An interesting article by Scott Atran on how the media over-emphasis on the Boston Bombings helps terrorists terrorize.

Helping Terrorists Terrorize: How Our Overwrought Reaction Fosters Radicalization

by Scott Atran

“Americans refuse to be terrorized,” declared President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings, “Ultimately, that’s what we’ll remember from this week.” Believe that, and I’ve got some great beach property in Arizona to sell you.

The Boston bombings have provoked the most intense display of law enforcement and media coverage since 9/11. Greater Boston was in full lockdown: “a ghost town,” “a city in terror,” “a war zone,” screamed the headlines. Public transit was stopped, a no-fly zone proclaimed, people told to stay indoors, schools and universities closed, and hundreds of FBI agents pulled from other pressing investigations to exclusively focus on the case — along with thousands upon thousands of other federal, state, and city agents equipped with heavy weapons and armored vehicles. It all came close to martial law, with all the tools of the security state mobilized to track down a pair of young immigrants with low-tech explosives and small arms who failed to reconcile their problems of identity and became amateur terrorists.

Not that the events weren’t shocking and brutal. But this, of course, is part of the overall U.S. reaction to terrorism since 9/11, where perhaps never in history have so few, armed with so few means, caused so much fear in so many. Indeed, as with the anarchists a century ago, it is precisely the outsized reaction that sponsors of terrorism have always counted on in order to terrorize.

There is nothing to compare to the grief of parents whose child has been murdered like 8-year-old Martin Richard, except perhaps for the collective grief of many parents, as for the 20 children killed at Newtown. Yet, despite the fact that the probability of a child, or anyone else in our country, being killed by a terrorist bomb is vastly smaller than being killed by an unregistered handgun — or even being slain by a lawnmower or an unregulated fertilizer plant – our politicians and the public seem likely to continue uncritically to support the extravagant measures associated with an irrational policy of “zero-tolerance” for terrorism, as opposed to much more-than-zero tolerance for nearly all other threats of violence. But given the estimated $300 million the Boston bombing has already cost, and the trillions that the national response to terrorism has cost in little more than a decade, the public deserves a more reasoned response. We can never, ever be absolutely safe, no matter how much treasure we spend or how many civil liberties we sacrifice.

Especially for young men, mortal combat with a “band of brothers” in the service of a great cause provides the ultimate adventure and maximum esteem in the eyes of many and, most dearly, in the hearts of their peers. For many disaffected souls in today’s world, jihad is a heroic cause that holds the promise that anyone from anywhere can make a mark against the most powerful country in the history of the world. But because would-be jihadis best thrive and act in mostly small, self-organizing groups within networks of family and friends — not in large movements or armies — their threat can only match their ambitions if fueled way beyond actual strength by publicity. Today, whereas most nations tend to avoid publicizing their more wanton killings — including civilian killings that might be labeled “state terrorism” (from ethnic cleansings to “collateral” deaths from drones) — publicity is the oxygen that fires modern terrorism.

It is not by arraying “every element of our national power” against would-be jihadis and those who inspire them that violent extremism will be stopped, as President Obama once declared. Although wide-ranging intelligence, good police work and security preparedness (including military and law enforcement defense) is required to track and thwart the expansion of Al Qaeda affiliates into the Arabian peninsula, Syria (and perhaps Jordan), North Africa and East Africa, this is insufficient. Findings from research on “copycat suicide” (where the strongest indicator of the copycat effect is how much media coverage a suicide receives) clearly suggest that media restraint can reduce terrorist contagion. Indeed, as Columbia University epidemiologist Madelyn Gould noted: “We wouldn’t have a billion-dollar advertising market in this country (the US) if people didn’t think you could influence someone else’s behavior.”

The real rub stems from the broader problem of collective action: it is for our common good to deny terrorists media exposure, but each media outlet in a competitive and unregulated market is tempted to break the compact by trumpeting the news. The late Nobel Prize-winning political scientist Elinor Ostromspent the better part of her life trying to tackle the issue of how to better regulate “the commons” (“public goods,” whether water and forests or information and media space). Poring over thousands of cases worldwide, she found local self-regulation to be the most efficient and enduring way to prevent overuse and abuse of the commons, and central government control to be the most problematic.

There are successful examples of media self-restraint from the past. In 1982, killings from cyanide-laced Tylenol in Chicago area stores were followed by myriad tamperings that were breathlessly covered by the media until public authorities and the media realized that this coverage was spawning more tamperings. The Department of Justice worked with the news media to tamp down the coverage and, mirabile dictu, the tamperings tapered. Of course, the news media back then was remarkably homogeneous compared to today, and it is undoubtedly easier to keep tamperings quiet compared to bombings in public places. But the principle remains the same.

We can break the real, if unplanned, alliance between terrorism and the media through better reporting for the social good, which may prove to be the best business strategy of all (people like business best that helps them and others find happiness, not fear). It’s going to be a hard slog, I know: many men and women at senior levels of the government, military, intelligence and law enforcement understand that overwrought reaction to terrorism helps terrorists radicalize and terrorize, but the powerful if maladjusted relationship between the political establishment and media business drastically subordinates reason to sensation. (A senior FBI official once told me in a meeting at the British Parliament that “If I advocated anything less than zero tolerance for terrorism, they’d have me hanging from my balls from the dome of Congress”). Yet, if we can learn to practice restraint, and show the resilience of people just carrying on with their lives even in the face of atrocities like Boston, then terrorism will fail.

For more, see today’s article in Foreign Policy

Scott Atran, an anthropologist at John Jay College, the University of Michigan and Oxford University, is co-founder of ARTIS Research and author of Talking to the Enemy.

Is it a happy coincidence that both Geert Wilders and Robert Spencer are out hawking their books for sale?

(h/t: Haywood)

Sean Hannity Interview Geert Wilders About Radical Islam (FOX NEWS)

The above protesters believe abortion is terrorism

It’s only terrorism when Muslims do it, right? Even though data from both the US and Europe shows otherwise, and you have more of a chance of being killed by peanuts or lightning than you do a “Muslamic terrorist!”

Is it safe to presume in this case that those individuals targeting Planned Parenthood are likely Right-Wing extremists and likely Christian? There are a couple of reasons for me to think this is the case: 1.) All or at least most previous attacks on abortion clinics and women health center’s, such as Planned Parenthood have been carried out by Right-wingers, 2.) There are many militant Christian organizations whose ideologies are violently opposed to abortion.

Muslims aren’t involved because a.) abortion is not a particularly too controversial issue within the Muslim community, and b.) Planned Parenthood is not occupying or invading Muslim countries.

Such events seem to be quite under reported in the media. You can bet that if a Muslim was suspected of such bombings the Islamophobesphere would be going buck-wild about our nation being under attack and the creeping “Islamization” of society, etc.

As of now they are mostly unconcerned and silent as the string of bombings continue:

Homemade bomb detonates at Wisconsin Planned Parenthood clinic

By Stephen C. Webster (RawStory)

A homemade explosive device detonated outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wisconsin on Sunday night.

Police are still looking for whoever left the device, which exploded around 7:30 p.m. and caused little damage to the building. Nobody was injured.

The attack is one of a string across the U.S. in recent months.

Amid a heated debate over funding for Planned Parenthood last month, the Fort Worth offices of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis (D) — a strong supporter of the female health program — were attacked with two firebombs. Another clinic in the Dallas area was attacked in a similar manner by a separate person last July.

This video is from NBC 26 in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, broadcast Sunday, April 1, 2012. (Click link to view video)

I wonder if these bombings will make it into the FBI’s compilation of terrorist attacks?

There is also a propensity for Right-wingers and their acolytes to shift blame, as this individual below does, calling liberals “Islamic jihad ass-kissers.” That’s essentially what Anders Breivik was calling the kids he mowed down in Utoya during his horrific terror splurge:

Glenn Greenwald on the overblown and exaggerated threat of “homegrown terrorism”:

The Grave Threat of “Homegrown Terrorism”

by Glenn Greenwald

U.S. government officials and their cheerleaders in the community of so-called “Terrorism experts” have spent the last two years justifying Endless War and ever-increasing surveillance, detention and militarism authorities with a steady drumbeat of shrill warnings that the nation faces a new, grave menace: the threat of “Homegrown Terrorism” from radicalized American Muslims:

Fox News, September 10, 2010:

The government has failed to anticipate the danger from homegrown terrorists, some of whom immigrated to the United States, and now faces the most complex set of threats since the Sept. 11 attacks, analysts on an organization headed by the two 9/11 Commission co-chairmen warned Friday. . . .

“The United States has failed to fundamentally understand and prepare for these threats,” group member Bruce Hoffman said. “Terrorists may have found our Achilles’ heel. We have no strategy to deal with this growing problem and emerging threat.”

NPR, September 10, 2010:

Homegrown Terrorists Pose Biggest Threat, Report Says

A new report to be released later Friday says that in the nine years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the terrorist threat against the United States has fundamentally changed. The biggest threat is no longer coming from the dusty landscape of Afghanistan or the mountains of Pakistan border regions. Instead, experts say, the threat now comes from within our own borders, in the form of homegrown terrorists.

“A key shift in the past couple of years is the increasingly prominent role in planning and operations that U.S. citizens and residents have played in the leadership of al-Qaida and aligned groups, and the higher numbers of Americans attaching themselves to these groups,” a new report by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group says.

ABC News, December 21, 2010:

In a rare and wide-ranging interview, the attorney general [Eric Holder] disclosed chilling, new details about the evolving threat of homegrown terror . . . .  What was uppermost on his mind, however, is the alarming rise in the number of Americans who are more than willing to attack and kill their fellow citizens.  . . .

“The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born,” he said. . . .

The Hill, February 9, 2011:

Homeland security and counter-terrorism officials warned lawmakers Wednesday that the nation is increasingly threatened by foreign terrorists who seek to recruit U.S. citizens.

The largest threat to the U.S. is no longer Osama Bin Laden, according to the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCIC), Michael Leiter, but is now Anwar Al-Awlaki, the head of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group based out of Yemen.

The increased threat that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses revolves heavily around its ability to attract and reach U.S.-natives who want to be trained in terrorism techniques, and who could fall beneath the radar of intelligence circles more easily.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told members at the hearing that domestic terrorism and homegrown radicalization is a very large focus of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2011:

The proliferation of radicalized followers of al Qaeda within the U.S. has put the nation at a heightened risk of terrorist attacks, though on a smaller scale than the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes, security officials told Congress Wednesday. . . . ”In some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened state since” 9/11, [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano told the House Committee on Homeland Security . . . U.S. counterterrorism officials, led by White House terrorism adviser John Brennan, are turning their sights on the threat posed by homegrown extremists . . . . The rise of homegrown threats has occurred despite U.S. successes fighting al Qaeda’s central command, according to a report released this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

CNN, May 11, 2010:

Several top U.S. counterterrorism officials had the same message: Americans radicalized at home and trained in Pakistan represent a new and disturbing threat to the American homeland.

Council on Foreign Relations, September 30, 2011:

Threat of Homegrown Islamist Terrorism

The number of terror incidents involving Islamic radicals who are U.S. citizens has seen an uptick in recent years. . . . As the list has grown, the question increasingly arises of how to combat Islamist terrorism at home.

ABC News, December 7, 2011:

Homegrown Islamic terrorists — possibly including radicalized American soldiers — who target U.S. military communities in the homeland are a “severe and emerging threat,” according to a new Congressional report.

The report, released by the staff of Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says there have been at least 33 “threats, plots and strikes” against U.S. military communities since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and the likelihood of another deadly attack by “militant Islamists” is a “severe threat.”

But like virtually every War on Terror threat hyped by government officials, these claims are wildly exaggerated to the point of pure fabrication; from The New York Times today:

A feared wave of homegrown terrorism by radicalized Muslim Americans has not materialized, with plots and arrests dropping sharply over the two years since an unusual peak in 2009, according to a new study by a North Carolina research group.

The study, to be released on Wednesday, found that 20 Muslim Americans were charged in violent plots or attacks in 2011, down from 26 in 2010 and a spike of 47 in 2009.

Charles Kurzman, the author of the report for the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, called terrorism by Muslim Americans “a minuscule threat to public safety.” Of about 14,000 murders in the United States last year, not a single one resulted from Islamic extremism, said Mr. Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina.

Just consider what the constant hyping of this “miniscule threat” has enabled. The once-controversial Patriot Act was extended for another four years with no reforms whatsoever based on these fears (Christian Science Monitor: “National Intelligence Director James Clapper warned the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that failure to renew the [Patriot Act] provisions could stymie important intelligence-gathering operations both domestically and abroad”; ”‘When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we would be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected,’ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday. In unusually personal criticism of a fellow senator, he warned that [Rand] Paul, by blocking swift passage of the bill, ‘is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them’”).

Read the rest here

(via. Islamophobia Today)

Robertson And Spencer Agree: Media Love Islam ‘Cult’ Because They Hate America

Submitted by Brian Tashman on August 3, 2011 – 1:55pm

Anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer joined Pat Robertson on The 700 Club today to discuss the increased scrutiny of Spencer’s writings after it came to light that they were frequently cited by the right-wing Norway terrorist who killed scores of progressive youth activists and government employees. Robertson, whose American Center for Law and Justice worked with Spencer to organize a rally opposing the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero, previously said that people who “oppose Muslims” am like himself are similar to those who fought “Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.”

Spencer told Robertson, who was upset that no one in the media was telling “the truth about this cult,” that the “hard left” media hate America and Christianity, and therefore “love” radical Islam. Later in the program, Robertson blasted the “anti-American” media for embracing “something out of the Eighth Century B.C.” (note: Muhammad was born in 570 AD) and denounced Islam for supposedly endorsing violence and restricting the rights of women (things Robertson has never, ever supported).

Robertson: Tell me what it is about the media today that seems to be in favor of radical Islam, why do they want to put down anybody who tells the truth about this cult?

Spencer: Well I tell you I think the unpleasant truth about it is, is that the media being hard left is essentially anti-American. And so anything that’s American, that’s Western, that’s Christian, that’s Judeo-Christian, they hate. And so they see Islam and it’s non-Western and non-Christian and they love it.

…

Robertson: ladies and gentlemen, it’s out there. You know, you ask the media in this country: What in name is wrong with you? Are you so anti-American, are you so opposed to this great nation and the freedoms you have that you want to embrace something out of the Eighth Century B.C. that restricts the role of women and causes hideous fighting, jihad, the killing of innocent civilians? Why do you embrace that? And you ask yourself, the media in America, why do you embrace that? You’re living in the freest, nicest, most beautiful nation on earth, what’s wrong with you? Wake up!

Original post: Robertson And Spencer Agree: Media Love Islam ‘Cult’ Because They Hate America

Daily Show with Jon Stewart: In the Name of the Fodder

The Fox rapid-response team makes a plea to distinguish violence in the name of a religion from the practitioners and tenets of that religion as long as it’s Christianity.

Loonwatch has been in the media quite a bit, The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, etc. and now NPR and Professor Juan Cole at his Informed Comment.

Muslims Try to Get Media-Savvy (go to 3:15)

by Arun Venugopal

Muslim intellectuals and activists appear to have a favorite source of TV news: “The Daily Show,” which reliably skewers critics of Islam and Islam-based hysteria, and is in all likelihood the only program with a Senior Islamic Correspondent, in Aasif Mandvi.

More serious, but equally edgy is LoonWatch, a relatively new Web site whose editors want to remain anonymous. The people behind LoonWatch (which bears the faux-alarmist tagline, “The Mooslims! They’re Heeere!”) said their mission is to expose “anti-Muslim loons, wackos, and conspiracy theorists” on the Internet.  One of their most widely-circulated articles was “All Terrorists are Muslims… except the 94% who Aren’t,” and was based on FBI statistics showing that only 6 percent of terrorists since 1980 have been Muslim.

DePaul University professor Laith Saud said LoonWatch is not only funny and incisive, but much better at addressing Islam and critics of Islam than the mainstream media.

“In terms of the intellectual claims being made by Islamophobes, those really go unchallenged,” he said. “What the mainstream media is really concerned with is how Islamophobia is playing out politically in this country, in terms of Republicans and Democrats, in terms of voter registration and voter drives.

Loonwatch’s beef it should be reiterated is not with mere critics of Islam but those who traffic in irrational fear of Islam and are pushing an anti-Muslim agenda. The reason we get it more than the mainstream media is because we are ahead of the game. We have been talking about Spencer, Geller and the anti-Muslim movement and its potential to create Islamophobiapalooza for a year and a half now, long before the mainstream media. We have knowledgeable people from all backgrounds, because in the end the fight against bigotry and hate is a universal fight.

Professor Juan Cole used the analysis we first published on the Europol report on terrorist attacks in Europe and also linked to us in a great blog piece on Informed Comment.

On Juan Williams’ Firing for Islamophobia and how Most European Terrorism is by European Separatists

A Europol report on terrorist attacks in Europe in 2009 [pdf] says that out of hundreds of terrorist attacks iin Europe in 2009, most were the work of ethnic separatists. About 40 were carried out by members of the extreme left. A handful by the European far right. See also this analysis.

One terrorist attack was carried out in 2009 in all Europe by persons of Muslim heritage (I do not say ‘by a Muslim’ because terrorism is forbidden in Islamic law).

That is right. Out of hundreds. Exactly one.

After all that nonsense spewed on the internet and Fox Cable News about the danger of Muslims to Europe, and all the ethnic profiling and other discrimination against Muslims, it turns out that not only is their religion not dangerous, even the persons who depart from it into extremism and terrorism are tiny in number. Now it would not be right to profile or generalize about Basques, the Real IRA, etc., either. But even by the lights of the bigoted, it would be a waste of time to obsess about Muslims on this evidence.

As for the European far left and far right, those it is all right to generalize about and to conclude that they are, like, very dangerous. Two words: Stalin and Hitler. Extremists of Muslim heritage have killed a few thousands of people over the past century. European political extremists have killed tens of millions.

An excellent post from Glen Greenwald that was too good to not be featured.

Glaring double standard in tolerance for anti-Muslim bigotry

In theory, it could be a fun game to try to detect the double standard in this pattern of facts, except that it’s so obvious and glaring that no effort is required to see it:

The Washington Post, July 8, 2010:

Octavia Nasr has been fired. CNN fired the editor responsible for Middle Eastern coverage after she posted a note on Twitter expressing admiration for a late Lebanese cleric considered an inspiration for the Hezbollah militant movement. Octavia Nasr later apologized for her tweet, but CNN’s senior vice president for international newsgathering, Parisa Khosravi, said Wednesday that Nasr’s credibility had been compromised.

Politico, June 7, 2010:

In the world of political journalism, it’s the end of an era: Helen Thomas has retired just months shy of her 90th birthday … [Thomas] stepped down from her latest role — a columnist for Hearst Newspapers — in the wake of controversial remarks made in late May about the need for Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Poland and Germany. “Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately,” read a statement from Hearst Newspapers on Monday. “Her decision came after her controversial comments about Israel and the Palestinians were captured on videotape and widely disseminated on the Internet.”

USA Today, Oct. 1, 2010:

CNN has fired Rick Sanchez following his controversial comments on the radio show “Stand Up With Pete Dominick” … On Thursday, Sanchez called Jon Stewart a “bigot,” arguing that “The Daily Show” host is against “everybody else who’s not like him.” He also suggested that CNN is run by Jewish people. Stewart is also Jewish.”

Nafees A. Syed, CNN, Sept. 23, 2010:

At a time when our nation’s top university is more diverse than ever before, Harvard’s recent decision to honor its former professor Marty Peretz on Friday for setting up an undergraduate research fund in his name comes as a big, disappointing surprise … Here is the latest blog-post calumny: “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims” and “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse” … Despite the voices raised against it, the university just reaffirmed its decision to recognize him …

Think Progress, today (with video):

Last week, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said on ABC’s “The View” that “Muslims killed us on 9/11,” prompting “The View” co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. “Fox and Friends” host Brian Kilmeade defended O’Reilly the next day, making an equally idiotic and “obviously false” statement that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” Kilmeade even defended that statement a few hours later on his radio show, saying it’s a fact “you can’t avoid.” But today, after having the weekend to think it over, the “Fox and Friends” host offered a half-hearted apology:

KILMEADE: “On the show on Friday, I was talking about Bill O’Reilly appearance on ‘The View’ and I said this: ‘Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims.’ Well, I misspoke. I don’t believe all terrorists are Muslims. I’m sorry about that if I offended or hurt anybody’s feelings. But that’s it.”

In contrast to the loud backlash of anger from journalists over the remarks of Thomas and Sanchez, few have condemned the remarks from Peretz or Kilmeade (for instance, when asked about Peretz, the Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz — who devoted substantial attention to the remarks of Thomas and Sanchez — was steadfastly silent, telling the Guardian: “I’m afraid I just haven’t focused on the subject.” And Kilmeade, of course, will suffer no repercussions (or even widespread criticisms) either for his initial bigoted and patently false statement, nor for his proudly begrudging non-apology, with more emphasis on defiance than regret (“I’m sorry about that if I offended or hurt anybody’s feelings. But that’s it”). Could the double standards in our discourse be any more glaring?

Islam and Muslim related issues have taken central stage as leading news stories in America with a frequency of coverage that might make other faiths green with envy. Does all this (un)wanted attention serve to bolster the perception of Muslims (as the saying goes, “any publicity is good publicity”) or does it present a scenario of helplessness in which ones faith is gawked and bawked at willy nilly by political opportunists and an overwhelmingly complicit uncritical media? Or both?

The answer to the first question is that it is not always true that “any publicity is good publicity,” if you believe that then there is a New York City Cab driver with whom I would like you to speak. The attention that has been levied on Islam and Muslims has taken stories that were really “tempests-in-a-tea-pot” and made them into hurricanes that only highlight the helplessness American Muslims face when it comes to their relationship with the media and society.

Take the example of the NYC Mosque and Cultural Center. This story 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.

Yet, we are reaping the fruits of their persistent and belligerent disinformation campaign about a “mosque at Ground Zero,” smears against an Imam who has been sponsored by the State Department as a diplomat, and a Muslim community that is being indicted as collectively guilty for the crimes perpetuated by a fringe extremist organization. Muslims are told to be sensitive to the those who are insensitive, to quietly take the bigotry and move elsewhere. For some, the heavily accented Dutch neo-fascist politician Geert Wilders’ cry of “no mosque here” resonates and is far more familiar than appeals to the Constitution and the rights of their neighbors.

More egregiously however has been the silencing of Muslim voices in the face of the perpetuation of stereotypes resulting in the witting and unwitting explosion of prejudice directed at Muslims. Muslims are only brought on TV to respond to crises, sometimes these crises are wholly manufactured by an uncritical media. A case study on this is needed but let us take the example of the threat against the South Park creators by Revolution Muslim and the International Burn the Koran Day by Pastor Terry Jones and his Dove Outreach Church.

The controversy that swelled around South Park was initiated by Revolution Muslim, a fringe group even amongst extremists, composed of about 4 morons with below zero credibility in the Muslim community. In fact, they were kicked out of the mosque they attended and were relegated to being scraggly street side loons with a bull horn. Most people with common sense who passed them by on the street viewed these people for who they were, a bunch of nuts.

However, for whatever reason the media took it upon itself to give them a voice. These nobodies became the spokesmen for Muslims, and in an even worse move Comedy Central lent credence to the threat by canceling the South Park episodes that included the Prophet Muhammad. No one asked Muslims for their opinion, Comedy Central didn’t bother to consult Muslims, instead they chose the path of self-censorship (or what some cynically term a PR stunt) at the expense of Muslims. The result was a perception that Islam not only can’t take criticism, not only do they react violently to such criticism but they can’t even handle their Prophet being depicted by people who don’t hold the same opinion as they do about pictorial representations of holy figures.

This perception metastasized into a phenomenon that pitted false paradigms against one another, leading to the willful deafness of one group so consumed by its perceptions that it ultimately resulted in the wrongheaded and thoroughly Islamophobic “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”

What did the media do to correct the ignorance it helped to perpetuate? Nothing. The damage was done, the story that was headline news for a while faded into the abyss of old news but the residue of perception remained.

Fast forward to the past few weeks and the debate over whack job Pastor Terry Jones’ call for an International Burn the Koran Day on 9/11. He based his action on Acts 19:19 in which the early Christians burned the books of witches. He believed he was doing the Godly, righteous thing since Islam was “of the Devil” and leading people to the doom of Hellfire.

But notice the difference in the coverage of the Revolutionary Muslim crackpots and this Terry Jones character. Even though both are fringe groups/individuals with unbelievably small followings, only one group, Revolutionary Muslim, was allowed to define a whole religion.

The distinction was made consistently and repeatedly from the top echelon of our government all the way down to our media that Terry Jones and his followers were a minority who don’t speak for Christianity or America, but the same point was given scant time or attention when it came to the South Park Controversy.

This double standard has to end because it is intellectually and morally dishonest and only perpetuates a perception of Muslims as backward primitives defined and represented by their least common denominator, a myth that can, as we have seen in the past, have dire consequences.

Chuck Schumer

Helen Thomas made an indefensible and impulsive comment that she subsequently apologized for, and now is being branded an “anti-Semite” and the “scum of the earth.” Not only has she apologized but she has essentially been forced to retire.

It is sad that her whole career will be overshadowed by one statement made by a questionable guy sticking a camera in her face. She let her emotions get the best of her, something we can all relate to, but I don’t agree with those who are impugning from her comment that she implied Jews should be ethnically cleansed.

However, insert Chuck Schumer into the equation, a life long advocate of the belief, “Israel is right no matter what,” who was speaking at an Orthodox Union dinner in which he said ‘we should strangle the Gazans economically until they moderate.’

Think Progress:

This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.

During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution,” and also that “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He went on to say “you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

New York’s senior senator explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — which is causing a humanitarian crisis there — is not only justified because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.” Summing up his feelings, Schumer emphasized the need to “to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense”

Read the whole story: Think Progress

Outrageous isn’t it? But do you think Chuck Schumer will apologize let alone be forced into retirement? The truth is that anti-Palestinian remarks will not get you into trouble, in fact they might boost your votes depending on where you live.

An interesting aside here is that Schumer got something else wrong as well. He stated that Palestinians don’t believe in “David or the Torah.” This statement was obviously directed at Palestinian Muslims who make up the majority of Palestinians (he can’t be referring to Christian Palestinians who obviously believe in the Old Testament).

Unfortunately the ignorance of our elected officials know no bounds. Schumer doesn’t know much about Islam, and probably hasn’t read the Quran, because if he did he would realize that David, or in Arabic Dawood, is one of the most revered prophets of Islam. The Quran also calls on Muslims to affirm belief in the Torah and all Heavenly revealed books from God, to do otherwise is contrary to basic Islamic creed and puts one outside the pale of Islam.

If he was following recent news he would also have noted that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas quite controversially stated his belief in the legitimacy of Jewish claims to Israel deriving from the Quran,

Reports of Abbas’s remarks were met with seeming disbelief in the Arab media and led an Al Jazeera reporter later that day to ask him if the reports were correct. Abbas replied, “Jews are there, and when you read the Holy Koran you have it there. That’s what I said.”

Cenk Uygur had some excellent commentary on the hypocritical double standards that this situation highlights,

Bill Maher on the other hand seems to think that Israel is besieged in the press. Here he goes toe to toe with Oliver Stone.

What do you think?