Tell us something we didn’t know.

Former Fox News pundit: ‘Fox waging a campaign’ to link ‘radical’ and ‘Islam’

By David Edwards (RawStory)

Former Fox News contributor Jane Hall says that her ex-colleagues at the conservative network have been “waging a campaign” to link the words “radical” and “Islam” following the bombings at the Boston Marathon earlier this month.

In a Sunday discussion on CNN, host Howard Kurtz noted that after briefly coming together in the aftermath of the tragedy in Boston, the media had returned to its “ideological sniping.”

Current TV host Cenk Uygur told Kurtz that Fox News had led the charge in making the airwaves more vitriolic by “talking about Muslims, which is ironic because this is the same Bill O’Reilly who kept calling Dr. Tiller, “Dr. Tiller The Baby Killer,” until Scott Roeder shot him.”

“So here’s a fundamentalist who’s Christian worrying about fundamentalists who are Muslims, and driving people to violence,” Uygur said.

Kurtz argued that “it’s not entirely just on one side” because MSNBC’s Alex Wagner had accused two Fox News personalities of being on the verge of suggesting that President Barack Obama was a secret Muslim.

“It’s a funny way of balancing things out, Howard,” Uygur disagreed. “I mean, on the one side you have a guy who keeps saying, ‘Muslim! Terrorist! Muslim! Terrorist!’ Trying to equate the two. On the other side, you have someone saying, ‘Hey, maybe that’s not that wise, and maybe they’re implying something here that they shouldn’t be implying.’”

“So, I don’t equate those two as equal,” he insisted. “Just to say that one side does something 1 percent or 10 percent may be wrong doesn’t justify the other side doing something 100 percent wrong.”

“I think that Fox is practically waging a campaign to link the words ‘radical’ and ‘Islam’,” Hall agreed. “I don’t think radical Islam is a religion. I think what happens can be a perversion, from what I understand, of religion. I don’t think the media should shy away from looking at how these young men got radicalized, what [dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev] learned when he went back to Russia… But I think there is a difference endlessly linking this and saying, you know, helpfully having visuals that say radical Islam with these young men’s pictures.”

Hall pointed out that Fox News guest Ann Coulter had said that Tsarnaev’s wife should have beenimprisoned for wearing a headscarf and Fox News host Bob Beckel had called to suspend all student visas from Muslim countries.

“We don’t know what happened here and yet there is a rush to tar all Muslims with radicalism,” she observed. “I really think if you look at it, it’s across a lot of different shows on Fox.”

Watch this video from CNN’s Reliable Sources, broadcast April 28, 2013.

This what happens when you are demonizing a community 24/7 on the airwaves.

Fox News host: Denouncing violence against Muslims ‘could be perceived’ as offensive

By Eric W. Dolan (RawStory)

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s denunciation of violence against Muslims during a speech to the Anti-Defamation League could be seen as offensive, according to Fox News host Megyn Kelly.

Though the vast majority of his speech focused on the ADL’s importance in fighting hate crimes, some conservatives have become outraged that Holder denounced “misguided acts of retaliation” against Muslims. Kelly addressed the issue during a segment on Monday.

“He is speaking to the Anti-Defamation League, which is a group that fights anti-Semitism and he is lecturing that group on how they can’t be bigoted, and we can’t be ignorant, and we can’t have a backlash against Muslims,” Kelly said. “I mean, the context could be perceived by some to be somewhat offensive, that the Attorney General is perceiving the folks in front of him or others in this country are now getting ready to put on their bigoted clothes and go out there and exercise their ignorance as opposed to expressing outrage at the fact that we were attacked by two guys who apparently are followers of radical Islam.”

Kelly’s guest, Julian Epstein, completely dismissed her concerns, stating that nobody at the ADL thought Holder’s remarks were offensive. He noted Muslim Americans and mosques frequently faced attacks following high-profile terror attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing.

But Kelly was skeptical that Muslims in the United States were threatened, citing the lack of new coverage of such events.

Following the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this month, frequent Fox News guest Erik Rushcalled for all Muslims to be killed. Three days later, a man assaulted a Muslim woman in Boston and screamed, “Fuck you Muslims! You are terrorists!”

The FBI has investigated more than 800 hate crimes against Muslims — and those perceived to be Muslim — since 9/11.

Watch video, via Media Matters, below:

Hannity, O’Reilly, Kilmeade, Bolling and an assortment of Islamophobic guests have been relentless in their attacks on Muslims.:

(h/t: JD)

Fox News Attacks Muslims Relentlessly In Wake Of Boston Bombing

In the days following the Boston Marathon bombings, Fox News has become a haven for talk about the extreme threats posed to the United States by Muslims. Day after day, the network’s hosts and pundits have warned about an Islamic menace which is poised to take down the country.

At the most extreme has been “Fox News liberal” Bob Beckel, whose call on “The Five” to bar or severely restrict Muslim students from coming into America seemed to startle even Dana Perino, George Bush’s former spokeswoman. Beckel stuck by his comments on Tuesday, saying that some of the 75,000 Muslim students in American schools are likely to harbor terrorist ambitions.

“It’s a risky situation,” he said.

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade has also suggested putting “listening devices” in mosques, and wondered aloud why there can’t be more racial profiling of Muslims and Arabs. He said this despite widespread reports that bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was actually shouted down at a mosque when he began making radical statements.

There was also Ann Coulter, who called for Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife to be jailed for wearing a hijab, as well as a host of other virulently anti-Muslim commentators; and the state senator who has been calling for Dzokhar Tsarnaev to be tortured.

Bill O’Reilly got in on the act on his show, shouting down the head of the Council on American Islamic Relations when he tried to point out that people like the Tsarnaevs are not representative of all of Islam.

There were no signs that the campaign was letting up on Wednesday, as “Fox & Friends” took up the question of the “infection” of “radical Islam” in America.

Coulter: Boston suspect’s widow ‘ought to be in prison for wearing a hijab’

Appearing on Fox News Republican talk show “Hannity” Monday night, right-wing columnist Ann Coulter said she’s sad that not only does she think the Boston bombing should shut down the nation’s immigration reform debate, she would like to see the alleged bomber’s widow in jail too, not for committing a crime but for “wearing a hijab.”

“I don’t care if she knew about this,” Coulter said. “She ought to be in prison for wearing a hijab. This immigration policy of us, you know, assimilating immigrants into our culture isn’t really working. They’re assimilating us into their culture. Did she get a clitorectomy too?”

Hannity seemed momentarily puzzled at the sudden citation of female genital mutilation, stammering his reply. “I, uh, I don’t know the answer to that,” he said before confidently adding: “But your point is well taken.”

Hannity went on to say that he believes people who immigrated “from countries where perhaps they grew up under Sharia law” are definitely a threat and “I think we can make a safe assumption that they have been radicalized.” He added that even foreign students should be subjected to greater scrutiny, lest they too pose a threat.

“Our immigration policy has nothing to do with helping America,” Coulter insisted. “It has to do with solving the internal problems of other countries. We’ll take Russia’s radicals. We’ll take the illiterate, unskilled, low-skill workers from all these countries. We’ll take their old people and put them on our supplemental security and Medicare. No, immigration policies are supposed to make your country better, not to make it worse and to create all these problems.”

“Lindsey Graham was on some show this week saying this shows we need better tracking,” she continued. “I’m thinking this means we need better immigrants.”

Coulter and Hannity are just the latest conservatives to jump on the idea that because the Boston bombing suspects were born overseas, the nation’s whole immigration reform debate must shift gears into more regressive policy proposals, or just shut down in Congress altogether, as it did on Monday.

Fellow Republican talker Laura Ingraham said as much on Monday afternoon, suggesting that the U.S. shut down all immigration from majority Muslim nations. “I would submit that people shouldn’t be coming here as tourists from Chechnya after 9/11,” she said. “Dagistan, Checnya, Kergystan, uh-uh. As George Bush would say, ‘None of them stans.’”

Both Boston bombing suspects came to the U.S. legally as children. Authorities say there is not yet any evidence linking them to any foreign terrorist organizations, but an investigation is still ongoing.

Additionally, the Partnership for a New American Economy said last year that about one in 10 Americans worked for an immigrant-owned business in 2012, which contributed more than $775 billion to the U.S. economy and over $125 billion in payroll.

This video is from Fox News’s “Hannity,” aired Monday, April 22, 2013.

There are calls to have Erik Rush removed from Fox News.

Fox regular jokes about killing all the Muslims

He was being sarcastic, but still said “Islamist apologist sphincters” didn’t get it

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

Going beyond even Pamela Geller, Fox News regular Erik Rush responded to the Boston Marathon bombing today by suggesting that we round up Saudis and then kill them — but don’t worry, he was mostly joking.

Latching onto a thinly sourced New York Post report that police have detained a Saudi national (the city’s police commissioner later said that they have no suspects in the bombing yet), Rush tweeted, “Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them! C’mon! #bostonmarathon.” The columnist, who boasts on his Twitter bio that he “was the first to break the story of Barack Obama’s ties to militant preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright on a national level,” followed up with a response to someone asking if he was blaming Muslims: “Yes, they’re evil. Kill them all.”

Rush appears to have deleted the tweet, but Right Wing Watch screen grabbed it:

by Mooneye

Christians face discrimination in many places in the Muslim world, including in Egypt, however it certainly doesn’t help when Fox News, a bastion of Right-Wing fundamentalism (of both the political and religious variety) pushes misleading stories.

In an article published on March 26, 2013, Fox News ran a story on its main page with the inflammatory title, “Egyptian mosque turned into house of torture for Christians after Muslim Brotherhood protest.” The headline paragraph read,

Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.

As you can see there is a fair bit of editorializing. Fox contradicts their own narration that this was an “Islamic hard-liners vs. Christians” demonstration,

Demonstrators, some of whom were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.

Is this “militia” to go unnamed?

In fact the conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Muslim Brotherhood groups clearly transcends the sectarian divide. For months there have been tensions in Egypt between the ruling party and opponents, sometimes spilling into violence; Brotherhood offices have been torched and ransacked while opponents of Morsi have been killed in clashes, jailed and have had peaceful protests disrupted.

Of course, Fox News is trying to fire-up another Randolph Linn and hence any of the complexities and nuance of the situation will be glossed over and left out of the context; we know that Islamophobia is a central position at Fox, being an integral part of Roger Ailes‘ strategy.

A more sober report by Ahram Online on the incident gives us a realistic picture, leaving out the false reporting about the protest as a “Christians vs. Muslims” conflagration:

The board of directors of a community-funded religious centre in Cairo’s Moqattam district – located near the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters – issued a statement on Monday confirming that “members of the Islamist current” had taken control of the mosque during Friday’s bloody clashes between protesters and Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Anti-Brotherhood protesters had accused Brotherhood members and supporters of holding and torturing their opponents inside the mosque during street battles.

The Belal Ibn Rabbah Mosque lies in the Nafoura square where scuffles broke out between both groups on Friday.

Media reports in the past 72 hours had cited witnesses, some of whom said they are Moqattam residents, who claimed to have been brutally tortured at the hands of Brotherhood members inside the mosque on the day of the clashes.

The statement issued by the mosque’s board of directors is the first document to corroborate claims made by anti-Brotherhood protesters that supporters of the ruling Islamist group had occupied the mosque.

Muslim Brotherhood Secretary-General Mahmoud Hussein had accused protesters of breaking into mosques following Friday’s clashes.

The centre stated that it had filed an official legal complaint about the incident.

Egypt’s prosecution-general, meanwhile, has subpoenaed on Monday several political activists accused of “inciting and committing violence against the Brotherhood’s headquarters and group members.”

Prosecutor-General Talaat Abdullah ordered the subpoenas based on a complaint filed by Brotherhood lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud on Monday morning against 169 individuals – including opposition figures and “thugs” – accused of of instigating attacks on the Islamist group’s headquarters.

If Fox News was trying to feed its base’s “Christian persecution complex” they succeeded as the comments were, as you would expect, extremely anti-Muslim, verging at times on the genocidal.

Mick Wagner talks about burning the mosque down and sonarguy thinks Islam should be erased from the earth:

Scott Willis links it back to the USA:

Wilhelm1:

brunsk42 brings Obama into it:

Buck Ofama:

Some want to nuke the Egyptians, like totalpeon doing his best impersonation of Eric Allen Bell:

This is only a representative sampling of the 160 or so comments on the Fox article which was predictably  and faithfully reproduced by the looniverse.

Such media malfeasance at Fox is nothing new or surprising and just highlights how easy it is in our present climate to get away with bashing Muslims and Islam.

ADVANCE EXCERPT: Upcoming Ailes Biography Reveals Fox’s Islamophobia Goes Straight To The Top

by JUSTIN BERRIER

In an upcoming biography of Fox News president Roger Ailes, author Zev Chafets reports that Ailes hasn’t donated to any Muslim charities, and connects that decision to comments tying all Muslim charities to terrorism. Ailes’ brand of Islamophobia is mirrored in Fox News’ coverage, which has repeatedly tried to connect all Muslims and Muslim institutions with terrorism.

In his new book Roger Ailes: Off Camera, an early copy of which was obtained by Media Matters, Chafets describes Ailes’ charitable giving as being spread among a variety of religious charities. Despite giving to charities of various faiths, Chafets reported that Ailes has not given to any Muslim charities, quoting Ailes as saying he would only support those organizations “if they disarm” (emphasis added):

“I’ve been kicked out of every damn church I’ve ever belonged to,” says Roger Ailes. It is a buccaneer’s boast, meant to convey a hard-core irreverence. Ailes is not, by any means, a conventional born-again Christian of the Mike Huckabee variety, let alone Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. He wouldn’t use the word himself, but he is ecumenical. He donates considerable sums each year to a small Protestant church near his home in Garrison, although he is not on its membership rolls. He donates upward of 10 percent of his net income to charities, many of them religious, including an annual fifty grand to the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and another fifty grand to Catholic charities. He told me he’d be glad to give to Muslim charities, too, “if they disarm.”

The implication that all Muslim charities are connected to terrorism is in line with the Islamophobic rhetoric that regularly appears on Fox News. Fox hosts and guests have a long history of invoking terrorism to attack Muslims and Islam:

• In an appearance on ABC’s The View, Fox host Bill O’Reilly declared ”Muslims killed us on 9-11.” O’Reilly used the claim to justify his opposition to a planned Islamic community center located two blocks away from New York City’s Ground Zero. O’Reilly later said, “If anybody felt I was demeaning all Muslims, I apologize.”
• Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade defended O’Reilly’s statement by saying ”there was a certain group of people that attacked us on 9-11. It wasn’t just one person. It was one religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” On his radio show later in the day, Kilmeade asserted that it’s a “fact” that “every terrorist is a Muslim.” Following widespread criticism of his remarks, Kilmeade“clarified” his comments, saying “I’m sorry about that, if I offended … or hurt anybody’s feelings. But that’s it.”
• On The O’Reilly Factor, regular Fox guest Ann Coulter& advocated racial profiling by claiming terrorists “all look alike. They’re all foreign-born … They’re all Muslim”
• On The Five, co-host Eric Bolling falsely claimed ”every terrorist on American soil has been a Muslim.”
• In a months-long attack on the proposed Islamic community center Park51, Fox News hosts and guests regularly invoked terrorism. Contributor Dick Morris claimed the center would “train the same kind of terrorists that caused the attacks” on 9-11. Bolling predicted Park51 “may be a meeting place for some of the scariest minds — some of the biggest terrorist minds.” Kilmeade described the center by saying “the next Hamburg cell could be right downtown,” a reference to the terrorist cell whose members executed the 9-11 hijackings.

Chafets’ book is not the first to report on Ailes’ Islamophobia. In a 2011 Rolling Stone profile of Ailes, Tim Dickinson described Ailes putting “Fox News on lockdown” after “observing a dark-skinned man in what Ailes perceived to be Muslim garb.” Dickinson quoted a source close to Ailes saying “He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim — which is consistent with the ideology of his network”:

Inside his blast-resistant office at Fox News headquarters, Ailes keeps a monitor on his desk that allows him to view any activity outside his closed door. Once, after observing a dark-skinned man in what Ailes perceived to be Muslim garb, he put Fox News on lockdown. “What the hell!” Ailes shouted. “This guy could be bombing me!” The suspected terrorist turned out to be a janitor. “Roger tore up the whole floor,” recalls a source close to Ailes. “He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim — which is consistent with the ideology of his network.”

Sean Hannity has a history of attempting to portray Rep. Keith Ellison as a “radical Muslim.”

Hannity accuses Keith Ellison of “a host of radical connections”

(Salon.com)

Sean Hannity attempted to tie Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to controversial Nation of Islam pastor Louis Farrakhan and his national assistant Khalid Mohammed, following anexplosive interview on Fox News earlier this week in which Ellison accused Hannity of being “the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen” and a “shill for the Republican Party.”

In a segment on his show Thursday, Hannity accused Ellison of having “a host of radical connections,” and revived attacks made during Ellison’s 2006 campaign about ties to Farrakhan and the Million Man March. “The reality is, the congressman not only associated with these radicals – but he spent years spewing their hateful rhetoric,” Hannity said.

He continued: “What is the difference, I mean, do we have somebody then in Congress that is the equivalent of one side of what the Klan is? Because I view the rabid ranting of Khalid Mohammed as frightening in terms of racism, anti-Semitism.”

As ThinkProgress reports, Ellison addressed his work with the Million Man March and Farrakhan several years ago:

In the late 1990s, Ellison worked with the group to organize the Million Man March, but apologized for failing to “adequately scrutinize the positions and statements” of the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan six years ago in a letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

“I wrongly dismissed concerns that they were anti-Semitic,” he wrote, adding, “They were and are anti-Semitic and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did.” “I have long since distanced myself from and rejected the Nation of Islam due to its propagation of bigoted and anti-Semitic ideas and statements, as well as other issues.”

Hide Your Bibles, Hide Your Kids, Because Muslims Are Coming! Or So Suggests Fox News’ Todd Starnes

by Andrew Kirell (Mediaite)

Fox News radio host Todd Starnes visited Fox & Friends this morning to remind everyone that his Sharia law alert level is still at full-blown code red, and you should probably clutch your pearls as hard as possible.

Starnes is a frequent guest on Bryan Fischer‘s AFA radio show, which should give you at least a little clue of where the Fox reporter comes from on issues of religion, homosexuality, science, etc.

With blaring sirens literally signaling his appearance this morning, Starnes said:

“There is a disturbing trend in the country where Muslim students are being given accommodations that Christian students are not receiving.”

Disturbing! No, this is not just another round of Starnes picking nits and twisting stories to fulfill some belief in a nefarious plot among Muslims to overtake America through ho hum feel-good public school P.C.-ness. Move along, people.

His first example of this disturbing trend:

“Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, they had a cultural club in the school. They led the entire student body in the Pledge of Allegiance on Monday said entirely in Arabic. And that included a portion of the pledge where we normally say in English, ‘One nation under God.’ Instead of ‘God,’ they used the word ‘Allah.’ They say they were doing this not to promote the Muslim Brotherhood or the Islamic faith but as an effort to be culturally diverse.”

The horror! They used the word Allah! Which… umm… is literally the Arabic word for “God.” Just like the Jews would say “Adonai” or “Hashem” in Hebrew. Ugh… languages and stuff.

Also hilarious is the fact that he actually threw in the consideration that the cultural club could have ever thought to do this to “promote the Muslim Brotherhood.” I guess you never know with those 14-to-17-year-old Honor students and their dedication to the teachings of Hasan al-Banna.

- RELATED: GOP Rep. Gohmert: Obama Admin Has ‘A Bunch of Muslim Brotherhood Members Giving Them Advice’

Starnes also forgot to note that this insidious Sharia-loving club has also performed the pledge in French (remember when they were enemy number one?) and Spanish. Also: did you know the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a self-described SOCIALIST?!?!

But such nuance is not an important factor in Starnes’ quest to eradicate the Muslim plot, and so he took to FoxNews.com with the perfectly reasonable headline: “School Recites Pledge in Arabic, One Nation Under Allah?”

Moving along to Starnes’ next discovery in the Plot to Destroy America:

“A district in Illinois dropping Veterans Day as a holiday … so they can celebrate an Islamic holiday. This is in Skokie, Illinois. Boys and girls are going to get the day off but the teachers are not. The reason is they’re only allowed a certain number of days off. They are getting rid of Veterans Day for teachers and replacing it as an Islamic holiday.”

Or… maybe that school district is experiencing a demographic shift, resulting in more Islamic students and thus, perhaps, the demand for accommodations similar to how the district gives everyone off for the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah and the Christian holiday Good Friday? Or… let’s just go with “this is another plot to destroy America and replace the Constitution with Sharia law.”

Furthermore, kudos to Starnes for twisting this story to fit his narrative. Yes, Skokie District 68 has added Eid ul Adha as a day off, but it didn’t “drop” Veterans Day to accommodate that. As some districts might do, Veterans Day is being used for “Teachers Institute Day,” which is the common practice of having teachers gather for a workshop of sorts. The kids still get off.

You could blame some treacherous Muslim plot for this egregious shake-up… or you could just whine to the State of Illinois, which gives local districts permission to schedule “Teachers Institute Days” on Veterans Day, Presidents Day and Casimir Pulaski Day.

Another story in Starnes’ bank of fear:

“[A district in Massachusetts took] middle school students to a mosque for an architectural observation and tour. Instead, when they got there they separated the boys and girls. They took the boys to do Muslim prayers and the girls were set aside and had their own private discussions. The school later apologized and said, ‘Oops, sorry.’ But we’re hearing a lot of these apologies after the fact.”

Okay, that does seem like a boneheaded mistake sure to offend some people. Outrage happened just as it would if the students were taken to a church and asked to perform the eucharist.

But wait a second: if we want our children to be especially vigilant for when the Muslim plot takes hold, wouldn’t we want them to have knowledge of the prayer practices? You know, to blend in until Christian revolution forces fight back?

And then there were more horror stories:

“A teacher, a member of the Gideons, a child asked for a copy of the Bible. The teacher gave him a copy. The teacher was fired just a few weeks ago. What’s interesting, in Russia you can give kids bibles in schools. Here in the United States, teachers can’t do that anymore.”

Yeah! I bet you can’t find a single instance of an American teacher giving their student a Bible anymore. According to reports, the teacher broke two of the NJ districts’ needlessly ridiculous rules: one that prohibits employees from distributing religious literature on school grounds; and another that requires educators remain neutral while discussing religious materials.

- RELATED: Hannity Guest: Obama ‘Steadfast In Promoting Islam’ But ‘Puts Down’ Christians

In other words, this wasn’t part of some ongoing WAR ON CHRISTIANITY; it was part of what’s known as “public school bureaucracy is ugly.” Silly rules like these are not a reason to fear some religious war, but rather, a great reason to argue for more school choice, so as to give parents the opportunity to find schools that match their values.

His final story:

“A little girl wrote a Veterans Day poem in honor of her grandfather who served in the war. She had a passing reference to God. The school district ordered her to remove that word.”

Yeah, this one is pretty indefensible. But one can’t help but wonder: if that child were Muslim and the poem were about a father in the military who loves his dogs and “Allah,” would Starnes be so quick to defend the child? Who knows.

But again, the solution to this problem — which no one ever mentions — would be to allow more “school choice,” but I digress. Let’s just chalk this up to “schools making accommodations for Muslims where they wouldn’t for Christians,” as Starnes would have it.

Hide your Bibles quickly, and then watch the segment below, via Fox:

[h/t Ian Schwartz]

How many Randolph Linn‘s will be watching Boykin on Fox News:

Fox News Sunday To Host Islamophobic General

(Media Matters)

Fox News Sunday will host a retired general with a record of Islamophobic comments that drew criticism from President George W. Bush to provide “expert” commentary on the recent decision to allow women in the armed forces to serve in combat roles.

According to a promotion that ran on Fox News, retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin will appear on the January 27 edition of Fox’s flagship Sunday morning political news show. The ad describes Boykin as providing “expert insight” on whether women serving in combat is “the right move going forward.”

As we’ve previously noted:

Boykin received international attention in 2003 after the Los Angeles Times and NBC News reported on speeches he had given in full military dress at religious events suggesting that the United States was fighting a “spiritual battle” in the Middle East against “a guy called Satan” who “wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” Boykin also said of a Somali fighter who said that Allah would protect him from Americans, “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

(Boykin later apologized and claimed that he had meant that the man’s God was “money and power.”)

Boykin’s remarks drew widespread criticism, including from President Bush, who said that Boykin “doesn’t reflect my point of view or the point of view of this administration.” Later that year a Defense Department investigation found that Boykin’s speeches had violated regulations and called for the taking of “appropriate corrective action.” In 2010, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Boykin to testify on the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan, then revoked that invitation following media reports of the pending testimony, with a spokesman stating that the 2003 comments “would be used to distract” from Kagan’s record.

Following his retirement, Boykin has continued to offer up Islamophobic commentary, saying that “Islam itself is not just a religion — it is a totalitarian way of life,” which “should not be protected under the First Amendment”; calling for “no mosques in America” because a “mosque is an embassy for Islam and they recognize only a global caliphate, not the sanctity or sovereignty of the United States”; and stating that “Islam is evil.”

Because of this history of rhetoric, the announcement that he had been selected to host a prayer breakfast at the United States Military Academy at West Point last year drew criticism from cadets, faculty, Muslim organizations, and progressive veterans groups, ultimately forcing him to withdraw.

Boykin, now executive vice president at the Family Research Council, opposes allowing women to serve in combat units, calling the decision to allow them to do so a “social experiment” from people who “have never lived nor fought with an infantry or Special Forces unit” — a critique similar to his rationale for opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The decision to rescind the direct combat exclusion rule came after the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously supported that policy.