because he had written an article against crazy myself.

Maximum Abdul Hadi Palazzi was certainly the most unique of all the Muslim Moderates.

In this role, he became consultant of ‘ Intelligence Summit , and over half the world explaining how the Qur’an [allegedly] affirms the divine right of the State of Israel . He also went to Hebron to express their solidarity with the most extremist settlers.

A study by the Rand Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks , dedicated explicitly to look for “Potential Partners and Allies” for the “U.S. Grand Strategy,” cites as examples for Italy (on page 100) Souad Sbai and Massimo Palazzi.

In 2003, Palazzi was co-speaker at a conference neocon held at the University of Messina, together with Michael Arthur Ledeen (American Enterprise Institute), Daniel Pipes (Middle East Forum) and Flame Nirenstein .

Not any more.

Maximum Abdul Palazzi has changed yet again, and today is Satya Prakash Shankar Baba , new convert to Hinduism , or rather all’Arya Samaj, a modernist movement inside Hinduism.

On the site of the ‘ Arya Samaj , we read:

“April 7, 2011, dr. Mahendera Swaroop, president of the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha Nederland, has opened a new Arya Samaj in Rome, Italy. Every Sunday in Rome, the seat of the Vatican and the Pope, are held Havan and Satsang. In March 2011, he also played a Shudhi Sanskaar [ conversion ceremony ] at the Arya Samaj temple in The Hague, for Mr. Massimo Palazi [sic] and Mrs. Maria Luisa Sales, (both of Rome, Italy). After the Shudhi, respectively received the names of Satya Prakash and Aditi Devi “.

Today, the ex-Muslim Moderate, as can be seen by taking a look on Google, looks like this: [1]

Satyaprakash Shankar 
President of 
the Italy section Arya Samaj, 
founded by Swami in Inai Dayanad Saraswati 
Arya Samaj Italy Rome 
Body Worship Hindu – Vedic Ritual-air 
http://aryasamajroma.blogspot.it/

Just a year after his conversion, Massimo Palazzi already dedicated to teach. In this video we see the ex-secretary of the Association of Italian Muslims (and friend of Mario Scaramella and other strange characters), while explaining the world as it reads the Sandhya to Brahma:

Read the rest here.

*Update: Palazzi’s story about being born to a Catholic convert to Islam and a Muslim mother of Syrian descent sounds plausible whereas he seems to have constructed an incredible story about his credentials (via. Wikipedia, h/t: JSB):

Palazzi was born in Rome, Italy to an Italian Catholic father who converted to Islam and a Muslim mother of Syrian descent…Palazzi learned at home teaching of Sufism and then studied the philosophy of Avicenna and Averroes at university in Rome before going to Al Azhar University in Cairo to prepare to receive his theological degree. In Cairo he received his “ijaza” (authorization to teach Islam) from Shaykh Ismail al-Khalwati and Sheikh Husayn al-Khalwati, and holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Sciences by decree of former Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz.

In 1987 Palazzi became an Imam and Sheikh, receiving the equivalent of a doctorate in Islamic theology from representative of Chief Mufti of Saudi Arabia.”

Shanker Nath Baba

Update 2: Former Muslim Zionist Sheikh Adbul Hadi Palazzi, Shankar Nath Baba, aka, Satya Prakash Shankar, now has a Facebook page, which appears to further bolster the case that he has indeed converted to Hinduism. It can be viewed here.

Update 3: Right on the heels of discovering a blog and Facebook page that seem to confirm Palazzi’s conversion to Hinduism (see Update 2), Loonwatcher Just Stopping By has found a video that seems to indicate exactly the opposite. Starting at about minute 18, there is a a back screen showing the date of the event being filmed as March 2012, and the place card for the character in question identified him as Sheikh Palazzi: (H/T: Just Stopping By)

Clearly the confusion surrounding whether or not Palazzi has converted to Hinduism has not been cleared up, mostly due to his own actions and the preponderance of contradictory information. The question we originally asked “‘Muslim Zionist Abdul Hadi Palazzi now Hindu?” still stands.

What can’t be denied however and what critics of our article still won’t engage with are the facts regarding Palazzi’s dubious and contradictory claims to “Islamic scholarship,” his association with extremist settlers in Hebron and his participation with noted Islamophobes at the “Intelligence Summit.”

by Ilisha

Yesterday was the big day when Zombie Muhammad was expected to flog a Qur’an with a cat ‘o nine tails at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Judging by the nonexistent press coverage, even  in the local paper, the event was a bust, if it happened at all.

Last July, Ernest Perce V, director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of American Atheists, announced he would protest if the state House of Representatives didn’t drop its “Year of Religious Diversity” resolution. Last March he also protested a “Year of the Bible” resolution with a controversial  anti-Christian billboard:

Atheist group’s slave billboard in Allison Hill neighborhood called racist, ineffective

A Harrisburg billboard’s depiction of a slave with a spiked metal collar around his neck rises to the level of a hate crime, said a retired Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission director, who plans to report it.

The billboard, which says “Slaves, obey your masters,” a quote from the Bible, was paid for by the groups American Atheists and Pennsylvania Nonbelievers. It went up Tuesday morning at 13th and Paxton streets in the Allison Hill neighborhood, the city’s most racially diverse section, angering some African-Americans, including clergy, legislators, the mayor and the president of the local NAACP branch.

The billboard company rarely takes down signs, a spokesman said.

The full article and the billboard can be viewed here. Apparently Perce’s hatred for Islam has softened his stance toward Christians. He expressly invited them, and the rest of the community, to join him in his “Flog a Quran” hatefest.

His special animosity toward Islam apparently stems in part from an incident during a Halloween parade last fall, where he was confronted by an angry Muslim while marching as Zombie Muhammad. Citing a lack of evidence, a judge dismissed the subsequent harassment case in  February, setting off a firestorm of controversy. The judge was said to be a Muslim (he wasn’t) enforcing blasphemy laws under Sharia in a Pennsylvania court.

Of course the judge made no reference to any Islamic sources of law, and Perce wasn’t charged with “blasphemy,” nor was he deprived of his right to free speech and public displays of belligerence. He could have gone out the very night of the verdict and paraded as Zombie Muhammad. In any case, the loons went wild, and a lynch mob mentality prevailed.

Judge Martin had to relocate out of fear of retribution, as the story went viral in the looniverse. Coverage of the incident on Loonwatch led to a vigorous debate in the comments here.

Who knows why “Flog a Quran Day” failed to draw much attention. Maybe it never happened, or maybe it did and no one cared. In any case, Perce is not giving up his vendetta against Judge Martin.

Now it seems he’s feeling litigious, and has turned to The Legal Project, a right wing “think tank” founded by anti-Muslim bigot, Daniel “A Muhammad Cartoon a Day” Pipes. The Legal Project is affiliated with the anti-Muslim hate site, the Middle East Forum:

‘Zombie Mohammad’ Wants Judge Removed from Bench

…Last October, atheist Ernest Perce dressed in a “zombie Mohammad” costume to march in a Halloween parade in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and was attacked by a Muslim in the crowd. But Perce was subsequently arrested by a local police officer. Cumberland County Magisterial District Judge Mark Martin then dismissed the harassment charges Perce filed against Talaag Elbayomy, his Muslim attacker, and instead called Perce a “doofus”, citing the Islamic faith and anti-blasphemy sharia laws as a rationale for the physical assault (see earlier story).

Sam Nunberg of The Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum, which is representing Perce. He has a problem with Judge Martin’s recognition of sharia law.

“This ruling throws out our United States Constitution, throws out our First Amendment, puts Islamic anti-blasphemy defamation of religion laws over our First Amendment, gives it binding in the court system, and lets the defendant off of a crime, rationalizing that what he did would not be wrong in Islamic countries,” Nunberg summarizes.

When a complaint was filed about Martin, the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board only “privately rebuked” him for his ruling.

Read the rest here

If the loons succeed in getting Judge Martin removed from the bench, it won’t be the first time their petty grievances damaged someone’s career. Last June, some loons dredged up a seven year old academic paper and managed to oust a Muslim doctor from the prestigious Mayo Clinic for nothing more than a “thought crime.”

The loons are incestuous, well organized, and tenacious.  In the current climate, it’s hard to predict what might happen next.

Related Stories:

Loon Victory: Muslim Doctor Ousted for FGM Thought Crime

Pennsylvania “Sharia Court”: Loons Jump the Gun AGAIN on Ginned up “Legal Jihad”

“Zombie Muhammad” Strikes Again

Afghans hold placards reading: “Our leader Mohammed” during a protest against an anti-Islam film in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid)

On Friday, Youm-e-Ishq-e-Rasool (pbuh) [love of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Day] was observed throughout Pakistan. Many demonstrators  carried signs with red hearts bearing the Prophet’s name and inspiring slogans (“Our leader Muhammad” and “Honor Our Prophet”). This positive theme had great potential, but unfortunately, was marred by more violence.

A  thousand peaceful protests can be overshadowed by a single protest turned deadly, especially with the media so eager to highlight episodes of violence. Loons can hardly contain their glee.

In fact, Daniel Pipes wants to see more violence and mayhem. A lot more, until the so-called “Islamists” are finally tamed.

In his recent article published on mainstream conduit of hate, Fox News, Pipes has dipped into the historical archive and culled together an assortment of events, including the controversies over Salmon Rushdie’s lackluster book more than two decades ago, the Danish Cartoons of 2005, the nutty antics of the infamous “Reverend” Terry Jones, Qur’an burnings, and the recent provocations by the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hedbo. He clearly relishes each and every incident that reinforces the notion of perpetual “Muslim outrage.”

According to his cynical interpretation of events, Muslims aren’t protesting because they’re defending their beloved Prophet Muhammad and their routinely maligned faith, Islam. Rather, Muslims, or “Islamists” in loon parlance, are protesting violently because they want to take over the West and abolish free speech.

Despite Pipes hateful motives and cynical exploitation of tragic events, he’s right about one thing: Provocateurs cannot be stopped by protests, and a violent backlash will only encourage more provocations. The right to free speech and exercising that right in a moral or responsible way are two different things, but it isn’t practical to legislate kindness and decency.

Many Muslims are quite understandably sickened and angered by attacks on their faith and the prophet they revere, but Islam is a religion of love and mercy, not of anger and revenge:

And not equal are the good deed and the bad. Repel [evil] by that [deed] which is better; and thereupon the one whom between you and him is enmity [will become] as though he was a devoted friend. Qur’an 41:34

And the servants of (Allah) Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, “Peace!” Qur’an: 25:63 

You are neither hard-hearted nor of fierce character, nor one who shouts in the markets. You do not return evil for evil, but excuse and forgive.  The Prophet Muhammad

These outrageous provocations will not end until they cease to generate sensational headlines, or in Pipe’s own callous words, ”until the Islamists [sic] become accustomed to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.”

A Muhammad Cartoon a day

by Daniel Pipes, Fox News

When Salman Rushdie mocked Islamic sanctities in his magical 1989 realist novel “The Satanic Verses,” Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini did something shockingly original: He issued a death edict on Rushdie and all those connected to the production of his book. By doing this, Khomeini sought to impose Islamic mores and laws on the West. We don’t insult the prophet, he effectively said, and neither can you.

That started a trend of condemning those in the West deemed anti-Islamic that persists to this day. Again and again, when Westerners are perceived as denigrating Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam, Islamists demonstrate, riot or kill.

Khomeini’s edict also had the unexpected side effect of empowering individuals – Western and Islamist alike – to drive their countries’ policies.

Fleming Rose, a newspaper editor, created the greatest crisis for Denmark since World War II by publishing 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad. Florida pastor Terry Jones sowed panic among American commanders in Afghanistan by threatening to burn a Koran. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and friends prompted a crisis in U.S.-Egyptian relations with his amateurish “Innocence of Muslims” video. And the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo caused the French government to temporarily shut down diplomatic missions in 20 countries. Plans by the German satirical magazine Titanic  to publish attacks on Muhammad likewise led German missions to be closed.

On the Islamist side, an individual or group took one of these perceived offenses and turned it into a reason to riot. Khomeini did this with “The Satanic Verses.” Ahmad Abu Laban did likewise with the Danish cartoons. Afghan President Hamid Karzai goaded his people to riot over burned Korans by American soldiers, and Egyptian preacher Khaled Abdullah turned “Innocence of Muslims” into an international event.

Any Westerner can now buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other, as confrontations occur with increasing frequency.

Which prompts this question: What would happen if publishers and managers of major media outlets reached a consensus — “Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoon every day, until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot”? What would happen if Korans were recurrently burned?

Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause?

I predict the latter. A Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, would make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Westerners could then once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values.

So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: Display the Muhammad cartoon daily, until the Islamists become accustomed to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.