by Oliver Willis (Media Matters)

On today’s edition of Happening Now, Fox News obscured language in Islamophobic billboards created by conservative blogger Pam Geller’s American Israel Defense Initiative, deeming the language “so inflammatory we’re not going to show it to you.” While Fox seems to have finally drawn a line on Geller‘s bigotry, the network has promoted her for years.

The ads, currently posted in NYC subway stations, read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel/Defeat Jihad.” Fox blurred the word “savage” when showing the ad to viewers:

The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority initially refused to run the ads, on the grounds that it violated their policy against accepting advertising that demeans individuals or groups on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin. Geller’s group sued the MTA and in July a federal judge ordered the agency to run the ads, saying that the content was protected speech.

During the segment, Fox’s panelists agreed that they “hate” the message in the ads, while they avoided mentioning the obscured text. Despite Geller’s claims to the contrary in the accompanying video package, Fox described the billboards as “anti-Muslim” in their on-air chyron.

It seems odd that Fox would suddenly exhibit this sort of sensitivity.

The network has regularly featured anti-Islam commentary as a part of its regular programming and has often invited Geller as a guest despite her long and well-documented history of bigotry.

While she was campaigning against plans to build the Park51 Islamic community center in New York, Geller appeared on Fox several times to make bigoted comments about the center and Islam.

She described the center as a “mosque” that “basically embodies the very ideology that inspired those attacks on 9-11.” She also said ”I don’t know why” the developers of the center “want to stab Americans in the eye with that.” Geller also compared construction of the center to building a “Ku Klux Klan shrine” near a black church in Alabama.

Fox also gave Geller a platform to promote her book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and was given airtime to promote and fundraise for her campaign suggesting that honor killings and terrorism are representative of the Islamic faith. During one of the appearances, she claimed that President Obama “was giving seminars in sharia finance” a week “after he nationalized some banks.”

Fox networks have also hosted Geller to push bizarre conspiracy theories. Hours after Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year, Geller appeared on Eric Bolling’s now-defunct Fox Business program to analyze a poster-sized version of the document and decide whether it was “Photoshopped.” (Sample analysis from Geller: “This whole border is suspect.”)

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

Joe “nuke ‘em” Kaufman was on Fox and Friends saying Muslim Family Day was a terrorist sponsored event.

Fox & Friends’ latest vicious attack on Islam targets Muslim Family Day

July 20, 2010 1:48 pm ET by Justin Berrier

On what is rapidly becoming a regular feature, Fox & Friends this morning continued their incessant attack on Islam. Co-host Alisyn Camerota this morning hosted anti-Islam blogger and founder of the ironically named Americans Against Hate organization Joe Kaufman to attack Muslim Family Day at Six Flags Great Adventure. Camerota called it “insensitive” that they would host the event on September 12, “just hours after the anniversary of the September 11th attacks,” and added “but what’s even more controversial are the allegations that the Muslim group organizing the event could have been involved in financing the September 11 terror attacks.” Kaufman went further, employing what is becoming a familiar phrase among anti-Muslim bloggers: “The fact that they’re having it on September 12th, I believe they are actually spitting in the face of Americans.”

So what evidence did Kaufman give to back up Camerota’s claim that the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), who is sponsoring this event, “could have been involved in financing the September 11 terror attacks?” His first piece of evidence is a message from former ICNA President Dr. Muhammad Yunus making “a request calling on supporters to give ‘material support to groups associated with al-Qaida and the Taliban.” Here is what Yunus actually said, in an image hosted on Kaufman’s website: “Remember fellow Chechnyan Muslims in Eid Celebrations. President ICNA Dr. Muhammad Yunus has requested all Muslims around the world to include Chechnyan Muslims in their special Eid-ul-Fitr prayers. We must show our spiritual and material support for our brothers and sisters being oppressed by Russian forces.” For Kaufman, this justifies making the claim that “they may be themselves involved in financing 9/11.”

In case the name Muhammad Yunus sounds familiar, by the way, that would be Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, developer of the microcredit and microfinance concepts.

Kaufman went on to try to associate ICNA with Hamas through more tenuous ties. According to his website, in 2006 ICNA was listed as a donor to the Al-Khidmat Foundation, a Pakistani charitable organization that, according to their website, “is dedicated to the services of humanity all parts of the world without any discrimination of creed, religion and political associaltion [sic].”  They provide funding for clean water projects, diagnostic centers, orphan homes, and other community-based programs. According to Kaufman, while ICNA was one of their donors, the Al-Khidmat Foundation made a one-time donation to Hamas. Kaufman of course has no evidence that ICNA was involved in the gift, or that their money was part of the gift, or that they had anything to do whatsoever with the gift. Kaufman has been pushing this connection for years, and even the Anti-Defamation League isn’t buying it. An October 5, 2007 Dallas Daily News article reported on Kaufman’s allegations. At the time, he was protesting a different Muslim Family Day at Six Flags Over Texas. They reported (accessed via Nexis):

Mohammad Barney, president of the Dallas chapter of ICNA, said the accusations are troubling and untrue.

According to its Web site, ICNA supports Islamic culture and education while promoting justice and understanding.

“It’s disturbing that they are writing false statements like that,” said Mr. Barney. “People have the right to say whatever they want, but that doesn’t make it true.”

The Anti-Defamation League – a pro-Jewish group – seems to agree. ICNA is not listed as a threat on its Web site.

“We don’t involve ourselves in that kind of activity,” said Mark Briskman, regional director of the league, who said his group would not participate in the protest. “He made a lot of claims … without clear documentation of those claims. His statements are problematic.”

So other than making what appear to be baseless accusations about an organization sponsoring a family outing, why would Fox & Friends bring Kaufman on to attack Muslim Family Day? Well, what he lacks in expertise or insight, he makes up for in dedication. What Kaufman failed to mention is that, while Muslims may be “spitting in the faces of Americans” for holding the event on September 12, he attacked the event in 2007, when it was being held on October 14. Kaufman and Fox also ignored that the reason why the event is being held on September 12 this year –the same reason it was held on October 14 in 2007 –is that it falls on the first weekend after Ramadan ends.

In a FrontPage article titled “Fanatic Muslim Family Day” Kaufman wrote of the October 2007 event:

ICNA’s Muslim Family Day that will occur on October 14, 2007 is nothing but a charade, created to spread hatred, but veiled in a way to make the sponsoring organization look harmless. Six Flags will play host to this dangerous farce. If events, such as these, are allowed to continue, more and more Americans could become desensitized to those groups – fifth columns within our borders that wish to do us harm. It is up to those concerned to speak out against these travesties that threaten our way of life.

He may have been on to something. Looking back at previous events, I was able to find evidence of ICNA members spreading hatred. Witness the horror:

Jim Quinn is very fond of Neanderthals

In an insane rant, Jim Quinn, who we reported on earlier attempted to use the  emotive memory of the tragedy of September 11th by asking his audience to remain “angry.” Just remain “angry” and everything will be alright, don’t channel that anger into positive action but just remain angry. He then tells his listeners that we have “to stoop as low as the enemy because that is the only way to defeat them.” Pretty much asking us to disregard our laws and make it open season to profile, torture, deport American Muslims.

In the middle of this coarse and illogical, a-la-Glenn-Beck rant, Quinn also states his black and white vision of the world, and calls for Americans to “fight Islam on the battlefield…Kill Islam before it kills you.” He believes you can take tanks, jets and guns and defeat a set of religious beliefs. This is sort of like when Rick Santorum the former Pennsylvania Senator said “Muslims speak Islamic.” How many times do people like Jim Quinn and Santorum have to be reminded that Islam is not a person, Islam is a fourteen hundred year old religion with followers all over the globe including America.

Jim Quinn: “We have to kill Islam”

Jerome Corsi, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer

WorldNetDaily is for some strange reason one of the most popular right-wing sites and is frequently sited by Conservative pundits and their underlings. It has given space to a range of strange conspiracy theories and “discredited” ideas such as,

’9/11 was caused by the immorality of America, promoting the cause of radical Israeli settlers, KGB defector Alexo Litvinenko  was a terrorist, Anglo-Saxon identity and White only immigration, Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and not really an American (the Birther hullabaloo), and on and on.

Jerome Corsi, is a staff writer for WND and his inclusion on the site and its popularity is quite mind boggling. You might remember him for his infamous book Unfit for Command which attacked John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign.  It rode a wave of popularity and was credited as contributing to sabotaging (or better yet swift-boating) Kerry’s election.

His inclusion on the site begs the question are people this naive, ignorant or just plain hateful? Any veneer of credibility that WND and these other internet “news” sites such as the NRO are shattered when they hire and have as members and contributors people like Jerome Corsi. Media Matters, the news watch dog group has done a detailed examination of these sites and their propagation of morbid hate speech.

Amongst other things Corsi is on the record stating,

• Corsi on Islam: “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion”

• Corsi on Catholicism: “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press”

• Corsi on Muslims: “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters — it all goes together”

• Corsi on “John F*ing Commie Kerry”: “After he married TerRAHsa, didn’t John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm [sic]? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?”

• Corsi on Senator “FAT HOG” Clinton: “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?”

This is just a sampling of a wider oeuvre from Corsi that goes back decades and includes many strange ideas and theories, including that: John McCain was associating with groups linked to Al-Qaeda, 9/11 Truther’s, Birther’s, etc.

In an interesting aside, that queen of plagiarism accusations and the harbinger of the internecine Civil Blog Wars, Debbie Schlussel has accused Corsi of plagiarism. Is there any end to the destructiveness of the loons, motivated by different agendas, some that over lap (such as money) — they are always ready to throw one another under the bus.

Regarding the photo, one has to ask in all sincerity what is Robert Spencer, a self proclaimed “objective” scholar of Islam doing stretching those smiling muscles from ear to ear with Corsi and the odious Pam Geller who is holding up a picture of Geert Wilders? What is it about Spencer that he ends up supporting, being supported by and taking pictures with some of the most radical anti-Muslims and Islamophobes on the scene?

John Derbyshire

John Derbyshire, is a contributor to the National Review and the New English Review and has also penned several books, one fiction and the other two dealing with mathematics and politics. From all appearances Derbyshire seems like an intelligent man but that’s when you realize that individuals who appear intelligent on the surface can believe and say utterly stupid things.

Derbyshire has stated, “I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one.” He can add that he is an Islamophobe and a not so tolerant one to the list as well. In an NRO column he explains why he takes issue with the term Islamophobia which he discussed previously in a review of Robert Spencer‘s book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t. Amongst other denunciations of Islam and Muslims, Derbyshire writes that he would answer “yes” to the following question,

Would it be wise of Western countries, in the present state of affairs, to “fence off” Islam — that is, to deny entry to foreign Muslims, to expel — regretfully, politely, and humanely, but firmly — resident foreign Muslims, and to restrict the activities of Muslim citizens (preventing them, for example, from proselytizing in our jails, or working in defense establishments)?

Derbyshire’s mantra seems to be “If you build it, they won’t come.” By building this figurative wall and excluding Muslims he is sending a message that Muslims aren’t equal and we have to keep the barbarian hordes out, that the unfortunate fact that we have Muslims in this country means that we have to restrict their activities.

One wonders why The National Review which was founded by William Buckley to serve as a conduit for Conservative thought and dispel myths about Conservatism would traffic in such banalities? It is no surprise that someone such as Derbyshire, a self-admitted racist, would also be an Islamophobe but it is quite another thing for a publication which proclaims to be respectable and “the most widely read in America” to give him a platform.

In the end Derbyshire would do well to read Robert Frost‘s poem the Mending Wall where he wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” meaning there is something in our nature that is adverse to: barriers, fences, walls, artificial obstacles that are created to divide and isolate.

Neanderthal

Jim Quinn who hosts The War Room with Quinn and Rose on Clear Channel did a segment in which he was discussing the proposed Burqa ban in France. During the discussion he went into a rant about how he can’t understand why any Black person would want to convert to Islam. He chalks up Black conversions to Islam as nothing other than an attempt to “reject our culture.” Yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality Quinn? It is also condescending and a bit amusing to see Quinn who is a white male and has no knowledge of what it is like to be Black opine on the personal choices of Black people in America.

He goes on to call Islam a “neanderthal religion…this throw back to a thousand years ago.” So the fact that it’s an old religion makes it neanderthal? It seems like Quinn is the one using neanderthal logic here! What would that make Hinduism, Judaism and even Christianity which no doubt Quinn must think is “our culture,”  would they also be considered “neanderthal?”

Jim Pinkerton

It’s hard to take these people seriously anymore and part of me just wants to give up on them because it really seems like those people who believe Obama is a “Mooslim” will continue to believe in that fairy tale no matter what you tell them or how compelling the fact is that he isn’t a Muslim.  Do these claims ever get old?

We’ve written about this phenomenon before and as this video demonstrates there is no dearth of poor old white haired ladies trembling from the prospect that Obama is Muslim. It’s such an absurd prospect that it reminds one of those who think the world is 6,000 years old or assert that the earth is flat.

The most sinister aspect of the accusation is that it assumes being Muslim is a sin or an automatic “got-ya” card that disqualifies and delegitimizes an individual from public office or the public square. It is the height of prejudice, and the way it is nonchalantly bandied about, such as in the case of Jim Pinkerton underscores our point — no matter what you do or say people will continue to push this Islamophobic lie.

Eric Boehlert, in a great post titled Fox News and Obama as the Muslim Manchurian Candidate points out that Pinkerton, a regular contributor to Fox News is part of the mainstream of Conservatism and is still propagating this looniness,

That’s the premise Pinkerton is pushing on national television; that Obama kept his Muslim roots hidden during the campaign, but that signs of it are starting to show now, and when he’s safely elected he’ll finally feel comfortable practicing Islam out the open.

Behold the ‘mainstream’ conservative movement in America!

It is high time that people got over the idea that Obama is an evil “Mooslim” or that being a Muslim and holding public office is somehow helping our enemies take over our country or in the immortal words of Glenn Beck leading America to stand at some sort of “Boiling point.”

The truth is Obama isn’t a Muslim and it wouldn’t matter if he was one, these conspiracy theories hold less water than sightings of Big Foot and are closer in spirit to the discourse that Jews faced around the early 20th Century. Let the strange saga continue!

Michael Goldfarb

President Barack Obama is an iconic figure that inspires heated discussion on many topics as he is not easy to pigeonhole into one category or label. One topic that has and will continue to strangely garner absurd and heated discussion is the topic of Obama and his relation to Islam and Muslims.

In a recent manifestation of such absurdity, a blog post by Michael Goldfarb on The Weekly Standard surmised that Obama’s use of the Arabic word Shukrun, which means ‘thank you,’ somehow denoted that Obama knows more about Islam than he is letting on,

Obama has said before that he speaks “barely passable Spanish” and “a smattering of Swahili,” as well as some Bahasa from his youth in Indonesia. But Obama has at other times denied speaking a foreign language, saying in July of last year, “I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!“…One wonders if the president hasn’t been concealing some greater fluency with the language of the Koran.

The bigotry is on live display in the above quote and Eric Boehlert at Media Matters rightfully pointed out that “Goldfarb does his best to to raise doubts about whether or not Obama secretly speaks Arabic.” Goldfarb doesn’t pause to consider that not only is Arabic the “language of the Koran” but it is also the language of millions of Christians from various denominations, many of whom sing their prayers and recite their liturgy in Arabic — i.e. no one has a monopoly over a particular language.

Goldfarb also might have missed, probably because he doesn’t speak Arabic, that Obama mispronounced the Arabic word Hijab (veil) incorrectly as Hajib during his speech in Cairo.

So continues the theater of looniness in which Obama is considered a closet Muslim and because he used an Arabic word we should now be even more suspicious of him.

The truth is that this is just another manifestation of the unconscious hatred felt by many in the right-wing for all things Islam. The hope is to secure some cheap political points by somehow tainting all percieved enemies of the right-wing with associations to Islam and Muslims — the new boogey men of America. How long will the right-wing believe they can pull this on Americans? Only fellow Americans can answer that one.