A mourner cries over the bodies of Afghan civilians shot dead in their homes by a U.S. solider in Alkozai village of Panjwayi district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan on March 11, 2012. Photographer: Jangir/AFP/Getty Images

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” ~ Peter Ustinov

Who Commits Terrorism?

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

If the Fox News promoters of racial profiling had been in charge of investigating the terror attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011, they might well have encountered blond, blue-eyed Anders Behring Breivik and his two smoking-hot guns only long enough to ask if he’d seen any suspicious-looking Muslims around.

After all, it has been a touchstone of the American Right, as well as right-wing Israelis, that Muslims are the source of virtually all terrorism and thus it makes little sense to focus attention on non-Muslims. A clean-cut Nordic sort like Breivik, who fancies himself part of a modern-day Knights Templar, is someone who would get a pass.

Or, as Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2006, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.” [Washington Post, March 7, 2006]

So, if you were tuned in to Fox News after the Norway attack, you would have seen smug-looking Fox talking heads recounting how this attack was surely an act of Islamic terrorism and even one exchange about the value of racial profiling to avoid wasting time on non-Muslims.

Yet, while the biases of Gillerman and Fox News represent a large chunk of the conventional wisdom, the reality is that terrorism is far from some special plague associated with Muslims. In fact, terrorism, including state terrorism, has been practiced far more extensively by non-Muslims and especially by Christian-dominated nations, both historically and in more modern times.

Terror tactics have long been in the tool kit of predominantly Christian armies and paramilitaries, including Breivik’s beloved Crusaders who slaughtered Muslims and Jews alike when Jerusalem was conquered in 1099.

Terror, such as torture and burning “heretics” alive, was a big part of the Roman Catholic Inquisition and the intra-Christian bloodletting in Europe in the middle of the last millennium. Terror played a big role, too, in genocides committed by Christian explorers against the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere and other unfortunate targets of colonialism.

More Crusading ‘Knights’

During the Jim Crow era in the American South, white Christians organized Ku Klux Klan chapters, which, like Breivik’s Templars, considered themselves Christian “knights” harkening back to the Crusades. The KKK inflicted terror on blacks, including lynching and bombings, to defend white supremacy.

In the 20th Century, there were countless examples of “red” and “white” terror, as Communists challenged the Capitalist power structure in Russia and other countries. Those violent clashes led to the rise of German Nazism which empowered “Aryans” to inflict terrifying slaughters to “defend” their racial purity from Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other “inferior” races.

To prevail in World War II, the Allies resorted to their own terror tactics, destroying entire cities from the air, such as Dresden in Germany and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

After World War II, the United States created the CIA to conduct what amounted to a war of terror and counter-terror against revolutionary movements around the world. This “low-intensity conflict” sometimes spilled into massive slaughters, such as U.S. terror bombings that killed estimated millions across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

The CIA also recruited, deployed and supported proxy terrorists throughout Latin America. A generation of South and Central American military officers was schooled in how to intimidate and repress political movements seeking social change.

A fierce slaughter occurred in Guatemala after the CIA ousted an elected government in 1954 through the use of violent propaganda that terrified the nation. The CIA’s coup was followed by military dictatorships that used state terror as a routine means of controlling the impoverished population.

The consequences of the U.S. strategy were described in a March 29, 1968, report written by the U.S. embassy’s deputy chief of mission, Viron Vaky.

“The official squads are guilty of atrocities. Interrogations are brutal, torture is used and bodies are mutilated,” Vaky wrote. “In the minds of many in Latin America, and, tragically, especially in the sensitive, articulate youth, we are believed to have condoned these tactics, if not actually encouraged them. Therefore our image is being tarnished and the credibility of our claims to want a better and more just world are increasingly placed in doubt.”

Vaky also noted the self-deceptions within the U.S. government that resulted from its complicity in state-sponsored terror.

“This leads to an aspect I personally find the most disturbing of all – that we have not been honest with ourselves,” Vaky said. “We have condoned counter-terror; we may even in effect have encouraged or blessed it. We have been so obsessed with the fear of insurgency that we have rationalized away our qualms and uneasiness.

“This is not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as long as Communists are being killed it is alright. Murder, torture and mutilation are alright if our side is doing it and the victims are Communists. After all hasn’t man been a savage from the beginning of time so let us not be too queasy about terror. I have literally heard these arguments from our people.”

Vaky’s lament, however, mostly fell on deaf ears. Before long, much of Latin America was governed by murderous regimes, including the Southern Cone dictatorships which went so far as to create an international assassination combine called Operation Condor to spread terror among political dissidents by killing critics as far away as Washington and European capitals.

The Bush Role

These terror operations reached a peak when George H.W. Bush was CIA director in 1976. In that year, U.S.-backed Cuban terrorists blew up a Cubana Airline plane killing 73 people, with the evidence pointing at Cuban anti-communists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles.

But those two right-wing Cubans continued to receive help and protection from the United States, including from the next generation of Bushes, Jeb and George W. (Thanks to the Bushes and their readiness to harbor these terrorists, Bosch lived out his golden years in Miami and Posada was spared extradition to Venezuela.)

Some of the worst examples of state terrorism occurred in Central America during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan threw the support of the U.S. government behind the blood-soaked militaries of Guatemala and El Salvador (ironically, in the name of fighting terrorism). He also unleashed a terrorist organization, known as the Contras, against the leftist government in Nicaragua.

The butchery was shocking. Tens of thousands were slaughtered across Central America with the U.S.-backed Guatemalan army engaging in genocide against Indian populations of the highlands.

Though Reagan was the leading proponent in this application of terror in the 1980s, he is today one of the most honored U.S. presidents with scores of government facilities, including National Airport in Washington, named after him. (He is routinely cited by all sides in policy debates, including by President Barack Obama.)

Though Israel has been the victim of many horrible acts of Islamic [sic] terrorism, it also is not without guilt in the dark arts of terrorism. Militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state in the 1940s. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.

One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin. Another veteran of this campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir.

And, these Jewish terrorists were not simply obscure figures in Israeli history. Begin later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel’s prime minister. Shamir was another Likud leader who was later elected prime minister. (Today, Likud remains Israel’s ruling party.)

In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style. As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, “Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know.” I responded with a chuckle, “yes, I’m aware of the prime minister’s biography.”

Defining Terrorism

The classic definition of “terrorism” is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal. But the word ultimately has been transformed into a geopolitical insult. If “our” side is the target, it’s “terrorism,” even if it’s a case of local militants attacking an occupying military force. Yet, when “our” side is doing the killing, it is anything but “terrorism.”

So, for instance, when Palestinians trapped in the open-air prison called Gaza fire small missiles at nearby Israeli settlements, that is decried as “terrorism” because the missiles are indiscriminant. But in 1983, when the Reagan administration lobbed artillery shells from the USS New Jersey into Lebanese villages (in support of the Israeli military occupation of Lebanon), that was not “terrorism.”

Yet, when Lebanese militants responded to the U.S. shelling by driving a truck bomb into the U.S. Marine base at the Beirut airport, killing 241 American troops, that was widely deemed “terrorism” in the American news media, even though the victims weren’t civilians. They were military troops belonging to a country that had become a participant in a civil war.

As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press then, I questioned the seeming bias that the wire service was showing in its selective use of the word “terrorist” as applied to the bombing. Responding to my concerns, a senior AP executive quipped, “Terrorist is the word that follows Arab.”

Working journalists understood that it was an unwritten rule to apply the word “terrorism” liberally when the perpetrators were Muslims but avoid the term when describing actions by the United States or its allies. At such moments, the principle of objectivity went out the window.

Eventually, the American press corps developed such an engrained sense of this double standard that unrestrained moral outrage would pour forth when acts of “terrorism” were committed by U.S. enemies, but a studied silence – or a nuanced concern – would follow similar crimes by the United States or its allies.

So, when President George W. Bush carried out his “shock and awe” assault on Iraq, there was no suggestion that the destruction might be an act of terror – despite the fact that it was specifically designed to intimidate the Iraqis through acts of violence. Bush then followed up with a brutal invasion that has since resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

Many Muslims and others around the world denounced Bush’s Iraq invasion as “state terrorism,” but such a charge was considered far outside the mainstream debate in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents were labeled “terrorists” when they attacked U.S. troops inside Iraq.

[This pattern continues to this day. On Monday, after Taliban fighters attacked Afghan government targets and offices related to NATO's occupation of the country, the New York Times' lead story characterized the offensive as "the most audacious coordinated terrorist attacks here in recent years." However, the Times never describes raids by U.S. military forces, which have claimed large numbers of civilian lives, as "terrorism."]

This double standard reinforces the notion that “only Muslims” commit acts of “terrorism,” because the Western news media, by practice, rarely applies the t-word to non-Muslims (and then only to groups opposed to the United States). By contrast, it is both easy and expected to attach the word to Muslim groups held in disfavor by the U.S. and Israeli governments, i.e. Hamas and Hezbollah.

Islamophobe Hearings

This double standard was on display in 2011 at Rep. Peter King’s Homeland Security Committee hearings on the “radicalization” of American Muslims. King refused to expand his investigation to include what some see as a rising threat from Christian Right “radicalization.”

Much like the Norway slaughter, a number of examples of domestic terrorism in the United States have emanated from the Right’s hostility toward multiculturalism and other policies of the modern American state.

Such cases of domestic terrorism have included the gunning down of presumed liberals at a Unitarian Church in Kentucky; violent attacks on gynecologists who perform abortions; the killing of a guard at Washington’s Holocaust Museum; and the shooting of a Democratic congresswoman and her constituents in Arizona.

From Breivik’s manifesto urging European Christians to rise up against Muslim immigrants and liberal politicians who tolerate multiculturalism, it is also clear that the Nordic/Christian mass murderer was inspired by anti-Muslim rhetoric that pervades the American Right. That bigotry has surfaced in ugly campaigns to prevent mosques from being built across the country or even an Islamic community center that was deemed to be too close to 9/11′s Ground Zero.

Rep. King’s hearings were inspired by the work of noted Islam-basher Steven Emerson, whose Investigative Project on Terrorism has sought to link the locations of mosques to the incidence of terrorism cases. Emerson, who has close ties to Israel’s Likud and American neocons, also was a key figure in the campaign to block the Islamic community center near Ground Zero.

In 2010, Emerson went on right-wing activist Bill Bennett’s national radio show and insisted that Islamic cleric Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leading force behind the community center, would likely not “survive” Emerson’s disclosure of supposedly radical comments that Rauf made a half decade earlier.

Emerson said, “We have found audiotapes of Imam Rauf defending Wahhabism, the puritanical version of Islam that governs Saudi Arabia; we have found him calling for the elimination of the state of Israel by claiming he wants a one-nation state meaning no more Jewish state; we found him defending bin Laden violence.”

However, when Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism released its evidence several days later, it fell far short of Emerson’s lurid descriptions. Rauf actually made points that are shared by many mainstream analysts – and none of the excerpted comments involved “defending Wahhabism.”

Imbalanced Propaganda

As for Rauf “defending bin Laden violence,” Emerson apparently was referring to remarks that Rauf made to an audience in Australia in 2005 about the history of U.S. and Western mistreatment of people in the Middle East.

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims,” Rauf said. “You may remember that the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, [she] said it was worth it.”

Emerson purported to “fact check” Rauf’s statement on the death toll from the Iraq sanctions by claiming “a report by the British government said at most only 50,000 deaths could be attributed to the sanctions, which were brought on by the actions by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.”

What Emerson’s “fact check” ignored, however, was that Rauf was accurately recounting Leslie Stahl’s questioning of Secretary of State Albright on CBS “60 Minutes” in 1996. Emerson also left out the fact that United Nations studies did conclude that those U.S.-led sanctions caused the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five.

In the 1996 interview, Stahl told Albright regarding the sanctions, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright responded, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Later, an academic study by Columbia University’s Richard Garfield put the sanctions-related death toll of Iraqi children, under five, at 106,000 to 227,000.

Emerson didn’t identify the specific British report that contained his lower figure, although even that number – 50,000 – represents a stunning death toll and doesn’t contradict Rauf’s chief point, that U.S.-British actions have killed many innocent Muslims over the years.

Also, by 2005, when Rauf made his remarks in Australia, the United States and Great Britain had invaded and occupied Iraq, with a death toll spiraling from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands with some estimates of war-related deaths in Iraq now exceeding one million.

Far from “defending bin Laden violence,” Rauf’s comments simply reflected the truth about the indiscriminate killing inflicted on the Muslim world by U.S.-British interventions over the decades. British imperialism in the region dates back several centuries, a point that Emerson also ignored. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Islam Basher Claims to Unmask Cleric."]

It is Emerson’s kind of anti-Muslim propaganda that has infected the ability of the U.S. political system to deal fairly with Middle Eastern issues. Rep. King’s one-sided hearings became another opportunity to exacerbate American hostility toward Muslims.

Emerson has boasted about his role in helping to structure King’s hearings, but lashed out at King when the congressman refused to include Emerson on the witness list. “I was even going to bring in a special guest today and a VERY informed and connected source, who could have been very useful, possibly even critical to your hearing, but he too will not attend unless I do,” Emerson wrote to King. “You have caved in to the demands of radical Islamists in removing me as a witness.”

In a particularly weird twist, Emerson somehow envisioned himself as the victim of McCarthyism because he wasn’t being allowed to go before the House Homeland Security Committee and accuse large segments of the American-Muslim community of being un-American. [Politico, Jan. 19, 2011]

But such is the strange world of the propagandists who have managed to associate the crime of “terrorism” almost exclusively with Muslims, when the ugly reality is that the blood of innocents covers the hands of adherents to many other faiths (and political movements) as well.

It is that sort of anti-Muslim bigotry which feeds the Christian Right terrorism of an Anders Behring Breivik.

[In the wake of Breivik's killing spree, the Center for American Progress produced a report on the well-funded bigotry of Emerson and other Muslim-bashers. Entitled "Fear, Inc.," the 129-page report listed Emerson as one of five "scholars" who act as "misinformation experts" to "generate the false facts and materials" that are then exploited by politicians and pundits to frighten Americans about the supposed threat posed by Muslims. To read more on Emerson's "misinformation" role, see Consortiumnews.com's "Unmasking October Surprise 'Debunker.'"]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, “Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush,” was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, “Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq” and “Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’” are also available there.

At RJC Forum, Gingrich Says He’ll Appoint John Bolton As Secretary of State

by Charles Johnson Wed Dec 7, 2011

Speaking today at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Presidential Candidates Forum, Newt Gingrich announced that for Secretary of State, his pick would be John Bolton.

Yes, that would be the same John Bolton who wrote the foreword for the deranged anti-Obama book by hate bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, and who appeared in a recorded message at Geller’s ugly “Ground Zero Mosque” hatefest last year. (Newt, in typical Gingrich fashion, agreed to speak too but then bailed out.)

President Obama hosts Iftar dinner at White House for American Muslims during Ramadan.

Muslim Scholars Issue Fatwa Declaring No Conflict Between Islamic Law And U.S. Constitution

Islamic scholars tired of conservative charges that Muslims in the United States constitute a radical fifth column bent on subverting American values and obligated by their religion to launch jihadist terror attacks are fighting back by issuing a fatwa.

The Islamic religious ruling, a “Resolution On Being Faithful Muslims and Loyal Americans,” is a response to what its authors call “erroneous perceptions and Islamophobic propaganda” that has built up for a decade following the 9/11 attacks and subsequent terrorist plots by adherents of al-Qaida and other extremist groups. It was issued in Virginia late last month by the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), a group of Islamic scholars who meet several times a year to draft opinions on issues of concern to American Muslims.

“As a body of Islamic scholars, we the members of FCNA believe that it is false and misleading to suggest that there is a contradiction between being faithful Muslims committed to God (Allah) and being loyal American citizens,” the fatwa declared.

“Islamic teachings require respect of the laws of the land where Muslims live as minorities, including the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, so long as there is no conflict with Muslims’ obligation for obedience to God. We do not see any such conflict with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The primacy of obedience to God is a commonly held position of many practicing Jews and Christians as well.”

Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the nation, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, yet the fast-growing community has been a constant target of right-wing groups. From protests against the so-called “ground zero mosque,” to efforts in more than a dozen states to ban Sharia lawin courts, to recent Capitol Hill hearings on Islamic radicalization that brought comparisons to McCarthyism, Muslims have had to assert their loyalty.

And that troubles members of the Los Angeles Police Department, who in recent years have been at the forefront in building bridges to the Muslims in order to combat radicalization and enlist the community in the fight against terrorism.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and other law enforcement officials will attend a meeting Thursday at the Islamic Center of Reseda to talk about the new fatwa as part of his department’s Muslim Community Forum. Muzammil Siddiqi, director of religious affairs of The Islamic Society of Orange County and the president of the Fiqh Council of North America, will be on hand to discuss the origins of the fatwa.

For many non-Muslims, perhaps the best-known fatwa was the one against authorSalman Rushdie for his book ”The Satanic Verses.” Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared it blasphemous and called for Rushdie’s death.

This new decree might face a warmer welcome.

“We’re always fighting two sides of extremism. There’s the violent ideological side and the neo-conservative side that is creating hate campaigns against American Muslims …which is a bunch of BS,” said Michael Downing, commander of the LAPD’s Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau. “The majority of American Muslims are as patriotic as you and I. This declaration says it is not a conflict to be a faithful Muslim and loyal American.”

Rep. West to screen controversial film on ‘Ground Zero mosque’

By Jordy Yager - 08/02/11 11:22 AM ET

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) is planning to screen a controversial film on Capitol Hill about attempts to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan.

The film, “Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mosque,” was produced by the conservative Christian Action Network (CAN) and has begun to garner criticism from such groups as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The 45-minute film is largely focused around a series of interviews conducted with survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and members of their family. The interviews, according to CAN’s website, delve into the feelings they experienced last summer when a group proposed building an Islamic center blocks away from where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

Efforts to build the Islamic center, which was set to include a swimming pool and a mosque among other amenities, were the focus of nearly every news agency last summer and brought a slew of politically charged arguments from members of Congress.

CAN attempted to get permission to show the film in New York City parks over the week leading up to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but it was denied out of concern for the content.

According to CAN’s website, West plans to host the event during the week Congress returns from recess, on Sept. 8 in the Rayburn House Office Building.

This will not be the first time a controversial film about Muslims has been shown on Capitol Hill. In 2009, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) hosted the controversial Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders and showed his movie, “Fitna,” which many Muslims have designated anti-Islamic. Following an anti-screening campaign by the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association, no members of Congress reportedly showed up to watch the film.

West came under fire last year for commenting during a conference that terrorists were fulfilling mandates laid out by the Quran.

A spokeswoman for West did not immediately return a request for comment.

FBI ‘Islam 101′ Guide Depicted Muslims as 7th-Century Simpletons

As recently as January 2009, the FBI thought its agents ought to know the following crucial information about Muslims:

• They engage in a “circumcision ritual”
• More than 9,000 of them are in the U.S. military
• Their religion “transforms [a] country’s culture into 7th-century Arabian ways.”

And this was what the FBI considered “recommended reading” about Islam:

• A much-criticized tome, The Arab Mind, that one reviewer called “a collection of outrageously broad — and often suspect — generalizations“
• A book by one of Norwegian terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s favorite anti-Muslim authors.

All this is revealed in a PowerPoint presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit(.pdf), which trains new Bureau recruits. Among the 62 slides in the presentation, designed to teach techniques for “successful interviews/interrogations with individuals from the M.E. [Middle East],” is an instruction that the “Arabic mind” is “swayed more by words than ideas and more by ideas than facts.”

The briefing presents much information that has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with constitutionally-protected religious practice and social behavior, such as estimating the number of mosques in America and listing the states with the largest Muslim populations.

Other slides paint Islam in a less malicious light, and one urges “respectful liaison” as a “proactive approach” to engaging Muslims. But even those exhibit what one American Muslim civil rights leader calls “the understanding of a third grader, and even then, a badly misinformed third grader.”

One slide asks, “Is Iran an Arab country?” (It’s not.) Another is just a picture of worry beads.

“Based on this presentation, it is easy to see why so many in law enforcement and the FBI view American Muslims with ignorance and suspicion,” says Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal aid group. “The presentation appears to treat all Muslims with one broad brush and makes no distinction between lawful religious practice and beliefs and unlawful activities.”

A grainy copy of the PowerPoint was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California chapter and the Asian Law Caucus, a San Francisco-based civil rights group, and provided to Danger Room. The two groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year inquiring about government surveillance of American Muslim communities.

“In order for FBI training to be effective it has to present useful, factual and unbiased information. This material fails on all three criteria,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who now works for the ACLU. “Factually flawed and biased law enforcement training programs only expand the risk that innocent Muslim and Arab Americans will be unfairly targeted for investigation and prosecution, and stigmatized in their communities.” [Full disclosure: My fiancee works for the ACLU.]

In response to queries from Danger Room, the FBI issued the following statement about the PowerPoint: “The FBI new agent population at Quantico is exposed to a diverse curriculum in many specific areas, including Islam and Muslim culture. The presentation in question was a rudimentary version used for a limited time that has since been replaced. It was a small part of a larger segment of training that also included material produced by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point.”

It is unclear when the FBI stopped using the PowerPoint.

Among the most provocative aspects of the presentation is its recommended reading list. One book offered is The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, by Robert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ringleaders of the protest against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the co-founder of Stop the Islamicization of America, which “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda,” in the view of the Anti-Defamation League. A manifesto written by the Norwegian terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik cited Spencer 64 times.

Another book cited is The Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai. The volume was briefly infamous in 2004, after Seymour Hersh reported its influence among certain Iraq war hawks in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. According to Hersh, the takeaway of Patai’s book is that “Arabs only understand force” and are susceptible to “shame and humiliation.”

“It’s like asking law enforcement to learn ‘the facts’ about the African American experience by reading a book by the grand wizard of the KKK,” says Khera. “It is deplorable and offensive that the nation’s top law enforcement agency would promote such hateful so-called ‘experts’ on Islam.”

An FBI spokesman said Spencer’s book is no longer on the reading list but was not sure about the others. “We encourage our agents to seek out a variety of viewpoints. That does not mean we endorse or adopt the view of any particular author,” the bureau’s statement continues. “Broad knowledge is essential for us to better understand and respond to the threats we face. Knowledge also helps us defeat ignorance and strengthen relationships with the diverse communities that we serve.”

When dealing with Muslims and counterterrorism, the FBI’s record is mixed. It’s sent informants into mosques and used operatives to coax suspected extremists into active terror plots, arresting them before anyone was hurt. But its agents also stood up against torture at Guantanamo Bay and in the CIA’s undisclosed prisons. FBI Director Robert Mueller testified in 2008 that many of its terrorism cases “are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States.”

In recent years, law enforcement agencies around the country have proven receptive to anti-Muslim crusaders. The Washington Monthly recently reported on the “growing profession” of terrorism consultants who get paid to make “sweeping generalizations about Muslims” to rapt audiences of cops. Adam Serwer at the American Prospect reports that another Breivik favorite, Walid Shoebat, also gets government cash to tell police things like “Islam is the devil.”

At a Capitol Hill event on Monday, a Florida-based researcher named Peter Leitner claimed that up to 6,000 Muslims in America are a “fifth column.” According to Leitner’s official biography, he founded a group called the Higgins Counterterrorism Research Center; Higgins claims to have provided counterterrorism instruction to “FBI Counterterrorism Special Agents,” various police departments countrywide and even Blackwater.

“These characterizations of Islam and of Arab and Muslim people are not just disheartening — they are frightening,” says Veena Dubal, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. “Degrading and inaccurate characterizations of Islam and of the ‘Arab mind’ don’t help individual agents fight terrorism. Rather, they imbue law enforcement with an extremely biased view of a diverse community.”

Photo: newmanchu/Flickr

The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle

By Robert Steinback
Illustration by Bri Hermanson

The apparent recent surge in popular anti-Muslim sentimentin the United States has been driven by a surprisingly small and, for the most part, closely knit cadre of activists. Their influence extends far beyond their limited numbers, in part because of an amenable legion of right-wing media personalities — and lately, politicians like U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who held controversial hearings into the radicalization of American Muslims this March —who are eager to promote them as impartial experts or grassroots leaders. Yet a close look at their rhetoric reveals how doggedly this group works to provoke and guide populist anger over what is seen as the threat posed by the 0.6% of Americans who are Muslim — an agenda that goes beyond reasonable concern about terrorism into the realm of demonization.

Of the 10 people profiled below, all but Bill French, Terry Jones and Debbie Schlussel regularly interact with others on the list. Most were selected for profiling primarily because of their association with activist organizations. People who only run websites or do commentary were omitted, with two exceptions: Schlussel, because she has influence as a frequent television talk-show guest, and John Joseph Jay, because he is on the board of Pamela Geller’s Stop Islamization of America group. Three other activists, Steve Emerson, Daniel Pipes and Frank Gaffney, have interacted with many of the core group as well and also have offended many Muslims, but they are somewhat more moderate in their views of Muslims than those who are profiled below.

BILL FRENCH
ORGANIZATION Heads the for-profit Center for the Study of Political Islam in Nashville.

CREDENTIALS Former Tennessee State University physics professor; author of Sharia Law for Non-Muslims (2010; under the pen name Bill Warner).

SUMMARY French has no formal training or background in law, Islam or Shariah law — which in any case is not an established legal code, as the book title implies, but a fluid concept subject to a wide range of interpretations and applications. He garnered attention recently by leading the opposition to a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

IN HIS OWN WORDS “The two driving forces of our civilization are the Golden Rule and critical thought. … There is no Golden Rule in Islam. … There is not really even a Ten Commandments.”
—Quoted in The [Blount County, Tenn.] Daily Times, March 4, 2011

“This offends Allah. You offend Allah.”
— Quoted in The Tennesseean, Oct. 24, 2010, speaking to opponents of the Murfreesboro mosque while pointing to an American flag

BRIGITTE GABRIEL
ORGANIZATIONS Founder and head of ACT! for America and American Council for Truth.

CREDENTIALS Author of Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (2006) and They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (2008). Co-producer and co-host of weekly ACT! for America television show.

SUMMARY Gabriel views Islam in absolute terms as a monolithic threat to the United States, Israel and the West. She is prone to sweeping generalizations and exaggerations as she describes a grand, sophisticated Muslim conspiracy bent on world domination. Of the people profiled here, she alone has focused on building a grassroots organization, claiming 155,000 members and 500 chapters around the country. Questions persist about the accuracy of her autobiographical account of being a victim of Muslim militancy in Lebanon.

IN HER OWN WORDS “America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America. They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department.”
— Quoted in The New York Times, March 7, 2011

“The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arabic world is quite simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil and this is what we’re witnessing in the Arab and Islamic world. I am angry. They have no soul! They are dead set on killing and destruction.”
— From a speech delivered to the Rev. John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Convention, July 2007

“Tens of thousands of Islamic militants now reside in America, operating in sleeper cells, attending our colleges and universities, even infiltrating our government. They are here — today. Many have been here for years. Waiting. Preparing.”
— ACT! for America website, undated

P. DAVID GAUBATZ
ORGANIZATION Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE).

CREDENTIALS Co-author of Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America (2009). As director of operations for SANE’s Mapping Shariah project (see David Yerushalmi, below), a privately operated effort to infiltrate American mosques in an attempt to expose radical elements, Gaubatz was paid $148,898, according to Sheila Musaji of The American Muslim website.

SUMMARY A civilian agent who worked in the Middle East for the U.S. Air Forces Office of Special Investigations, Gaubatz made it a personal project — and the theme of his book — to prove the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is linked to international terrorism. In October 2009, four members of Congress led by Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) held an embarrassing press conference claiming the book revealed a Muslim plot to infiltrate government. Their hardest “evidence” was a document showing that CAIR had encouraged young Muslims to become Capitol interns — much like many other Washington, D.C., interest groups.

IN HIS OWN WORDS “As an ideology [Islam] is a terminal disease that once spread is hard to destroy. Once the ideology (cancer) takes hold it is like trying to remove millions of cancerous cells in one’s body. Not impossible to remove, but very, very unlikely.”
— Essay on the Northeast Intelligence Network website, June 10, 2008

“[T]he political ideology of winning over the West and the world for an Islamic Caliphate is NOT specific to some extremist group of Muslims. This is mainstream Islam and Shari’a. … The goal remains the same: all of the non-Islamic world, and indeed all of the Islamic world, must submit to Shari’a. A Muslim who refuses to do so will be killed. … A non-Muslim, assuming he is not a pagan (typically a Christian or Jew) might be given the opportunity to live in a subservient status in an Islamic society and pay a special head tax to prove his submission. But this option is left to the Caliph or ruler at the time.”
— Essay carried by the Assyrian International News Agency, Feb. 13, 2008

PAMELA GELLER ORGANIZATIONS Executive director and co-founder (with Robert Spencer; see below) of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA)

and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an umbrella group encompassing SIOA. Both are listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Runs the Atlas Shrugs blog.

CREDENTIALS Self-styled expert on Islam with no formal training in the field. Co-produced with Spencer the film “The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks,” which was first screened at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference. Co-author with Spencer of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (2010).

SUMMARY Geller has seized the role of the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and influential figurehead. Her strengths are panache and vivid rhetorical flourishes — not to mention stunts like posing for an anti-Muslim video in a bikini — but she also can be coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam. Geller does not pretend to be learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to SIOA partner Spencer. She is prone to publicizing preposterous claims, such as President Obama being the “love child” of Malcolm X, and once suggested that recent U.S. Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagen, who is Jewish, supports Nazi ideology. Geller has mingled with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists and defended Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. She is a self-avowed Zionist who is sharply critical of Jewish liberals.

IN HER OWN WORDS “Islam is not a race. This is an ideology. This is an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth.”
— On Fox Business’ “Follow the Money,” March 10, 2011

“No, no, they can’t. … I don’t think that many westernized Muslims know when they pray five times a day that they’re cursing Christians and Jews five times a day. … I believe in the idea of a moderate Muslim. I do not believe in the idea of a moderate Islam. I think a moderate Muslim is a secular Muslim.”
— Quoted in The New York Times, responding to a question as to whether devout practicing Muslims can be political moderates, Oct. 8, 2010

“In the war between the civilized man and the savage, you side with the civilized man. … If you don’t lay down and die for Islamic supremacism, then you’re a racist anti-Muslim Islamophobic bigot. That’s what we’re really talking about.”
— Quoted in The New York Times, Oct. 8, 2010

DAVID HOROWITZ

ORGANIZATION Front Page Magazine (online), published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

CREDENTIALS Organized “Islamofascism Awareness Week” which brought prominent anti-Muslim activists to college campuses in 2007. Author of several books including Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004), which claims that American leftists support Islamic terrorists.

SUMMARY Horowitz, who spent his young years as a Marxist, has in recent years become a furious far-right antagonist of liberals and leftists. He also provides some funding support for other anti-Muslim ventures, including, according to the blog SpencerWatch.com, paying Spencer $132,537 to run the JihadWatch website. Horowitz sees no philosophical gradations; if you’re not in total agreement with his view of Islam, you’re in favor of Muslim hegemony. He believes the Muslim Brotherhood and “Islamofascists” control most American Muslim organizations, especially Muslim student groups on college campuses.

IN HIS OWN WORDS “I spent 25 years in the American Left, whose agendas are definitely to destroy this country. The American left wanted us to lose the Cold War with the Soviets and it wants us to lose the war on terror. So I don’t make any apologies for that.”
— On the “Riz Khan” Show, Al Jazeera, Aug. 21, 2008

“Some polls estimate that 10 percent of Muslims support Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. An al-Jazeera poll put the number at 50 percent. In other words, somewhere between 150 million and 750 million Muslims support a holy war against Christians, Jews, and other Muslims who don’t happen to be true believers in the Quran according to
bin Laden.”
— In the Columbia Spectator, Oct. 15, 2007

“There are 150 Muslim Student Associations on American campuses. The Muslim Student Associations were created by Hamas and funded by Saudi Arabia. … [The associations] are Wahhabi Islamicists, and they basically support our enemies.”
— On Fox News’ “Neil Cavuto Show,” Aug. 15, 2006

JOHN JOSEPH JAY
ORGANIZATION summer patriot, winter soldier (a website; Jay doesn’t use capital letters in his website’s name or in his writings). Board member, SIOA. Listed as one of the founders of American Freedom Defense Initiative, SIOA’s umbrella group (see also Pam Geller, above).

CREDENTIALS Jay worked for 25 years as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C. Geller’s Atlas Shrugs blog describes him as a constitutional scholar. In addition to his anti-Muslim commentary, Jay blogs prolifically on the right to bear arms.

SUMMARY Jay is remarkable for his unreconstructed hatred of all Muslims. He believes attacks by Muslim terrorists justify any violence directed at any Muslim, adding that, as he sees it, the Koran itself justifies such blind retaliation.

IN HIS OWN WORDS “every person in islam, from man to woman to child may be our executioner. … there are no innocents in islam. … there is no innocence in islam. all of islam is at war with us, and … all of islam is/are combatant[s.] … islam has established without intellectual doubt that there are no innocent muslims, that the myth of the ‘moderate muslim’ is precisely that, and that muslims are no more entitled to exemption or protection from retaliation that [sic] any of the other ‘non-innocent’ combatants in the world. … there are no innocent muslims.  islam is subject to killing on grounds of political expediency on the same basis as islam kills its victims, and islam cannot ethically and morally claim otherwise.”
— From his website, July 14, 2010

“in short, dear muslims, g_d in his infinite wisdom saw in advance this struggle between men and religions to win his favor, and the only thing that is foreordained, is that the strong and the resolute shall win his favor, and so far, it has been amply demonstrated that he has chosen the jews as his people, and favored christianity with science, technology, culture and military power. to islam, he has given the hind and dry tit, and the sewers and the deserts of the world in which to inhabit, and in which to fester.”
— From his website, June 27, 2010

TERRY JONES
ORGANIZATION Dove World Outreach Center of Gainesville, Fla. Listed by the SPLC as a hate group.

CREDENTIALS Pastor of Dove World; instigator of “International Burn a Koran Day,” which was slated for Sept. 11, 2010, but canceled after worldwide protests and calls from senior officials of the Obama Administration. On March 20, however, Jones did burn a Koran, leading to several days of rampages in early April by religious rioters in Afghanistan, including the storming of a United Nations compound, that resulted in the deaths of at least 20 people. Jones showed no remorse over the deaths, which included at least seven foreigners. Author ofIslam is of the Devil (2010). Jones has admitted never having read the Koran. He has no academic or theological degree; his “doctorate” is honorary.

SUMMARY A true fanatical extremist who seems to be driven mostly by the need for self-promotion and publicity. Operates entirely outside of the core circle of anti-Muslim activists. Jones is also virulently anti-gay.

IN HIS OWN WORDS “Here’s your opportunity, all you so-called peaceful Moslems [Jones' pronunciation]. … We are accusing the Koran of murder, rape, deception, being responsible for terrorist activities all around the world. … Present to us your defense attorney who is going to defend the Koran. Let us really see. We challenge you: do it. Let us not talk. Let us have some action and proof. … The Koran, if found guilty, can be burned … Or the Koran will be drowned. Or the Koran will be shredded into little bitty pieces … or the Koran will face a firing squad.”
— From an undated video on the Dove World Outreach website announcing “International Judge the Koran Day”

“The world is facing a great danger, which, if it is not stopped, will sooner or later be a threat to freedom in all nations and specifically to the United States. This danger is the growing religion of Islam.”
— From the introduction to Islam is of the Devil, 2010

DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL
ORGANIZATION Columnist; eponymous website.

CREDENTIALS The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Schlussel is a Detroit-based attorney and MBA. Frequent guest on conservative talk shows.

SUMMARY Uncompromising, viciously anti-Muslim commentator who dismisses ostensible allies if they are willing to believe in the concept of moderate Islam. She has even berated Hollywood for its failure to depict Muslims as sufficiently villainous. She has referred to Muslims as “animals.” Her intense animosity toward Muslims appears rooted in strong pro-Israel sentiments.

IN HER OWN WORDS “So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. Or so we’d hope. … How fitting that Lara Logan was ‘liberated’ by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the ‘liberation.’ Hope you’re enjoying the revolution, Lara! Alhamdillullah (praise allah) [sic].”
— From her website, following the gang sexual assault on CBS Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo, Feb. 15, 2011

“[T]he fact is that the majority of Muslims support terrorism. The vast majority. Not just a few hijackers and a few suicide bombers. But the MAJORITY. This isn’t me saying it. It’s Muslims saying it. And not just in poll after poll of Muslims around the world including in America. Go to the streets of ‘moderate Muslim’ Dearbornistan [Dearborn, Mich.] and see how many Muslims dare condemn Hezbollah and HAMAS. It’s like playing “Where’s Waldo?”
— From her website, Oct. 8, 2008

ROBERT SPENCER
ORGANIZATION Runs the Jihad Watch website, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Co-founder with Pamela Geller (see above) of Stop Islamization of America and the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

CREDENTIALS Spencer has a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Co-produced with Geller the film “The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks” (2011). Author of numerous books including The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (2007) andThe Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (2005).

SUMMARY Spencer is entirely self-taught in the study of modern Islam and the Koran. Critics have accused him of doggedly taking the Koran literally — Spencer considers it innately extremist and violent — while ignoring its nonviolent passages and the vast interpretive tradition that has modified Koranic teachings over the centuries. Spencer believes that moderate Muslims exist, but to prove it, they’d have to fully denounce the portions of the Koran he finds objectionable. Spencer has been known to fraternize with European racists and neo-fascists, though he says such contacts were merely incidental. Benazir Bhutto, the late prime minister of Pakistan, accused Spencer of “falsely constructing a divide between Islam and West” in her 2008 book,Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West. Spencer, she wrote, presented a “skewed, one-sided, and inflammatory story that only helps to sow the seed of civilizational conflict.”

IN HIS OWN WORDS “Osama [bin Laden]‘s use of these and other [Koranic] passages in his messages is consistent … with traditional understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don’t interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved them away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition.”
— From The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 2005

“Where is moderate Islam? How can moderate Muslims refute the radical exegesis of the Qur’an and Sunnah? If an exposition of moderate Islam does not address or answer radical exegeses, is it really of any value to quash Islamic extremism? If the answer lies in a simple rejection of Qur’anic literalism, how can non-literalists make that rejection stick, and keep their children from being recruited by jihadists by means of literalism? Of course, as I have pointed out many times, traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”
— Jihad Watch, Jan. 14, 2006

DAVID YERUSHALMI
ORGANIZATION President of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE); principal of Stop the Madrassa.

CREDENTIALS General counsel for the Center for Security Policy (see Frank J. Gaffney Jr., above); also, an attorney representing SIOA. Yerushalmi drafted a proposed law filed this year in the Tennessee legislature that would subject anyone who advocates or adheres to Shariah customs to up to 15 years in prison; he drafted a similar bill in Georgia in 2008.

SUMMARY Yerushalmi equates Shariah with Islamic radicalism so totally that he advocates criminalizing virtually any personal practice compliant with Shariah. In his view, only a Muslim who fully breaks with the customs of Shariah can be considered socially tolerable. He waxes bloodthirsty when describing his preferred response to the supposed global threat of Shariah law, speaking casually of killing and destroying. Ideally, he would outlaw Islam and deport Muslims and other “non-Western, non-Christian” people to protect the United States’ “national character.” An ultra-orthodox Jew, he is deeply hostile toward liberal Jews. He derides U.S.-style democracy because it allows more than just an elite, privileged few to vote.

IN HIS OWN WORDS “On the so-called Global War on Terrorism, GWOT, we have been quite clear along with a few other resolute souls. This should be a WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all Muslim faithful. … At a practical level, this means that Shari’a and Islamic law are immediately outlawed. Any Muslim in America who adopts historical and traditional Shari’a will be subject to deportation. Mosques which adhere to Islamic law will be shut down permanently. No self-described or practicing Muslim, irrespective of his or her declarations to the contrary, will be allowed to immigrate to this country.”
— A 2007 commentary entitled “War Manifesto — The War Against Islam,” as reported by The American Muslim

“The more carefully reviewed evidence, however, suggests that because jihadism is in fact traditional Islam modernized to war against the ideological threat posed by the West against Islam proper,there is no way to keep faithful Muslims out of the war. If this is true, any Muslim who sticks his neck out of the mosque to yell some obscenity at the West should be considered an enemy combatant and killed or captured and held for the duration of the war. If you kill enough of them consistently enough, those disinclined to fight in the first place will find a way to reform their religion.”
— Review of Mary Habeck’s book Knowing the Enemy on the American Thinker website, Sept. 9. 2006

The key point to this NY Daily News article is here:

The former Burlington Coat Factory building at 45-47 Park Place is no more historically significant than dozens of buildings pelted with plane parts on Sept. 11, 2001, lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey told a Manhattan court Tuesday…

City lawyer Virginia Thomas pointed out that 56 other buildings were hit by plane parts and that no one’s pushing to preserve those. Century 21 is not a monument to 9/11,” she said. “Nor is 45-47 Park Place.”

Fifty-six other buildings were hit by plane parts, including Century 21.  But for some damn reason–I wonder why!?–these people only care about the Islamic cultural center that will replace the Burlington Coat Factory. It couldn’t possibly have to do with hating Muslims, right? No, absolutely not, that’s ridiculous!  Oh wait, it’s about parking!  Umm yeah, that’s it!

Are you buying it?  I’m not.  Sounds like “anti-Muslim nonsense cloaked in Ground Zero mystique.”

Proposed Park51 mosque site does not merit landmark status for being hit by Sept. 11 debris: lawyer

by: Jose Martinez

The lawyer for the owner of a building near Ground Zero that would house a controversial mosque says it doesn’t deserve landmark status just because part of a plane hit it on 9/11.

The former Burlington Coat Factory building at 45-47 Park Place is no more historically significant than dozens of buildings pelted with plane parts on Sept. 11, 2001, lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey told a Manhattan court Tuesday.

He was arguing the merits of a lawsuit filed by an FDNY firefighter – with the backing of a Washington conservative group – challenging the city’s refusal to grant landmark status.

Bailey trashed the legal action as anti-Muslim nonsense cloaked in Ground Zero mystique.

“Our property is not at Ground Zero,” he said.

“You can’t throw a football and hit it from Ground Zero.”

Firefighter Timothy Brown‘s suit says the building deserves the status because a plane’s landing gear crashed into it on 9/11.

“That building is a monument to that day because of what happened with the landing gear,” said Jack Lester, a lawyer for Brown.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission in August rejected an application to grant landmark status to the 152-year-old Italian palazzo-style warehouse.

It’s marked as the eventual site of Park51, a project that would include a community center and a Muslim prayer space.

City lawyer Virginia Thomas pointed out that 56 other buildings were hit by plane parts and that no one’s pushing to preserve those.

“Century 21 is not a monument to 9/11,” she said. “Nor is 45-47 Park Place.”

Bailey portrayed Brown as a puppet of the American Center for Law & Justice, saying the firefighter doesn’t even live in New York and cares only about shutting down the mosque.

“The 800-pound gorilla in the room is freedom of religion,” Bailey said.

While lawyers for the firefighter carefully danced around the topic of religion before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman, outside court they trashed the Park51 project as “un-American.”

Feinman said he will issue a ruling on the case in the next month.

jmartinez@edit.nydailynews.com

2010 has been an unbelievable year! Can we say that we are happy that it is finally over? Only if that means that the wacky anti-Muslim Islamophobia that reached unprecedented and at times demented levels will recede. However, it doesn’t appear as though that will be happening any time soon.

Looking at the year in review we see that right-leaning and populist anti-Muslim/xenophobic organizations and party’s increased their power/influence across Europe while also initiating and passing discriminatory legislation in their countries.

1. Rise of Geert Wilders and the Freedom Party
2. EDL (English Defense League)
3. Sweden Democrats
4. Switzerland’s banning of Minarets
5. BZO Austria
6. Pia Kjaersgaard (DF)
7. France and the face veil controversy
8. Belgium’s banning of the face veil
9. Catalonia face veil proposal

In the United States we saw the convergence and solidifying of a network of Islamophobes across the nation who joined arms with their brethren across the Atlantic ocean. We were also treated to the Republican party’s instrumentalization and usage of Islam for purposes of fear-mongering during the the run-up to the 2010 elections; add to this mosque controversies, hate crimes, anti-Muslim rallies and your run of the mill nuke Mecca suggestion and you had 2010.

The beginning of the year saw a slew of hate crimes, it also saw our piece, “All Terrorists are Muslim…Except the 94% that Aren’t,” go viral and become one of our most popular pieces ever, getting picked up by various mainstream media outlets.

Joseph Stack's attack

Events picked up shortly after that with Joseph Stack flying his plane into a IRS office kamikaze style and the failure of many, especially on the right to equate the act to terrorism.

Such double standards were consistently exposed by us throughout the year, particularly in our “What if they were Muslim?” segment. We documented the colossal double standards that exist both in media and popular perception when it comes to judging crimes committed by Muslims against those committed by individuals of other faiths. Invariably, when a Muslim commits a crime it is blamed or linked to Islam, whereas if someone else does it his or her faith is not mentioned — even if it was the motivation.

Of course we would be remiss if we did not mention the biggest story of the year; the Cordoba House, i.e. Park51 or as it has come to be known by many, “the Ground Zero Mosque controversy.” This was a story that raged for months and was “whipped up into a frenzy by a pair of bigoted anti-Muslim bloggers, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, two individuals who should be summarily dismissed as loons that have zero influence in the mainstream media or amongst any of our politicians.”

The Republicans latched onto this story and attempted to make it the wedge issue that they could use to ride to victory during the elections. A dozen or more candidates incorporated this issue into their platform with some making it their sole selling point, (un)surpirsingly a handful actually came out victorious, most prominently the looniest of them all, Allen West.

This was also the issue that catapulted Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer into their 5 minutes of fame. We had been reporting on these two, their financiers, networks and supporters ever since we started Loonwatch, our pieces on both of these goons especially “Pamela Geller: The Looniest Blogger Ever” was picked up by mainstream media outlets including the New York Times, Salon.com, Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post.

Both Geller and Spencer were irked to no end by this and though they attempted to play the silent game were forced at some point to respond to Loonwatch, but they did so only with ad hominem attack and zero interaction with the substance of our articles. Geller resorted to calling us a “Goebbels-style hate site” while Spencer wished to inflict “100-101 lashes” on Danios who he labeled a “slick liar” while continuing to run-away and evade Loonwatch’s open challenge to a radio debate.

Today the controversy over Park51 is still simmering though the rhetoric and verbiage on it has cooled down quite a bit to the chagrin of Spencer and Geller. The spill over from Park51 left a terrible residue and sparked controversies around the nation.

It seemed that the issue with mosques (i.e. Muslims) was not simply about proximity to “hallowed ground,” but the right to build and freely worship was being challenged all over the country.

1. Murfreesboro, TN.
2. Temecula, CA.
3. Sheepshead Bay
4. Sheboygan County, Wi
5. Florence, KY
6. Selden, LI
7. Ohio

Ahmed H. Sharif

There are about six more places from our count where mosque controversies were raging, but the above sampling gives you an idea. The worst spillover of the mosque controversy undoubtedly manifested itself with the near fatal stabbing of New York City cab driver Ahmed H. Sharif. Passenger Michael Enright entered his cab, asked him “Are you a Muslim?” and when the cabdriver replied, “Yes,” slashed his throat.

There were other notable Islamophobiapalooza moments during the year as well. For instance Rima Fakih, the first Muslim Miss America drew the ire of right-wingers and Islamophobes who didn’t like seeing a brown lady with the crown, let alone a Mooslim. There was also the South Park/Revolution Muslim controversy and the resultant Everybody Draw Mohammed Day on Facebook which descended into an orgy of bigotry and hatred. Later this would reveal the epic double standards and failure of the moribund perception-makers in the media when contrasted with the way it dealt with the story of Pastor Terry Jones and his wacky Dove Outreach Church’s “International Burn the Koran Day on 9/11″ (Read: Islam and the Media in the Age of Islamophobiapalooza).

The final focal point with which Islamophobes and their cynical cohorts in the Republican party attempted to garner populist support through anti-Muslim fear-mongering was surrounding the buzz word: Sharia’. Sharia’ is the boogey monster that Muslims, 1% of the population of America is going to impose. Forget the fact that most of those advocating this conspiracy theory are themselves woefully ignorant of the Constitution, a document that they subvert with every statement and move they make. It got so bad that Oklahoma overwhelmingly passed a measure banning Sharia’ which has (thankfully) been overturned for being unconstitutional, it should also have been overturned for being unbelievably stupid.

This leads us to consider the biggest Islamophobic conspiracies of the year, which could be a feature piece on its own:

1. Sharia take over of the United States
2. Park51 being a “victory mosque” for “Islamic supremacism”
3. Barack “Hussein” Obama being a secret “Mooslim”
4. Muslim Congressional Spy Interns
5. Rep. Keith Ellison working for Hamas
6. Google’s “e” as an Islamic crescent

At the end of the day, all hope was not lost. There were many whose eyes were opened and Loonwatch helped by being picked by prominent and diverse bloggers as well as media venues as varying as AlJazeera, NPR, Christian Science Monitor, The Independent, AlArabiya etc. Many concerned citizens spoke out eloquently to reject and counter Islamophobia, our segment “Anti-Loons” vividly  showcased the best of those who opposed bigotry and were sincerely and effectively working to counter hate and ignorance on all levels, especially against Islam and Muslims. Lesley Hazelton’s profound lecture describing her experience with the Quran left us with hope, that those who make an effort may come to see beyond the stereotypes, the ignorance that shackles us and fosters animosity between humanity.

“Part of the problem I think is we imagine that the Quran can be read as we usually read a book. As though we can curl up with it on a rainy day with a bowl of popcorn in reach, as though God, and the Quran is entirely in the voice of God speaking to Muhammad, were just another author on the best-sellers list. Yet it is precisely because so few people read the Quran that it is so easy to quote, that is to misquote, phrases and snippets taken out of context, in what I call the highlighter version, which is the one favored by Muslim fundamentalists and anti-Muslim Islamophobes.” –Lesley Hazelton

An epic piece from Max Blumenthal. He links to us and a lot of the information he presents are issues that we have been covering for quite a long time.

The Great Islamophobic Crusade

Nine years after 9/11, hysteria about Muslims in American life has gripped the country.

With it has gone an outburst of arson attacks on mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the branding of the Muslim-American community, overwhelmingly moderate, as a hotbed of potential terrorist recruits. The frenzy has raged from rural Tennessee to New York City, while in Oklahoma, voters even overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure banning the implementation of Sharia law in American courts (not that such a prospect existed). This campaign of Islamophobia wounded President Obama politically, as one out of five Americans have bought into a sustained chorus of false rumors about his secret Muslim faith. And it may have tainted views of Muslims in general; an August 2010 Pew Research Center poll revealed that, among Americans, the favorability rating of Muslims had dropped by 11 points since 2005.

Erupting so many years after the September 11th trauma, this spasm of anti-Muslim bigotry might seem oddly timed and unexpectedly spontaneous. But think again: it’s the fruit of an organized, long-term campaign by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks, but only attained critical mass during the Obama era.  It was then that embittered conservative forces, voted out of power in 2008, sought with remarkable success to leverage cultural resentment into political and partisan gain.

This network is obsessively fixated on the supposed spread of Muslim influence in America. Its apparatus spans continents, extending from Tea Party activists here to the European far right. It brings together in common cause right-wing ultra-Zionists, Christian evangelicals, and racist British soccer hooligans. It reflects an aggressively pro-Israel sensibility, with its key figures venerating the Jewish state as a Middle Eastern Fort Apache on the front lines of the Global War on Terror and urging the U.S. and various European powers to emulate its heavy-handed methods.

Little of recent American Islamophobia (with a strong emphasis on the “phobia”) is sheer happenstance.  Years before Tea Party shock troops massed for angry protests outside the proposed site of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, representatives of the Israel lobby and the Jewish-American establishment launched a campaign against pro-Palestinian campus activism that would prove a seedbed for everything to come. That campaign quickly — and perhaps predictably — morphed into a series of crusades against mosques and Islamic schools which, in turn, attracted an assortment of shady but exceptionally energetic militants into the network’s ranks.

Besides providing the initial energy for the Islamophobic crusade, conservative elements from within the pro-Israel lobby bankrolled the network’s apparatus, enabling it to influence the national debate. One philanthropist in particular has provided the beneficence to propel the campaign ahead. He is a little-known Los Angeles-area software security entrepreneur named Aubrey Chernick, who operates out of a security consulting firm blandly named the National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination. A former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has served as a think tank for the American Israel Policy Action Committee (AIPAC), a frontline lobbying group for Israel, Chernick is said to be worth $750 million.

Chernick’s fortune is puny compared to that of the billionaire Koch Brothers, extraction industry titans who fund Tea Party-related groups like Americans for Prosperity, and it is dwarfed by the financial empire of Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media baron who is one of the largest private donors to the Democratic party and recently matched$9 million raised for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces in a single night. However, by injecting his money into a small but influential constellation of groups and individuals with a narrow agenda, Chernick has had a considerable impact.

Through the Fairbrook Foundation, a private entity he and his wife Joyce control, Chernick has provided funding to groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and CAMERA, a right-wing, pro-Israel, media-watchdog outfit, to violent Israeli settlers living on Palestinian lands and figures like the pseudo-academic author Robert Spencer, who is largely responsible for popularizing conspiracy theories about the coming conquest of the West by Muslim fanatics seeking to establish a worldwide caliphate. Together, these groups spread hysteria about Muslims into Middle American communities where immigrants from the Middle East have recently settled, and they watched with glee as likely Republican presidential frontrunners from Mike Huckabee to Sarah Palin promoted their cause and parroted their tropes. Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the increasingly widespread appeal of Islamophobia is that, just a few years ago, the phenomenon was confined to a few college campuses and an inner city neighborhood, and that it seemed like a fleeting fad that would soon pass from the American political landscape.

Birth of a Network

The Islamophobic crusade was launched in earnest at the peak of George W. Bush’s prestige when the neoconservatives and their allies were riding high. In 2003, three years after the collapse of President Bill Clinton’s attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue and in the immediate wake of the invasion of Iraq, a network of Jewish groups, ranging from ADL and the American Jewish Committee to AIPAC, gathered to address what they saw as a sudden rise in pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses nationwide. That meeting gave birth to the David Project, a campus advocacy group led by Charles Peters, who had co-founded CAMERA, one of the many outfits bankrolled by Chernick. With the help of public relations professionals, Peters conceived a plan to “take back the campus by influencing public opinion through lectures, the Internet, and coalitions,” as a memo produced at the time by the consulting firm McKinsey and Company stated.

In 2004, after conferring with Martin Kramer, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the pro-Israel think tank where Chernoff had served as a trustee, Peters produced a documentary film that he called Columbia Unbecoming.  It was filled with claims from Jewish students at Columbia University claiming they had endured intimidation and insults from Arab professors.  The film portrayed that New York City school’s Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures as a hothouse of anti-Semitism.

In their complaints, the students focused on one figure in particular: Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor of Middle East studies.  He was known for his passionate advocacy of the formation of a binational state between Israel and Palestine, as well as for his strident criticism of what he termed “the racist character of Israel.” The film identified him as “one of the most dangerous intellectuals on campus,” while he was featured as a crucial villain inThe Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, a book by the (Chernick-funded) neoconservative activist David Horowitz.  As Massad was seeking tenure at the time, he was especially vulnerable to this sort of wholesale assault.

When the controversy over Massad’s views intensified, Congressman Anthony Weiner, a liberal New York Democrat who once described himself as a representative of “the ZOA [Zionist Organization of America] wing of the Democratic Party,” demanded that Columbia President Lee Bollinger, a renowned First Amendment scholar, fire the professor. Bollinger responded by issuing uncharacteristically defensive statements about the “limited” nature of academic freedom.

In the end, however, none of the charges stuck. Indeed, the testimonies in the David Project film were eventually either discredited or never corroborated. In 2009, Massad earned tenure after winning Columbia’s prestigious Lionel Trilling Award for excellence in scholarship.

Having demonstrated its ability to intimidate faculty members and even powerful university administrators, however, Kramer claimed a moral victory in the name of his project, boasting to the press that “this is a turning point.” While the David Project subsequently fostered chapters on campuses nationwide, its director set out on a different path — initially, into the streets of Boston in 2004 to oppose the construction of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

For nearly 15 years, the Islamic Society of Boston had sought to build the center in the heart of Roxbury, the city’s largest black neighborhood, to serve its sizable Muslim population. With endorsements from Mayor Thomas Menino and leading Massachusetts lawmakers, the mosque’s construction seemed like a fait accompli — until, that is, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Boston Herald and his local Fox News affiliate snapped into action.  Boston Globecolumnist Jeff Jacoby also chimed in with a series of reports claiming the center’s plans were evidence of a Saudi Arabian plot to bolster the influence of radical Islam in the United States, and possibly even to train underground terror cells.

It was at this point that the David Project entered the fray, convening elements of the local pro-Israel community in the Boston area to seek strategies to torpedo the project. According to emails obtained by the Islamic Society’s lawyers in a lawsuit against the David Project, the organizers settled on a campaign of years of nuisance lawsuits, along with accusations that the center had received foreign funding from “the Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia or… the Moslem Brotherhood.”

In response, a grassroots coalition of liberal Jews initiated inter-faith efforts aimed at ending a controversy that had essentially been manufactured out of thin air and was corroding relations between the Jewish and Muslim communities in the city. Peters would not, however, relent. “We are more concerned now than we have ever been about a Saudi influence of local mosques,” he announced at a suburban Boston synagogue in 2007.

After paying out millions of dollars in legal bills and enduring countless smears, the Islamic Society of Boston completed the construction of its community center in 2008. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, nothing came of the David Project’s dark warnings. As Boston-area National Public Radio reporter Philip Martin reflected in September 2010, “The horror stories that preceded [the center’s] development seem shrill and histrionic in retrospect.”

The Network Expands

This second failed campaign was, in the end, more about movement building than success, no less national security. The local crusade established an effective blueprint for generating hysteria against the establishment of Islamic centers and mosques across the country, while galvanizing a cast of characters who would form an anti-Muslim network which would gain attention and success in the years to come.

In 2007, these figures coalesced into a proto-movement that launched a new crusade, this time targeting the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a secular Arabic-English elementary school in Brooklyn, New York. Calling their ad hoc pressure group, Stop the Madrassah – madrassah being simply the Arab word for “school” — the coalition’s activists included an array of previously unknown zealots who made no attempt to disguise their extreme views when it came to Islam as a religion, as well as Muslims in America. Their stated goal was to challenge the school’s establishment on the basis of its violation of the church-state separation in the U.S. Constitution.  The true aim of the coalition, however, was transparent: to pressure the city’s leadership to adopt an antagonistic posture towards the local Muslim community.

The activists zeroed in on the school’s principal, Debbie Almontaser, a veteran educator of Yemeni descent, and baselessly branded her “a jihadist” as well as a 9/11 denier.  They also accused her of — as Pamela Geller, a far-right blogger just then gaining prominence put it, “whitewash[ing] the genocide against the Jews.”  Daniel Pipes, a neoconservative academic previously active in the campaigns against Joseph Massad and the Boston Islamic center (and whose pro-Likud think tank, Middle East Forum, has received $150,000 from Chernick) claimed the school should not go ahead because “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” As the campaign reached a fever pitch, Almontaser reported that members of the coalition were actuallystalking her wherever she went.

Given what Columbia Journalism School professor and former New York Times reporter Samuel Freedman called“her clear, public record of interfaith activism and outreach,” including work with the New York Police Department and the Anti-Defamation League after the September 11th attacks, the assault on Almontaser seemed little short of bizarre — until her assailants discovered a photograph of her wearing a T-shirt produced by AWAAM, a local Arab feminist organization, that read “Intifada NYC.” (“As AWAAM provides young women with opportunities to become active as community organizers and media producers, ‘intifada NYC’ is a call for empowerment, service, civic participation and critical thinking in our communities,” the organization explained once the controversy erupted.)

Having found a way to wedge the emotional issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict into a previously New York-centered campaign, the school’s opponents next gained a platform at the Murdoch-owned New York Post, where reporters Chuck Bennett and Jana Winter claimed her T-shirt was “apparently a call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big Apple.” While Almontaser attempted to explain to the Post’s reporters that she rejected terrorism, the Anti-Defamation League chimed in on cue. ADL spokesman Oren Segal told the Post: “The T-shirt is a reflection of a movement that increasingly lauds violence against Israelis instead of rejecting it. That is disturbing.”

Before any Qassam rockets could be launched from Almonstaser’s school, her former ally New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg caved to the growing pressure and demanded her resignation, prompting the state’s Department of Education to fire her. A Jewish principal who spoke no Arabic replaced Almontaser, who later filed a lawsuit against the city for breaching her free speech rights. In 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that New York’s Department of Education had “succumbed to the very bias that the creation of the school was intended to dispel” by firing Almontaser and urged it pay her $300,000 in damages. The commission also concluded that thePost had quoted her misleadingly.

Though it failed to stop the establishment of the Khalil Gibran Academy, the burgeoning anti-Muslim movement succeeded in forcing city leaders to bend to its will, and having learned just how to do that, then moved on in search of more high-profile targets. As the New York Times reported at the time, “The fight against the school… was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.”

“It’s a battle that has really just begun,” Pipes told the Times.

From Scam to Publicity Coup

Pipes couldn’t have been more on the mark. In late 2009, the Islamophobes sprang into action again when the Cordoba Initiative, a non-profit Muslim group headed by Feisal Abdul Rauf, an exceedingly moderate Sufi Muslim imam who regularlytraveled abroad representing the United States at the behest of the State Department, announced that it was going to build a community center in downtown New York City. With the help of investors, Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative purchased space two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan.  The space was to contain a prayer area as part of a large community center that would be open to everyone in the neighborhood.

None of these facts mattered to Pamela Geller. Thanks to constant prodding at her blog, Atlas Shrugged, Geller made Cordoba’s construction plans a national issue, provoking fervent calls from conservatives to protect the “hallowed ground” of 9/11 from creeping Sharia. (That the “mosque” would have been out of sight of Ground Zero and that the neighborhood was, in fact, filled with everything from strip clubs to fast-food joints didn’t matter.)  Geller’s activism against Cordoba House earned the 52-year-old full-time blogger the attention she apparently craved, including along profile in the New York Times and frequent cable news spots, especially, of course, on Fox News.

Mainstream reporters tended to focus on Geller’s bizarre stunts.  She posted a video of herself splashing around in a string bikini on a Fort Lauderdale beach, for instance, while ranting about “left-tards” and “Nazi Hezbollah.”  Hercall for boycotting Campbell’s Soup because the company offered halal — approved under Islamic law (as kosher food is under Jewish law) — versions of its products got her much attention, as did her promotion of a screed claiming that President Barack Obama was the illegitimate lovechild of Malcolm X.

Geller had never earned a living as a journalist.  She supported herself with millions of dollars in a divorce settlement and life insurance money from her ex-husband.  He died in 2008, a year after being indicted for an alleged $1.3 million scam he was accused of running out of a car dealership he co-owned with Geller. Independently wealthy and with time on her hands, Geller proved able indeed when it came to exploiting her strange media stardom to incite the already organized political network of Islamophobes to intensify their crusade.

She also benefited from close alliances with leading Islamophobes from Europe. Among Geller’s allies was Andrew Gravers, a Danish activist who formed the group Stop the Islamicization of Europe, and gave it the unusually blunt motto: “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense.” Gravers’ group inspired Geller’s own U.S.-based outfit, Stop the Islamicization of America, which she formed with her friend Robert Spencer, a pseudo-scholar from Great Britain whose bestselling books, including The Truth About Muhammad, Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, prompted former advisor to President Richard Nixon and Muslim activist Robert Crane to call him, “the principal leader… in the new academic field of Muslim bashing.” (According to the website Politico, almost $1 million in donations from Chernick has been steered to Spencer’s Jihad Watch group through David Horowitz’s Freedom Center.)

Perfect sources for Republican political figures in search of the next hot-button cause, their rhetoric found its way into the talking points of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin as they propelled the crusade against Cordoba House into the national spotlight. Gingrich soon compared the community center to a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, while Palin called it “a stab in the heart” of “the Heartland.” Meanwhile, Tea Party candidates like Republican Ilario Pantano, an Iraq war veteran who killed two unarmed Iraqi civilians, shooting them 60 times — he even stopped to reload — made their opposition to Cordoba House the centerpiece of midterm congressional campaigns conducted hundreds of miles from Ground Zero.
Geller’s campaign against “the mosque at Ground Zero” gained an unexpected assist and a veneer of legitimacy from established Jewish leaders like Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman. “Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” he remarked to the New York Times. Comparing the bereaved family members of 9-11 victims to Holocaust survivors, Foxman insisted, “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”

Soon enough, David Harris, director of the (Chernick-funded) American Jewish Committee, was demanding that Cordoba’s leaders be compelled to reveal their “true attitudes” about Palestinian militant groups before construction on the center was initiated.  Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles, another major Jewish group, insisted it would be “insensitive” for Cordoba to build near “a cemetery,” though his organization had recently been granted permission from the municipality of Jerusalem to build a “museum of tolerance” to be called The Center for Human Dignity directly on top of the Mamilla Cemetery, a Muslim graveyard that contained thousands of gravesites dating back 1,200 years.

Inspiration from Israel

It was evident from the involvement of figures like Gravers and Spencer that the Islamophobic network in the United States represented a trans-Atlantic expansion of simmering resentment in Europe.  There, the far-right was storming to victories in parliamentary elections across the continent in part by appealing to the simmering anti-Muslim sentiments of voters in rural and working-class communities. The extent of the collaboration between European and American Islamophobes has only continued to grow with Geller, Spencer, and even Gingrich standing beside Europe’s most prominent anti-Muslim figure, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, at a rally against Cordoba House.  In the meantime, Geller was issuing statements of support for the English Defense League, a band of unreconstructed neo-Nazis and former members of the whites-only British National Party who intimidate Muslims in the streets of cities like Birmingham and London.

In addition, the trans-Atlantic Islamophobic crusade has stretched into Israel, a country that has come to symbolize the network’s fight against the Muslim menace. As Geller told the New York Times’ Alan Feuer, Israel is “a very good guide because, like I said, in the war between the civilized man and the savage, you side with the civilized man.”

EDL members regularly wave Israeli flags at their rallies, while Wilders claims to have formed his views about Muslims during the time he worked on an Israeli cooperative farm in the 1980s. He has, he says, visited the country more than 40 times since to meet with rightist political allies like Aryeh Eldad, a member of the Israeli Knesset and leader of the far right Hatikvah faction of the National Union Party.  He has called for forcibly “transferring” the Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied West Bank to Jordan and Egypt. On December 5th, for example, Wilders traveled to Israel for a “friendly” meeting with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, then declared at a press conference that Israel should annex the West Bank and set up a Palestinian state in Jordan.

In the apocalyptic clash of civilizations the global anti-Muslim network has sought to incite, tiny armed Jewish settlements like Yitzar, located on the hills above the occupied Palestinian city of Nablus, represent front-line fortresses. Inside Yitzar’s state-funded yeshiva, a rabbi named Yitzhak Shapira has instructed students in what rules must be applied when considering killing non-Jews. Shapira summarized his opinions in a widely publicized book, Torat HaMelech, or The King’s Torah. Claiming that non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature,” Shapira cited rabbinical texts to declare that gentiles could be killed in order to “curb their evil inclinations.” “There is justification,” the rabbi proclaimed, “for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

In 2006, the rabbi was briefly held by Israeli police for urging his supporters to murder all Palestinians over the age of 13. Two years later, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he signed a rabbinical letter in support of Israeli Jews who had brutally assaulted two Arab youths on the country’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same year, Shapira was arrested as a suspect in helping orchestrate a rocket attack against a Palestinian village near Nablus.

Though he was not charged, his name came up again in connection with another act of terror when, in January 2010, the Israeli police raided his settlement seeking vandals who had set fire to a nearby mosque. One of Shapira’s followers, an American immigrant, Jack Teitel, has confessed to murdering two innocent Palestinians and attempting to the kill the liberal Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell with a mail bomb.

What does all this have to do with Islamophobic campaigns in the United States?  A great deal, actually. Through New York-based tax-exempt non-profits like the Central Fund of Israel and Ateret Cohenim, for instance, the omnipresent Aubrey Chernick has sent tens of thousands of dollars to support the Yitzar settlement, as well as to the messianic settlers dedicated to “Judaizing” East Jerusalem. The settlement movement’s leading online news magazine, Arutz Sheva, has featured Geller as a columnist.  A friend of Geller’s, Beth Gilinsky, a right-wing activist with a group called the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero and the founder of the Jewish Action Alliance (apparently runout of a Manhattan real estate office), organized a large rally in New York City in April 2010 to protest the Obama administration’s call for a settlement freeze.

Among Chernick’s major funding recipients is a supposedly “apolitical” group called Aish Hatorah that claims to educate Jews about their heritage. Based in New York and active in the fever swamps of northern West Bank settlements near Yitzar, Aish Hatorah shares an address and staff with a shadowy foreign non-profit called the Clarion Fund. During the 2008 U.S. election campaign, the Clarion Fund distributed 28 million DVDs of a propaganda film called Obsession as newspaper inserts to residents of swing states around the country. The film featured a who’s who of anti-Muslim activists, including Walid Shoebat, a self-proclaimed “former PLO terrorist.” Among Shoebat’s more striking statements: “A secular dogma like Nazism is less dangerous than is Islamofascism today.” At a Christian gathering in 2007, this “former Islamic terrorist” told the crowd that Islam was a “satanic cult” and that he had been born again as an evangelical Christian. In 2008, however, the Jerusalem Post, a right-leaning newspaper, exposed him as a fraud, whose claims to terrorism were fictional.

Islamophobic groups registered only a minimal impact during the 2008 election campaign. Two years later, however, after the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections, the network appears to have reached critical mass. Of course, the deciding factor in the election was the economy, and in two years, Americans will likely vote their pocketbooks again. But that the construction of a single Islamic community center or the imaginary threat of Sharia law were issues at all reflected the influence of a small band of locally oriented activists, and suggested that when a certain presidential candidate who has already been demonized as a crypto-Muslim runs for reelection, the country’s most vocal Islamophobes could once again find a national platform amid the frenzied atmosphere of the campaign.

By now, the Islamophobic crusade has gone beyond the right-wing pro-Israel activists, cyber-bigots, and ambitious hucksters who conceived it. It now belongs to leading Republican presidential candidates, top-rated cable news hosts, and crowds of Tea Party activists. As the fervor spreads, the crusaders are basking in the glory of what they accomplished. “I didn’t choose this moment,” Geller mused to the New York Times, “this moment chose me.”

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

Original post: The Great Islamophobic Crusade

Bloomberg’s defense of the Park51 proposal will never be forgotten but neither should be his mixed record in regards to the Muslim community.

Beyond the Mosque: Bloomberg and New York’s Muslims

(Gotham Magazine)

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg strongly defended the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero last August even as polls showed most New Yorkers opposed the project, he garnered some favorable media coverage and praise for his stance.

A New York Times editorial called Bloomberg “the leader with the courage to make the case” for the center. Tom Robbins, a Village Voice columnist and frequent critic of the mayor, wrote, “Mike Bloomberg did a brave and good deed for this city” when he spoke out in favor of the project, known as Park 51. Errol Louis called Bloomberg’s speech on Governors Island defending the proposed center “the finest speech of his career.” And the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, praised Bloomberg for “defending the rights of Muslims and other Americans to build houses of worship.”

The mosque, while significant, is just one issue. Beyond that, many Muslim groups, faith leaders and activists who have applauded Bloomberg’s forceful defense of Park 51 say his administration has had a mixed and at times disappointing track record on policies affecting the Muslim community. Among other issues, they cite his failure to speak out on proposals for other mosques around the city, his refusal to provide a school holiday for Muslim holy days and the attitude of the police department toward Muslims in the city.

“We appreciate that Bloomberg came out and took a stand in a very difficult political moment, particularly a backlash against Muslim communities,” said Monami Maulik, the executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, a grassroots activist group serving the South Asian community. “On the other hand, we also saw it as window dressing in many ways because the bottom line is that it’s the policies and practices that the administration puts in place that affects the members of our community day to day.”

A Range of Concerns

An estimated 800,000 Muslims live in the city, and their numbers are growing. Not surprisingly, they have an array of concerns — extending far beyond a mosque in lower Manhattan. Interviews with a wide array of Muslim community leaders indicate that the Bloomberg administration and the city’s Muslim community have a complicated and nuanced relationship.

“It is a work in progress,” said Adem Carroll, the former executive director of the Muslim Consultative Network and the former coordinator for the Islamic Circle of North America’s 9/11 relief program. “He has hired some Muslims as commissioners who work very hard at being liaisons. He himself does not visit our community members very much, at least that’s the perception.”

Robina Niaz, the founder and executive director of Turning Point for Women and Families, a non-profit organization that seeks to address domestic violence within the Muslim community, said she has seen a “marked change in the last several months” toward the positive in how Bloomberg is perceived in the Muslim community.

Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid, an African-American leader at the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, describes the relationship between the Bloomberg administration and the Muslim community as “strained.” But he said, “There has been a demonstration of some political sensitivity on the part of that administration toward some issues of importance to the Muslim community.” For example, ‘Abdur-Rashid said, after a September 2009 fire badly damaged a mosque in the Bronx that served a large West African Muslim community, “the Bloomberg administration was a great help and assistance to them, helping them to find a temporary place to worship.”

However, a consensus exists that the Bloomberg administration needs to reach out more to the Muslim community, especially in a difficult political climate for Muslims.

“Just because he supported Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Park 51, that doesn’t mean every other issue should be taken off the burner,” said Niaz.

In an interview, Fatima Shama, a Palestinian-American Muslim who is the commissioner for immigrant affairs under the Bloomberg administration, forcefully defended the administration’s efforts.

Bloomberg “has engaged with the Muslim community more than any other mayor in this city,” said Shama, noting that she was the first Muslim hired to be commissioner of immigrant affairs. Shama also pointed out that Bloomberg holds an annual Iftar dinner, to mark the fast breaking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Voice of Reason

With anti-Muslim prejudice seemingly on the rise across the country, many Muslims in New York would like the mayor to go beyond his speech on the mosque and community center near Ground Zero. In particular, they wish he would speak out on the battles over proposed mosques elsewhere in the city. In the Midland Beach neighborhood of Staten Island, the board of a Catholic Church blocked plans for a proposed mosque when, in the face of harsh condemnation, they refused to sell a vacant convent to a Muslim organization. In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, a proposed mosque and community center has also sparked controversy.

“Bloomberg this time around chose to stand on the right side of history on the Park 51 controversy by making that eloquent speech, but I don’t think that he should stop there. I think he’s positioned uniquely as a mayor, as a national leader, to lead the charge against Islamophobia if he really wants to redeem himself in the eyes of Muslim New Yorkers considering that he’s failed them a few times,” said Debbie Almontaser, the founder and former principal of theKhalil Gibran International Academy, the city’s first dual-language Arabic public school.

In 2007, many Muslims and other New Yorkers believe, Almotaser fell victim of that prejudice when a right-wing campaign targeted the school and Almontaser. Following an article in the New York Post that claimed she “downplayed the significance” of T-shirts bearing the word “intifada,” she was“forced to resign following a directive from Bloomberg, according to Almontaser. Earlier this year, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that the Department of Education discriminated against Almontaser and “succumbed to the very bias that the creation of the school intended to dispel.”

Almontaser’s resignation remains on the mind of many community leaders.

Perceptions of the mayor’s actions don’t stop at New York’s borders. While Bloomberg does not have a role in formulating foreign policy, many Muslim activists disapprovingly cited his staunch support for Israel, and specifically his January 2009 visit to Israel while the country waged an assault on the Gaza Strip in Palestine.

“His relationship with Israel, supporting Israel with no limits, hurts us,” said Zein Rimawi, a member of the New York City-based Arab Muslim American Federation. “Don’t forget: We are Arabs, we are Muslims, and the people in Gaza are Arabs and Muslims and we support them.”

Under Suspicion

In addition, Muslim leaders have concern about New York Police Department counter-terrorism practices in the Bloomberg era. Civil rights organizations like CAIR-NY and DRUM have of police harassment of Muslims in New York.

Arguably the biggest irritant came when the police department released a 2007 report, titled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. The report detailed the process by which it saw some American Muslims as being “radicalized” into terrorists and said that, while Americans Muslims are “more resistant to radicalization than their European counterparts, they are not immune.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations promptly criticized the report, saying, “Its sweeping generalizations and mixing of unrelated elements may serve to cast a pall of suspicion over the entire American Muslim community.” In the wake of the report, the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition formed and critiqued the report for presenting “a distorted and misleading depiction of Islam and its adherents.”

Following meetings with Muslim organizations, the police department quietly issued a two-page clarification that stressed that the “NYPD’s focus on al Qaeda inspired terrorism should not be mistaken for any implicit or explicit justification for racial, religious or ethnic profiling.”

While Muslim organizations welcomed the clarification, criticism of the report remains.

“It’s not clear what the NYPD really thinks, because it’s leaving the bulk of its assertions and its conclusions in place,” said Faiza Patel, who works with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Project. The clarification “didn’t address all of [the Muslim community's] concerns. The way it was done — really kind of hidden there — makes it seem as if the police department is talking out of two sides of its mouth.”

The police did not respond to requests for comment. But Shama defended the department, saying it has many Muslims in the police force and also has aMuslim Officers Society whose mission includes promoting “a mutual understanding between the NYPD and the Muslim community.”

“I don’t think there are any broad brushes or generalizations in the report,” said Shama, when asked about Muslim community leaders’ criticism of the document. “But we do have a policy that if you see something, say something. … It’s a new day in a new country,” she said, referring to the post-9/11 world.

No Days Off

Bloomberg’s opposition to closing public schools on two Muslim holidays — Eid Ul-Fitr and Eid Ul-Adha — disappointed many in the Muslim community — particularly after the City Council approved the change in the school calendar. In July 2009, the New York City Council passed a nonbinding resolution calling for the inclusion of Eid Ul-Fitr and Eid Ul-Adha, two Muslim holidays, into the school calendar. Underscoring the issue, parent-teacher conferences this year are being held today, which is also Eid Ul-Adha.

The administration opposed the measure, saying that the school system can’t celebrate every holiday. “One of the problems you have with a diverse city is that if you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school,” Bloomberg has said.

Shama said the Bloomberg administration “absolutely listened to all the requests and concerns of the school holidays coalition” before taking its position. Despite that, ‘Abdur-Rashid said, the administration stand “left a very bad taste in the mouths of many Muslims.”

Faiza Ali, the director of community affairs for CAIR-NY, said her organization is still pursuing the issue. “We’re looking to the leadership of the mayor and chancellor…[to] re-tool the school calendar to fit the needs of the community,” she said.

Alex Kane blogs on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia in the United States athttp://alexbkane.wordpress.com/, and you can follow him on Twitter here. His work has also appeared in Mondoweiss, Salon, The Electronic Intifada, Common Dreams, Palestine Chronicle and Alternet. He is a former intern at the Gotham Gazette.

Charles Johnson over at LGF launches into Pamela.

Your Whacked Out Pamela Geller Rant of the Day

A classically incoherent run-on title from the Shrieking Harpy introduces her latest outrageous outrage:

JIHADIST DEVELOPERS OF GROUND ZERO MOSQUE HIT UP 9/11 FUND TO REBUILD LOWER MANHATTAN FOR $5 MILLION JIZYA TO ERECT ISLAMIC SUPREMACIST MEGA-MOSQUE

Imagine the gall of these Islamic supremacists. The very idea that the infidels should finance the second wave of 911 attacks on the American people again exhibits the contempt Rauf and his gang have for the filthy kuffar.

Here’s what her latest asinine Crusade is about: the developers of Park51 have applied for funding from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which was set up after the 9/11 attacks to help distribute federal funds to businesses, for the improvement of lower Manhattan. The fund was set up specifically for projects like the Cordoba House, which proposes to take an abandoned eyesore of a building and turn it into a world class community center open to all. I don’t know if they’ll receive the funding, but it certainly qualifies under the intent of the LMDC.

But Geller and her Bigot Brigade are raging out of control again, because in their universe it’s obvious that none of that money was ever intended to get into the hands of Muslims. In other words, you’re looking at pure naked bigotry, unashamed, ignorant, and proud of it.

A footnote: Geller is always claiming that she doesn’t hate Muslims, she’s not a bigot, etc., all while spewing the most disgusting slurs, insults and hate speech. For example, this post: BLIND GIRL SAVES FOR THREE YEARS TO BUY A GUIDE HORSE BECAUSE HER STRICT MUSLIM PARENTS CONSIDER DOGS UNCLEAN.

You can tell how much sympathy Geller has for this blind Muslim woman by her comment:

Why not a goat? Isn’t that cheaper? (/sarc)

Hurr hurr.

UPDATE at 11/23/10 6:55:20 pm:

Some facts about the plans for Cordoba House:

The majority of the center will be open to the general public and its proponents have said the center will promote interfaith dialogue. It will contain a Muslim prayer space that has controversially[7][8] been referred to as the “Ground Zero mosque”. It would replace an existing 1850s Italianate-style building that was being used as a Burlington Coat Factory before it was damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The proposed multi-faith aspects of the design include a 500-seat auditorium, theater, a performing arts center, a fitness center, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a childcare area, a bookstore, a culinary school, an art studio, a food court, and a memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks. The prayer space for the Muslim community will accommodate 1,000–2,000 people.

Whoopi could use some Loonwatch help in eviscerating Bill O’Reilly but over all she was able to handle his attacks and stand her ground, even though he wouldn’t let her talk.

Notice O’Reilly’s profound ignorance of the Islamic world. He claims “madrassa” which literally means school is a “place where violent Jihad” is taught. Bill, read a book, even the majority of madrassas which are of a religious bent don’t teach Jihad, they provide a free opportunity to poor students to learn the Quran, and some, though too often not enough secular sciences.

Also O’Reilly says that 90% of terrorists in the world today are Muslims. Where does he get these stats? As we have shown, in the West at least, Muslim terrorism barely makes up one percent of all terrorist attacks.

(Huffington Post)

O’Reilly, Whoopi Goldberg Clash About Muslims On ‘O’Reilly Factor,’ And Whoopi Swears Again

Whoopi Goldberg’s appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show was aired in full on Tuesday’s “O’Reilly Factor.” It was their first meeting since October, when O’Reilly caused Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set of “The View” in anger. Unsurprisingly, that incident, and O’Reilly’s statement that “Muslims killed us on 9/11,” was the focus of his and Goldberg’s rematch.

Though the encounter remained fairly civil — except for one moment when Goldberg swore– the two expressed a fundamental disagreement over both the impact of O’Reilly’s words and the situation in the Muslim world. O’Reilly told Goldberg he thought it was ludicrous to assume that he literally meant all Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

“I don’t worry so much about what you think,” Goldberg said, adding that she did worry about the effect such statements might have on viewers. “You’re a really great showman, you’re a great guy to talk to, but sometimes I think you give yourself less credit, which is shocking, I know, than you think,” she told O’Reilly.

O’Reilly then asked Goldberg if she thought there was a “Muslim problem” in the world, as he did. She said that she thought there was a “terrorist problem.” The two clashed about the issue for a few minutes, with O’Reilly saying that 90 percent of the terrorism in the world was being caused by Muslims, and Goldberg insisting that he was painting things with too broad a brush.

The spikiest moment, however, came when O’Reilly referred to Goldberg as “Ms. Goldberg.”

“What is this bullshit about Ms. Goldberg?” Goldberg snapped — ironically, using the very word that she used during their encounter in October. “Stop that, Bill, just call me Whoopi.”

(via. IslamophobiaToday)

Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar got so angry with Bill O’Reilly while discussing the Ground Zero mosque that they both walked off the set. They later returned after Bill apologized.

From The View, Thursday 10/14/10.

Keith Ellison discusses the interesting if seriously flawed show that Christiane Amanpour held this past week. He rips into the format and discusses what would happen if we replaced Islam with Black or Jewish and proceeds to call for a heightened more intelligent discourse.

Should we fear Islam? (Washington Post)

by Congressman Keith Ellison

At a time when our nation is seeing a rise in intolerant behavior, crossing every cultural line, whether based on race, religion or sexual orientation, we seem simultaneously stuck with a national news media that is preoccupied with conflict and controversy when we desperately need one that weighs facts and reports fairly. A recent national news program reinforced these concerns. Let me explain what I mean.

Imagine a respected TV show or news magazine article with the title, “Should Americans Fear Black People?”

Imagine staccato hip-hop music for the teaser, with clips of black gang members toting guns, hanging around urban scenes, looking scary. Imagine the zoom-in close up of a shoulder tattoo, proclaiming “Thug for Life.”

As the host (some household name) opens the show, imagine that the white expert opining about the root causes of urban decay is a nationally recognized racist, like for instance, David Duke. With a straight face, and no sense of irony, the host solicits Duke’s views, who proceeds to declare, “when the American people saw the LA riots, they received a peek into their future.”

Imagine the television cameras going in search of voices of ‘real’ black people. Where do they go? The ‘hood of course! I mean, where else do black people live?

The intrepid host invites regular Americans to ask the experts to explain black pathology: “Why is their rap music so degrading to women?” Cynthia from Wyoming wonders. “Why are so many blacks at the bottom of the economic and educational ladder?” Chuck from New York State muses.

Is this starting to get a little uncomfortable? Of course, it is. Just ask Don Imus about the wisdom of indulging in racial stereotyping against blacks. Add Jews, Catholics, gays and others as well. Not a good idea.

Now replace black with Muslim, and that’s just about how ABC News treated Islam and Muslims this past weekend, on 20/20 and This Week with Christiane Amanpour.

There were the obligatory clips of terrorist training camps, the planes flying into the twin towers, the victims of so-called ‘honor killings.’ The Muslim experts – looking officially ‘Islamic’ in their long beards and hats – included one declaring that one day the flag of Islam would fly over the White House. The non-Muslim experts - Robert Spencer(leading anti-Muslim advocate in the Park51 Project controversy), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (prolific anti-Muslim writer), and Franklin Graham (said Islam “is a very evil and wicked religion”) – are well known, even famous, for spewing anti-Muslim hate. Of course, these characters emphatically agreed with the caricatures with long beards and white hats, repeating the propaganda that Islam requires its adherents to dominate people. Among the ‘normal’ Muslims interviewed were a woman in niqab (fewer than 1% of Muslim women in America wear the full face veil and accompanying robes), and Muslims in the Muslim ‘hood’, cities, like Dearborn, MI, and Patterson, NJ.

Do some Americans fear black people? For sure. But we don’t validate those fears by allowing them to be expressed with fake innocence on respected news shows. Why are fears of Muslims validated by television airings?

Are there criminals in America who are African-American? Yes, again. But they’re not presented as representative figures of the community by reputable news programs. Why do such shows go out of their way to find the scariest, most cartoonish Muslims possible and present them as spokespeople for Muslims?

No serious journalist would ask a random black guy with a briefcase on the street to explain the pathology of an African American criminal because of the coincidence of shared skin color. But serious journalists called on ordinary Muslim Americans to explain the behavior of homicidal maniacs and extremists, thereby making the link between the crazies and the mainstream community.

Are there people willing to offer all sorts of racist theories about black crime, from problems in black genes to deficiencies in black culture? Plenty. But the only time they show up on mainstream news shows are as examples of racism, not as experts on race.

We are having a national conversation about belonging. The threatened Qur’an burning in Florida and the controversy over the proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan are examples of this national conversation about whether America can stretch her arms wide enough to embrace Muslims too. Irresponsible and sensational depictions of Muslims in the popular media are not the cause of Islamophobia, but they certainly can make it worse. Recent news shows and media reports do nothing to shed light or understanding on this national conversation, which is too bad.

But the conversation must continue. And I hope it continues in our mosques, churches, synagogues and other holy places, with Americans of all faiths talking face to face about differences and about our shared humanity – free of the stereotypes that, lately, are so prominent in our TV shows and magazines.

A good article from Rabbi Yoffie. He discusses why the analogy of the nuns at Auschwitz doesn’t comport with the mosque near Ground Zero.

Auschwitz and the Mosque Near Ground Zero: The Problems with This Analogy

Jewish Americans have generally been more supportive of the Cordoba House project than other Americans. Jews have been denied religious freedom and been the victims of religious discrimination so frequently that their natural sympathies lie with others who now confront these burdens. Nonetheless, even those most firmly committed to building the community center/mosque in lower Manhattan have struggled with the seemingly powerful argument that what happened at Auschwitz in the 1980s is a reason to rethink their position.

This argument goes as follows: A group of Carmelite nuns attempted to establish a convent on the grounds of Auschwitz in the mid-1980s. Pope John Paul II was sensitive to the concerns of Jews, who saw Auschwitz as sacred ground and the convent as an attempt to obscure the memory of the Jewish slaughter that happened there. In 1989, the Pope ordered the Polish nuns off the grounds of Auschwitz to a different location. Therefore, Imam Feisal Rauf should demonstrate similar sensitivity and move the Cordoba House from its current site.

There are two problems with this argument.

The first is that all Holocaust analogies are profoundly suspect. The Holocaust, with Auschwitz as its central symbol, was an endeavor of pure evil, involving a fanatic, obsessive, and single-minded six-year campaign to exterminate an entire people. Words fail us in attempting to describe or explain the Holocaust. We Jews, therefore, rightly discourage others from making comparisons that must ultimately fall short. The Holocaust is analogous to nothing because it is utterly unique.

The second problem is that if there is a lesson to be learned from John Paul’s actions, it is exactly the opposite of what Cordoba House opponents are now claiming.

I agree that Ground Zero is a sacred place. It is a mass grave, the site of a terrible atrocity. One can reasonably argue that anything that detracts from the memory and the message of the site is out of place there, and that a mosque — or any place of worship — might do that.

But that is where the similarities end. The Jewish community was outraged in the 1980s because the convent was located on the grounds of Auschwitz. At the request of the Pope, the convent was then moved to another building across the street, off the grounds but only 600 yards away. The Jewish community was grateful to the Pope for his actions. Jews saw nothing problematic about the convent being only a third of a mile from Auschwitz. What was important was that it was no longer on the grounds of the camp that had been the place of an unprecedented and unthinkable slaughter of Jews.

The Cordoba House, of course, was never to be located at Ground Zero. It is to be two and a half blocks away — close by, but still at a respectable distance, as in the case of the convent after the move, and not only that, in a highly congested urban neighborhood where its presence will be barely noticeable. Just as the Jewish community had no problem with a Carmelite convent that was so close to Auschwitz, so too should it have no problem with a community center/mosque that is so close to Ground Zero. If moving the convent a short distance from the death camp was seen as a step to be applauded, why should a community center/mosque a short distance from Ground Zero be seen as troubling?

For Jews, emotions run deep on the Holocaust, which is burned into our consciousness. But we must not let these emotions be exploited. Twenty years ago, by a short move from sacred ground to secular territory, the dispute over the convent at Auschwitz was resolved. Common sense and a spirit of mutual understanding triumphed. In dealing with plans for Cordoba House, to be constructed in a busy and very worldly section of downtown New York, let us hope that they will triumph once again.

Bob Beckel and Ahmed Rehab were on Fox Business News’ program Money Rocks with Eric Bolling alongside right-wingers Pamela Geller, David Webb and Fox host Bill Hemmer. It was an interesting program and I am baffled as to why Pamela brought it to our attention by posting it because she got absolutely butchered and exposed! For the longest time we complained that people weren’t using the information in our articles exposing her crazy, wingnut, moonbat, wacko, and lunatic blogging on Atlas Shrugs.

To our dismay she actually started receiving a wider (Tea Party mostly) audience and influence with the big wigs in the Republican party. The instances that she was on TV no one was adequately challenging her with the exception of the Alyona Show, but the past month or so she has been getting challenged in both print and on TV by people who are using the information we have documented on her.

Video:

She gets called out beautifully in the beginning here by Ahmed Rehab who takes a jab at Bolling for saying that Geller is his “good friend,”

Rehab: You just called her your good friend, and I don’t know if you’ve visited her anti-Muslim blog any time recently, Atlas Shrugs, where you can see a video that she posted where she is implying that Muslims have sex with goats, and suggesting they wear Muhammad condoms, I don’t know if you can call her your good friend…

Geller interrupts: That’s a lie, you know it’s a lie.

Rehab: We have a screenshot of that, you’re a lying bigot.

Geller: You don’t have a screenshot of that. [LW: actually Pamela there is a screenshot, click here.]

Rehab: Do you also deny that you put a picture of the Prophet Muhammad with a pig for a face?

Geller: yea, no…that was part of Everybody Draw Muhammad Day…do you condemn…

Rehab: Don’t evade the question, you are one of the most anti-Muslim bigots out on the internet and your blog consistently is filled with anti-Muslim statements…

[talking over]

Bolling: Pam hold on, Pam hold on, go ahead Rehab,

Rehab: Well, Pamela also suggested we should nuke Mecca, and this was done on her blog February 24, 2010.

Geller: I did not say it. [LW: actually you did Pamela, click here.]

Rehab: She also suggested that Obama is an anti-Semite, pimp and Jihadist…

Geller: Oh yeah, uh, I believe that is true.

Rehab: She is a certified loon. She’s a bigot of the highest order and you’re calling her your good friend Eric, so I don’t know how you feel about that now.

Bolling went on to justify his friendship with nut case Pamela Geller saying he “knows her” and then he goes on to talk about his personal experience with the World Trade Center and how he “was there.” He exposes his bias saying he is “angry” with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his group for building their mosque near Ground Zero, which he thinks is so close you can throw a baseball there. Yeah, maybe if you have the arm of Roberto Clemente! Where is Fox getting these people?

Geller tried to strike back at Rehab with her guilt by association smear tactics, trying to bring up CAIR and repeating Hamas as many times as possible in one breathe, but it seems she hyperventilated and was unable to make the point because Rehab straight up asked her, “what does that got to do with the Mosque?” Her response was epic, bumbling idiocy.

Rehab: Pamela’s at the forefront of those who are claiming this is a victory mosque at Ground Zero, which is a blatant lie, so I am asking her right now, what can she tell us in terms of truth that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf had anything to do with hijackers in a plane?

Bolling: hang on I want to bring in the panel.

Bolling then proceeds to bring in the panel. He immediately hits up Beckel by playing a clip of him saying, “we have to get over 9/11.” They discuss that for a while and he clarifies that what he is saying is that “we shouldn’t forget 9/11″ or “stop grieving” but that we can’t live like it “happened yesterday.”

He also laid into Pamela Geller saying,

Beckel: There are also a lot of moderate Islamists…but you wouldn’t know that from your friend’s (Pamela Geller) web page, who accused the President of the United States of being anti-Semitic which is as about ridiculous a thing I’ve ever heard.

Bolling then shifted to Rehab and asked him his thoughts. Rehab defended Beckel, but it then descended into a free for all talk over and Rehab was unable to answer the original question from Bolling. Bill Hemmer, the totally credulous Fox News presenter tried to stick up for Geller, complimenting her on her performance on 60 minutes and then saying he just found out that “they [Muslims] are praying.” What a douche.

C’mon, seriously Bill, you didn’t know that Muslims were praying in that building?

Hemmer: What I did not know until last night, they’re praying,(pause) inside that building today. I don’t think that’s something that most people even realize.

Beckel: What’s wrong with that?

Hemmer: I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that…there is already a mosque there.

Beckel: There is also a strip joint there.

Now it gets interesting, with quite the exchange between Geller and Beckel. Geller essentially says Beckel is in league with terrorists, supporting them and in a most condescending way says, “you are carrying water” for them. This obviously infuriates Beckel, and he tells Geller to watch what she says. He makes a comment that she is a woman, obviously implying that if she weren’t he would probably knock her teeth out for saying that he was a terrorist water boy. Geller replied in her usual shrill way by saying that Beckel was a women hater. Classic.

Geller: I would like to address Mr. Beckel’s point, I don’t know why you are carrying water for the most radical, intolerant ideology in the world today, there have been 20,000 documented radical Islamic attacks since 9/11, each one with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric.

Beckel: You better be very careful, you’re a woman, you better be very careful for who you say I carry water for because you have no idea what you’re talking about and don’t start putting me in the middle of your crap!

Geller: Don’t point at me.

Beckel: I’ll point at you all I want.

Geller: You’re a misogynist.

Beckel: You got yourself 15 minutes of fame because you’re picking on a bunch of Muslims.

Geller: You’re picking on a bunch of women. You’re a women hater.

Beckel: A women hater?  A women hater?

Geller: Yes. Look how you are talking to me. It’s outrageous.

Beckel: You are nuts!

Geller: I’m not nuts.

Geller looked pathetic when she said that. “I’m not nuts.” Pamela, you’re nuttier than a bag of Planters roasted peanuts.

Bolling shifted topics and asked Rehab about Rauf being a bad landlord, Rehab responded by saying this is an evasion from the topic.

Rehab: Well, again, what you are trying to do here is evade the central issue which is the principle position of whether we can build a center there or not and whether we should or not and going back to Mr. Beckel’s point we shouldn’t forget about 9/11 but we should move beyond the politicization and the exploitation and memory of 9/11 for personal political gain or for ratings or for notoriety like your certified bigot friend there Pamela Geller is doing.

Geller: Unbelievable.

Man was Geller getting exposed. She is nuts, regardless of her protestations. She hates Muslims, the evidence is there for all to read, and when she is challenged on it she resorts to lying and saying it is not there.

The video ends succinctly with Rehab getting the last word responding to one of David Webb’s only points,

Rehab: I am not saying that they should build because we have the right to build…I am saying they should build because it is the right thing to do

Webb: You just did.

Rehab: …I am telling you it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to build a moderate center that can bring people together, that actually stands against the very ideology of AlQaeda. You know, building this center is the worst thing that could happen to Bin Laden, that’s not why we are doing it, we’re doing it because that’s the best thing we can do for our country.

Bolling: [Laughing] Those are some fairly interesting things you had to say. We’ll bring you back though, we appreciate your time.

Rehab: For interesting things visit Atlas Shrugs, you’ll find a lot of interesting things there.

Bolling and Geller shared a strange and out of place laugh towards the end of the segment, condescendingly and mockingly laughing at Rehab’s final point that this mosque is the best thing we can do for our country. Why is that funny?

Is it because it so shatters your view and perspective on this issue that you are just unwilling to countenance it at all? Even being outnumbered 4-2 by the right-wingers both Beckel and Rehab held it down and destroyed the hate and illogic coming from the anti-Mosque crowd. My last request is that I hope someone will auto tune this video!

Robert Spencer and his goonish friend Pamela Geller, leaders of the hate group SIOA and FDI are claiming that the size of their rally on September 11th, which they billed as the biggest thing ever was huge.

The fact is that it was really not that big, let alone historic. It was definitely not in the 40,000 or more range as Geller and Spencer claim. In fact according to the AP it wasn’t larger than a thousand.

Charles Johnson sums it up well:

Anti-Mosque Rally Attendance: Less Than 1,000

According to the Associated Press, attendance at Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s international hate rally was less than 1,000: The Associated Press: Dueling demonstrations begin after 9/11 memorial.

After the ceremony, around 1,000 activists rallied about five blocks from the site of the 2001 attacks to support the proposed Islamic community center. A smaller group of opponents rallied nearby, chanting, “USA, USA.”

UPDATE at 9/11/10 6:27:36 pm:

Hilarious! Geller is claiming 40,000. Who could ever have predicted that?

UPDATE at 9/11/10 6:41:30 pm:

Pamela Geller’s closing words to the seething throng:

As the crowds dissipated, Geller warned them against talking to members of the media: “Do not give them any ammunition. You know who you are. You know that you’re righteous. Do not give them an opportunity to deride this fine and honorable effort. Remember what I’m saying. They’re looking to catch you. Don’t give it to them.”

“Listen to Mommy,” she said.

Of course Spencer and company claim that it is a big old conspiracy against those who want to expose Islam, and that the numbers are under reported. Fact is that it isn’t under reported, it is just the their hate rally was “historically” underwhelming.

Mosque opponents have been screaming that the proposed NYC Islamic Cultural Center is going to be a slap in the face and offensive because of its closeness to “hallowed ground.” However, many of them probably didn’t bargain for the fact that it is more hallowed than they actually knew. There are many graves of slaves buried in Manhattan (via. Colorlines).

Ground Zero’s Slave Graves

Before the mosque debate, there were the Ground Zero Slave Graves. Jen Phillips over at Mother Jones adds some historical perspective:

The outrage about the “ground zero mosque” has turned very ugly, as this video of this recent protest shows. People are calling Mohammed a pig. A New York City cab driver was stabbed today after his passenger asked him if he was Muslim. But I find the righteous outrage of those contending the former World Trade Center site is “hallowed ground” amusing, because they have no idea just how right they are. Before the World Trade Center was even designed (with Islamic architectural elements, incidentally), the ground was indeed sacrosanct: The bones of some 20,000 African slaves are buried 25 feet below Lower Manhattan. As at least 10 percent of West African slaves in America were Muslims, it’s not out of bounds to extrapolate that ground zero itself was built on the bones of at least a few Muslim slaves. That is to say, hallowed Muslim ground.

For some time, activists, historians, and city officials have been working together to excavate and preserve the bones of the slaves buried under present-day lower Manhattan. A recent excavation of a 14,000 square foot section of the six-acre burial ground found that 92 percent of the 419 skeletons were of African descent, and 40 percent were children under 12. The bones of the 419 slaves were eventually reinterred.

It’s a harrowing reality for a debate that’s grown increasingly bombastic — and violent. While none of this takes away from the horror of 9/11, it’s a welcomed historical fact check.

Read more at Mother Jones.

Fast Company’s Mark Borden tweets this terrifying photo of a rented, decommissioned missile that “Ground Zero” “Mosque” protesters are driving around the proposed Islamic community center site today, and perhaps indefinitely. Take that, “productive interfaith dialogue” prospects!

Send an email to Jim Newell, the author of this post, at newell@gawker.com.

The Passions (And Perils) Of Pamela Geller

Doug Chandler

Pamela Geller had had enough.

The right-wing blogger, whose vehement opposition to the planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero (a “mega-mosque” in her parlance) has earned Geller national headlines, rose from her seat at a Midtown diner last week and, fed up with the line of questioning, stormed out of a Jewish Week interview.

“Shame on you,” she shouted, “shame on you. Stop slamming the good guys.”

A journalist’s offense? Asking questions about her accuracy and her red-meat rhetoric.

The sense of drama seems, in part, to define Geller, who can be seen on the Internet frolicking in a bikini and posing in a skin-tight Superwoman outfit. Her blog “Atlas Shrugs” has referred to Democrats as “National Socialists,” has sided with Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian president charged with war crimes, and has claimed that Elena Kagan, the country’s newest Supreme Court justice and a Jew, admired “an architect” of Nazism. She has also likened President Barack Obama’s opposition to settlement growth on the West Bank to preparations for the Holocaust and has provided space to one writer’s view that Obama is Malcolm X’s love child.

Geller’s politics and tone have drawn a growing number of visitors to her blog, which she uses to promote other projects, including a provocatively named group, Stop Islamization of America, and her recently published book, “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.”

But it’s her opposition to the proposed Islamic center — an effort she helped fuel and now helps to lead — that has arguably won Geller the most attention. Recent articles in the Washington Post and on Salon.com have noted that Geller was among the handful of people calling attention to the project nine months ago, before it hit the national radar and when the host of a Fox News show could still interview Daisy Khan, wife of the center’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and wish her well.

Since then, Geller’s right-wing fans have hailed her as prophetic, especially for warning of the dangers posed by Muslims in this country, while progressives, moderates and at least some embarrassed conservatives see her as something entirely different: a radical activist who comes across as shrill, crude and offensive and who fails to distinguish between Islamic fanatics and the religion itself.

Those emotions are bound to escalate in the next week, as Geller plans a Sept. 11 rally in Lower Manhattan to protest the Islamic center, known as Park51.

But few people are likely to guess that the woman who has stirred so much passion is also a Jewish day school mom raised by a Yiddishkeit family in the Five Towns enclave of Hewlett, L.I.

For her part, Geller dismisses any suggestion that she put the whole story in motion as “nonsensical” and as “condescending to the American people, as if they don’t know their own minds. It’s an issue of common decency,” she said while sitting in the back of a Midtown diner. “And you can see that in the [polling] numbers,” which show 70 percent of Americans opposed to the project.

The one thing Geller does acknowledge is that “no one else was talking” about the center as she began addressing the issue on Atlas Shrugs. But no one should assume that Geller’s blog posts made the story the one it is today. Instead, as she sees it, awareness of the matter simply grew and, with it, opposition to the center.

But Geller has done more than simply write about the project. She has also organized much of the opposition, showing up at the May 25 community board meeting that heard public debate over the issue, convening the first rally against the center, in early June, and now, of course, planning next week’s rally. Geller attended the community board meeting with Robert Spencer, an author and fellow blogger with whom she often partners, where they and others often shouted down speakers in favor of the center, creating an atmosphere that reminded one board member, the son of a German Jewish refugee, of the Brown Shirt movement.

She has also debated the issue on Fox News, “The Joy Behar Show” and other TV programs, where she often raises her voice and talks over the other guests.

In person, though, the 51-year-old blogger comes across as charming, demure and even subdued, as long as she isn’t questioned or challenged too vigorously.

Like many New Yorkers, Geller appears to divide her life between “Before 9/11” and “After 9/11.” Before the terror attacks, she worked on the business side of the newspaper industry, spending the 1980s at the Daily News before moving to the New York Observer. She was mostly apolitical, although, if anything, she said, she leaned left, seeing everything “through the prism of abortion.”

All that changed after 9/11, Geller recalled, saying she “felt guilty that I didn’t know who attacked my country.” She began reading all the material she could about Islam, Geller said, citing such authors as Martin Gilbert, the British historian; Bat Ye’or, an Egyptian-born scholar whose politics are decidedly right wing; and Ibn Warraq, a former Muslim from Pakistan.

“I spent years studying the matter before I started blogging,” Geller said, adding that the more she read, the more she realized that journalists and historians were “whitewashing Islam.”

Today, Geller describes herself as a keen believer in individual rights — “the well from which all things spring” — and says the name of her blog, launched in 2004, reflects that. The name refers to the title of Ayn Rand’s most famous book, which is an inspiration for Geller. She also calls herself an ardent Zionist.

Much of her blog’s focus, though, springs from Geller’s view of Islam, which, is portrayed as a monolithic religion that can only be interpreted in a single way — the one most scholars associate with radical, Wahhabi Muslims.

“It’s not like Judaism, where you have these different levels of observance,” Geller said. “Islam is Islam. … There’s no way you can be a devout Muslim and not support jihad.”

The only moderate Muslims are those who are secular, Geller said. And she dismisses any Muslim who claims otherwise by insisting that he’s a liar — a follower of taqiyya, the Islamic principle that allows Muslims to mislead their enemies, according to Geller.

Comments such as those, by Geller and others, leave at least one local Muslim in disbelief.

“They talk about Islam as if it’s monolithic,” said Qanta Ahmed, a British-born physician who often writes about religion for the Huffington Post and other sites. “We’re 1.5 billion individuals from 57 countries and countless cultures.”

“‘Devout’ means devotion to one’s faith, and you can be very devout without being radical,” said Ahmed, whose articles have concerned such topics as the friendship and inspiration she has drawn from a number of Jews, including a rabbi; the admiration she often feels for Israel; and the hatred toward Jews conveyed in Palestinian textbooks and TV shows.

Discussing jihad, a word that means “struggle,” Ahmed said it’s not even mentioned in the five pillars of Islam, “the absolute basis of being a Muslim,” and there are three kinds of jihad to which Muslims refer. The most important, known as the “greater jihad,” is the internal struggle within each individual to be good, while the “lesser jihad” concerns the religious permission Muslims need to defend themselves against military attack.

“There is no such thing as a holy war in Islam,”Ahmed continued. “There are only just and unjust wars, and Islam is very clear about that.”

On the matter of faith, Geller herself is not especially observant, calling her children far more religious than she is. She sends two of her children to Jewish day school, although she prefers that any further information about her kids remain private — a consequence, she added, of the death threats she says she has received.

She grew up in a Conservative Jewish home — “more Yiddishkeit than by the book,” she said — and has visited Israel twice: once during college and, again, in 2006, when she blogged about Israel’s war with Hezbollah. But her views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are just as right-wing as her views on American politics.

In Geller’s eyes, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] are Jewish land; there are no settlers, only Jews living in the Jewish homeland; and the area’s Muslims should return the Temple Mount to Jewish hands.

Geller has also taken aim at Jewish leaders in the United States, comparing mainstream organizations to Jews before the Holocaust who ignored all the danger signs. She has also called J Street and the National Jewish Democratic Council “kapos,” a reference to the Jews in Europe who aided the Nazis.

Geller’s fans include Lori Lowenthal Marcus, founder of the right-wing, pro-Israel Z Street, who said “she’s definitely serving a need. She’s an indefatigable fighter and very brazen, which is necessary to raise the profile of the issues.”

Another view comes from Todd Gitlin, a progressive scholar who teaches journalism and sociology at Columbia University, who considers Geller part of “a long history” of firebrands devoted to “this sort of agitation. … These are people who have a fixation on some paranoid scenario,” he said, and they often become a focal point for wider passions.

While not discussing Geller specifically, Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a neoconservative think tank, said the tenor of the conversation regarding Islam in recent months has distressed him. The “good part” is that Americans are now pushing back against Islamacists, or radical Muslims, but the “bad part” is that many are now doing so “in a crude way,” calling Mohammed a pedophile and referring to all Muslims as terrorists.

Many of today’s bloggers, Pipes said, “came of age on 9/11” and haven’t done the serious study of Islam that he and others have. As a result, he added, much of what they write is based on ignorance.

For her part, Geller defends the tone of her blog, calling Atlas Shrugs “my living room and kitchen” — a place where she can kick back and yell, like some people shout at their TV. Her book and opinion pieces “are more studied and more measured.”

“There’s no gray area with me,” Geller said. “I know why I think what I think.”

(cross-posted from The Onion)

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was “perfectly happy” to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world’s second-largest religion.

“I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11,” Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam’s approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. “What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?”

“And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero,” continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. “No, I won’t examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people’s universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell.”

“Even though I am not one of those people,” he added.

When told that the proposed “Ground Zero mosque” is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, “I know all I’m going to let myself know.”

Gentries explained that it “didn’t take long” to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

“All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts,” said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country’s armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. “Period.”

“If you don’t believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka,” Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. “Or worse, a rape camp. That’s right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps.”

Over the past decade, Gentries said he has taken pains to avoid personal interactions or media that might have the potential to compromise his point of view. He told reporters that the closest he had come to confronting a contrary standpoint was tuning in to the first few seconds of an interview with a moderate Muslim cleric before hastily turning off the television.

“I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn’t want to hear,” Gentries said. “But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of ‘other’ to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities.”

Added Gentries, “That really put things back into perspective.”

There was a great article on Huffington Post, which linked to our site (my article on taqiyya):

Tea Party Reveals Real Reason Behind Mosque Opposition Frenzy

By Ahmed Rehab

Leaders of astroturf groups opposing the Not-At-Ground-Zero-Muslim-Center can’t seem to decide on an argument. They have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at us in the way of fabricated reasons.

First, they tried the “legal” route. When it became apparent that American Muslims had a constitutionally guaranteed right to religious, cultural, and communal services in lower Manhattan just like everyone else, they invoked the “sensitivity to the 9/11 families” line.

When it was argued that there is nothing insensitive about Muslims with no connection to 9/11 establishing a center two blocks away (unless you assume collective guilt), and that Muslims died in the Twin Towers, too, they tried to smear the center’s imam as a radical.

When it was revealed that imam Feisal’s 37-year track record was so consistently antithetical to radicalism that it earned him the “moderate model imam” accolade from this administration, the Bush administration, the FBI, and the New York interfaith community, they tried the “sacred ground” argument.

When it was revealed that the center was not actually “at” Ground Zero and that there were offices, delis, dollar stores, bars, and a strip club in the same vicinity that no one was taking issue with for being on sacred ground, they tried the foreign funding route.

When it was revealed that the imam has no intention of receiving funding from foreign governments or groups, or even individuals with a less-than-stellar reputation, they tried the sensitivity route again.

It seems that they just can’t decide on the public strategy to keep Park51 from taking its rightful place among Manhattan’s blossoming diversity.

Privately, however, there seems to be little such confusion. The reasons there are given clearly, and it turns out it is precisely what many of us have argued all along: opposition organizers are motivated by an ideological belief that “Islam is evil and must be stopped; America is Judeo-Christian.”

That’s it.

That is the undisguised rallying cry on the private email listservs, the blogs, and the viral youtube videos administered by the right-wing oppositional leadership. On the prime time networks, they openly lie to the American people about harboring an anti-Muslim agenda, perhaps wishing to avoid being exposed for their religious intolerance.

Not for long.

Check out the uber-creepy Tea Party email below, released by no less than teaparty.org.

In it, the Tea Party folks argue that America is exclusively “Judeo-Christian” and that Islam should be “expelled from our shores.”

And that’s just for starters.

The rest of the email displays a fundemental disdain for a pluralistic America and reveals chilling levels of Islamophobia and hatemongering.

It poses the freakish question: “Will ‘blanket tolerance’ be the downfall of the Judaic/Christian basis of the American society?”

It quotes select passages from of the Quran out of context, a game that can just as easily be played with the Torah or the Bible.

It then suggests to its members that Muslims at large — not terrorists, mind you, but Muslims at large — plan for the “complete annihilation of the west,” for “our demise,” for “our destruction,” and that they are “working dilligently” to “celebrate the day America will be no more.” It warns that “the United States Judaic/Christian roots are being ‘God Shocked,’” and wonders if “the courts should hand down a litmus test” for religions before they are “expelled from our shores.”

So let me ask you again? Do you still think that the sudden rise in anti-mosque hysteria is really about sacred ground? Sensitivities to 9/11 victims? Funding sources?

Or is it about the rise of an ideological anti-Islam movement and the desire to curb, if not outlaw, religious freedoms for Muslims?

What would it take to wake the media up, if not this blatant piece of evidence? Will the media now pay attention? Is it remotely interested in the facts that are practically smacking it in the face? Where is the FOX News coverage of everything “Mosque at Ground Zero,” the same FOX News that desperately scrutinizes Imam Feisal’s every utterance in the hope of unearthing a controversial statement? Laura Ingraham, are you listening?

Re: Tea Party – Truth Behind 911 Mosque
From: teaparty@teaparty.org

On: Friday, August 20, 2010 8:46 PM

The American people find articulating their concern over the proposed Mosque near the sight of the 911 attacks problematic. On one hand, many view the First Amendment a shield of protection for religious freedom, on the other hand, some view the First Amendment as providing a haven for religions with a hostile political agenda wrapped in cleric’s robes.

Is it any wonder that there is so much confusion on this matter? Most Citizens of the United States have never experienced the driving and all consuming force of a Theocratic government with its crushing Theo-political tenet.

The American religious experience is the usual Sunday morning ‘hymn singing’; passing the offering plate, an off tempo choir and the occasional neighborhood revival. The ‘Church supper and bake sale mentality’ gives way to a much colder and more formidable view of religious practices, which are not only unfamiliar, but also antithetical to the ‘Sunday Go To Meeting’ crowd.

The United States Judaic/Christian roots are being ‘God Shocked’ by the concept that a religion can and does demand world domination by any means, including violence if necessary.

The Koran states: Sura 61:9 He it is Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islamic monotheism) to make it victorious over all (other) religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, and disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah and His Messenger Muhammad) hate (it). (Hilali and Khan, The Noble Qur’an, Riyadh: Darussalam, 1996)

Allah’s Messenger said: “By Him (Allah) in Whose Hand my soul is, surely the son of Mary [Isa (Jesus)] will shortly descend amongst you people (Muslims), and will judge mankind justly by the Law of the Quran (as a just ruler) and will break the Cross and kill pigs and abolish the Jizyah [a tax] ….” (Bukhari 3:2222) .

The growing confusion among Ministers and their Congregations over the nature of legitimate Islamic worship and the practice of Taqiyya[1] is causing serious questions regarding the constitutionally protected practice of religion, if that religion is detrimental to the welfare and domestic tranquility of the very nation whose constitution protects it.

The emerging question is: Should the first amendment protect the practice of a religion which has a hostile political agenda wrapped in cleric’s robes? Should the U.S. Constitution protect a religion whose focus is converting the United States from a Democratic Republic into a Theocracy lead by religious cleric’s who are antithetical to what made this nation great and what keeps it great? Is this the change America should have or needs?

How can the Citizenry demarcate a concept which holds the well established fact that millions of the Islamic faith have called for a Holy Jihad and thereby demand the complete annihilation of the west? Yet, this same Citizenry is expected to open their arms to that very same religion, welcoming them as friends, protecting them with the same Constitutional protection Synagogues and Churches have enjoyed for over 234 years.

To make matters worse, this same Citizenry is expected to grant permission to build a Mosque on American hallowed ground, thereby, offering sanctuary and worship for the same religion which was instrumental in the 911 attacks.

Will it become necessary for the courts to hand down a litmus test for religion? If a religion passes the litmus test, then and only then that religion is welcome and protected?

However, if the religion in question fails the litmus test… will that be reason enough to expel the failed theological expression from our shores?

Should ‘We The People” give haven to religions whose main purpose it to install a system of Theo-political colonization? Shall the American people welcome with open arms a religion having untold millions of members demanding the beheading of western infidels? Shall the People of America grant safe haven to those who cheerfully work for the day Israel, the United States and all other non-Islamic states are finally eradicated off the face of the earth?

These bothersome questions are not ones of religious rights, but rather of the will of the people. Will the people tolerate everything?

Will ‘blanket tolerance’ be the downfall of the Judaic/Christian basis of the American society?

Is there nothing which will compel We The People to stand up and say: “It stops here and no further,” shall this be America’s crucifixion?

Or, shall the American people create a feathered bed for all those who plan our demise, who work diligently for our destruction and for those who will celebrate the day America will be no more.

Stephen Eichler J.D.

America’s Legal Analyst

[1] The practice of precautionary dissimulation whereby believers may conceal their faith when under threat, persecution or compulsion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya

Click here for the real skinny on “Taqiyya“

Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg is a candidate for anti-Loon of the year due to his consistent defense of religious liberty and steadfast support of the political hot-potato issue of the Park51 Cultural Center, aka the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Bloomberg Launches Another Impassioned Defense Of Cordoba House

by Sam Stein

In a rousing address before a predominantly Muslim audience Tuesday night, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reaffirmed his commitment to the controversial Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center.

Bloomberg, who hosted the annual Ramadan Iftar dinner at his official Gracie Mansion residence, did not back away from his position as the most vocal and public defender of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque.” If anything, he couched his defense of the project in even deeper moral and political terms, calling the Cordoba House a telling illustration of intrinsic American principles and a valuable tool in the war on terror.

From Bloomberg’s prepared remarks:

But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.

We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.
Islam did not attack the World Trade Center — Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam — we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom.[snip]

The members of our military are men and women at arms — battling for hearts and minds. And their greatest weapon in that fight is the strength of our American values, which have always inspired people around the world. But if we do not practice here at home what we preach abroad — if we do not lead by example – we undermine our soldiers. We undermine our foreign policy objectives. And we undermine our national security.

While some of the cultural center’s other early supporters have backed away from their defense of the project, Bloomberg has emerged as perhaps the least fickle of its supporters. And he’s been hailed for that defense — locally, nationally and among the commentariat — even though a majority of the public opposes the Cordoba House’s proposed location.

Addressing those calling for a compromise location for the center, Bloomberg offered the logical rejoinder. “The question will then become, how big should the ‘no-mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be?” he remarked. “There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it too, be moved?”

However the debate ends, of course, there will be hard feelings. Still, the Mayor ended his remarks with an appeal to the lessons of history.

I know that many in this room are disturbed and dispirited by the debate. But it is worth keeping some perspective on the matter. The first colonial settlers came to these shores seeking religious liberty and the founding fathers wrote a constitution that guaranteed it. They made sure that in this country the government would not be permitted to choose between religions or favor one over another.

Nonetheless, it was not so long ago that Jews and Catholics had to overcome stereotypes and build bridges to those who viewed them with suspicion and less than fully American.

UPDATE: Video of Bloomberg’s speech is below.

The anti-Muslim movement, spearheaded by Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller has been ratcheting up the rhetoric against Islam and Muslims. Painting Muslims as an evil fifth column stealthily attempting to subvert our freedoms and impose a draconian totalitarian government upon us.

I mean what else did they expect when they created the Orwellian sounding organization “Stop the Islamization of America” (hat tip: Les):

Police: Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked “Are You Muslim?”

As of late Tuesday, no charges had been filed.

Both the driver and the passenger were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

By: NY1 News

A city cab driver is in the hospital after being stabbed by a passenger who allegedly asked if he was Muslim, police tell NY1.

Investigators with the New York City Police Department say it all began Monday night when a 21-year-old man hailed a cab at 24th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.

Police say the passenger asked the driver, “Are you Muslim?” When the driver said yes the passenger pulled a knife and slashed him in the throat, arm and lip.

The 43-year-old driver was able to lock the passenger in the back of the cab and call 911.

Robert Spencer, a Christian crusader who likes to cover his anti-Muslim fanaticism with a pretense to scholarship is fond of saying “Obama may be a Muslim,” and his buddy Pamela Geller often dubs Obama as a “Socialist” and “Communist.”

That’s why it is quite ironic to learn that Spencer himself in a previous incarnation used to be a Communist. In his younger days before he went zealous with Christianity Spencer was a devoted Communist,

Robert Spencer…[a] canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House in 2012, Spencer nonetheless offered that he had spent part of his youth working at Revolution Books, which is run by the Revolutionary Communist Party (and its cultish leader Bob Avakian), a hard-line Maoist group most sixties-style radicals, like, say, Bill Ayers, would consider beyond the pale.

Not only was Spencer a Commie but he was a hard core Communist, such that even the boogie monster known as Bill Ayers wouldn’t want to touch.

It is also another point of similarity between Spencer and his boss David Horowitz who used to be a Communist and now is a hardcore Conservative. Interestingly enough Spencer’s embrace of capitalism has been quite profitable, he is making six figures for his anti-Muslim work.

The article in the New York Magazine also reveals some other interesting if irrelevant tid-bits about Spencer, his father used to work for the Voice of America.

The following is the relevant portion relating to Spencer in the article, I suggest everyone read the whole thing by Mark Jacobson titled, Muhammad Comes to Manhattan:

Dhimmitude was the state to which Muslim caliphs reduced their “useful” but decidedly second-class subjects, those who had to be made to “feel themselves subdued” (the Koran, Sura 9:29), Robert Spencer told me as we dined in the T.G.I. Friday’s on the scenic lower level of Penn Station. A canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House in 2012, Spencer nonetheless offered that he had spent part of his youth working at Revolution Books, which is run by the Revolutionary Communist Party (and its cultish leader Bob Avakian), a hard-line Maoist group most sixties-style radicals, like, say, Bill Ayers, would consider beyond the pale. Spencer—whose father worked for the Voice of America during the Cold War—contended that terror, the threat of the A-bomb in the burka, while worth worrying about, was “just one tactic” in Islam’s clash with the U.S. What was afoot was a more insidious thing, a burrowing infiltration of the enemy.

“Muslims are the first immigrant group that has ever come to this country with a ready-made model of society and government they believe to be superior to what we have here,” Spencer told me. The thinking was clear to anyone who took the trouble to study the plan, the blogger and author of Stealth Jihad contended. “Muhammad said, ‘When you meet the unbelievers, invite them to accept Islam; if they refuse, offer them the dhimma—second-class status—and, if they refuse that, go to war with them.’ That’s it. Conversion, subjugation, or war. Three steps. Conversion, subjugation, or war … That’s what Muhammad said. And in chapter 33, verse 21 of the Koran, it says Muhammad is the excellent example for the Muslim, you ask any Muslim and they’ll tell you that: That is nonnegotiable, what Muhammad said goes, and that’s not some hijacker extremist Islam, that’s mainstream … This is how it is, you don’t need a bomb. I don’t think Feisal is ever going to blow anything up, because that’s not his game; his game is a societal, cultural penetration … ”

After that, Spencer peered up from his plate of Caribbean chicken and bid me to look around the T.G.I. Friday’s. “Remember this moment and this spot,” he said. “Because the freedoms we enjoy are in danger. You might not know it now, because it is just beginning. But 25 or 30 years from now you’re going to think of this place and say to yourself, Spencer was right.”

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An excellent article by Nicholas Kristof on the issue of the Park51 Islamic cultural center and mosque. He portrays accurately how those fighting this are feeding into the ideology of Bin Laden and company.

Taking Bin Laden’s Side

Is there any doubt about Osama bin Laden’s position on the not-at-ground-zero mosque?

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

Osama abhors the vision of interfaith harmony that the proposed Islamic center represents. He fears Muslim clerics who can cite the Koran to denounce terrorism.

It’s striking that many American Republicans share with Al Qaeda the view that the West and the Islamic world are caught inevitably in a “clash of civilizations.” Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who recruits jihadis from his lair in Yemen, tells the world’s English-speaking Muslims that America is at war against Islam. You can bet that Mr. Awlaki will use the opposition to the community center and mosque to try to recruit more terrorists.

In short, the proposed community center is not just an issue on which Sarah Palin and Osama bin Laden agree. It is also one in which opponents of the center are playing into the hands of Al Qaeda.

These opponents seem to be afflicted by two fundamental misconceptions.

The first is that a huge mosque would rise on hallowed land at ground zero. In fact, the building would be something like a YMCA, and two blocks away and apparently out of view from ground zero. This is a dense neighborhood packed with shops, bars, liquor stores — not to mention the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club and the Pussycat Lounge (which says that it arranges lap dances in a private room, presumably to celebrate the sanctity of the neighborhood).

Why do so many Republicans find strip clubs appropriate for the ground zero neighborhood but object to a house of worship? Are lap dances more sanctified than an earnest effort to promote peace?

And this is an earnest effort. I know Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan — the figures behind the Islamic community center — and they are the real thing. Because I have written often about Arab atrocities in Darfur and about the abuse of women in Islamic countries, some Muslim leaders are wary of me. But Imam Feisal and Ms. Khan are open-minded and have been strong advocates for women within Islam.

The second misconception underlying this debate is that Islam is an inherently war-like religion that drives believers to terrorism. Sure, the Islamic world is disproportionately turbulent, and mullahs sometimes cite the Koran to incite murder. But don’t forget that the worst brutality in the Middle East has often been committed by more secular rulers, like Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad. And the mastermind of the 1970 Palestinian airline hijackings, George Habash, was a Christian.

Remember also that historically, some of the most shocking brutality in the region was justified by the Bible, not the Koran. Crusaders massacred so many men, women and children in parts of Jerusalem that a Christian chronicler, Fulcher of Chartres, described an area ankle-deep in blood. While burning Jews alive, the crusaders sang, “Christ, We Adore Thee.”

My hunch is that the violence in the Islamic world has less to do with the Koran or Islam than with culture, youth bulges in the population, and the marginalization of women. In Pakistan, I know a young woman whose brothers want to kill her for honor — but her family is Christian, not Muslim.

Precisely because Palestinian violence has roots outside of Islam, Israel originally supported the rise of Hamas in Gaza. Israeli officials thought that if Gazans became more religious, they would spend their time praying rather than firing guns.

President George W. Bush was statesmanlike after 9/11 in reaching out to Muslims and speaking of Islam as a religion of peace. Now many Republicans have abandoned that posture and are cynically turning the Islamic center into a nationwide issue in hopes of votes. It is mind-boggling that so many Republicans are prepared to bolster the Al Qaeda narrative, and undermine the brave forces within Islam pushing for moderation.

Some Republicans say that it is not a matter of religious tolerance but of sensitivity to the feelings of relatives to those killed at ground zero. Hmm. They’re just like the Saudi officials who ban churches, and even confiscate Bibles, out of sensitivity to local feelings.

On my last trip to Saudi Arabia, I brought in a Bible to see what would happen (alas, the customs officer searched only my laptop bag). Memo to Ms. Palin: Should we learn from the Saudis and protect ground zero by banning the Koran from Lower Manhattan?

For much of American history, demagogues have manipulated irrational fears toward people of minority religious beliefs, particularly Catholics and Jews. Many Americans once honestly thought that Catholics could not be true Americans because they bore supreme loyalty to the Vatican.

Today’s crusaders against the Islamic community center are promoting a similar paranoid intolerance, and one day we will be ashamed of it.

Hate blogger Pamela Geller

(cross-posted from mediamatters.org)

Numerous mainstream media outlets have recently hosted right-wing “Atlas Shrugs” blogger Pamela Geller to discuss the controversy surrounding a proposed Islamic community center set to be built blocks away from Ground Zero. However, Geller’s history of outrageous, inflammatory and false claims, particularly when it comes to issues related to Islam, demonstrate that she cannot be expected to make accurate statements and should not be rewarded with a platform on national television.

Media bring Geller into the mainstream, telling nation she is a credible source

[...]

Geller routinely uses downright outrageous, hateful rhetoric

Geller: Obama “is a third worlder and a coward” who’s “appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords.” In an April 13 blog post, Gellerwrote: “Obama is a third worlder and a coward. He will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords. All this is going down while Obama plays footsie at his nuclear nonsense campfire — sucking up to Iran’s enablers while beating up our allies.”

Geller: Liberal Jews are “lost souls,” “self-hating wretches.” In her January 25 Newsmax column, Geller wrote that Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League “has come out against a great and wonderful friend of the Jews, Rush Limbaugh.” Geller added that this “is symptomatic of a deeper problem: I have for years derided Jews in America and the Jewish lay leadership for tolerating and supporting clear and present enemies of the Jewish people among our senior ranks. It is a sickness of the soul.” She further wrote, “The liberal Jew worships at the church of human secularism. These lost souls are married to their liberal dogma” and asked, “Which Jews support deleterious characters like Foxman? Which Jews give blood money to these self-hating wretches?”

Geller on Obama’s Israel policy: “Jews Refuse to Get on Obama’s Trains.” In a post apparently responding to Obama’s opposition to settlement growth, Geller wrote, “Jews refuse to get on Obama’s Trains.” She added: “Obama is pressuring Jews to “evacuate” from parts of Israel? And what Warsaw ghetto does the muhammadan [sic] president have in mind? I think I am gonna hurl. The Jews will not go. The Jews will not submit to this century’s nazis [sic] and Mansourian poser. No way, bloodsuckers. Not again. Never again.”

Geller on transgender Obama appointee: “What a freak show this presidency is.” In a January 4 blog post, Geller responded to a report that Obama named a transgender appointee to a Commerce Department position by stating, “Does Obama know anyone who isn’t wacky, radical, militant, judeophobic, socialist, marxist, pedophilic? …… Does he chill with anyone who is normal? Isn’t there one Marilyn Munster in the family? What a freak show this presidency is.”

Geller: Obama “wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing.” In an April 1 blog post titled, “”President Jihad: Obama Encouraged Violent Palestinian Muslim protests against Israel,” Geller claimed Obama “is agitating Muslims against Jews” and stated, “The President of the United States is advancing jihad against the oath of office that he took.” Geller also stated in an April 11 post, “President Sarkozy called [Obama] ‘a madman,’ ‘a lunatic.’ Perhaps, I don’t know — but one thing is for sure: Hussein is a muhammadan. He’s not insane ………..he wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing. Of course, to the western mind, the rational mind, the logical mind, the American mind, that is insane.”

Geller called Democrats “National Socialists.” In a March 13 blog post, Geller wrote, ”National Socialists [Democrats] Obamacare: Sheeps to ‘Slaughter Solution.’” She added, “The buzz on Capitol Hill is that the Democrats are now considering what is being called the ’Slaughter Solution’ that will allow ObamaCare to be signed into law WITHOUT HOUSE MEMBERS EVEN HAVING TO VOTE.“

Geller: Senate Democrats supporting health care reform voted “to rape the American people.” In a December 21, 2009, blog post, Geller wrote of the cloture vote for health care reform: “The moochers and the looters, the crooks and degenerates voted at 1 am this morning to rip the constitution to shreds, to rape the American people and to nationalize medicine.” She added that passing the bill on Christmas Eve would be “an act of treason and blasphemy.”

Geller declared “VICTORY!” after Swiss established ban on minaret construction. In a November 29 post to her Atlas Shrugs blog — headlined “VICTORY! SWISS BAN MOSQUE MINARETS IN A LANDSLIDE VOTE” — Pamela Geller commented: “The Swiss have hand [sic] enough. They actually had the spine to take back their country. I wonder how the religion of peaceniks will react…in their usual tolerant and pacifist manner?”

Geller: “Obama Goes Full On Nazi.” Geller headlined a November 9, 2009, post “Obama Goes Full On Nazi: Subject: “Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after appearing on Fox News.”

Geller: ” ‘Kick a Jew’ days … are part of this growing evil Evil unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.” In a December 14, 2009, post, Geller wrote:

It’s as if the floodgates of hell have been thrown open. The moratorium on the holocaust is officially over and all the savages are free to incite, hate and destroy. Clearly those “Kick a Jew” days discussed here and here in schools are part of this growing evil Evil [sic] unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.

Geller: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois.” In a December 15, 2009, post, Geller responded to reports that Guantanamo Bay detainees may be housed at the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois by stating: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois. Has anyone asked the people of Chicago if they want KSM’s soul mates in their state? Obama’s treachery is breathtaking. A killer’s paradise.”

Geller: “It is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth,” and he only visited Pakistan while in college because of “jihad or drugs.” In an August 1, 2009, post, Geller discussed rumors of a Palin divorce being spread by bloggers, including one supposedly tied to CNN and stated:

Let’s understand this. CNN won’t touch the birth certificate issue, the Rezko/Auchi corruption, Obama’s anti-semitism, his ACORN/SEIU ties and corruption, and other legitimate stories that need investigation. But they write fiction about Palin. Daily. So why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections? My question is, it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff. Why aren’t they pursuing that story? Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices. Where’s the investigation?

Geller further stated of Obama’s trip to Pakistan during college: “Back in the early 80′s, there were only two reasons to travel to Pakistan. Jihad or drugs. I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad.”

Geller on Dome of the Rock: “The dome has got to go.” On September 27, 2009, Geller posted an image of Muslims praying at the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holy sites, and stated, “On Erev Yom Kippur, Muslims attack Jews in Jerusalem. The dome has got to go. It is sitting atop the great Jewish temple. The dome has got to go. It’s time to push back and stop indulging evil. Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (paraphrasing Rand).”

There’s no reason to expect conspiracy theorist Geller to make accurate statements

Geller claimed Obama’s birth certificate is a “forgery.” In an August 4, 2009 column, Geller claimed that according to a “digital forensic examination specialist” called “Techdude,” the birth certificate Obama posted on his fightthesmears.com website was a “forgery.” She further stated that there is “something on Obama’s birth certificate” that “he does not want us to see” and that “there is know way of knowing” whether “all the documentation on Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship is in order.” Geller also speculated about Obama’s birth certificate at length on her blog, dating back to July 2008. In August 2008, FactCheck.org reported that they had “seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship.” FactCheck.org also noted that “a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961.”

Geller runs with fake Obama quote from fabricated Columbia thesis. After an August 25 post on the blog Jumping in Pools claimed that Obama attacked the Constitution and Founders in his Columbia thesis, right-wing media ran with the “report,” despite the fact that it was tagged as “satire.” In an October 23 post, Geller wrote, “EXCERPTS FROM OBAMA’S COLUMBIA THESIS REVEALS AMERICA’S WORST NIGHTMARE IS IN THE OVAL OFFICE.” She added that the writings revealed ”an America hater.” She also posted the claim on her twitter feed. Geller later posted an update to her blog that stated: “I am looking for the link for the ten pages ………and I can’t find it. But he did say this very thing.” Her blog post has since been taken down.

Geller mistakes AP paraphrase for an Obama quote to accuse him of “a slip of the foreign tongue.” In a May 31 post, Geller quoted an Associated Press article that stated (emphasis in the original): “More than just barbecues and family time, Memorial Day is the chance to honor members of the military who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country, President Barack Obama says.” Geller responded: “Uh, whose country? Brother Obama’s latest slip of the foreign tongue.” However, the words “their country” can only be attributed to AP’s paraphrase of Obama’s remarks, they do not appear anywhere in his actual address. In fact, in the second paragraph of the address, Obama referred to “our country’s flag.”

In her post, Geller also called Obama “our Nancy boy” because he moved his Memorial Day speech due to rain.

Geller falsely claimed Kagan is “an admirer of an architect of German national socialism, Nazism.” In a July 2 post, Geller wrote, “How broken are we that we would consider an admirer of an architect of German national socialism, Nazism, to sit in one of the most powerful judicial chairs in the world? The Obama freak show continues and we are his victims. Kagan cannot, must not, will not be confirmed.” Geller’s claim was based on a Human Events article that said Kagan’s undergraduate thesis “cited the theories of an influential German Marxist [Werner Sombart] who notoriously switched allegiances to Nazism after Adolf Hitler attained power.” However, at no point did Kagan indicate that she shared or sympathized with Sombart’s ideology. As Media Matters has noted, Kagan’s thesis explored historical questions about socialism and did not express personal support for socialism, or Nazism.

Geller also posted a photo of Kagan – who is Jewish – photoshopped to look like she is wearing Nazi uniform:

Geller claimed Qatari diplomat incident was an “act of Islamic terror” and rushed to attack Obama. In an April 7 post on Atlas Shrugs entitled, “Muslim Tries to Light a Bomb on DC to Denver Aircraft,” Pamela Geller wrote, “NBC is reporting that a muslim [sic] passenger attempted to light an explosive device on board an aircraft from Washington to Denver, sources tell NBC News — this on the day that Obama said jihad and Islamic terrorism does not exist (neither does his birth certificate).” The NBC report to which she linked — a “breaking news” Twitter feed — said only that “a passenger attempted to light an explosive device on board an aircraft from Washington to Denver, sources tell NBC News.” The post made no mention of the passenger’s religion. Geller called the passenger “[t]he jihadi committing this act of Islamic terror.” Before Geller updated her post to reflect new information, she wrote: “Fighter jets were scrambled to bring the plane down. G-d only knows what would have happened if the the [sic] air marshals on board hadn’t tackled him…”

Geller falsely claimed Farrakhan, Ayers and Wright visited White House. In a Marcy 26 post, Geller wrote:

There are consequential, disturbing revelations to be found when flipping through the visitors list at the White House. Bill Ayers is there no less than three times, Louis Farrakhan at least once, but there is also a separate visit for his family, and the infamous hater Jeremiah Wright is there at least five times (four times under Jeremy, one under Jeremiah)

She added, “These are terrorists, inciters to genocide, America haters, the underbelly of an ugly America — and they are in the House.” In fact, the New York Times reported back in October 2009 that the White House said “visitors by the names of William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright were not the same two men who stirred controversy for Mr. Obama in his campaign.” In January, White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen stated that the “Louis Farrakhan” in the list is not the well-known individual with that name.

Geller absurdly claimed Obama administration wearing purple as sign of solidarity with SEIU. In a March 26 post titled, “Flying the gangsta colors at the White House: SEIU, The color purple,” Geller wrote (emphasis in the original), “Yes, it seems this can no longer be written off as pure coincidence. The color purple is the fighting color of this administration. It is painfully clear who and what is running the show. Historically the color purple has signified royalty which, ironically, is exactly how the power mad pres thinks of himself. But this is SEIU, all the way. The Chicago way.” As evidence, Geller claimed Obama wore a purple tie when he signed the health care law.  But in other photos and videos, the tie appears to be a grey-ish blue. Geller also posted a photo of Democratic lawmakers who she said were wearing “purple ties,” but they are clearly blue. And she claimed that Robert Gibbs and Andy Stern wore “matching purple bracelets.” However Gibbs had explained in a March 15 tweet that he was wearing the bracelet in support of a family friend who “is bravely fighting cancer.”

Geller baselessly claimed Obama may have visited Louis Farrakhan when he went to Chicago for Memorial Day. In a My 30 post, Geller wrote: “How did the President of the United States spend his Memorial day weekend? Honoring the glorious dead by laying a wreath at Arlington cemetery?? Not a chance. It is unclear, but he may have pow-wowed with race baiter, Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan, a frequent visitor to the White House.” However, Geller provides no information that suggests Obama met with Farrakhan. She noted that Obama attended a dinner at the home of Marty Nesbitt, which is near the home of Farrakhan, and that the press pool reportedly clashed with some of Farrakhan’s men, concluding, “The whole story stinks. Did Obama see Farrakhan or not?”

Geller calls Obama “the Muslim president.” Geller’s blog contains 267 posts tagged, “Muslim in the White House?” In a June 2, 2009, post, Geller called Obama “The Muslim president.” Calling it a “critical issue,” Geller wrote in January 2008 that “Obama went to a madrassa in Jakarta,” that “he practiced Islam” and that “if Obama makes it to the big house, Israel is screwed. Finished.” On May 30, 2009, Geller wrote that with his Cairo speech, Obama “proved everything I said to be true.” In fact, CNN debunked the “madrassa” falsehood back in January 2007 and as Newsweek stated, “Barack Obama has never been Muslim and never practiced Islam.”

Counterterrorism experts have said that the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy and the anti-Islam protests benefit Islamic extremists “by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.”  But Muslims should not fall into the trap of thinking of all Americans as a monolithic group, just as they themselves do not want to be viewed that way.  In fact, some of the most vocal supporters of the Islamic cultural center include Jews, such as Rabbis in the Manhattan community and stalwarts like Jon Stewart, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, etc. etc.  And there are Christian supporters of the Cordoba initiative.  And why shouldn’t there be?  Just as Islam is the religion of peace for mainstream Muslims, so too is Christianity a religion of love for its true followers.  Muslim-Americans should not forget that.  Even the Quran, the holy book of Islam, says:

Not all of them are alike.  Of the People of the Book (the Jews and the Christians) are those who are righteous, who recite the words of God, who bow down in worship at night. They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and strive with one another in hastening to good deeds.  These are amongst the righteous. (Quran, 3:113-114)

Here is an excellent article on the Huffington Post from one such Evangelical Christian (good to know LoonWatch is being used as a resource by so many people!):

Why Christians Should Support the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’

By Lisa Sharon Harper (Executive Director of NY Faith and Justice, author, poet, and award-winning playwright)

Of the 1366 people who died on 9/11, 59 were Muslims. Yet Reuters reported yesterday that New York Governor David Paterson will pressure the developer of the proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan to relocate. This is nuts.

As an Evangelical Christian, three pillars of my faith guide my response to this trumped-up controversy: forgiveness rooted in the Cross, the value for Truth, and the call to love our neighbor.

Evangelicals believe in the power of the Cross, the place where Jesus died at the hands of his enemies; the place where Jesus uttered, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do”; the place that makes radical forgiveness possible. Yet the Muslim world did not perpetrate the terrorist acts of 9/11, so there is actually no need to forgive Muslims for 9/11. The fault sits squarely with Al Qaeda, a small terrorist organization. And therein lies is the irony. We have failed to do the lesser thing. Jesus calls us to follow him into forgiveness of our enemy. But forgiveness isn’t politically profitable. So we have been led by Evangelical hacks like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to feed on misdirected bitterness rather than follow Jesus’ lead.

Fear and hysteria are no excuse for muddled language and twisted truths. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Thus, to suppress truth is to suppress Jesus himself. Why would Jesus care about truth? Because lies destroy people made in the image of God, thus destroying the image of God on Earth. We would do well to remember that the next time Newt Gingrich rants that building a mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center is like the Nazis putting a swastika next to the Holocaust Museum. Come on.

So what is the truth?

Dr. Sarah Sayeed, president of Women in Islam, Inc. and program director for the Interfaith Center of New York, explained in a recent interview:

There has been a mosque on Warren Street, four blocks from the World Trade Center site, for many many years. My dad used to go there for prayers when I was a little kid. A lot of the Muslim people who work at City Hall or in the financial district would go to that mosque.

The Warren Street Mosque lost its lease and had to find a new location. Some people in that community came together and were able to purchase the building on Park Place and West Broadway, where the Islamic Community Center is now proposed; two blocks closer to Ground Zero. The people in the purchasing community partnered with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who had another mosque in Tribeca — also close to Ground Zero. Imam Feisal serves on the board of the Interfaith Center of New York.

Their vision included a full-blown community center that serves the wider community, not just the Muslim community. It’s conceived in the tradition of the YMCA, with a pool, a place for seniors to congregate, a place for the arts and a multi-faith chapel and prayer space. So, it’s really a cultural center that is being built by a group of Muslims. They’re also talking about having an interfaith advisory group to help shape the work in the building.

In light of this truth, to ask this long-established community to relocate is a first step down the long road to ethnic cleansing. It is the antithesis of Jesus’ call to love our neighbor.

Governor Patterson and other politicians are trading truth for political points. And worse, without realizing it, they are following the lead of right-wing liar, Pamela Geller, founder of Stop the Islamization of America, a crude website dedicated to stopping the spread of Islam in the U.S. and worldwide. Loonwatch.com lists Geller as “the looniest blogger ever.” The mosque controversy traces directly back to Geller. And it is true to form. During the 2008 elections, Geller claimed that Obama was a Muslim and that purple is the official “gangsta” color of the Obama administration — no connection, just goof-ball.

My faith’s values for forgiveness, truth, and love of neighbor lead me to conclude that politicians using the Islamic community center as an opportunity to score political points are mounting a direct assault against the honor of the dead — not just the 59 Muslim Americans who died but also all those whose lives were stolen by the hands of terrorists on September 11, 2001. They are betraying the heart of our country. Worse, they are betraying the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees the free exercise of religion. And this is the one freedom Islamic extremists despise most.

The mainstream media continues to cover the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”  story (which isn’t a mosque, and isn’t on Ground Zero), and the story has gone truly viral.  At the heart of the controversy is Pamela Geller, who was the first to protest the Islamic cultural center’s location.  Ahmed Rehab wrote an excellent article for the Huffington Post, which gives a very accurate timeline of events leading to this contrived controversy.  Says Rehab:

The “Ground Zero Mosque” fiasco is a fabricated controversy that traces its origins to a couple of long-time anti-Muslim goons from the annals of the hate blogosphere by the names of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller as a flagship campaign of their newly founded organization, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). SIOA is part of an emerging phenomenon of astroturf anti-Muslim organizations that seek to project any public expression of Muslim life in this country as tantamount to a stealth “Islamization of America.” (Except it’s not so stealth since everyone and their mother is talking about it).

It was SIOA that first coined the misnomer “Mosque at Ground Zero,” purposely twisting the reality that the proposed Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero is neither a Mosque nor at Ground Zero. It was the SIOA that sought to redefine Imam Rauf as a radical Imam even though he was heralded by the Bush administration, the FBI and others as a moderate voice of reason. It was the SIOA and its partners that ruthlessly sought to stoke the fears and suspicions of otherwise good, unsuspecting Americans.

Hate blogger Pamela Geller used the power of her hate blog to bring attention to the cultural center, amping up fears of an “Islamic conquest of Ground Zero”.  She teamed up with “the acclaimed scholar of Islam” Robert Spencer to form the organization known as Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).  You may be wondering why they didn’t pick a catchier name, or one that rolls off the tongue without sounding extremely awkward.  (And why is there an “O” in the acronym from “of” but  not a “t” from “the”?)  Well, if you follow Pamela Geller’s crazy blog you’ll note that she has a tendency to slam every possible stereotype and alarmist mantra into her blog titles, along the lines of: “Stealth Jihadist Taqiyya Artist Pimp Imam Hussein Obama Pledging Loyalty to Mafia Jihad Hamas-Linked CAIR.”

The title of “Stop the Islamization of America” captures the essence of their alarmist paradigm.  It’s not just a name of a group.  It’s their entire conspiracy theory perfectly encapsulated in five words.

Ahmed Rehab did a good job of introducing you to the two founders of SIOA.  But allow me to introduce you to the “spiritual head” of the group.  Her name is Bat Ye’or, an anti-Muslim ideologue and conspiracy theorist.  Like Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or claims to be “a scholar”–not just any scholar, but “the world’s leading scholar of Islamic antisemitism”–even though she, like Spencer, “is not an academic and has never taught at any university” (quote from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz).

Pamela Geller says on her hate blog:

Bat Ye’or, groundbreaking scholar of the Islamization of Europe (author of Eurabia), the pioneering scholar on dhimmitude, the institutionalized mistreatment of non-muslims under Islam law…

Notice the words “Islamization of Europe.”  It’s a conspiracy theory called “Eurabia”, which is the idea that Moozlems are going to take over Europe and reduce non-Muslims to second-class citizenship (or worse)…Geller and Spencer have simply adopted this same idea and applied it to America.  Hence the name “Stop Islamization of America” (SIOA).

In fact, as one reader pointed out, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA) is a rip off of Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE), whose slogan boasts that “Islamophobia is the height of common sense.”  This organization is linked to fascists, the English Defense League (EDL).  Both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have ties to these hate groups.

But back to the spiritual head of the group…

Here are some of Bat Ye’or’s conspiracy theories from which Geller and Spencer take inspiration:

Conspiracy Theory: Europe Will Become a Vassal State to the Arab World

Bat Ye’or is a fringe conspiracy theorist who argues that “Europe will become a vassal [state], a satellite of the Arab world.” Such alarmist drivel that no sane person could take her seriously.  The irony is that the reality is the exact opposite: it is the Arab world that plays second fiddle compared to the West.  Tell us, Bat Ye’or, how will the Arabs make a vassal state out of Europe?  Them and which army?  The combined Arab might pales in front of Israel; how can the Arab world then vanquish all of Europe?  Such senseless fear mongering.

And:

Conspiracy Theory: The Rise of Eurabia

The culmination of Bat Ye’or’s theories is what she coins as “Eurabia,” a (not so) clever combination of the words “Europe” and “Arabia.”  Basically, the theory is that Arab and Muslim immigration (of “stealth jihadists”) will soon overwhelm Europe, destroy Western culture and civilization forever, and replace the democratic governments with Taliban style theocracies.   While that does sound like an interesting plot for a fictional movie, it is pure insanity to take this seriously.  Bat Ye’or is simply delusional.  David Aaronovitch, a journalist for The Times, labels Bat Ye’or as a conspiracy theorist:

Pinch me a third time while we get to grips with “Eurabia”. This is a concept created by a writer called Bat Ye’or who, according to the publicity for her most recent book, “chronicles Arab determination to subdue Europe as a cultural appendage to the Muslim world-and Europe’s willingness to be so subjugated”. This, as students of conspiracy theories will recognise, is the addition of the Sad Dupes thesis to the Enemy Within idea.

Aaronovitch would know; he wrote the book entitled Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History.  (Aaronovitch is no “dhimmi” as the Islamophobes would say; he produced a pro-Israeli documentary titled Blaming the Jews.)

Conspiracy Theory: The Churches of Europe are Colluding with Muslims

Bat Ye’or’s lunacy can be ascertained by some of her even more outlandish claims.  For example, she accuses the churches in Europe of being in a state of “collusion with the Muslims,” which she says have of their own volition become “Christian slave militias” that will “spearhead…the Islamic war against Christianity.”  According to her, the churches of Europe “reject…the Bible, which they read with a Koranic understanding.”  She goes on to say that European Christians “are more inclined to follow the Koranic Muslim Jesus, called Isa, than the Jewish Jesus.” Can any sober academic–or even sensible layman–take such drivel seriously?  But perhaps the reader thinks that we have taken her words out of context (after all, who could say something so crazy!), so let us reproduce her entire nonsensical answer verbatim so that her madness can be firmly established in the eyes of the reader:

JW: You’re accusing churches of collusion with the Muslims?

BY [Bat Ye'or]: Yes. Those churches know perfectly well the dire condition of Christians in Muslim lands. But instead of denouncing it, they adopt the militancy of the Janissaries, those Christian slave militias that were the spearhead of the Islamic war against Christianity. They forbid Christians to reveal the iniquities of modern dhimmitude in Arab countries, the enslavement of Christians in Sudan, the abductions and jihadic terror against innocent population. Those churches follow an arcionist theological line which separates the Gospels from the Hebrew Bible. They reject the historical legitimacy of Israel in its own land and, therefore, reject also the Bible, which they read with a Koranic understanding. They are more inclined to follow the Koranic Muslim Jesus, called Isa, than the Jewish Jesus. In my book, I call them the Islamized churches because their rejection of Israel’s history implies their refusal of the Bible and their acceptance of the Koranic version of the Bible that considers Christianity as a deformation of Islam.

This lunacy has been affirmed by another well-known loon–Daniel Pipes–who writes:

The historian Bat Ye’or, the first person to comprehend the gradual process of Europe accepting the dhimmi status, observes that this fundamental shift began with the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when the continent began moving “into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity.”

Translation: not only has Europe fallen under the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence–and not only has it become a subservient “dhimmi” to the Arab world–it is doing so willingly and of its own volition.  Riiiight, riiiight.  So Pipes is not far behind Bat Ye’or in looniness, which explains his reliance on her work.

The SIOA received “spiritual input” from Bat Ye’or on the issue of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” [video].  In the video, Bat Ye’or likens the Muslims to Nazis, a typical comparison that Geller makes recurrently on her crazy site.  (It’s amazing how a sweet looking granny and a cougar with a botoxed face and fake boobs could be amongst the two biggest hatemongers in the world).

The spiritual idea behind blocking the Islamic cultural center is not just that Ground Zero is “sacred ground” unfit for Muslims, but that the Muslims are going to take over and impose “dhimmitude” upon non-Muslims.  Spencer, Geller, and Bat Ye’or recount the horrors of Islamic rule, conveniently forgetting the even worse Christian rule over Jews and Muslims.  The theological basis of SIOA is that the Muslim-Americans are engaging in “stealth jihad”, a doctrine supposedly based in the Islamic concept of taqiyya.  (I’ve thoroughly debunked this lie here.)  Basically, those pesky Muslim-American spokesmen are trying to sweet talk us silly infidels into believing that their religion is about peace, and then when we’re fast asleep, they’ll take over!  And then we’re in deep trouble, because that’s when they will reimpose “dhimmitude” upon us.  So we need to get them before they get us!  (I’ve obliterated their argument about Muslims wanting to reimpose dhimmitude here.)

This is the alarmist conspiracy theory that buttresses the group known as Stop the Islamization of America, which is behind the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy.  If you think they will stop at just this mosque, you’re horribly uninformed.  There have been protests all over the country over mosques, and the SIOA is swift in coming to their aid.  Muslim-Americans complain that there is virtually no city in the country where they can freely build a mosque without meeting fierce opposition from people in the community.  The SIOA wants to tap into peoples’ fears and translate it into anti-Muslim bigotry.  Every mosque must be opposed, because every mosque teaches Muslims to wage “stealth jihad” (“taqiyya!”) and secretly preaches that Muslim-Americans must lie in wait to impose Sharia and dhimmitude over the infidels.

It’s not just mosques.  It’s also Muslim Congressmen.  They all want to impose Sharia on you and I.  So they must be stopped too.  All two of them.

Now that you understand the ideology behind the SIOA, let me ask you: can you imagine the reaction of the public if Muslim-Americans founded a group called “Stop the Judaization of America” (SJOA)?  Pamela Geller is Jewish. What do you think she’d think of such a group?  She’d yell “anti-Semitism” at the top of her lungs.  And so would you.  And so would I.

Now, can you imagine for a second, if Imam Rauf–the Imam of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”–was part of a group called “Stop the Judaization of America”?  Or what if Ahmed Rehab was a co-founder of this group?  Do you think he’d be invited to make rounds on the cable news networks like Pamela Geller has been?  Do you think he would be called on as an expert to explain his views, like news organizations have called on Geller?  Do you think they would talk to the leader of the SJOA seriously, or do you think they would tear the leader of such a group a new one?

But let’s think about it for a second.  How many Jews are there in the country?  According to one reliable study, about 1.3% of the U.S. population is Jewish, compared to 0.5% for Muslims.  That means there are more than twice as many Jews as Muslims in the country.  So, the SJOA has twice the reason to exist over the SIOA.  If you think it’s ludicrous that 1.3% of the U.S. population is taking over the remaining 98.7% (as I do)–and if you would laugh in someone’s face who would claim such a thing–then how do you take someone seriously who claims that less than half of that is going to take over the remaining 99.5% of us?

It’s beyond absurd!  The entire premise of the organization, and their entire paradigm is ridiculous.  Next time anyone debates Geller, please just ask her very calmly: “Do you really think the Muslims, who constitute 0.5% of the population, are going to take over?”  And then laugh at her.  And make sure to laugh in a conceited and haughty tone. Scoff.  Because that’s what nut jobs who claim such a thing deserve.  They don’t deserve to be treated seriously.

If you think there are too many Muslim Congressman (there are two!) and you think the emergence of Muslim Congressmen is proof of the Islamization of America, then a member of the SJOA would have even more right to fear the Judaization of America, considering that there are over 40 Jewish Congressmen.  In fact, they are way overrepresented in the Congress, so this must be proof of the Judaization of America!  Save yourself!

Let’s compare how many Jewish people are in the media vs Muslims.  It wouldn’t even be a comparison.  What about synagogues vs mosques?  I’m betting there are ten times as many synagogues.  And what about lobbies?  Whose lobby is more powerful?  Can you say AIPAC?

If a person is to be considered an anti-Semite for thinking that the Jews are Judaizing the country, then so too should people be labeled as Islamophobes if they worry about the Islamization of America.

In fact, the idea that Jews are taking over Europe or America is an old one, and was responsible for a lot of Jewish persecution. Today, it’s true that the “Jew” has been replaced by the “Muslim.” For some odd reason though, we just don’t react the same way when we hear the exact same thing against Muslims.

The truth of the matter is as one Muslim-American comedian put it when he imitated a radical Imam, saying: “Today, we are going to establish the religion of Islam!  But first I have a couple announcements to make: we need to raise some money to buy a shampoo machine for the carpet…”  The idea that Muslim-Americans could somehow take over the country is ludicrous.  They barely have enough money to shampoo the carpet…

I’m forming another group: Stop the Loonization of America (SLOA).  I’ll give you a Free Hat if you join.

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

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

Check out the amazing article for yourself:

A powerful piece by Ahmed Rehab in the Huffington Post laying the bottom line about the swelling controversy surrounding the “mosque at Ground Zero.”  (hat tip: Schmorgus)

The Untold Story of the Mosque at Ground Zero

by Ahmed Rehab | Huffington Post

Americans have a right to assemble and worship freely in this country, period. It’s not only a founding principle of this nation, but a main justification for its founding. It is why many White Christians flooded to this country in the first place.

Those opposed to American Muslims practicing their right to build a religious and cultural center on their private property near Ground Zero and in concordance with all laws and regulations reluctantly concede that they have no legal grounds to challenge it. So they argue instead that they should voluntarily forgo their right out of sensitivity for the sacredness of that site.

This is a particularly disingenuous line.

If it is about sensitivity for the sacred, then why aren’t those same people opposing the deli, bar, coffee shop, and offices, or strip club for that matter, that are open for business in that same sacred vicinity?

What is particularly indecent or insensitive about American Muslims building a house of peace, community, and worship that doesn’t apply to the New York Dolls gentlemen’s club?

Let’s be blunt: it is only indecent and insensitive if you buy into the canard that American Muslims are somehow collectively guilty for 9/11. That is the coded message at the heart of opposition to the center. It is a message we reject on its face.

American Muslims bear no collective guilt or blame for the crime of 9/11. We have nothing to apologize for and everything to be proud of, including our loyalty and hard-earned livelihoods. We are not guest citizens, we are not second-rate citizens; we reject marginalization and require no validation. We are equal citizens living and worshipping in our country.

We are part and parcel of the diversity of America including the diversity of the 3,000 people who died on 9/11. We are part of the diversity of the hundreds who were injured and those who were first responders to Ground Zero. We are part of the diversity of the millions who grieved and still grieve. When “they” attacked “us,” we were attacked. We are part of the “us” not the “they.”

The whole brouhaha about the “Mosque at Ground Zero” is frankly bogus. It has little to do with sacred ground, or sensitive hearts. It does however have everything to do with the exploitation of the sacred and the sensitive for the furtherance of the sacrilegious and the insensitive: the phenomenon of Muslim-bashing that is ravaging our nation today.

The Cordoba House, now Park51, is an old story. In fact, it was reported on in the New York Times and other mainstream media as far back as two years ago. Why the frenzy now?

That’s not all: Muslims have been worshipping at Mosque Manhattan a few blocks away from Ground Zero, long before Ground Zero was Ground Zero; in fact, since 1970, before the twin towers were the twin towers.

So again, why the sudden frenzy?

Failure to ask “why” is a collective indictment of the media establishment (with a few notable exceptions). Just as the media shirked its responsibilities in questioning the Bush administration on the justifications for the war in Iraq, now too it fails to properly investigate, scrutinize, and report the origins of this controversy. Here is what it failed to tell you:

The”Ground Zero Mosque” fiasco is a fabricated controversy that traces its origins to a couple of long-time anti-Muslim goons from the annals of the hate blogosphere by the names of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller as a flagship campaign of their newly founded organization, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). SIOA is part of an emerging phenomenon of astroturf anti-Muslim organizations that seek to project any public expression of Muslim life in this country as tantamount to a stealth “Islamization of America.” (Except it’s not so stealth since everyone and their mother is talking about it).

It was SIOA that first coined the misnomer “Mosque at Ground Zero,” purposely twisting the reality that the proposed Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero is neither a Mosque nor at Ground Zero. It was the SIOA that sought to redefine Imam Rauf as a radical Imam even though he was heralded by the Bush administration, the FBI and others as a moderate voice of reason. It was the SIOA and its partners that ruthlessly sought to stoke the fears and suspicions of otherwise good, unsuspecting Americans.

The fact that bigots see fit to peddle sensational drivel for a living is not shocking.

The fact that the media is unwilling or incapable of calling it out is disturbing.

The fact that a significant segment of this population stands to be duped by it is disappointing.

And the fact that public officials who should know better are all too content pandering to the bigoted, misguided, and confused in search of votes this election season is outright nauseating.

Here’s another under reported fact:

The battle raging on now is not one that pits Muslims on one side and non-Muslims on the other as critics would have you believe. It is in fact a showdown between Americans of all backgrounds (Muslim and otherwise) who are fighting for the freedom and dignity of what it means to be American, on one side; and those who are willing to throw those values under the bus in exchange for publicity, notoriety, ratings, or votes, on the other.

It is a struggle between those wishing to affirm our pluralism and our equality as color-blind, race-blind, and faith-blind citizens and those wishing to immerse us into identity politics that make some more equal than others.

The Park51 battle is a microcosm of this generation’s struggle for the soul of America.

That’s the untold “Mosque at Ground Zero” story any red-blooded American journalist who still has respect for the integrity of the profession should be telling.

TIME has come out with a poll on the prevailing mood amongst Americans toward the mosque and toward their fellow Muslim citizens. What does this mean for the future of religious freedom and the failure of our leaders and the media in tackling this story?

Majority Oppose Mosque, and most Distrust Muslims

Opponents of the planned Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan have public opinion firmly in their corner. According to a new TIME poll, 61% of respondents oppose the construction of the Park51/Cordoba House project, compared to 26% who support it. More than 70% concur with the premise that proceeding with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Opposition to the project appears to derive largely from the conviction that the proposed site of the project — just two blocks from Ground Zero, in a building that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory outlet — is so close to “hallowed ground,” as President Obama put it.

Yet the survey also revealed that many Americans harbor lingering animosity toward Muslims. Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — slightly higher than the 24% who mistakenly believe that the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim. In all, just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim. (See TIME’s photo-essay “Muslim in America.”)

And while more Americans are open to the idea of having a mosque built in their neighborhoods than near Ground Zero, it’s still not an overwhelming majority; 55% of respondents say they would favor the construction of an Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from their own homes, and an equal number say they believe most Muslims are “Patriotic Americans.”

As he attempts to shepherd the U.S. through the sluggish economic recovery and galvanize Democratic voters ahead of a congressional election cycle in which the party is expected to sustain heavy losses, Obama’s approval rating has held relatively steady, at a near-even split: 46% of respondents back his job performance, with 45% expressing disapproval. Voters are far less enthusiastic about the President’s policies, however, with 57% asserting the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction.

That wasn’t the only grim news for Democrats. The GOP has snatched the lead in generic Congressional balloting, with 43% of likely voters saying they would vote for a Republican candidate if the midterm elections were held today, compared to 37% for Democrats. (Last month, Democrats held a slight edge in generic balloting, 43%-42%.) While those figures augur well for the GOP, harping on the mosque issue — a tactic many Republicans appear to have embraced as the overheated debate nears a boiling point — seems unlikely to give the party’s fortunes a significant boost. Nearly three quarters of voters told TIME the issue will not have any impact on their decisions in the ballot box.(Read “Ground Zero: Exaggerating the Jihadist Threat.”)

While the poll revealed that prejudice toward Muslims is widespread, respect for other religions traditions remains sturdy. Respondents held the Jewish faith in the highest regard, with 75% professing to hold a favorable impression-just slightly higher than attitudes toward Protestants and Catholics. Fifty-seven percent say they have a favorable view of the Mormon faith, compared to 44% for Muslims. Despite (or perhaps because of) this widespread antipathy, 62% of respondents say they don’t personally know a Muslim American.

The poll, conducted by ABT SRBI, surveyed 1,002 adults — 89% of whom identified themselves as likely voters — on Aug. 16-17.

Zia Ulahaq

Osman Adnan is a Muslim-American veteran. He is for the mosque near Ground Zero. Is he an Islamic supremacist?  Here’ a great piece by Salon.com:

A loyal Muslim American laments the mosque mess

I am a lifelong resident of Middletown, N.J., the town that lost more victims per capita on 9/11 than anyplace in the state, and the second hardest hit city after New York. Almost 50 of our neighbors died that day, in a town of 60,000. Most of those who died worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. Although I was only 18, I was an enlisted medic with the New Jersey National Guard on that day, and I wound up on many Homeland Security missions in my four-year stint after the attack. My older brother commissioned as a U.S. Army officer after Sept. 11, and was awarded a Purple Heart during his service in Iraq. To this day he has shrapnel lodged in his body from the IED that blew up his convoy.

My brother and I are also Muslim Americans, born in the United States, of Pakistani heritage.

In our town, the wounds of 9/11 haven’t healed. Just this last July 4, I sat with a longtime friend as he cried about a mutual friend who died that day. With tears in his eyes, he thanked me and my brother for our service to our country. Now that we have returned home to New Jersey, my brother and I are sad to see that some of our fellow Americans would like to deprive us of our rights to pray for our country and our loved ones at the proposed Muslim Cultural Center near ground zero. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich even said that building a mosque in that area would be analogous to having a Nazi sign next to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Maybe Gingrich should visit Middletown and get a reality check. I do not remember anyone chasing me out of a funeral for one of the 9/11 victims because they were offended by my being a Muslim. In Middletown, we grieved the people we lost together, as a community.

Our town is close-knit, and many of my childhood friends still reside here. I attended public school in Middletown from kindergarten through high school.  I went to grammar school birthday parties, Little League games, bar mitzvahs, proms and now weddings with the same large yet close group of friends. My first cousins are Jewish, as is my older brother’s fiancée. Another first cousin’s last name is Plumb and he is half Irish. My older brother graduated from the local Catholic high school. One of his classmates died on 9/11. He’d been born on the 4th of July; in fact, he’s the same person our friend wept remembering on this past Independence Day. A close high school friend’s father also died in the attacks. I see her from time to time, and she is one of the most remarkable people I know, carrying on with her life the way she does. I still see the pain of family members and those who lost loved ones, or who escaped from the vicinity of the World Trade Center.

In the direct aftermath of the attacks, friends and neighbors checked up on my family, not because they were suspicious, but because they wanted to make sure we were OK. When I am introduced at family or Christmas parties I never hear a bigoted remark. You could always tell how proud my friends and their parents were of me, “This is Osman, he is in the service.”

In Middletown, I belong. But beyond Middletown, it seems as though some people can’t even conceive of my existence: a Muslim American who is a patriot, who served his country, who cherishes its ideals. I am also aware of the low public perception of the United States in many Muslim countries, including Pakistan. After I graduated from law school, I decided to work as an American, building a school on the Pakistani side of Kashmir, an area where terrorists roam freely. As I got on the plane to fly to Islamabad, my mother told me, “Show them what an American is.” Carrying an American flag in my backpack and traveling dangerous roads and mountains, I helped establish a school for Afghan war refugees.

I remember teaching a young girl how to read; she was 11 years old and had never been to school before. Pulling out the American flag from my backpack, I wanted to make sure she knew Middletown, and America, meant her no harm. Later, Pakistan’s national broadcast channel came to interview me. During the interview I told them that American aid was coming to build more of these schools, thanks to the Kerry-Lugar aid bill, passed just prior to my arrival in the area, which funded school construction in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Schools like this keep our troops safe in Afghanistan by limiting the recruiting ability of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan, as local people begin to see that Americans have a humanitarian mission, they are not just invaders.

I see the impulse that drove me to work as an American in Kashmir in the desire to build the Park51 Community Center. Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his partners want to combat Muslim extremism, terrorism and anti-Americanism, showing that America’s tradition of religious tolerance extends to Muslims, and that Muslims can live in peace with neighbors of every religion, as well. Imam Rauf, a Sufi, is no “extremist”; he advised the State Department under the past Bush administration, and worked with the FBI after 9/11. Every religion has its own group of fanatics, and extremism is not confined to Islam. New York Rep. Peter King, a Park51 opponent, not too long ago overtly supported efforts to raise money to buy weapons for the Irish Republican Army, which was considered a terrorist organization. We can take strange sections out of every religion’s holy books, if we want to paint the worst picture of that particular group.

I believe Rauf’s goal with Park51 is in harmony with the goals of our nation’s founders. George Washington himself once wrote to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island, reassuring them of our nation’s religious tolerance. “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” I flew halfway around the world to promote that great vision, and my brother came close to giving his life to protect it.

George Washington also reminded us to guard against the “imposters of pretended patriotism.” Mr. Gingrich and Mrs. Palin: Please do not confuse the public and slander all Muslim-Americans as being responsible for 9/11. Please don’t tell my shrapnel-scarred war hero brother that he is no different than the 9/11 hijackers. Sadly, you represent the very spirit of intolerance you attack in others.

Behind Plastic Pam's heavily botoxed face and surgically augmented breasts lies a dark black stone for a heart.

By Danios with contribution from Rosseau

John Roberts recently filled in for Anderson Cooper, and correctly pinned the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy to hate blogger Pamela Geller, a radical right-wing anti-Muslim bigot.  Geller is the one who first blogged about the issue, trumping it up using the fantastic language that she is so well-known for.  Roberts made a point during his interview with Geller that I thought he could have developed a bit more.  He pointed out that Pamela Geller was outraged when her hateful anti-Muslim bus ads were opposed. The New York Daily News characterized her bus ads as “messages of hate masquerading as messages of help.”  Those bus ads carried a link to an anti-Muslim website, one which decried “the falsity of Islam.”

The Miami-Dade transit authority had declared that they were going to remove those ads due to the fact that the ads were deemed offensive to Muslims.  (Ya think?)  Pamela Geller lost her mind, called it a violation of her First Amendment rights, and sued the transit authority.  The Miami-Dade transit authority backed down, and the hateful ads are still found on buses today.  John Roberts pointed out that Geller had cried “First Amendment!” then, but suddenly she can’t see that the Muslim-Americans who own the property two blocks from Ground Zero have their First Amendment right to build a “mega mosque” there.  (It’s actually an Islamic cultural center, not a “mega mosque.”)  When challenged on this point, Geller argued back that it wasn’t about First Amendment rights, but about “being sensitive.”  Said Geller on CNN:

It is a human compassion issue.  It is common decency.  That this is so painful to so many 9/11 families.

Wow, that’s rich.  Where was your “human compassion”, Ms. Geller, when you put those hateful ads up on buses?  Are Muslims not humans?  If they are, are they not worthy of your “human compassion”?  Is it from “common decency” to post hateful ads up on buses, ones which hurt and disparage Muslims?  If someone had put the exact same ad up against Catholics, disingenuously asking “victims of Catholic priest pedophilia” to follow a hyperlink to an anti-Catholic website, would you say this is from “common decency?”  Let us suppose that the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” put up a huge sign in front of their mosque, calling Judaism a “false religion”–just as your ad linked to a website that said the same of Islam–who do you suppose would be at the forefront of the campaign to oppose the mosque?

Is it not interesting, and a sign of our times, that hateful anti-Muslim ads do not garner any national attention, but an Islamic cultural center–dedicated to pluralism and tolerance–is so opposed?  Hateful, bigoted, and intolerant ads are OK, but a cultural center dedicated to peace, love, and interfaith cooperation is offensive to the “sensitivities” of “Judeo-Christian” Americans?  If hate blogger Pamela Geller did not respect the sensitivities of Muslim-Americans when she ran (and continues to run) those hateful anti-Muslim ads, then why should Muslim-Americans care about her sensitivities?

Geller’s hypocrisy with regard to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is clear once we close our eyes and think back to not too long ago when Geller and her sidekick, Robert Spencer (of the “Obama-is-a-Moozlem” variety), promoted the drawing of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.  On display were some of the most disgusting and vile portrayals of a religious figure that even shocked some of those who had initially backed the idea. In that instance it was completely fine for Geller, Spencer and the rest of the anti-Muslim blogosphere to trample on the sensitivities of Muslims all over the world in the name of freedom of speech. However, when Muslim-American New Yorkers decided to create a community center (that happens to include a prayer area) near that which Geller and Spencer consider sacred, then all hell breaks loose. Muslims must then fall prostrate to what Geller considers sacred and holy.

Pamela Geller argues that the decent thing for Manhattan Muslims to do is move the center farther away from Ground Zero, even though they have a constitutional right to create the center. Yet, Geller remains oblivious to the hypocrisy she is engaging in here. Sure Pam, you have the right to mock and desecrate the name of a man that over one billion humans consider sacred, but is it the right thing to do?  The sensitivities of “Judeo-Christian” Americans are to be honored, based on the fact that it is “hallowed ground”, but the sensitivities of Muslims towards one they consider “hallowed” (the Prophet Muhammad) cannot?

And there is a major difference between the drawing of the cartoons and the Islamic cultural center.  The cartoons, and the whole “Draw Muhammad Day” brouhaha, was created for the entire purpose of sticking it to the Muslims, to hurt their feelings.  On the other hand, the Islamic cultural center was not created with that intent.   The Manhattan Muslims weren’t engaging in a disgusting and childish act like Geller and Spencer were promoting on their hate blogs. The Muslims in this instance were engaging in outreach to build bridges with others, not destroy them like Geller did when she put up the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet, despite their noble aim, Geller demands that the Muslims give up their constitutional right to create a religious center. What a world Geller lives in–post disgusting cartoons of a religious figure and then cry about your constitutional rights when anyone opposes your actions. When others exercise their constitutional rights, bark about them trampling upon your delicate sensitivities!

Pamela Geller is one of the worst human beings on earth.  If she were not constrained by the laws of this wonderful land we live in, she would be amongst those who would promote ethnic and religious violence.  If Geller had been living in India during the Gujarat Riots, she would be at the front lines, calling for the slaughter of Muslims.  She’d be wielding  a machete, smeared with the blood of her Muslim victims.  That’s not too hard to believe when we recall that she promoted on her website an anti-Muslim video, from a genocidal group in India held responsible for the Gujarat riots that led to the murder of 2,500 people, mostly Muslims.  She has called for the annihilation of Pakistan, and the nuking of Mecca, Medina, and Tehran.  This is all of course her showcasing to us what it means to possess “human compassion” and “common decency.”

Ms. Geller, we do not need you to tell us about “human compassion” and “common decency.”  You are the last person on earth to speak of these things, as you are completely devoid of them.  You are a despicable hate blogger, and you will be remembered by the eye of history, just fifty or a hundred years from now, as equivalent to those who called for the Japanese to be interned in camps. And people will wonder then, how could those people have been so stupid (and hateful) to think that?

One last slightly (un)related point: I’ve heard many bigots raise the argument that “as soon as there are churches in Saudi Arabia, then we can have a mosque at Ground Zero.”  While of course you will never find anyone more in favor of churches in Saudi Arabia than I (are the Saudis so doubtful of the veracity of their religion that they fear the competition?), I cannot tolerate such bigoted tribalism.  It typifies the “us vs. them” mentality that is in fact the core of Al-Qaeda theology, and is shared by the crazy right-wing nuts in our country.  “The Other”–the Muslims–are The Borg, and they don’t let us build churches there, so we won’t let them build mosques here.  All this ignores the fact that the Muslims in Saudi Arabia are not the same as Muslim-Americans, so there is no “them.”

But if these bigots wish to foist this comparison of “us vs. them” upon the situation, then let us reevaluate where we stand.  They bombed us once, on 9/11.  Do you know how many buildings “we’ve” bombed in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to speak of Pakistan and Yemen?  According to Harvard Professor Stephen M. Walt we’ve likely killed “over one million” Muslims, “equivalent to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.”  And this, not by terrorists outside the control of the will of the people and the government but by the sanction of the duly-elected government of the United States of America.  As Jason Mustian put it: “In fairness, we’ve been building ‘ground zeros’ near Iraqi mosques since March 2003.” Quite simply, we were fortunate enough to be able to call it 9/11, an infamous day but one day in one year.  “They” have so many “9/11′s” that they would have one every day of the year for several years, making it difficult to name them.  Certainly “they” could not name them based on date or day, since so many dates and days are ones in which we bomb “them.”

If Americans are so outraged by a small Islamic cultural center being built two blocks away from Ground Zero, then how angry do you think Muslim Iraqis are that we built a gargantuan military base in Iraq–one that is actually the size of a small city?  A “mega mosque” arouses our suspicion; what do you think a “mega military base” does to theirs?  If the presence of some Muslim-Americans peacefully praying two blocks away from where “Muslims” attacked us bothers us so much, can you imagine how much “they” hate “us” stationing thousands of troops where “we” bombed “them”?  The point here is not to justify the “us vs. them” viewpoint espoused by Al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.  Rather, it is to convince you–the American reader–that such comparisons do not suit us even from a tactical standpoint.  From an ideological and principled standpoint, of course, this “us vs. them” lens is wholly opposed to the American ideal, which is that we are all Americans, regardless of religion.  Ours is a pluralistic society, and we should take pride in that.  “They” don’t win by placing an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero.  We do.

On the heels of the Salon.com article that traced the Ground Zero mosque controversy back to Pamela Geller, CNN ran a special segment on the anatomy of this story. In it Pamela Geller is called out for who she is, an “anti-Muslim blogger.” The evidence for that abounds,

Geller: Obama “is a third worlder and a coward” who’s “appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords.” In an April 13 blog post, Gellerwrote: “Obama is a third worlder and a coward. He will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords. All this is going down while Obama plays footsie at his nuclear nonsense campfire — sucking up to Iran’s enablers while beating up our allies.”

Geller: Liberal Jews are “lost souls,” “self-hating wretches.” In her January 25 Newsmax column, Geller wrote that Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League “has come out against a great and wonderful friend of the Jews, Rush Limbaugh.” Geller added that this “is symptomatic of a deeper problem: I have for years derided Jews in America and the Jewish lay leadership for tolerating and supporting clear and present enemies of the Jewish people among our senior ranks. It is a sickness of the soul.” She further wrote, “The liberal Jew worships at the church of human secularism. These lost souls are married to their liberal dogma” and asked, “Which Jews support deleterious characters like Foxman? Which Jews give blood money to these self-hating wretches?”

Geller on Obama’s Israel policy: “Jews Refuse to Get on Obama’s Trains.” In a post apparently responding to Obama’s opposition to settlement growth, Geller wrote, “Jews refuse to get on Obama’s Trains.” She added: “Obama is pressuring Jews to “evacuate” from parts of Israel? And what Warsaw ghetto does the muhammadan [sic] president have in mind? I think I am gonna hurl. The Jews will not go. The Jews will not submit to this century’s nazis [sic] and Mansourian poser. No way, bloodsuckers. Not again. Never again.”

Geller on transgender Obama appointee: “What a freak show this presidency is.” In a January 4 blog post, Geller responded to a report that Obama named a transgender appointee to a Commerce Department position by stating, “Does Obama know anyone who isn’t wacky, radical, militant, judeophobic, socialist, marxist, pedophilic? …… Does he chill with anyone who is normal? Isn’t there one Marilyn Munster in the family? What a freak show this presidency is.”

Geller: Obama “wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing.” In an April 1 blog post titled, “”President Jihad: Obama Encouraged Violent Palestinian Muslim protests against Israel,” Geller claimed Obama “is agitating Muslims against Jews” and stated, “The President of the United States is advancing jihad against the oath of office that he took.” Geller also stated in an April 11 post, “President Sarkozy called [Obama] ‘a madman,’ ‘a lunatic.’ Perhaps, I don’t know — but one thing is for sure: Hussein is a muhammadan. He’s not insane ………..he wants jihad to win. That’s what he is doing. Of course, to the western mind, the rational mind, the logical mind, the American mind, that is insane.”

Geller called Democrats “National Socialists.” In a March 13 blog post, Geller wrote, ”National Socialists [Democrats] Obamacare: Sheeps to ‘Slaughter Solution.’” She added, “The buzz on Capitol Hill is that the Democrats are now considering what is being called the ’Slaughter Solution’ that will allow ObamaCare to be signed into law WITHOUT HOUSE MEMBERS EVEN HAVING TO VOTE.“

Geller: Senate Democrats supporting health care reform voted “to rape the American people.” In a December 21, 2009, blog post, Geller wrote of the cloture vote for health care reform: “The moochers and the looters, the crooks and degenerates voted at 1 am this morning to rip the constitution to shreds, to rape the American people and to nationalize medicine.” She added that passing the bill on Christmas Eve would be “an act of treason and blasphemy.”

Geller declared “VICTORY!” after Swiss established ban on minaret construction. In a November 29 post to her Atlas Shrugs blog — headlined “VICTORY! SWISS BAN MOSQUE MINARETS IN A LANDSLIDE VOTE” — Pamela Geller commented: “The Swiss have hand [sic] enough. They actually had the spine to take back their country. I wonder how the religion of peaceniks will react…in their usual tolerant and pacifist manner?”

Geller: “Obama Goes Full On Nazi.” Geller headlined a November 9, 2009, post “Obama Goes Full On Nazi: Subject: “Democratic consultant says he got a warning from White House after appearing on Fox News.”

Geller: ” ‘Kick a Jew’ days … are part of this growing evil Evil unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.” In a December 14, 2009, post, Geller wrote:

It’s as if the floodgates of hell have been thrown open. The moratorium on the holocaust is officially over and all the savages are free to incite, hate and destroy. Clearly those “Kick a Jew” days discussed here and here in schools are part of this growing evil Evil [sic] unleashed with an anti-semite in the White House.

Geller: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois.” In a December 15, 2009, post, Geller responded to reports that Guantanamo Bay detainees may be housed at the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois by stating: “Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois. Has anyone asked the people of Chicago if they want KSM’s soul mates in their state? Obama’s treachery is breathtaking. A killer’s paradise.”

Geller: “It is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth,” and he only visited Pakistan while in college because of “jihad or drugs.” In an August 1, 2009, post, Geller discussed rumors of a Palin divorce being spread by bloggers, including one supposedly tied to CNN and stated:

Let’s understand this. CNN won’t touch the birth certificate issue, the Rezko/Auchi corruption, Obama’s anti-semitism, his ACORN/SEIU ties and corruption, and other legitimate stories that need investigation. But they write fiction about Palin. Daily. So why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections? My question is, it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff. Why aren’t they pursuing that story? Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices. Where’s the investigation?

Geller further stated of Obama’s trip to Pakistan during college: “Back in the early 80′s, there were only two reasons to travel to Pakistan. Jihad or drugs. I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad.”

Geller on Dome of the Rock: “The dome has got to go.” On September 27, 2009, Geller posted an image of Muslims praying at the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holy sites, and stated, “On Erev Yom Kippur, Muslims attack Jews in Jerusalem. The dome has got to go. It is sitting atop the great Jewish temple. The dome has got to go. It’s time to push back and stop indulging evil. Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (paraphrasing Rand).”

There is more where this came from, please read our profile of Geller, The Looniest Blogger Ever. The sad thing is that this segment on CNN had Pamela Geller on unopposed. The host, John Roberts, obviously didn’t do his research and didn’t press her enough with the tough questions that Geller should be asked.

Instead, the show in effect gave Pamela Geller an opportunity to lie and cover up the fact that she is a Muslim hater. It is now common to see Pamela in her TV appearances claim that she “loves Muslims,” though the type of love she seems to be talking about is some twisted love in which the only good Muslim is one who doesn’t practice Islam, or believe in the Quran or the Prophet Muhammad.

The fact is she is against the building of mosques. Even in this CNN program she exposes herself by equating terrorists as representatives of “pure Islam,” echoing her friend, Euro-supremacist demagogue Geert Wilders who wants to tax the Hijab, ban Muslim immigration and outlaw Islam in the Netherlands.

The truth is Geller is opposed to the building of mosques, as is clear when she triumphantly claims victory after the Swiss ban minarets and when she calls for the destruction of mosques like the Golden Dome.

Robert Spencer: Ground Zero Strip Club is OK, No to Islamic Cultural Center

by Rousseau

How a strip club “at” Ground Zero doesn’t cheapen the sanctity of Ground Zero, while an Islamic cultural center does, is only something a wannabe conquistador could fathom.

Robert Spencer is enraged at the wording used by Politico’s Ben Smith in describing the so-called Ground Zero mosque as “actually a few blocks north of the site…” For Spencer, anywhere you can see Ground Zero may be hallowed ground.

Spencer says:

In the first place, the mosque will not be a few blocks away. I have been to the site, and can tell you: walk half a block down the street from the Burlington Coat Factory that is set to be the site of the mega-mosque, turn left, and you will see Ground Zero. Smith and Haberman have apparently never been to the site, as no one who has could characterize it as “a few blocks north.” It is actually just 600 feet away from Ground Zero.

See, since you can walk a half-block down from the proposed mosque site and then turn to your left and see Ground Zero from 600 feet away this means that the mosque is actually “at” Ground Zero. Right.

So next time you’re looking over the New York skyline from the Empire State Building, remember that you’re standing on hallowed ground even though you’re a mile away from Ground Zero. Or hey, looking at Ground Zero from Google Maps could even make your bedroom hallowed ground.

This is a game of semantics. Spencer is arguing that the mosque is not a few blocks away from Ground Zero, but a mere 600 feet away. So? The implication is that by being 600 feet away, the mosque “near” Ground Zero is in fact “at” Ground Zero. Therefore, the mosque shouldn’t be there. What’s silly about all this is that “the actual mosque location is surrounded by delis, coffeeshops, bars, offices — not to mention a strip club a few feet away from the proposed site,” as Danial Luban points out. None of these trivial and even erotic sites enrage Spencer like the mosque does. How a strip club “at” Ground Zero doesn’t cheapen the sanctity of Ground Zero, while an Islamic cultural center does, is only something a wannabe conquistador could fathom.

Read the rest of the article here.

Two takes on the issues revolving on Islamic cultural center that has been dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque.” One is a very serious toned and heart felt monologue from Keith Olbermann,

The other is a satirical and hard hitting segment of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show called “Mosque-erade,”

Justin Elliot has a good piece on Salon.com, but he would have benefited from our pieces, Pamela Geller: The Looniest Blogger Ever and SIOA is an anti-Muslim Hate Group.

How the “ground zero mosque” fear mongering began

by Justin Elliot

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy. And yet it has become just that, dominating the political conversation for weeks and prompting such a backlash that, according to a new poll, nearly 7 in 10 Americans now say they oppose the project. How did the Cordoba House become so toxic, so fast?

In a story last week, the New York Times, which framed the project in a largely positive, noncontroversial light last December, argued that it was cursed from the start by “public relations missteps.” But this isn’t accurate. To a remarkable extent, a Salon review of the origins of the story found, the controversy was kicked up and driven by Pamela Geller, a right-wing, viciously anti-Muslim, conspiracy-mongering blogger, whose sinister portrayal of the project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Here’s a timeline of how it all happened:

• Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. “We want to push back against the extremists,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor’s office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.
• Dec. 21, 2009: Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham interviews Abdul Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan, while guest-hosting “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox. In hindsight, the segment is remarkable for its cordiality. “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it,” Ingraham says of the Cordoba project, adding at the end of the interview, “I like what you’re trying to do.”
• (This segment also includes onscreen the first use that we’ve seen of the misnomer “ground zero mosque.”) After the segment — and despite the front-page Times story — there were no news articles on the mosque for five and a half months, according to a search of the Nexis newspaper archive.
• May 6, 2010: After a unanimous vote by a New York City community board committee to approve the project, the AP runs a story. It quotes relatives of 9/11 victims (called by the reporter), who offer differing opinions. The New York Post, meanwhile, runs a story under the inaccurate headline, “Panel Approves ‘WTC’ Mosque.” Geller is less subtle, titling her post that day, “Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction.” She writes on her Atlas Shrugs blog, “This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem.” (To get an idea of where Geller is coming from, she once suggested that Malcolm X was Obama’s real father. Seriously.)
• May 7, 2010: Geller’s group, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launches “Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!” (SIOA ‘s associate director is Robert Spencer, who makes his living writing and speaking about the evils of Islam.) Geller posts the names and contact information for the mayor and members of the community board, encouraging people to write. The board chair later reports getting “hundreds and hundreds” of calls and e-mails from around the world.
• May 8, 2010: Geller announces SIOA’s first protest against what she calls the “911 monster mosque” for May 29. She and Spencer and several other members of the professional anti-Islam industry will attend. (She also says that the protest will mark the dark day of “May 29, 1453, [when] the Ottoman forces led by the Sultan Mehmet II broke through the Byzantine defenses against the Muslim siege of Constantinople.” The outrage-peddling New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser argues in a note at the end of her column a couple of days later that “there are better places to put a mosque.”
• May 13, 2010: Peyser follows up with an entire column devoted to “Mosque Madness at Ground Zero.” This is a significant moment in the development of the “ground zero mosque” narrative: It’s the first newspaper article that frames the project as inherently wrong and suspect, in the way that Geller has been framing it for months. Peyser in fact quotes Geller at length and promotes the anti-mosque protest of Stop Islamization of America, which Peyser describes as a “human-rights group.” Peyser also reports — falsely — that Cordoba House’s opening date will be Sept. 11, 2011.

If you listened to Pamela and company who would’ve thought there were New Yorkers for the mosque and cultural center?

Barack Obama commented on the Cordoba Center that will be near Ground Zero, reaffirming freedom of religion as an essential American value.

Islamophobes were furious about this. For many of them this probably confirmed their belief that Obama is a Muslim.

Robert Spencer was on record writing,

Obama is in effect saying that you can build a triumphal mosque marking Islam’s superiority and victory — which is how the Ground Zero mosque will be viewed in the Islamic world — and you can lie about your funding, and lie about your commitment to interreligious dialogue and harmony, and refuse to denounce jihad terrorists, and all that is just fine with him.

Pamela Geller had this to say through an SIOA news release,

Obama “has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists and told the ummah (at an Iftar dinner on the third night of Ramadan) that he believes in and supports what will be understood in the Islamic world as a triumphal mosque on a site of Islamic conquest.”

Obama throws support behind controversial Islamic Center

Washington (CNN) — President Obama threw his support behind a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center and mosque near New York’s ground zero, saying Friday that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.”

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” Obama said at a White House Iftar dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The president’s remarks drew praise from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced his support for the Islamic center last week.

Bloomberg compared Obama’s speech to a letter President George Washington wrote in support of a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. “President Obama’s words tonight evoked President Washington’s own august reminder that ‘all possess alike liberty,’ ” Bloomberg said in a statement.

“I applaud President Obama’s clarion defense of the freedom of religion tonight,” he said.

To learn more about the “ground zero” mosque, see CNN’s Belief Blog

Critics of the proposed Islamic center quickly denounced Obama’s remarks. “President Obama is wrong,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). “It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero. Unfortunately, the President caved into political correctness.”

“While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much,” King said in a statement. “The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from Ground Zero.”

What do you think about this issue? Tell us on video

Obama, who said he was speaking both as a citizen and as president, invoked the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which critics of the Islamic center cite as the main reason for preventing its construction.

“We must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan,” Obama said, according to his prepared remarks. “The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.”

“The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable,” he continued. “So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”

But Obama said one “reason that we will win this fight” against terrorism is “our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us — a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”

Repeatedly invoking the nation’s founders and examples of religious tolerance from American history, the president argued that national ideals and the Constitution demanded that the project proceed.

He noted that Thomas Jefferson hosted the the first Iftar dinner at the White House more than 200 years ago and said that the country had previously seen “controversies about the construction of synagogues or Catholic churches.”

“But time and again,” he said, “the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues.”

“This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” Obama said. “The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.”

The proposed Islamic center has provoked vocal opposition from some families of 9/11 victims and other groups. Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the plan, according to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Wednesday.

“Obama came out for the Islamic supremacist mosque at the hallowed ground of 911 attack,” Pamela Geller, a leading foe of the Islamic center, wrote on her blog Friday night. “He has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists.”

Muslim Americans, meanwhile, applauded the speech. “It was pitch perfect and it was cut and dry,” said Eboo Patel, executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core and a Muslim adviser to the White House on faith issues. “He said that our Founding Fathers built a nation on religious freedom where people from different faiths can pray and thrive and that is that.”

Some Muslims said they were surprised to hear the president weigh in on the controversy.

“It’s such a hot potato and he’s already got so much on his plate and people jumping on him for any hint of an Islamic connection,” said Akbar Ahmed, an American University professor who attended Friday’s White House dinner. “But he plunged in and took a very bold position.”

The Islamic center’s leaders say they plan to build the $100 million, 13-story facility called Cordoba House three blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks. The developer, Sharif El-Gamal, describes the project as an “Islamic community center” that will include a 500-seat performing arts center, a lecture hall, a swimming pool, a gym, a culinary school, a restaurant and a prayer space for Muslims.

On Wednesday, the project’s developers declined an offer by New York Gov. David Paterson to relocate the project to a state-owned site.

Earlier this month, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously denied landmark status for the building where the proposed Islamic center would stand, allowing the project to move forward.

Hilarious Jon Stewart once again, this time taking on the growing anti-Muslim sentiment across the nation.

Nonie Darwish

Our MSNBC debut!

Nonie Darwish was on MSNBC along with CAIR-New York representative Zead Ramadan (hat tip: JustAFan). Darwish was her usual self, blathering about how she “is against this frenzy of Mosque building,” trying to legitimate her putrid and irrational stance by putting up her bona fides as a “former Muslim,” you know the usual spiel we are used to from clowns like Walid Shoebat and company who parlay their too often made-up-out-of-whole-clothe ex-Muslim stories into big bucks and easy living.

However, this time she was stopped dead in her tracks, and her soft tone quickly turned shrill when Ramadan pointed out to her that she is featured on “Loonwatch.com for fibbing.” Yes, Darwish, you are featured on our site for being “Caught in a pool of lies,” an article written by Professor Jim Holstun,  and trust me we are not done exposing you, we haven’t even scratched the surface.

In response Darwish was slightly incomprehensible, and cried “those people at Loonwatch are Imams.”

Watch it:

Transcription:

Ramadan: “Ms. Darwish is on Loonwatch.com because of fibbing, she tells stories all the time, she fabricates information in order to push her ultra-right concept. She’s an extremist.”

Darwish: The people who are on Loonwatch are those Imams who are tyring, who are trying to fool the American people, who don’t want to stand up for our rights and freedoms in America.

So not only are we George Soros funded, one-half of the Leftist Mooslim-alliance, but we are also Imams trying to fool Americans. This gets funnier by the minute.

CNN host returns ADL award over group’s opposition to Ground Zero mosque

(Hat tip: Mondoweiss)

Columnist and TV host Fareed Zakaria has returned a First Amendment award to the Anti-Defamation League in protest of the organization’s opposition to a proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the site of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Zakaria, a Washington Post columnist and CNN host, has been the editor of Newsweek International, a journal with a circulation of 24 million, for almost a decade. He published a blog on Friday publicly announcing that he had returned the ADL’s Hubert H. Humphrey Freedoms Prize.

“I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But I cannot in good conscience keep it anymore. I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. I urge the ADL to reverse its decision. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain a reputation.”

The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement Friday that it was saddened and stunned by Zakaria’s decision to return the prize they awarded him in 2005. ADL National Director Abe Foxman said he hoped that Mr. Zakaria “will come to see that ADL acted appropriately” and would reclaim the award bestowed upon him.

The ADL, a U.S. Jewish civil rights group, has said that the location of the planned mosque is counterproductive to the healing process of the families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

I haven’t been the biggest fan of Michael Bloomberg, but I have to commend him for his stance on the Park 51 Cordoba Center and Mosque. It wasn’t easy.

Michael Bloomberg delivers stirring defense of mosque

by Justin Elliot

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has emerged as the unlikely but passionate defender of the planned Muslim community center near ground zero, today traveled to Governors Island off the tip of Lower Manhattan to deliver a stirring plea for sanity in what he called “[as] important a test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes.”

The Daily News’ Adam Lisberg reports that Bloomberg choked up at one point as he delivered the speech surrounded by religious leaders of different faiths, with the Statue of Liberty in the background.

Rather than attack the bigotry of the opponents of the so-called “ground zero mosque,” Bloomberg made several positive arguments for building the center. He traced the struggle for religious freedom in New York and affirmed the rights of citizens to do as they please with their private property:

The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

It’s worth noting that three Jewish leaders  — Rabbi Bob Kaplan from the Jewish Community Council, Rabbi Irwin Kula from the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and Cara Berkowitz from the UJA Federation — were present with Bloomberg during the speech, despite the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to the project. Below is the full text. Video of the speech is here.

“We’ve come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that more than 250 years later would greet millions of immigrants in this harbor. And we come here to state as strongly as ever, this is the freest city in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong.

“Our doors are open to everyone. Everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it’s sustained by immigrants — by people from more than 100 different countries speaking more than 200 different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here or you came here yesterday, you are a New Yorker.

“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.

“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedoms to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams, and to live our own lives. Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that even here — in a city that is rooted in Dutch tolerance — was hard-won over many years.

“In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue, and they were turned down. In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies, and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

“This morning, the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted to extend — not to extend — landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building.

“The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.

“On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ (Bloomberg’s voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) ‘What beliefs do you hold?’

“The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

“Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation, and in fact their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. But doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our city even closer together, and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any ways consistent with Islam.

“Muslims are as much a part of our city and our country as the people of any faith. And they are as welcome to worship in lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for better, the better part of a year, as is their right. The local community board in lower Manhattan voted overwhelmingly to support the proposal. And if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire city.

“Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure, and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off-limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us can attest.”

Finally someone has taken the time to bring up loony Pamela Geller’s crazy quotes to her face. She seemed surprised and dumbfounded…again.

I really love the Alyona Show! Wasn’t that host awesome? Why is Russia TV doing a better job at challenging the Geller’s of the world then our own oblivious and slow mainstream media?

There was a plethora, a million things that the host could have brought up, all in all she did a pretty good job. How silly does Pamela look with her hypothesis that Islam inspired Hitler. She did not leave that interview feeling good about herself.

Please take some time out and thank the host, Lauren Lyster for the great job that she did. She needs encouragement and positive feedback because the haters are going to be contacting her and spitting all sorts of vile.

Contact:

U.S. bureau

Phone: + 1 202 775 2305/06
Fax: + 1 202 775 2309
E-mail: RT-US@rttv.ru

Brad Burston is one of my favorite writers at Haaretz. His articles are always insightful, analytical and the commentary always makes you think.

In this article he writes about the ADL’s comments on the Cordoba Center as well as his opinions in general about boycotts.

A Special Place in Hell / Rethinking Israel boycotts, the ADL and a N.Y. mosque

by Brad Burston

In theory, the first purpose of boycotts is to cause people to think. To discover or reconsider an issue.

In theory, the first purpose of the Anti-Defamation League is the same. To cause people to discover, to rethink, to become aware of and combat bigotry, within themselves as well as in others.

This week a boycott campaign caused me to rethink boycotts against Israel. And a campaign by the Anti-Defamation League caused me to rethink the Anti-Defamation League.

The boycott was the decision by the Olympia, Washington Food Co-op, to remove Israeli products from the shelves of its two stores.

In a move as courageous as it was overdue, the co-op also featured and published online a pamphlet strongly opposing manifestations of anti-Semitism in leftist movements.

“Unfortunately,” the co-op’s blog observed, “anti-Semitic statements have abounded in a lot of the ‘support’ that the co-op has received in regard to the Israeli-products’ boycott.”

	A protester calling for a boycott of Israel.
	Photo by: AP

The Olympia Food Co-op has taken an important step in distinguishing between opposition to the policies of Israel on the one hand, and anti-Jewish hatred on the other.

It has also worked to identify and distance Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry from the wider discussion of boycotts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Which makes it all the more curious that when longtime ADL National Director Abraham Foxman chose to publicly oppose the construction of a mosque and Muslim cultural center near the Ground Zero site, his rationale was troubling, to say the least:

“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” Foxman, himself a survivor, told The New York Times.

“Referring to the loved ones of Sept. 11 victims, he said, ‘Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.’”

There is something at once refreshing and destructive about Foxman’s words. Refreshing, in the sense that this sounds like unfiltered honesty. Destructive, in the sense that this is precisely the rationale under which many on the left have justified or excused non-progressive, at times overtly bigoted, statements and actions by militant Palestinians.

It is high time to strike bigotry of all forms – by both sides – from the debate over the Mideast conflict.

It is time, as well, for the Jewish community as a whole to relate differently to those in their midst who have a serious difference of opinion with Israel.

In this regard, it is time for the Jewish community to engage those who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, rather than effectively excommunicating them.

Perhaps what is most profoundly needed is for those who care about the Mideast equation to genuinely say what they think, and to abandon the time-honored codes in which each side attacks the other.

Allow me to begin.

I fully recognize as valid the opinions of those who oppose the idea of a specifically Jewish state. I would only ask that they be honest and open about it.

If you think a Jewish state is a bad idea, an institution that should be disbanded, I believe that it is the honest thing – honest to yourself, before all else – to come out and say so.

As a supporter of the idea of a truly democratic Jewish state alongside an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, what I cannot accept is the idea that formally Muslim states are acceptable, where a Jewish state is not.

In the past I have been vociferous in opposing boycotts. I now realize that it was not the boycott per se that cause me rage, but the tolerance for a double standard that said “While others – including our own United States – commit war crimes, engage in oppression, and have a long history of subjugating, disenfranchising and dehumanizing minorities, Israel will be our sole target.”

Something else angered me as well – not the fact that some of the people who advocated boycotting Israel were actually against the idea of having a state of Israel, but the fact that for tactical reasons, they refused to come out and say so.

In general, I oppose boycotts as a tactic, first because I oppose collective punishment of all kinds, whether practiced by Israel against Gazans, or by progressives against Israelis as a whole. I also believe that boycotts against Israel tend to be self-defeating.

Having said that, I recognize that nearly everyone tends to boycott those they do not care for, while making efforts to support those whom they do. Moreover, some of those who most strongly oppose the BDS movement continually launch boycotts of their own.

I want to thank the Olympia Food Co-op Israel boycott. Something extremely valuable is happening there. Something truly radical. An awareness that people who are truly in favor of social justice must take a stand against bigotry, no matter the target.

The mayor of New York has set an example in this regard, saying of the mosque and its critics, “What is great about America, and particularly New York, is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us?”

It’s a lesson that Abraham Foxman needs to relearn.

It seems as though it has been a slow descent into inconsistency and betrayal of values for the ADL. An excellent and poignant article from Hollywood director Kamran Pasha.

The ADL Defames its Jewish Heritage

by Kamran Pasha

People often ask me what it is like being one of the first Muslims to succeed in Hollywood. There is always a hint of surprise in their tone, as if they never expected to meet a Muslim who has made strides in the entertainment industry. Because the real question they are asking is a more uncomfortable one: “How have you managed to succeed in a town filled with Jews?”

My response is one that usually takes them aback. I tell them that the only people who have helped me to succeed in Hollywood are Jews. It was Jewish studio executives who gave me my first writing breaks, and Jewish writers, directors and producers have served as my mentors and allies over the past decade. Without the help of Jews, this Muslim would still be writing scripts in a café somewhere, desperately hoping to find a way to break into Hollywood.

Others are surprised when I say that, but I am not. I grew up in Borough Park, a primarily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, and most of my close friends over the course of my life have been Jews. Despite our often passionate disagreements about Middle Eastern politics, my Jewish friends and I always find common ground in our shared experience of being a religious minority in a predominantly Christian country.

Both American Jews and American Muslims know what it is like to feel out of place, to long for inclusion in a mainstream society that is often filled with ignorance and hate for our faiths. We know what it is like going to elementary school and being reviled by our classmates for not believing that Jesus is the Son of God. We know what it is like being mocked for having different customs at home, for celebrating holidays that our Christian neighbors have never heard of (and often can’t pronounce). We know what it is like to be preached to every day by neighbors trying to convert us and “save our souls.” We know what it is like to be told that our religion is inferior to Christianity by people who do not understand even the most basic tenets of our faiths (as well as their own).

Despite the real political differences that exist over Middle East policy between members of our communities, we have a common bond of being outsiders, of being the misunderstood “other” in a Christian world. And that common bond has always allowed me to transcend political differences with my Jewish friends and meet them on the field of shared loneliness that is the lot of those who are different.

And that is why it breaks my heart to watch a respected Jewish organization like the Anti-Defamation League fall into the abyss of anti-Muslim bigotry over the past several years. Many Americans, including many Jews, have expressed shock at the ADL’s recent announcement that it sides with bigots and fear-mongers who oppose the building of the Cordoba House Islamic center in southern Manhattan.

Regrettably, I am not surprised. The ADL, which was founded in 1913 as a powerful voice against religious discrimination in America, has over the past decade become increasingly xenophobic toward the Muslim community, which its leaders seem to view as a threat to Jews due to its lack of support for Israel. As a Christian friend who works in the Obama Administration lamented to me recently, the ADL has in essence become the “Pro-Defamation League” when it comes to Islam and Muslims.

The recent comments by Abraham Foxman, National Director of the ADL, against the proposed Muslim community center in New York are the latest in a long line of incidents where members of the ADL have promoted bigotry and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims. In 1993, the ADL illegally spied on American citizens who had spoken out in sympathy with Palestinians, generating a watch list of 10,000 names of private citizens and over 600 groups, and then selling the list to South African intelligence agents.

The ADL was sued for violating privacy rights and settled out of court. But the organization did not learn its lesson. Through the past decade, it has regularly organized smear campaigns around Muslim leaders and conferences, falsely imputing terrorist sympathies to some of the most moderate and respected leaders of the community.

In one of its ugliest campaigns, the ADL protested the right of Muslim college students at UC Irvine to wear graduation stoles that carried the Shahada, the basic testimony of Islamic faith: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his Messenger.” The ADL claimed that the Muslim students were supporting terrorist groups like Hamas by wearing a common symbol of their religion. As a Muslim, I was left absolutely stunned at the stupidity of this argument. It was the equivalent of trying to bar Christian students from wearing crosses because the cross is a symbol that has been used by Christian extremists like the Crusaders and the Ku Klux Klan! The ADL was forced to apologize and retract its statements that the Shahada was “an expression of hate.”

To be fair, the ADL has in a few instances spoken up in defense of Muslim civil rights, notably when the topic of Israel is not involved. The ADL publicly denounced the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia and criticized the Swiss government for amending the constitution in 2009 to prevent the building of mosque minarets.

But the preponderance of its actions over the past decade have made it clear that when Muslim grievances against Israel are raised, the ADL will firmly side with its co-religionists rather than adhere to its underlying mission of standing for justice and equality for all humanity. On some level, perhaps that is understandable, if not excusable. But what is particularly shocking about the recent statements against the Cordoba House is that the ADL appears to have moved from a knee-jerk defense of Israel to an aggressive stance attacking American Muslims even when there is no criticism of Israel involved.

I have written at length on the Huffington Post about the founders of the Cordoba House and how they represent progressive Islam and embrace people of all religions, including Jews. I know Daisy Khan personally and she is a gracious and gentle woman who espouses love and wisdom, not hate. The writings of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf continue to inspire me and countless mainstream Muslims to improve our communities and defeat the extremists that threaten to corrupt Islam from within.

The opponents of the Islamic Center have gone out of their way to vilify and defame these honorable people, who are leaders of the moderate Islam that the media is always claiming doesn’t exist. Muslim leaders like Daisy Khan and Imam Abdul Rauf have endured with great dignity the double-pronged attack from their enemies. First, the media spreads the lie that Muslim leaders like them do not speak out against terrorism. And when they do speak out, they are either ignored or lumped in with the very extremists they are fighting. The Cordoba House is exactly the voice of moderate Islam that needs to be highlighted at a time when Muslim extremists and anti-Muslim bigots both want Islam, a spiritual path of great beauty, to be seen as a religion of hate and death.

But what is particularly painful for me as a Muslim is to watch how a group like the ADL, born out of the horrible experience of anti-Semitism and bigotry in America, can so easily turn its back on its heritage in order to join forces with the voices of hate and division. If any community knows what it is like to be branded with false stereotypes, to have the innocent condemned as guilty, it is the long-suffering Jewish people. To have its leaders now embrace the mindless, drunken crowd in its march of hate against a fellow religious minority’s right of worship, it is beyond obscene. And it is a fundamental rejection of everything that Judaism stands for.

In my latest novel, Shadow of the Swords, I delve deeply into the character of Maimonides, the great Jewish rabbi, who was friend and advisor to the Muslim sultan Saladin during the Crusades. In examining the experience of Maimonides, a Jew living as a minority among Muslims, I sought to demonstrate the ancient sympathy and understanding that Jews and Muslims had for each other at a time when both were being targeted by Christian persecutors. And I sought to share with my readers that the tenets of Judaism have always stood for social justice, mercy and wisdom, and that this ethical commitment served as a link of common understanding between Judaism and Islam at a time when Christianity stood for ignorance, murder and barbarism.

People who have read my book have expressed wonder at how two communities that were once intimate friends have become so estranged in the past century. The reasons for these modern divisions are long and complex, and are mainly linked to the trauma of Western colonization of the Muslim world, and the suffering of the Palestinians when Israel was created as the byproduct of that colonial history. Despite efforts by some Christians and Jews (as well as extremists among Muslims) to portray the current tensions between these communities as rooted in theological and cultural foundations, the reality is that Jews and Muslims historically got along much better than either group did with European Christians. When the Spanish Inquisition expelled Jews from Spain, where they had thrived under Muslim rule for 800 years, Spanish Jews found refuge in the Muslim Ottoman Empire and rose to positions of great economic and political power.

What the current leadership of the ADL does not understand is that there is no ancient enmity between Jews and Muslims. If many Muslims have problems with Israel today, that arises from real grievances about the treatment of Palestinians, not inherent hatred for Judaism in Islamic culture. What the ADL appears to fear is that as Muslims become part of the American fabric of life, that their critiques of Israel will lead one day to United States abandoning its long-term ally. This fear is, frankly, insane.

There is a place for dialogue, debate and disagreement about Middle Eastern politics among American citizens, and that discussion will not threaten Israel’s existence. As President Obama made abundantly clear in his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo last year, the bond between the United States and Israel is “unbreakable.” So Abraham Foxman should relax and take a breath. Muslim empowerment in the United States will not lead to a second Holocaust. Muslims praying at a mosque in New York City will not lead to death camps and mass extermination of the Jewish community.

Muslim voices joining the public forum will not add to anti-Semitism in America. But if the Jewish community is seen as willing to join in discrimination against innocent Americans to promote its own agenda – that perception will fulfill every anti-Semite’s ugly and false perception of the Jewish community as a self-serving and hypocritical group that only cares about its own pain and not the pain of others.

That ugly vision is not the Judaism I studied in college, the Judaism of Maimonides and Martin Buber, nor does it reflect the Judaism that I have experienced in my relationships with Jews all my life. But it appears to be the cheap and unworthy vision of the ADL leadership, and as such dishonors the Jewish legacy to this world.

The Judaism that I admire, that I write about in my novel, is the true Judaism of love for mankind, of humility before God, of service and compassion. It is the Judaism that stands for the rights of the weak and the oppressed against the arrogance of those in power. It is the Judaism of Moses standing in defiance of the Pharaoh on behalf of a group of powerless slaves.

It is the Judaism of Rabbi Hillel, one of the greatest religious visionaries of all time. Decades before Jesus Christ proclaimed the Golden Rule, Rabbi Hillel is famed for his response to a questioner who wanted to know the essence of Judaism, of the Torah, in the time it took him to stand on one foot. Hillel responded that the whole of the Torah could be summarized in one sentence.

“Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you.”

To Mr. Foxman and the rest of the ADL leadership, I ask if in your hearts you would want people to accuse innocent Jews of being enemies of the state? Would you want Jews to accept vilification of their entire religion if a handful of Jews ever did something wrong? Would you want Jews to tacitly accept the lies that bigots had projected on to them? And finally, would you want Jews to be forced to shut down their synagogues because of the misguided passions of a mob?

Would you want this done to Jews?

If the answer is no, then I ask as your Muslim brother that you follow the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel and the sages of Judaism.

Do not do the same hateful thing to my people.

Newt Gingrich Joins Muslim-Baiting Movement

by Walid Zafar

Early this week, disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich warned that “a commitment to religious freedom and God-given rights is being replaced by a secular oppression…”  Just hours after those words appeared on Human Events, Gingrich issued a statement forcefully opposing the construction of a community center and mosque in downtown Manhattan, two blocks from Ground Zero.

Gingrich’s affinity for religious freedom and his belief in God-given rights it would seem, doesn’t extend to Americans who are Muslim.  Such outright bigotry and blatant hypocrisy from Gingrich, an avid historian and former college professor, is even more repulsive when you consider his reasoning.

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York,” he writes, “so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”  Gingrich, who has been railing against the so-called secular socialist machine for trying to take religion out of the public square, and who, like most conservatives, decries the influence of foreign law, wants the U.S. to apply the same standards on Muslims that Saudi Arabia applies to those who are not Muslim.

That’s rich.

As the Washington Monthly‘s Steve Benen, after noting that conservatives continually justify despicable acts of torture on the premise that other nations and non-state actors employ such tactics, points out, “We’re not supposed to lower ourselves to the levels of those we find offensive.”

Gingrich’s clarion call continues: “Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for ‘religious toleration’ are arrogantly dishonest.”  What makes them Islamists, apologists or even dishonest? Gingrich doesn’t say but if you ask him, he’ll likely tell you about the Katusha rockets that Hamas has fired into Sderot or how Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.  Anything and everything to take the subject away from the “religious freedom and God-given rights” to which American Muslims are entitled.

To understand Gingrich’s paranoia that “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization,” one must delve deeply into the polarizing, overzealous and paranoid minds of professional Muslim-baiters and the politicians who depend on their support and cater to their illiberal demands.

Many of them are monomaniacs who have made it their life’s mission to defeat Islam and “expose” all Muslims as radical Islamofascists.  If one asks them for evidence to support their claim that no Muslim can be trusted, they will likely mention a purported plot by Muslim Brotherhood operatives to destroy America from within.  The Council on American Islamic Relations and their intern/spies are routinely placed at the epicenter of the evil conspiracy.

Among these folks, any and all Muslims who “refudiate” such insane theories — who denounce violence and terror, profess their loyalty to the American system, take part in the democratic process and who have assimilated into the American landscape — are cleverly employing taqiyya, which, as any Muslim-baiter would tell you, is religiously sanctioned deception.  The same was said about Jews decades ago and anti-Semites once evoked the specter of “Judeo-Bolshevism” the way that Muslim-baiters and politicians like Gingrich today warn of “Islamofascism.” But none of those awful facts really matter, even to a historian such as Gingrich, because facts have long been accused of being part of the secular-socialist machine.

Gingrich’s stand against the mosque project and his attempt to smear its backers as “Islamists” and apologists earns him his anti-Jihad bona fides, and with that, the support of an increasingly mistrustful and hateful electorate which lives off of tying American Muslims to every heinous act that occurs anywhere that remotely sounds Islamic.  In this world, if the media fails to make the connection, they are clearly part of the soft-jihad.

Here is the key: The connection rarely has to be solid.  In fact, the more specious the connection, the more the Muslim-baiter will be seen by others as a patriot and an enterprising investigative reporter.  For instance, the New York Times‘ Robert Wright highlights one smear that has been contrived to defame the man leading the effort to bring the project to fruition.  The imam behind the project is not to be trusted because conservatives say that “[his] wife has an uncle who used to be ‘a leader’ of a mosque that now has a Web site that links to the Web site of an allegedly radical organization.”  If you can’t keep up with all of that nonsense, then you’re complacent about the Jihad.

Any and all statements against violence made by Muslims must always be placed in the right conservative context: scare quotes.  Gingrich does this masterfully.  That simple act in effect says that Muslims who preach peace are actually jihadists.

As Gingrich and his buddies believe, either you are with them or you are, through your dhimmitude, a proto-Jihadist.  No, you’re worse since you probably support a second genocide against Jews.  (Prominent Muslim-baiters have argued that Muslims instigated the Nazi holocaust!)  Now that you’ve learned all of these made up facts, you simply do not have an excuse to not fight! Wake up and oppose the “Ground Zero Mosque” the “Islamization of America” and prove to those who hate the freedom in America that those freedoms, as Newt argues, don’t actually apply to all Americans.

Cross-posted on PoliticalCorrection.org

An excellent article from Jay Bookman on the parallel between the controversy surrounding Shirley Sherrod and what is happening to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

In some ways, ‘Feisal Abdul Rauf’ is Arabic for ‘Shirley Sherrod’

By Jay Bookman

Feisal Abdul Rauf and Shirley Sherrod have a lot in common.

At first blush, that might seem a strange assertion. Abdul Rauf is a naturalized U.S. citizen and a Muslim imam in New York City; Sherrod is a black woman from the American South. But they have been both selected as targets by a conservative media machine that is so intent on creating useful villains that it pays little or no attention to concepts such as truth or accuracy. The goal is to create “Objects of Hate” that can then be used to inflame the American public.

Abdul Rauf, for example, describes himself as “both a Muslim and an American citizen, as proud of the important and fundamental principles that America stands for as I am the important and fundamental principles for which Islam stands.”

In fact, Abdul Rauf argues, the reason so many Muslims flee their native countries to come here is because the United States is actually more true to Islamic principles of “human equality, human liberty and social justice” than many so-called Islamic societies.

He proclaims himself a patriotic American, and has harshly condemned violent extremists who cite Islam as their inspiration. September 11, Abdul Rauf says, is “a day that will live in infamy,” noting that “no nation could suffer such an assault without responding in a very robust way.” In the wake of bombing attacks in Great Britian in 2005, he expressed “a sense of deep revulsion,” said that true Muslims “naturally condemn the brutal attacks in London in the most unequivocal terms,” and urged British Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement in identifying and capturing those involved.

Abdul Rauf has also worked tirelessly to promote better relations among the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths. Rabbi Rabbi David Rosen, who heads the American Jewish Committee’s international interreligious affairs department in Jerusalem, calls him “an important voice of moderation,” and Jewish Week has lauded him as “a key voice of reason among Muslim leaders here.”

In 2003, Abdul Rauf joined Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, along with members of the Israeli Knesset and Palestinian leaders, in an initiative to bring moderate Palestinians and Israelis together to try to find common ground.

In his 2004 book, “What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America,” Abdul Rauf writes that the future of Islam will depend on its acceptance of a form of democratic capitalism. Toward that end, he stresses the emergence of what he calls an “American Islam.” Catholic immigrants, he notes, came to this country and in time created a distinctive American Catholicism, which in turn influenced Catholicism as a whole. Jewish immigrants likewise created a distinctly American version of Judaism, which has also influenced the larger faith.

The creation of an American Islam, Abdul Rauf believes, can help modernize Islam globally and in the process ease the strains between his adopted country and his faith.

Abdul Rauf is, in other words, everything that critics of Islam claim they want to see. More importantly, his moderate, pro-American message has proved so appealing to fellow U.S. Muslims that his mosque has outgrown its origins in a lower Manhattan storefront and needs to expand. He and his congregation envision a 13-story complex on Park Street in lower Manhattan, modeled after the 92nd Street YMCA and the Jewish Community Center in New York. The facility would include a community center, auditorium, mosque, swimming pool and restaurants.

The local community board in lower Manhattan, which no doubt includes many who experienced September 11 firsthand, has voted 29-1 to approve the project’s construction, strong testimony to the faith they have in Abdul Rauf’s mission.

“I think they need to establish a place such as this for people of goodwill from mainline Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths so we can come together to talk,” said Father Kevin Madigan of St. Peter’s Catholic Church, located a block away from the proposed facility.

In some circles, however, Abdul Rauf’s proposed mosque has become better known as the “Ground Zero mosque.” (It is actually located two city blocks away from Ground Zero, with no view of the site.) Both Abdul Rauf and the proposed project have become the target of a vicious, concerted smear motivated in part by irrational if sincere fear, and in part by cynical opportunists who hope to profit by that fear.

The ad above, for example, was put together by the Republican National Trust PAC. The group supposedly tried to buy air time to put the ad on CBS and NBC but was rejected. (The Republican National Trust is a major player in the PAC world. In the 2008 cycle, it spent more than $8 million trying to beat Barack Obama, plus another $434,000 helping to elect Saxby Chambliss here in Georgia.)

Interestingly, there is no indication that RNTPAC tried to place the ad on Fox News, which makes sense for a couple of reasons. A rejection by Fox would have undercut the group’s effort to depict itself as a victim of liberal censorship. And besides, why pay for something that you’re going to get for free anyway?

palin’s+mosque+tweet+7-17-2010
Fox has played a major role in ginning up conservative opposition to the mosque. Sean Hannity has shown the ad on his Fox show, condemning Abdul Rauf as an “extremist” and a champion of “radical Islam.” Sarah Palin has gotten involved, using Twitter to beg “peaceful Muslims” to “refutiate” the mosque, as if to imply that Abdul Rauf must be a member of al Qaida.

Rick Lazio, the GOP candidate for governor in New York, has come out in opposition to the mosque, trying to use the issue to boost his campaign. That led the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association to rebuke Lazio, warning that “for any candidate for public office to politicize Ground Zero shows a lack of respect to the families, who will forever live with the terrible memory of that dark day…. This conduct forsakes the memory of all those who lost their lives on September 11th.”

On NPR, Sam Nunberg of the Center for Law and Justice has warned that approving the mosque “would be like removing the sunken ship in Pearl Harbor to erect a memorial to the Japanese kamikazes killed in the attack.” Pamela Geller, a prominent conservative blogger who appeared on CNN to debate the mosque, called Abdul Rauf a “stealth jihadist” and the mosque itself “an act of jihad.” Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, now retired but once the head of U.S. military intelligence in the Rumsfeld Pentagon, told a conference at Colorado Christian College that the mosque was part of “the incremental taking over of our nation.”

In each and every case cited above, opponents of the mosque have refused to allow a distinction to be made between Islamic extremists and Muslims of demonstrated good faith such as Abdul Rauf. Critics of the Islamic community complain repeatedly that they don’t hear enough from moderates, but it’s pretty clear from this example that they do not hear because they refuse to listen.

Karen Armstrong, one of the most respected religious scholars of her generation, wrote something that now seems all too prescient in her foreward to Abdul Rauf’s book.

“It is vital that we know who our enemies are, but it is equally important to know who they are not. Only a tiny proportion of Muslims take part in acts of terror and violence. If our media and politicians continue to denigrate Islam, accepting without question the stereotypical view that has prevailed in the West since the time of the Crusades, we will eventually alienate Muslims who have no quarrel with the West, who are either enjoying or longing for greater democracy, and who are horrified by the atrocities committed in the name of their faith.”

Finally, I’d like to close with a video of the “stealth jihadist” himself, appearing at a public hearing about the proposed mosque. Watch and listen, then compare Abdul Rauf’s message to the message of the video at the top of this post.

Ask yourself: Who is the purveyor of racial hate and fear, and who is the healer? Who is the extremist, and who is the moderate? Who is the danger to this country, and who is its friend?

Palin’s Bigoted Twitter Calls on Muslims to “Refudiate”

by Geoffrey Dunn

Echoing the bigoted and right-wing contortions of the National Republican Trust PAC and disgraced Tea Party leader Mark Williams, Sarah Palin has sent the world of Twitter on fire this afternoon, with a series of incendiary Tweets about the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center

She pulled down one of them after concocting the word “refudiate” and then used the word “refute” incorrectly.

Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate

Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.

She then pulled the second attempt down and took a third swipe at it.

Peace-seeking Muslims pls understand. Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing

“Peaceful,” “peace-seeking”? Why the qualifier? How about “peaceful Christians“? And as if Sarah Palin knows anything about “healing.” Perhaps that’s the biggest joke of all.

Well, not quite. The Thrilla from Wasilla then compared herself to none other than the Immortal Bard himself (and with indirect reference to her primary obsession, Barack Obama).

‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!’

As Billy Boy so wisely noted in The Tempest:

You cram these words into mine ears against
The stomach of my sense.

Reza Aslan, an Islamic scholar and an accomplished writer, blogger, and emerging popular culture figure was on CNN opposite Zuhdi Jasser, a contributor to Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum and a contributing writer for the virulently anti-Islam Family Security Matters.

Republican Michael Faulkner gets tongue tied here trying to support his view on why the Mosque near Ground Zero shouldn’t be built. I also think Scott Stringer did an excellent job.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

David Wood Rambles

In my last article I debunked the lies and disinformation in the first half of David Wood’s anti-Muslim/anti-Mosque diatribe. Since then we have received a lot of comments and tips regarding David Wood’s background. Apparently David Wood is a Teaching Fellow at Fordham University where he is pursuing his PhD in Philosophy. I wonder if the administration at Fordham would consider Wood’s anti-Muslim activities as being in line with its Jesuit traditions and values? Maybe we should start a campaign to let them know?

Paul Williams, of the Muslim Debate Initiative has also stated that David Wood told him during a debate, in front of an audience of a hundred or more, that he attempted to murder his father and that he was sent to a mental institution for the attack which left his father permanently disabled,

About a year ago I moderated a debate at Westbourne Park Baptist Church (my old church here in London), between Wood and a Muslim. In front of an audience of probably one hundred people, mostly Christians, Wood told the audience of some of the more disturbing aspects of his past including his unspeakable attack on his own father with a hammer. Happily his father did not die (though Wood says he really wanted to kill him). His father is permanently disabled however. Wood spent time in a mental institution.

Yahya Snow, an Islamic apologist who has been following David Wood’s work also commented that Wood told him that, “his blog is not about evangelising to Muslims but about ‘warning’ non-Muslims about Islam.” This would explain why he and his group were the sole Christian Evangelical group arrested at the Dearborn Arab Festival, slamming on its face the argument that they were being “persecuted” for preaching Christ.

In fact, a few Evangelical Christians who witnessed the event wrote on David Wood’s blog (via. MDI),

Spiffy the Basset said…

‘This is a complete and total lie and David and Nabeel should be ashamed of themselves. Tonight, just as last night, there were dozens of Christians and former muslims at the festival witnessing to muslims. None of them had problems with people. None of the other several dozen “Christian preachers” were arrested. Lies, lies, and more lies.

The same happened last night. I saw Nabeel and David showboating and trying to cause a scene and know they were not only expecting to be arrested, but to some degree, trying to get arrested.

They care more about their hatred for islam than their love for muslims. I have evangelized in many continents and in places far more hostile than the dearborn festival, but can say with experience that they did not at all suffer for the cross, they suffered for their egos.’

June 19, 2010 10:52 PM

All of this makes me wonder if I should waste time even debunking the rest of the anti-Mosque video. David Wood is an obvious huckster with real problems. Maybe a longer stay at the mental institution was in order?

Anyhow, someone has to drudge through the swamp and refute the lies, lies, lies.

Of Mosques and Men

Picking up from the 3:00 mark David says,

This is when I first realized that there were two forces at work within Western Muslims like Nabeel. On the one hand he was born and raised in the United States, his father was in the US military, he loved America, but on the other hand, even though he came from the most peaceful sect of Islam there was something in Nabeel that allowed him to smile when there were terrorist attacks. Now those of you who know personally, who know Muslims close enough to where they can tell you what they really think, you know that this is really quite common, good citizens in public, not so good citizens in private.

What words can describe the above verbal barf and pseudo-psychological sewage spewed by Wood? He uses Nabeel, a Christian apologist and leader in Wood’s organization, (who seems not to mind being used as his ex-Muslim-mascot-that-evidences-the innate-evil-of Muslims-example) to drive the point home that even if you are a “peaceful Muslim,” there is something hidden, something stealth about you.

If this doesn’t sound eerily similar to the anti-Semitic racism and sinister conspiracies about Jews that were propagated in the past then you need to read up on history. Wood’s entire monotone delivery has the timbre of a sleazy used car salesman combined with a soothsaying Nazi propagandist trying hard to sound like Captain Kirk.

The hypocrisy is also glaring, someone needs to tell David Wood that if he really wants to talk about “good citizens in public, not so good citizens in private” he should look towards his Christian brethren; to the likes of Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, not to mention those family value politicians who love to trumpet their Christian bona fides while fondling male pages at the same time. I think there was once a Jewish carpenter who summed it up best, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

Wood is not content to end the disinformation and pseudo-psychological babble about “dual-Muslim natures,”

Interestingly, this duel Muslim nature is advocated in the Quran. If you turn to Surah 3, verse 28, you will see that the Quran says, “Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security.” So if you’re a Muslim you are not supposed to be friends with unbelievers unless to protect yourself.

What this means is that if Muslims feel threatened by a stronger advisory, say the United States of America, they can pretend to be friendly in order to protect themselves, in order to guard themselves against these unbelievers. The greatest Islamic  commentator of all time, Ibn Kathir comments on Surah 3:28, and he says, that when Muslims are outnumbered by a stronger advisory, “…believers are allowed to show friendship outwardly but never inwardly.”

He goes on to quote Muhammad’s companion, Abu Darda who said “we smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.”

Wood again propagates half-truths and lies to further mislead his audience into viewing Muslims as a sinister bunch not to be trusted even when they smile. He throws out context, history, theology and the polyvalent interpretations within Islamic canon. All with the aim of portraying Muslims as a deceiving group of untrustworthy criminals who telepathically communicate taqqiyah with each other like mindless ants as part of a plot to destroy the West.

THE FACTS:

The Literalist Ultra-Conservative interpretation:

The truth is there is a minority of Literalist ultra-Conservative Muslims who hold the opinion that Muslims should not be intimate friends with non-Muslims (I would venture to say 1% or less), because they fear Muslims will be put into a position of harm (physically and spiritually), will lose their religion, and take on the ways and mores of other religions.

However, even here there is a necessary caveat that must be made, this literalist minority while espousing the belief that one should not be close intimate friends with non-Muslims also states that one should deal justly and kindly with them, they say this based on the verse,

Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought not against you on account of religion nor drove you out of your homes. Verily, Allah loves those who deal with equity. (60:8)

As for the latter part of the verse, the interpretation and selective quotation from Ibn Kathir, (presumptuously labeled the “greatest Islamic commenter ever” by Wood when no such position or authority exists) does not support Wood’s theory. In fact, it is an intellectually deceptive attempt that leaves out the true import of the verse and is even a clumsy handling of the Ultra-Conservative interpretation.

The ellipses that Wood inserted is the key to understanding the context. No where does Ibn Kathir mention “when Muslim are outnumbered by a stronger advisory,” (David Wood made that up whole-cloth). What he actually writes is, ‘do not take disbelievers as friends in preference to Muslims,’ and the portion in question, unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, is rendered as unless you indeed fear a danger from them. Ibn Kathir then interprets it as “meaning, except those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly.”

So clearly we see that the ellipses purposely inserted by Wood hides the true interpretation given by Ibn Kathir. Ibn Kathir was essentially saying that Muslims who fear for their lives may be friendly in order to guard themselves from harm.

Think for example of the Spanish Inquisition, that was a time and a place where Muslims (and Jews) might have put the above into practice. Fearing for your own and your families safety is cause enough to show a “dual nature.” In fact, many Jews and Muslims under intense persecution proclaimed outwardly to have converted to Catholicism, while inwardly they remained Muslims and Jews, these crypto-Muslims (Moriscos) and crypto-Jews (Marranos) were known as Conversos.

Can David Wood honestly find fault with a verse that gives a dispensation to Muslims to save their lives and protect their religion by hiding it or acquiescing to their enemy in the face of danger or persecution?

David Wood bastardizes the verse by attributing an interpretation to Muslims that does not exist. He does this by asserting half-truthfully the minority ultra-conservative literalist interpretation.

The lie comes in the second half of the verse, where he attempts to say that when Muslims are “outnumbered,” they can be friendly with non-Muslims but inwardly they must hate them until a time comes when they have the numbers to take over, a position that the ultra-conservatives don’t advance. We have demonstrated that the literalist ultra-conservatives are in fact referring to a situation of danger that Muslims may find themselves in and not a tactic of domination.

The Context:

When we analyze this verse and its surrounding verses in context we learn that the verse was directed at the “hypocrites” (Munafiqoon), a group who entered Islam in outward appearance only in an attempt to destroy it. They had allied themselves with the sworn enemies of Islam, the pagan Meccans and their allies.

The Prophet Muhammad was speaking to his community in Medina and prophesied to them that one day they would hold sovereignty over the lands of Persia and Byzantium. The hypocrites responded by saying, “How preposterous!”

In response to this, verses 3:26-29 were revealed,the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, written about 100 years after Ibn Kathir’s exegesis explains,

When the Prophet (s) promised his community sovereignty over the lands of Persia and Byzantium, the hypocrites said, ‘How preposterous!’, and so the following was revealed, “Say, ‘O Allah , Owner of Sovereignty, You give sovereignty to whom You will and You take sovereignty away from whom You will. You honor whom You will and You humble whom You will. In Your hand is [all] good. Indeed, You are over all things competent.’” (3:26)

“You cause the night to enter the day, and You cause the day to enter the night; and You bring the living out of the dead, and You bring the dead out of the living. And You give provision to whom You will without account.” (3:27)

…

The hypocrites in particular and humanity in general is then told,

Say, “Whether you conceal what is in your breasts or reveal it, Allah knows it. And He knows that which is in the heavens and that which is on the earth. And Allah is over all things competent. (3:29)

Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains,

Say, to them: ‘Whether you hide what is in your breasts, in your hearts, of patronage to them, or disclose it, manifest it, God knows it and, He, knows what is in the heavens and what is in the earth; and God is Able to do all things, and this includes punishing those who patronise them.

The above is indicative of how the majority of Muslims explain these verses; revelation in a context of war and betrayal. Particularly in response to the hypocrites who claimed to be Muslims but concealed their alliance and patronage with enemies who wanted to annihilate the nascent Muslim community.

We also see that the dispensation referred to in verse 3:28 pertains to particular situations Muslims might find themselves in when they are in danger.

This becomes even more evident when we realize that at the time of the revelation of this verse there were Muslims who lived in pagan Mecca who concealed their religion and had to show patronage to the enemies of the Muslims due to fear of death or torture. Referring to them the Quran says, ‘you may outwardly show that you are allied with those who are at war with Muslims and may harm you for being Muslim, but inwardly you should feel differently.’

To drive the point home we look at one more verse that puts this subject into context,

For Allah loves those who are just. Allah only forbids you with regard to those who fight you for your faith, and drive you out of your homes and support others in driving you out, from turning to them for protection (or taking them as wali). Those who seek their protection they are indeed wrong- doers. (60:9)

Also, logically we have to question, if Islam doesn’t allow Muslims to befriend non-Muslims, why would it allow Muslim men to marry non-Muslims? Marriage is even more intimate than friendship, it is based on love and friendship.

Abu Darda’s statement: “We smile in the face of some…”:

David Wood then goes on to quote Muhammad’s companion, Abu Darda who said, “we smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.”

The above quote from Abu Darda, which Wood employs as a means to bash us into the belief that Muslims have a “dual nature” actually comes back to bite him in the butt.

Abu Darda’s (hadith) statement can be found in Saheeh Bukhari, under the chapter heading, Al-Mudaaraah ma3 An’Naas which means “Politeness/Gentleness with the People.” So rather than being something Taqqiyah or Jihad related, this statement actually pertains to polite manners and etiquette!

In explaining the statement, Imam Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani, writer of one of the seminal explanations of Saheeh Bukhari wrote,

Ibn Battaal  said: Politeness is part of the attitude of the believers, and it is lowering the wing of humility to people, speaking gently, and not speaking harshly to them, which are among the best means of creating harmony.

Ibn Muflih, an eminent 14th century scholar of the Hanbali school wrote concerning Abu Darda’s statement,

This attitude of Abu Darda does not mean approving of something haram (prohibited); rather it is politeness that may achieve some purpose.

Ibn Abd’ al-Barr, an eminent scholar and jurist who predates Ibn Kathir also quoted Abu Darda’s statement with regard to the virtues of good manners.

Abu Darda’s statement was intended to be a spiritual teaching, meant (in Islamic theological semantics) as a “heart softener” toward those who have “hard hearts.” The context given is that some individuals have brash and very rude manners, and the best way to deal with them, even though you dislike them in your heart is through politeness and good manners, because that may eventually lead to the rude individual reforming him or herself. It is the actualization of the Quranic verse, “Repel evil with that which is better,” i.e. respond to evil with goodness.

“Don’t trust those evil Mooslims, please!”:

Wood continues,

What’s my point you ask? Well, the Muslims who want to construct a massive mosque here, assure us that they are doing it to honor the victims of 9/11 and not to construct a symbol of Islamic supremacy. They assure us that they are going to build a beacon of understanding and harmony. A place where people of all faiths to gather and condemn extremism.

[Pause]

Do you believe that?

If so, I would like to sell you a bottle of Wood’s magical cure all, from the miracle springs of Poland for the low low price $870.

This mocking and very ineffectual attempt at a joke falls dead on delivery. In this instance David Wood may not be selling “magic” holy water like many of his televangelist preacher/prophet brethren are want to do, but he is selling something else — hate.

Wood is pitching the idea that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a supporter of American intervention in Afghanistan and a Sufi is in cahoots with Bin Laden. You see, David Wood tells us, Muslims are all the same at the end of the day, when they speak of harmony and peace, and when they condemn terrorism they are not to be trusted.

What makes this especially ironic is that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf knew people in the Twin Towers! Many of his congregants worked there, but in Wood’s world those facts just don’t matter because the “Muslim other” cannot be allowed to share in the tragedy and suffering of 9/11, that would humanize them, that you would make them Americans.

Of Churches and Men?:

Wood then attempts to prove his point,

My friends, what did Muslims do when they conquered Mecca? They went to the Ka’ba, the center of pagan worship and they claimed it for Islam, what did Muslims do when they took Jerusalem, where did they build their mosque, they built it on the Temple Mount, when Muslims conquered Damascus, where did they build their mosque? They demolished the Church of St. John the Baptist and replaced it with a mosque. Why?

Cordoba Mosque with the Cathedral in the Middle

While Muslims have had their share of taking over Churches or other places of worship and converting them into Mosques (Hagia Sophia), in that age and time that was the practice of most religions, including Christianity. The Spanish did it when they invaded Cordoba and transformed the famous Cordoba Mosque into a Catholic Church by plopping a Cathedral right in the middle of the Mosque.

As far as the capturing of Mecca goes, then the uniqueness of the circumstances and context must be elaborated. According to Arab tradition, the founder of the Ka’ba was Prophet Abraham who dedicated it to the One God. The Muslims, whether we view them as correct or not, believed essentially that they were only restoring the Ka’ba for its original purpose as the House of the One God, similar to the Temple created by Solomon in Jerusalem. They did not believe that by abolishing the practice of idolatry at the Ka’ba that they were supplanting the old and original religion with a new one.

As for Jerusalem, we must note that when Muslims gained sovereignty over the city, the Temple Mount was being used as a trash dump by the Christians. There was no Jewish Temple and it is highly likely there was no Church. In fact, it was only under Muslim rule that Jews were allowed to come back to Jerusalem to worship, having previously been banned by the Byzantine Christians.

As for the Church of St. John the Baptist or what is known as the Umayyad Mosque today, then we are about to give David Wood a history lesson. Damascus is one of the, if not the, oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The site of the Umayyad Mosque has an interesting and unique history of conquerors building religious structures devoted to their specific God(s) and cults,

It was 1000 BC at the latest when the Arameans built a temple here for Hadad, the god of storms and lightening. A basalt orthostat dating from this period, depicting a sphinx, has been discovered in the northeast corner of the mosque.

In the early first century AD, the Romans arrived and built a massive temple to Jupiter over the Aramean temple. The Roman temple stood upon a rectangular platform (temenos) that measured about 385 meters by 305 meters, with square towers at each corner. Parts of the outer walls of the temenos still survive, but virtually nothing remains of the temple itself.

In the late fourth century, the temple area became a Christian sacred site. The Temple of Jupiter was destroyed and a church dedicated to John the Baptist was built in its place. The church was (and is) believed to enshrine the head of the Baptist, and the site became an important pilgrimage destination in the Byzantine era.

Initially, the Muslim conquest of Damascus in 636 did not affect the church, as the building was shared by Muslim and Christian worshippers. It remained a church and continued to draw Christian pilgrims; the Muslims built a mud-brick structure against the southern wall where they could pray.

Under the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid, however, the church was demolished and the present mosque was built in its place between 706 and 715. An indemnity was paid to the Christians in compensation.

The Mosque still contains relics attributed to John the Baptist. It is a beacon of interfaith interaction and draws Christians (such as Pope John Paul II) and Manadeans. One notices also that the Church of St. John the Baptist itself was built after the destruction of a Roman Temple dedicated to Jupiter! Will David Wood say that act was a practice of Christian supremacy? Can we link that action with current projects by American Christian missionaries in Iraq and say that they are a sign of Christian supremacy?

In contrast to the Byzantines, the early Muslims who conquered Syria left the Christian Holy places untouched. If it was a practice of Muslims to convert the Holy places of non-Muslims into mosques to “show that they are in control,” surely the zealous companions of Muhammad would have immediately gone to the Church and made it into a mosque? However, it was 70 years later that the Mosque was built in its place, and quite out of pattern for conquerors, the Muslims actually paid an indemnity to the Christians as compensation for demolishing the Church.

The Conspiracy Theory Rears its Ugly Head:

Keep in mind, this was in the mind of Muslims all along, right after the September 11th attacks, Muslims were joking about filling the city with mosques and now they tell us that they are doing it to honor the victims of 9/11. Smiling in our faces while cursing us in their hearts. Come out of the cave America, it’s dark in there.

This brutally long and disgusting ode to disinformation, Islamophobia and bigotry finally comes to a close with one final outright and bold embrace of the conspiracy theory that has been the theme of this whole video: “keep in mind, this was in the mind of Muslims all along.”

Those crafty Muslims have been conspiring this whole time to take over our country and subjugate us to Islam! Somehow, in David Wood’s world the so called proposed Cultural Center and Mosque which he repeatedly and falsely refers to as “massive” was in the “mind of Muslims all along.” Bin Laden and his goons were working with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to build this Mosque. The plans announced by Cordoba Initiative that this is not a “massive mosque” but a center that will honor the victims (which by the way included 300 Muslims), contain a mosque, theater, gym, etc. cannot be believed because what Muslims say should never be trusted.

Why do I get the feeling that the only one who is truly smiling in our faces and cursing us in his heart is David Wood? A loon trying by any means possible to sow seeds of hate and suspicion. Such a person would benefit from the teaching of another famous Jew who was instructing his flock, “what­ever a man sows, this he will also reap.”

David Wood is a Christian apologist who attempts to save Muslim souls through his organization Acts 17 Apologetics and www.answeringmuslims.com. In the past Wood and his entourage, including Nabeel Qureshi, have targeted the Dearborn Arab Festival in Michigan for proselytism.

At the 2009 Arab Festival, David Wood made a controversial, and some claim one sided video that received over a million hits on YouTube which showed them getting kicked out of the festival. They claim that they were just engaged in free speech, whereas security at the festival stated that they were insulting and harassing festival goers.

Other Evangelical Christians criticized Wood and his group as being agitators,

“The Rev. Haytham Abi Haydar, a Christian evangelical convert from Islam with Arabic Alliance Church in Dearborn, said that a Christian group called Acts 17 Apologetics caused the problems at this year’s Arab festival.

They put cameras in their faces and were very antagonistic,” Abi Haydar said of the group that produced the controversial video that has drawn almost 1.4 million views on YouTube.

Just recently at the 2010 Dearborn Arab Festival, David Wood, Nabeel Qureshi and two others were arrested for disorderly conduct. Obviously intending to make a scene in an attempt at more YouTube success by portraying themselves as being persecuted.

Now David Wood, whose “love of  Muslims” seems to be akin to Pamela Geller’s (who he links to favorably a number of times) is joining arms with the anti-Muslim hate group SIOA in opposing the mosque and cultural center that is to be built a few blocks away from Ground Zero.

In the following video, filled with disinformation, falsehood and inaccuracies he expounds his reasons as to why he is against the mosque, and why he sees Muslims as a lurking evil attempting to take over the West. We expose it all in this series.

Of Mosques and Men

10 years later, two groups of Muslims, the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement are planning to build a Massive 13 story mosque right here behind me.

Right off the bat we see the disinformation at work, this isn’t a “13 story mosque,” (why would Muslims need 13 stories to pray in the middle of Manhattan?). The fact is this is a cultural center, that along side a space for a mosque will contain a theater, swimming pool, restaurant and other facilities with the expressed goals of promoting tolerance and mutual co-operation between people of different and varying backgrounds.

“Understandably, many people here in the West are concerned…”

WTF? Many people in the “West” are concerned? I highly doubt the masses of people in Europe or Canada really care about this particular Islamophobia-driven agitation, unless the “many people” he is referring to is the small hate group SIOE (Stop the Islamization of Europe and parent organization of SIOA) whose main campaigns revolve around opposing mosques and other anti-Muslim initiatives.

“…this isn’t an attempt to honor the victims of 9/11 instead, it may be an attempt to build a symbol of Islamic victory. Now, I have the same concern, but mine is slightly different, my concern is slightly different, it is based on a photograph I saw, while I was still in College.

While I was in College my best friend was a Muslim named Nabeel Qureshi. Nabeel showed me some photographs shortly after the September 11th attacks, and I found them quite surprising. Muslims were passing these photographs around and Nabeel thought they were absolutely hilarious. The first photograph was a picture of George W. Bush as a Muslim, and I have to admit that was actually pretty funny,

The second photograph wasn’t so funny, it was a photo shopped picture of the Statue of Liberty covered in a full veil.

Now, this one bothered me a little bit. The Statue of Liberty, the symbol of freedom and justice, covered by a full veil, a symbol of oppression and Shariah Law, now these two pictures actually worked their way around the internet and lots of people are familiar with them.

The third picture, is the one that disturbed me however, it was a photo shopped picture of New York City covered in mosques and minarets, in the bottom corner it said New York City 2006.

The idea was that the terrorist attacks had cleared the ground for the construction of new mosques.

David Wood makes some audacious claims that we are supposed to take as veritable truth upon his word. First, that the photographs he saw originated with Muslims. Second, that Muslims at his College were passing them around, (ostensibly in “celebration of 9/11″). Third, that a burka is a symbol of Shariah Law, and fourth, that the third picture was meant to convey the “idea that the terrorist attacks had cleared the ground for the construction of mosques.”

The truth is that all three of the photographs originate from a comedy website called “www.joe-ks.com,” (a fact conveniently hidden by David Wood in the video) which claims to be the “largest source of internet humor.” The site is definitely not Muslim or terrorist sympathetic, essentially it is a website that has jokes about everything, and a lot of the jokes lampoon terrorists and extremists, and some of them even lampoon whole countries such as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.

For example one of their posts is titled Afghan Humour:

Q: What do Kabul and Hiroshima have in common?
A: Nothing,…. yet.

Q: How do you play Taliban bingo?
A: B-52…F-16…B-1…

Q: What is the Taliban’s national bird?
A: Duck

Q: How is Bin Laden like Fred Flintstone?
A: Both may look out their windows and see Rubble.

Q: Why does the Afghanistan Navy have glass bottom boats?
A: So they can see their Air Force.

Q: What do Osama Bin Laden and General Custer have in common?
A: They both want to know where those Tomahawks are coming from.

Q: Why aren’t there any Wal-Marts in Afghanistan?
A. Because there’s a Target on every corner.

David Wood must have seen the original post on Joe-KS which would put the pictures above into their proper context instead of the deceptive context that he has created. The pictures weren’t created or disseminated by Muslims after 9/11 as a means of celebrating or “dealing with the tragedy through humor”, in fact the post that first contained the pictures was lampooning terrorists. The post published in October 2001 was titled, If the Taliban wins the War #1, #2, #3.

David Wood makes a claim that Muslims were passing these pictures around when the truth is they were created by and disseminated by non-Muslims who were making fun of terrorists and extremists. He doesn’t provide any evidence of Muslims passing these pictures out, instead we are supposed to take him at his word.

In reality it is a clever ploy that omits the fact that not only were Muslims also victims of 9/11 but all major American Muslim organizations condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms. However, he wants to caste Muslims in a dehumanized image: ‘they are not part of our suffering, in fact they are mocking our suffering and enjoy and support 9/11.’

His disingenuous claim that the third picture is meant by Muslims to convey the idea “that the terrorist attacks had cleared the ground for the construction of mosques” is a cynical attempt to link the humor piece deriding the Taliban to the current construction of the Cordoba Cultural Center.

He attempts to instill in the minds of his watchers the idea that this was the plan all along. In doing so he asserts the interesting, if off the wall conspiracy theory that Osama Bin Laden was somehow in cahoots with the founder of the Cordoba Initiative Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, (a Sufi Imam who has condemned Bin Laden and supported the War in Afghanistan).

You see, the plan all along to subvert and take over the West was that Bin Laden’s goons would fly planes into the Twin Towers, then ten years later Imam Abdul Rauf, (who has never spoken to or met Bin Laden) would telepathically (through secret Muslim Taqqiyah radar) communicate with Bin Laden to receive orders to stealthily build a gigantic 13 story Mosque a few blocks away from Ground Zero!

Stay tuned for part 2…