The opening scene in Combinations, a film designed to challenge viewers’ assumptions about Muslims. Photograph: Media Cultured

(h/t: CriticalDragon)

Film challenges extremism by and against British Muslims

Haroon Siddique (Guardian)

The call to prayer sounds and a serious-looking man with a bushy beard stares intently at the camera. At first appearance it is a familiar image of an angry Muslim but as the man breaks into laughter and begins to talk about his pride in being British, the viewer’s presumptions are challenged.

The clip is a trailer for Combinations, a short film being produced byMedia Cultured, a fledgling organisation using film and social media to challenge extremism by and against Muslims. In an age when the Taliban and Somali group al-Shabaab use Twitter, and the anti-Islamic film The Innocence of Muslims on YouTube was disseminated by extremists on both sides to further their own ends, Media Cultured is an attempt to use the same tools to promote harmony rather than discord.

The community interest company in Teesside is the brainchild of director Amjid Khazir, who has been working with local mosques and national faith groups to help the Muslim community understand internet safety and online propaganda. “We are trying to achieve a level of integration and tolerance between communities in an area [social media] that’s being ignored by the government,” said Khazir. “If you ever wanted to define big society, this is it.”

Combinations, made in conjunction with Thousand Yard Films, features Imran Naeem, who runs a boxing gym, is a community volunteer andcarried the Olympic torch through Darlington last summer. The title refers to the flurries of punches thrown by boxers as well as Naeem’s dual British-Muslim heritage. The trailer has already been shown in one “hard knock” Middlesbrough school, as Khazir describes it, where he says the children’s initial perceptions were challenged. He is in discussions to put the film on alongside workshops in other schools, as well as university Islamic societies, mosques and prisons, initially locally and then nationally.

When showing the trailer, which is being developed into a short film, Khazir pauses it at different stages, asking people to write down their thoughts before pressing play and highlighting any mistaken conclusions they may have jumped to.

“As a positive role model for young Muslims he [Naeem] is a fantastically credible, practising [Muslim], guy who’s part of the community and who also challenges the xenophobic views and discriminatory views of racists who paint us all as one bloc of evil Mullahs,” says Khazir. “He’s the antithesis of that. We can achieve the same ends with one piece of work. We can reduce extremism, providing positive role models for Muslims and to non-Muslims we can show the opposite of what the stereotypes portray in the media.”

Khazir previously worked in PR and internet search engine optimisation when he noticed how videos of jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan received large numbers of hits. He said: “Young people especially are often recruited and indoctrinated using videos posted on different social media channels – this can be by simply following a Twitter link.”

It was the death of his uncle that persuaded him to focus on his community work full-time. Mohammed Zabir, a taxi driver, died of a heart attack in 2011, a month after being attacked by a drunken passenger. Khazir said: “He was like a father to me. He lived next door to me, I grew up with him … I gave up the job I was doing and thought: ‘I am going to make this work.’”

Khazir set Media Cultured up with a bursary from Teesside University‘s DigitalCity project, which also provides him with an office and mentoring.

With the longer version of Combinations almost complete, Media Cultured is already planning its next film, Head for Cover, a history of the hijab. “It’s not a piece of clothing that’s divisive, or causing separation or segregation,” says Khazir. “It’s actually just a personal freedom, a simple item of clothing which has biblical traditions right from the Jewish matriarchs to Mary.”

Bob Pitt takes on the absurdity of Douglas Murray blaming Hope Not Hate for the attempted shooting of Lars Hedegaard.

Douglas Murray blames Hope Not Hate for attempted shooting of Lars Hedegaard

Douglas Murray of the Henry Jackson Society obviously fancies himself a very clever man, typically affecting a tone of patrician disdain towards those of his opponents – pretty well all of us, it would seem – whom he regards as his intellectual inferiors. But when it comes to the subject of Islam, Murray’s blinkered right-wing bigotry destroys any capacity he might have for intelligent thought.

Murray posted a particularly stupid piece on his Spectator blog last week exploiting the attempted shooting of notorious Danish Islamophobe, Lars Hedegaard, in order to attack the mainstream anti-extremist organisation Hope Not Hate, which Murray bizarrely describes as a “far left group” (though from the standpoint of an English Defence League admirer, I suppose HNH probably does appear extreme left). The indignant Murray took exception to HNH’s Counter-Jihad Report in which Hedegaard is listed among the “top dozen players” in the self-styled counter-jihad movement.

Murray complained: “Among the list of reasons they include him in their list is the fact that Hedegaard is: ‘Founder and President, Danish Free Press Society’. I do not see why this should warrant ‘Hope not Hate’ placing his picture alongside that of the mass-murderer Anders Breivik.”

Let us try and explain this to Murray.

First of all, HNH gives a number of reasons for placing Hedegaard on its list of leading figures in the counter-jihad movement, not least of which is that he was a featured speaker at the inaugural CounterJihad conference in Brussels in October 2007. As for the DFPS, HNH notes that it spawned the International Free Press Society, which among other initiatives has championed the cause of Dutch anti-Muslim fanatic and counter-jihadist hero Geert Wilders. HNH notes that the IFPS “launched an international campaign, petition and Defence Fund on 21 January 2009 for Wilders in support of his freedom of speech to criticise Islam and also co-sponsored his speaking tour of major cities across the United States from February-April 2009″.

Providing as it does only a brief summary of his role in the movement, the HNH report omits to detail the many other links between Hedegaard and his fellow counter-jihadists – his close relations with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer could have been mentioned, for example. And since the publication of the report, Hedegaard has appeared as a leading participant at last July’s counter-jihad conference in Brussels, where he received a “Defender of Freedom” award and shared a platform with English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon. That Hedegaard occupies a prominent and influential place in the international counter-jihad network is, in short, beyond dispute.

Read the rest…

by Garibaldi

Timbuktu, Mali is one of the historic and majestic cities of Islamic and Muslim cultural heritage, indeed world heritage. For years it bloomed as a center of learning in the disciplines of mathematics, astronomy, physics, philosophy, gnosticism and theology. Mansa Musa, one of the greatest kings of the medieval era built his grand palace in the city, making it a center of trade, knowledge and commerce.

The past year has seen Mali tragically wracked by dangerous instability. Long simmering ethnic divisions have simmered into an insurgency boosted by NATO weapons (used in the war in Libya that ousted Col.Gaddafi) against a corrupt government overthrown in a military coup.

A brutally reckless and religiously illiterate grouping of militant Salafists stepped in to take advantage of the turmoil, in the process destroying ancient tombs of revered saints, applying an unjust and by all reports bastardized form of “Shariah,” and until a few days ago they were thought to have burnt down thousands of ancient manuscripts (see article below).

It must be pointed out that the insurgency is not one that is simply broken down into terrorists vs. the government or Islamists vs. Secularists. In the fog of violence what is clear is that all sorts of elements are mixed into the hostilities between the state of Mali and insurgents, present are: aggrieved state workers, drug smugglers, criminal gangs, nationalists and militant Salafi-Islamists.

France’s entry into Mali has been widely reported as a positive, successful operation but it is not one that is being done for altruistic purposes or as France portrays it: doing their part in the “global War on Terror.” Let us have no illusions about it, France is in Mali to secure its interests (precious resources), as Tariq Ramadan masterfully points out in his article Mali, France and the Extremists(original in French). This is made even more clear when we realize that France had in the case of Libya, and still is in Syria, supporting “rebel” groups explicitly allied to or ideologically aligned with AlQaeda.

Thankfully, intrepid citizens secured Timbuktu’s treasures over a year ago. (h/t: Rizwan)

Intrepid Citizens Save Timbuktu’s Priceless Manuscripts

(The American Interest)

Once again civilization survives barbarism: Timbuktu’s ancient literary treasures were not destroyed after all. In a classic example of how the uncertainty of war can make bad reporters of us all, local accounts apparently vastly exaggerated the damage done to the city’s legendary library. Not only was the place not burned to the ground—as the city’s mayor claimed—but the manuscripts themselves were removed from the library by Malians last year. The Daily Maverick reports:

Preservationists in Mali told Walt that a large-scale rescue operation was executed early last year and thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute [the name of the library that housed the manuscripts] to a safe house elsewhere. “Realising that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the centre had been deliberately emptied,” Walt said. . . .

Other reports now suggest just 2,000 manuscripts were kept at the Ahmed Baba Institute while a further 28,000 were transferred safely to Bamako last year. According to these reports, efforts to save the manuscripts began as soon as northern Mali fell to Tuareg rebels last year. So while some manuscripts may have been destroyed, or looted, by fleeing rebels, the bulk of the collection appears to have been saved.

Though of course the loss of even some of the the manuscripts is tragic, we are greatly relieved that the majority of the collection has been saved. We are also inspired by the example of decency and courage displayed by the citizens who saved these treasures.

I agree with this point by Nick Lowles and have observed it myself,

We are entering a very dangerous period where ‘Counter-Jihadists’ and Islamist extremists are feeding off each other’s extremism to justify their own activities. I’ll be writing more about this shortly.

Though in all fairness this has been going on for quite some time now, though it seems to be escalating.

(h/t: Jai)

Geller stokes anti-Muslim hatred

by Nick Lowles (HopeNotHate)

US ‘Counter-Jihad’ activist Pam Geller is stoking anti-Muslim hatred by producing a poster for the New York subway which declares Muslims as ‘savages’.

The advert, which will go up in ten subway stations next week to coincide with the opening of the UN General Assembly, reads:

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) initially refused the posters but have been forced to by a court order.

Geller told Sky News: “I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages.

“I won’t take responsibility for other people being violent.

“I live in America and in America we have the first amendment.”

These posters are obviously designed to stoke up hatred against Muslims and coming so shortly after the Innocence of Muslims film, again produced by Counter-Jihadists, will create a reaction from Muslims and give ammunition to Islamist extremists.

We are entering a very dangerous period where ‘Counter-Jihadists’ and Islamist extremists are feeding off each other’s extremism to justify their own activities. I’ll be writing more about this shortly.

The impeccably loony self-styled scholar and hateful fraud Ayaan Hirsi Ali is at it again with another incendiary Newsweek article.:

Newsweek Publishes Islamophobic ‘Muslim Rage’ Cover In Response To Embassy Attacks

by Ben Armbruster (Think Progress)

Anti-Islam rhetoric in the United States has heated up this week in the wake of the violent protests in the Middle East. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough joined in the backlash this morning, saying the entire Muslim world hates the United States “because of their religion.”

Newsweek picked up on this theme, today releasing its new cover story by with the headline “MUSLIM RAGE” and a photo of angry Muslims:

Somali-born Dutch AEI scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the cover story’s author. In the article, Hirsi Ali claims that extremist Muslims “are not a fringe group“:

The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support — whether actively or passively — the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.

In a speech back in May, Hirsi Ali expressed sympathy for one of the justifications for Norwegian anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Breivik‘s attacks, explaining that Breivik said “he had no other choice but to use violence” because his fringe views were “censored.” Breivik was convicted of mass murder last month, which he admitted to perpetuating in order to save Europe from a “Muslim takeover.”

As this blog has previously noted, in a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine, Hirsi Ali called for Islam to be “defeated.” The interviewer asked: “Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?” Hirsi Ali replied bluntly: “No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.”

UPDATE

Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik sits in the courtroom in Oslo, Norway, on Friday 1 June, 2012. (AP / Heiko Junge, Pool)

A must read, very disturbing:

British far-right extremists voice support for Anders Breivik

by Mark Townsend (The Guardian)

A number of rightwing British activists have publicly praised mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik – one describing him as a “role model” – since the Norwegian extremist was sentenced.

Members of the English Defence League (EDL) and the National Front have voiced support for the 33-year-old, who was declared sane and convicted by an Oslo court nine days ago after killing 77 people in two attacks last year.

Kickboxer Darren Clifft from Walsall tried to garner support for a petition to free Breivik last week. The 23-year-old National Front supporter, who posts as “Daz MarxistHunter”, left a message on Facebook stating: “[Breivik] is truly inspirational. He sacrificed his life so Europe might be free again from the clutches of Islam and cultural Marxism, multiculturalism and political correctness. I see him as my role model, what every European man needs to be in order for Europe to survive.”

Another Breivik admirer, Nick Greger – who, along with EDL founder member Paul Ray, runs Order 777, which claims to bring together Christian resistance movements – wrote on Facebook that the Norwegian deserved a medal “for the groundbreaking performance to blow up his Marxist traitor government building”.

Breivik detonated a bomb in Oslo on 22 July last year, targeting government headquarters before embarking on a killing spree on the island of Utøya, where young political activists had gathered for a summer camp.

Greger, a German former neo-Nazi, lives in Malta as does Ray, who reportedly fled the UK fearing arrest for inciting racial hatred.

Several EDL members also appear to offer support for Breivik, including Joel Yossi, a member of the EDL’s Jewish division, who revealed that he had been writing to Breivik, who will be detained in Ila prison just outside Oslo for at least 21 years. Yossi wrote: “I have wrote letters to him in prison and he seems he is in high spirits.”

The EDL leader, Stephen Lennon, has said that although Breivik’s killings were “obviously wrong”, the court has helped to legitimise his motives. Lennon states: “By saying that he was sane, it gives a certain credibility to what he had been saying. And that is that Islam is a threat to Europe and to the rest of the world.” The EDL, with whom Breivik said he had links, says it is non-violent and opposed only to Islamic extremism.

Hope Not Hate, an anti-extremist group, said the sentiments of a small number of extremists helped to underline concern that the UK was “not immune” to a Breivik-style attack. The group’s director, Nick Lowles, said the global network of counter-jihadist extremists meant the ideas that inspired Breivik were still being traded. “Sadly, there are many others at large who share his warped ideology. Seventeen people in the UK with far-right views have been imprisoned in recent years for terrorist-related offences,” he said.

Clearly the threat from Right-wing terrorists and other groups has been severely undercut by the overblown emphasis on so-called “Islamic terrorism,” a term that should be disputed in the first place!

This is a point we have been making for quite some time now, and this is buttressed by Spencer Ackerman’s recent article about the DHS crushing an analyst who warned about “Far-Right Terror.” (h/t: Avram)

DHS Crushed This Analyst for Warning About Far-Right Terror

by Spencer Ackerman (Wired.com)

Daryl Johnson had a sinking feeling when he started seeing TV reports on Sunday about a shooting in a Wisconsin temple. “I told my wife, ‘This is likely a hate crime perpetrated by a white supremacist who may have had military experience,’” Johnson recalls.

It was anything but a lucky guess on Johnson’s part. He spent 15 years studying domestic terrorist groups — particularly white supremacists and neo-Nazis — as a government counterterrorism analyst, the last six of them at the Department of Homeland Security. There, he even homebrewed his own database on far-right extremist groups on an Oracle platform, allowing his analysts to compile and sift reporting in the media and other law-enforcement agencies on radical and potentially violent groups.

But Johnson’s career took an unexpected turn in 2009, when an analysis he wrote on the rise of “Right-Wing Extremism” (.pdf) sparked a political controversy. Under pressure from conservatives, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) repudiated Johnson’s paper — an especially bitter pill for him to swallow now that Wade Michael Page, a suspected white supremacist, killed at least six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. For Johnson, the shooting was a reminder that the government’s counterterrorism efforts are almost exclusively focused on al-Qaida, even as non-Islamist groups threaten Americans domestically.

“DHS is scoffing at the mission of doing domestic counterterrorism, as is Congress,” Johnson tells Danger Room. “There’ve been no hearings about the rising white supremacist threat, but there’s been a long list of attacks over the last few years. But they still hold hearings about Muslim extremism. It’s out of balance.” But even if that balance was reset, he concedes, that doesn’t necessarily mean the feds could have found Page before Sunday’s rampage.

A Neo-Nazi rally in Washington D.C., August 2002. Photo: Elvert Barnes/Flickr

Johnson left DHS in April 2010 after “they dissolved my team,” he says. Had he still been at DHS, he says he would have published an analysis calling attention to a growing number of attacks on mosques, which he thinks could serve as a “warning” to Sikh communities that are often mistaken for Muslim ones. But finding so-called “lone wolf” terrorists like Page is a challenge no matter their motivations, since they operate outside established extremist cells and often don’t have criminal records, making it difficult for law enforcement or homeland security officials to spot them.

Now a security consultant in the Washington D.C. area, Johnson used to work for DHS’ analysis shop, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). He supervised a team of six analysts studying what he calls “domestic non-Islamic extremism.” It’s a telling term: the DHS employed as many as 40 analysts who looked at al-Qaida and other jihadist groups’ inroads into the homeland.

Johnson ran everything else. One person on his team worked on the threat from anarchists; another, the threat from animal-rights extremists. Still others looked at anti-abortion radicalism, white supremacy and radical environmentalism. They were supplemented by analysts at the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; but outnumbered by the literally thousands of analysts, operatives and other counterterrorism officials throughout the government who focus on jihadism. “Salaries were our major budget item,” he recalls.

Then, in April 2009, Johnson warned that the election of the first African-American president, combined with recession-era economic anxieties, could fuel a rise in far-right violence. “DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities,” he wrote.

And so began a brief media firestorm. Conservative writers feared that the DHS was demonizing — even, potentially, criminalizing — mainstream right-wing speech. “It’s no small coincidence that [Secretary Janet] Napolitano’s agency disseminated the assessment just a week before the nationwide April 15 Tax Day Tea Party protests,” pundit Michelle Malkin speculated in the Washington Times. Others objected that Johnson’s report unfairly stigmatized veterans.

It surprised Johnson. An Eagle Scout leader from northern Virginia in his early 40s, Johnson became interested in counterterrorism in his teens, after an Arkansas standoff between federal authorities and a millenarian group called The Covenant The Sword And The Arm of The Lord, which stockpiled weapons and explosives to bring about Armageddon. “I was always fascinated with why people use religion to justify violence and believe the world was ending — and had a role to play in hastening that end,” Johnson said.

Stung, DHS responded by cutting “the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled numerous state and local law enforcement briefings, and held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups,” the Washington Post reported in June 2009.

According to Johnson, his former team now consists of a single analyst tasked with tracking all domestic non-Islamic extremism. His database has been shuttered.

A Tea Party activist expresses his displeasure with Johnson’s 2009 report on the danger of far-right extremism.Photo: RBerteig/Flickr

Asked for comment, DHS disputed Johnson’s claim that it gives non-Islamic extremism short shrift.

“The Department of Homeland Security protects our country from all threats, whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence,” spokesman Matt Chandler told Danger Room. “we face a threat environment where violent extremism is neither constrained by international borders, nor limited to any single ideology. This is not a phenomenon restricted solely to any one particular community and our efforts to counter violent extremism (CVE) are applicable to all ideologically motivated violence. DHS continues to work with its state, local, tribal, territorial and private partners to prevent and protect against potential threats to the United States by focusing on preventing violence that is motivated by extreme ideological beliefs.”

Johnson, who has written a forthcoming book about far-right extremist groups, concedes that the definition of “right-wing” in his product was imprecise. In retrospect, he says he should have clarified that his focus was on “violent” right-wing organizations, like white supremacists, neo-Nazis and so-called Sovereign Citizens who believe the U.S. government is an illegitimate, tyrannical enterprise. Much like mainstream Muslims denounce terrorism and object to over-broad analysis portraying Islam as an incubator of extremism, so too do mainstream conservatives denounce neo-Nazis and white supremacists and dispute that those groups are authentically right-wing.

LW: I want to add that while I understand the intent of this last sentence it still is a very strange and objectionable juxtaposition. Why not say that that Conservatives “denounce terrorism” and “object to over-broad analysis” much like mainstream adherents to all religions reject the portrayal of their faiths as “incubators of terrorism.”

Nor does he think DHS should ignore Islamic extremism. “It just needs to be more balanced,” Johnson says. New York congressman “Peter King has held three hearings in the past year on Muslim extremism,” he says, referring to the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, “but he’s yet to have a single hearing on right-wing extremism when there’s been a lot more activity.”

LW: Rep. Peter King has actually had 6 hearings on so-called “homegrown terrorism” threat from American Muslims.

Indeed, since Johnson released his ill-fated report, the Wichita, Kansas, abortion doctor George Tiller was assassinated; a security guard was killed when a gunman with neo-Nazi ties went on a shooting spree at the U.S. Holocaust Museum; the FBI arrested members of a Florida neo-Nazi outfit tied to drug dealing and motorcycle gangs; a man was charged with attempting to detonate a weapon of mass destruction at a Spokane, Washington march commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday; and several mosques around the country have been vandalized or attacked — including a Missouri mosque that burned to the ground on Monday, which had been attacked before.

As Salon recounts, the FBI has been warning for years that far-right racialist organizations might be interested in suicide terrorism. Peter Bergen, a longtime chronicler of al-Qaida, wrote on Tuesday that far-right domestic terrorism rivals and might eclipse the threat of homegrown jihadism.

In a press conference on Monday, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Teresa Carlson acknowledged that Page, the perpetrator of the Sikh temple assault, “had contact with law enforcement in the past,” but that contact didn’t rise to the level of sparking an active investigation. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks right-wing extremist groups, has apparently had Page on its radar for some time.

But Johnson doesn’t contend that more resources would necessarily have stopped Page from attacking the Sikh temple. Lone-wolf terrorists are hard to spot. What the government should do instead is broaden its counterterrorism focus beyond just jihadis. “It needs to be more balanced,” Johnson says. “It’s frustrating to see these types of incidents ongoing.”

Read the rest…

Austria has seen its fair share of Islamophobia and xenophobia, but Austria’s president, Heinz Fischer gives a very important message:

Austrian President: We are very proud to have recognized Islam for 100 years

“Islam was officially recognized by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1912, shortly after Bosnia and Herzegovina had been incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Austria is very proud of its early recognition of its Muslim citizens,” President of Austria Heinz Fischer has said. In an interview with Today’s Zaman, Fischer praised Austria’s Muslim community for its contributions to the development of Austria.

Reading today about the behavior of the fanatical Christian missionary zealots who showed up to provoke crowds for the fourth year in a row at an Arab Internationl Festival in Dearborn, Michigan got me thinking. What was their purpose? Why did they take such an uber-aggressive and hostile stance against festival-goers whom they perceive to be all Muslims, even though there are PLENTY of Arab Christians?

Perhaps they think they are taking up the tactic of the group of Medieval Christians who lived near Andalusia, and were so offended by the blasphemous way of life and faith of “infidel Saracens” that they would march into the city square of a Muslim governed town and loudly, for all to see: degrade Islam, Allah and the Prophet Muhammad. These medieval Christians sought to become martyrs, but more often than not were arrested and deported back to where they came from.

This explanation of the motivation of the fanatical missionaries who descended upon the Arab Festival in Michigan is too charitable. These aren’t “martyr-seekers,” they don’t even much care for converts I suspect; instead I believe they are motivated by a deep seated xenophobia and racism, just like their forebears used to angrily attack Blacks in the South, now they have set their sights on Muslims.

This should be a lesson that religion, or any ideology in the hands of fundamentalists/literalists can trend towards extremism. Followers of all faiths should be aware and take caution not to accuse others of following “the religion of violence, extremism, backwardness, hostility”, etc. Such sweeping generalizations lead to more disconnect between differing groups and deepens the gaping hole of non-understanding.

It also must be pointed out that such small subsets of fanatics and extremists must not be allowed to define a faith. These Christian missionaries are no more representative of their faith than those ultra-Orthodox Jews who attacked elderly Arabs are of Judaism, or the Mufti in Saudi Arabia who said Churches in the Arab peninsula should be destroyed is of Islam, or Buddhist Monks who led violent protests against the Dambulla Mosque are of Buddhism and I can go on and on and on.

Indeed, the practice of Jesus and his disciples as portrayed in the Gospels generally stands opposed to such conduct. I hope and pray that these fanatics reflect on what one distraught Christian commenter wrote after reading about their conduct,

A ‘Christian missionary’ by his or her very nature is to represent Christ in His mission of reconciling the world to God. We are ‘ambassadors of Christ’, entrusted with the word and ministry of reconciliation (2Cor. 5:9-20). Paul’s attitude is exemplary. While we most certainly share the gospel of Christ openly, we do so with an attitude of love and grace, “giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited, but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God” (2 Cor. 6:2-3). Paul said, “I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some”. Paul endeavored to connect with people as much as possible in order to convey God’s word. Whoever these folks were, they were not representing Christ.–Bert Watson

Whatever may be your view of Mr. Watson’s beliefs, at least we can agree that his attitude is one which we can live with, and one which encourages dialogue and debate over aggression, violence and provocation. (h/t:BBoyBlue):

Christian Missionary Group with Pig’s Head Taunts Arab-Americans at Dearborn Festival

By Niraj Warikoo (Freep.com)

Tensions flared Friday evening at the annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn as members of some Christian missionary groups — including one called the Bible Believers — taunted Arab Americans with a pig’s head and signs that promoted hatred of Islam.

“You’re gonna burn in hell,” one missionary shouted at a group of young Arab-American boys listening to him speak on Warren Avenue, where the festival takes place.

The festival continues today in Dearborn, but the members of the Bible Believers won’t be there because they’ll be protesting a gay festival in Ohio, said Arab Festival organizers.

The three-day festival is the largest public gathering of Arab-Americans in the U.S.; it has drawn Christian missionaries for years, but in 2009, some become more aggressive, leading to arrests and legal feuds. Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S., many of them Muslim, making it a magnet for some Christian missionaries.

The Bible Believers also protested at last year’s Arab Festival, holding up both anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic signs and causing one Arab-American Muslim girl to cry.

About a dozen with the group stood facing the festival on Friday with signs that made bigoted remarks about Islam and its prophet, Mohammed. One of the missionaries had a pig’s head mounted on a pole that he displayed in front of his group. Muslims don’t eat pigs because their faith teaches that the animal is unclean.

Some of the signs the missionaries held read: “Islam is a religion of blood and murder” and “Muhammad (Islam’s prophet) is a … liar, false prophet, murderer, child molesting pervert.”

Wayne County sheriffs tried to keep the peace; a few times, three officers on horseback rode by, trying to keep the young Arab Americans at a distance from the Christian missionaries.

At one point, some kids started throwing water bottles and pop cans at the missionaries. Others chanted “Allah-U-Akbar” (God is the greatest). One of the Christians shouted in response “Jesus Akbar.”

At another point, three girls wearing Islamic headscarves yelled back at the missionaries: “Read the Quran,” referring to Islam’s holy book.

A Christian missionary with another group told a group of Arab-American Muslim boys that they are ”transgressing against God.” One boy then spilled some water on the missionary.

Most of the confrontations were between elderly missionaries and Arab-American kids.

Earlier in the day, a group of Christian missionaries targeted the biggest mosque in Michigan, the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, standing right outside the mosque lawn to hand out fliers during Friday prayers.

In his Friday sermon, the imam of the mosque, Hassan Al-Qazwini, warned parents that some missionaries at the Arab Festival could target their children for conversion: ”Be careful. … They could be taken (spiritually) from us.”

Other missionaries at the festival were less confrontational, handing out fliers telling Muslims to convert and handing out free Christian books.

One wore a T-shirt that read ”I (heart symbol) Muslims” while handing out fliers that urged Muslims to ”accept the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or 313-223-4792.

To most rational people these anti-Islam protesters look like kooky idiots, as they have every single year they have done this.

The best thing to do is ignore them because they are not interested in discussion or debate, they want to create a scene so that they can claim the evil-invading-Mooslims are turning violent and Islamizing the USA:

Anti-Islam protest at Arab International Festival

For a brief moment Friday, the song “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” blared over the speakers of a ride at the Arab International Festival in Dearborn; but nearby, an anti-Islamic protest made its way down Warren Avenue, drowning out the lyrics’ message of friendship with the angry shouts of attendees.

While the majority of the festival remained unscathed, the Bible Believers – a small contigent with an anti-Islam message – protested at the fair on Warren Avenue.

Near them, separated by Wayne County police, a crowd of 50-100 counter-protesters contested the group’s presence with words and actions. Most were teenagers, while several adult festival-goers urged the youth to break up their groups and ignore the protest.

The group, armed with signs preaching messages against Islam, stayed for about an hour and a half. Bottles were thrown, swear words were shouted and obscene gestures were made while the police routinely stepped in to separate the groups. Midway through the affair, four mounted police officers were brought in to quell the crowd.

In total, the festival stretched several blocks and the protestors affected only a small area of the event. Nonetheless, two festival attendees were detained and issued citations for disorderly conduct, according to Wayne County Deputy Chief Mike Jaafar.

No official arrests were made, and Jaafar said his team was please overall with the outcome.

Dearborn Patch, 16 June 2012

This the second time that the Bible Believers have staged a provocative demonstration at the festival with their abusive banners, which denounce Islam as a “religion of blood and murder” and the Prophet Muhammad as a “child molesting pervert”. They did the same last year.