Ground Zero 'mosque; protest gets ugly

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com spotlights the core issue with the hysteria surrounding the protest of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero: Islamophobia. Greenwald correctly points out the significant ramifications of this issue and how it has both domestic and international consequences for the United States. Greenwald also aptly makes the important point that if these loons succeed in kicking out the Muslims from the land they own and have a Constitutional right to build on then it will only embolden the Islamophobes to continue protesting and demonstrating (and possibly worse, physically attacking) against mosque construction plans around the country.

Make sure to watch the video of the man at the protest who was incorrectly viewed by the protestors of the mosque as a Muslim. Imagine if he actually were a Muslim – what might have happened to him? It’s a scary thought.

The “mosque” debate is not a “distraction”

By Glenn Greenwald

Opponents of the Park51 Islamic community center held a rally yesterday in Lower Manhattan, and a 4-minute video, posted below, reveals the true sentiments behind this campaign.  It has little to do with The Hallowed Ground of the World Trade Center — that’s just the pretext — and everything to do with animosity toward Muslims.  I dislike the tactic of singling out one or two objectionable people or signs at a march or rally in order to disparage the event itself.  That’s not what this video is.  Rather, it shows the collective sentiment of those gathered, as well as what’s driving the broader national backlash against mosques and Muslims far beyond Ground Zero.

The episode in the video begins when, as John Cole put it, “some black guy made the mistake of looking Muslimish and was harassed and nearly assaulted by the collection of lily white mouth-breathers at the event . . . At about 25 seconds in, he quite astutely points out to the crowd that ‘All y’all dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit’.”  As this African-American citizen (whom the videographer claims is a union carpenter who works at Ground Zero) is instructed to leave by what appears to be some sort of security or law enforcement official, the crowd proceeds to yell:  ”he musta voted for Obama,” “Mohammed’s a pig,” and other assorted charming anti-mosque slogans.  I really encourage everyone to watch this to see the toxicity this campaign has unleashed:

The New York Times article on this rally describes similar incidents, including how a student who carried a sign that simply read ”Religious tolerance is what makes America great” was threatened and told that “that if the police were not present, [he] would be in danger.”  Does anyone believe that their real agenda is simply to have Park51 move a few blocks away to less Sacred ground, or that they’re amenable to some sort of Howard-Dean-envisioned compromise that accommodates everyone?

All of this underscores a point I’ve wanted to make for awhile.  There’s been a tendency, which I find increasingly irritating, to dismiss this whole Park51 debate as some sort of petty, inconsequential August “distraction” from what Really Matters.  Here’s Chuck Todd mocking the debate as a ”shiny metal object alert” and lamenting “the waste of time” he believes it to be, whileKatrina vanden Heuvel, in The Washington Post last week, condemned ”pundits and politicians [who] are working themselves into hysteria over a mosque near Ground Zero” on the ground that it won’t determine the outcome of the midterm elections.  This impulse is understandable.  If you chose to narrowly define the topic of the controversy as nothing more than the Manhattan address of Park 51, then obviously it pales in importance to the unemployment crisis, our ongoing wars, and countless other political issues.

But that’s an artificially narrow and misguided way of understanding what this dispute is about.  The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of significant and dangerous ways.  In June, The New York Times reported on a vicious opposition campaign against a proposed mosque in Staten Island.  Earlier this month, Associated Press documented that “Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation’s heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive.”  And today, The Washington Post examines anti-mosque campaigns from communities around the nation and concludes that “the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida in recent months, raising questions about whether public attitudes toward Muslims have shifted.”

To belittle this issue as though it’s the equivalent of the media’s August fixation on shark attacks or Chandra Levy — or, worse, to want to ignore it because it’s harmful to the Democrats’ chances in November — is profoundly irresponsible.  The Park51 conflict is driven by, and reflective of, a pervasive animosity toward a religious minority — one that has serious implications for how we conduct ourselves both domestically and internationally.  Yesterday,ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour decided to let Americans hear about this dispute from actual Muslims behind the project (compare that, as Jay Rosen suggested, to David Gregory’s trite and typically homogeneous guest list of Rick Lazio and Jeffrey Goldberg and you see why there’s so much upset caused by Amanpour).  One of those project organizers, Daisy Kahn, said this during her ABC interview:

This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism.  That’s what we feel right now. It’s not even Islamophobia; it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims, and we are deeply concerned.

Can anyone watch the video of that disgusting hate rally and dispute that?  That’s exactly why I’ve found this conflict so significant.  If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will seriouslybolster and validate the ugly premises at the heart of this campaign:  that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect.  As Aziz Poonawalla put it:  “if the project does fail, then I think that the message that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective.”

That’s exactly the message that will be sent, and that’s what makes this conflict so significant.  Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as overtly hateful as those in that video — and not all opponents are themselves bigots — but the position they’ve adopted is inherently bigoted, as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the aberrational acts of a small number of individual members.   And one thing is certain:  if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the sentiments driving it will become even more potent.  Hatemongers always become emboldened when they triumph.

The animosity and hatred so visible here extends far beyond the location of mosques or even how we treat American Muslims.  So many of our national abuses, crimes and other excesses of the last decade — torture, invasions, bombings, illegal surveillance, assassinations, renditions, disappearances, etc. etc. — are grounded in endless demonization of Muslims.  A citizenry will submit to such policies only if they are vested with sufficient fear of an Enemy.  There are, as always, a wide array of enemies capable of producing substantial fear (the Immigrants, the Gays, and, as that video reveals, the always-reliable racial minorities), but the leading Enemy over the last decade, in American political discourse, has been, and still is, the Muslim.

That’s why the population is willing to justify virtually anything that’s done to “them” without much resistance at all, and it’s why very few people demand evidence from the Government before believing accusations that someone is a Terrorist:  after all, if they’re Muslim, that’s reason enough to believe it.  Hence, the repeated, mindless mantra that those in Guantanamo — or those on the Government’s “hit list” — are Terrorists even in the absence of evidence and charges, and even in the presence of ample grounds for doubting the truth of those accusations.

And there’s no end in sight:  the current hysteria over Iran at its core relies — just as the identical campaign against Iraq did — on the demonization of a whole new host of Muslim villains.  A population that is constantly bombarded with tales of Muslim Evil (they want to kill your children and explode a nuclear suitcase in your neighborhood) will be filled with fear and hatred — sentiments always exacerbated during times of economic strife and uncertainty — and very well-primed to lash out.  That’s the decade-long brew that has led to this purely irrational, hate-driven demand that they not be allowed to desecrate and infect the Sacred, Hallowed Space of Ground Zero (the religious terminology used to talk about 9/11 is both creepy and no accident).  This “debate” over Park51 is many things.  An inconsequential “distraction” from what Really Matters is not one of them.

UPDATE:  Ron Paul issued a statement today excoriating conservative opponents of Park51 for violating their alleged belief in religious freedom and property rights, and added:

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. . . Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam — the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. . . .

The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. . . . . This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

It is indeed “about hate and Islamaphobia,” and that is the driving, enabling force behind so many of America’s most controversial and destructive policies.

UPDATE II:  Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this entire episode has been the dearth of national politicians willing to stand up to this campaign of bigotry.  Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley became one of the few to issue an unapologetic, principled, unparsed, caveat-free defense of Park51 today, joining Ron Paul, Joe Sestak, Grover Norquist, Russ Feingold, Jerry Nadler,Ted Olson and only a handful of others.  It’s particularly commendable of Feingold and Sestak to do so given the very tight Senate races they are fighting, and there’s added weight when people like Paul, Olson, and Norquist stand up to their own party to do so.

I’ll be on MSNBC, at roughly 4:00 p.m., this afternoon, discussing these issues, along with National Review‘s Cliff May.

UPDATE III:  The group which sponsored this rally has a website — the repellently named StopThe911Mosque.com — which is registered to The Center for Security Policy, the group of Frank Gaffney, one of the most deranged and dishonest right-wing extremists in the country.  So it’s hardly surprising that such a rotted root gave rise to this toxic fruit (I just unintentionally made a nice rhyme).

Speaking of deranged right-wing extremists, I was on MSNBC today debating Park51 with Cliff May of National Review; it largely degenerated into a cable-news screamfest, but for those interested, you can watch it here:

Greenwald on Dylan Ratigan

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.

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.

Stop the Islamization of America

Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), was created by anti-Muslim bloggers and activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. It was born out of its parent organization Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE), an organization led by Anders Gravers (also a leader in SIOA), of whom Media Matters wrote,

Despite having put what she says is the “full video” of the event on her site, Geller actually cut out several comments made by Anders Gravers, the Danish Leader for the Stop the Islamisation of Europe. For instance, Geller’s video edits out Graver’s assertion that “[r]ape is also a part of” Muslims’ efforts to convert non-Muslims in Europe, and that “[d]emocracy is being deliberately removed” from the European Union by “incorporating Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East in the European Union.” Gravers went on to explain (in a portion of the speech that Geller did include) that the purpose was to gain “some European control of oil resources” at the cost of the “introduction of Sharia law and removal of democracy” in Europe. No, really. Check out this exclusively un-edited portion of his remarks (transcript available here)

SIOE’s motto is, “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense.” It was criticized by John Denham, Labour’s (UK) Communities Secretary, who stated that it was “trying to provoke violence on Britain’s streets” and called it “right-wing.” The group calls for a boycott of all Muslim majority countries and some countries with sizable Muslim minorities such as Cameroon. It calls on its followers to avoid Fisher Price, Asda, Kentucky Fried Chicken and The Radisson Hotel chain for apparently pandering to the Muslim community (via. Wiki).

SIOA’s declared mission is to educate Americans,

about the threat that Islamic doctrine and those who support it present to our freedoms, and the future of our democracy and country.” The organizers call themselves “scholar warriors/ideological warriors in the cause of American freedom and Constitutional government,” as well as in “the defense of… our society of liberty, knowledge, and human decency

The declared mission gives us a scent of the absurdity that is SIOA, what else can “the threat of Islamic doctrine and those who support it” mean except “Muslims.” In other words the groups mission is to educate Americans about the “threat that Muslims present to freedom.”

However, to capture the full extent of bigotry and inciting hatred of Islam and Muslims that is the substance of the organization we have to look no further than its founders, members and supporters. It is a hatred that gives platform to all the destructive rhetoric and conspiracies about Muslims that we have detailed here at Loonwatch, including: nuke and kill all the Muslims and their holy places, Obama is a Mooslim, Muslim demographic take over of the West, extolling the Crusades, etc. The group also seems to bring together radicals from a variety of backgrounds: Christian Zionists, Extreme Jewish Nationalists, Tea Partiers all united in hate for Muslims.

US Government Rejects SIOA Trademark

Soon after SIOA was launched, both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer attempted to have their organization’s trademark patented. They assumed that it would go through without a problem but they didn’t expect what came next. The patent office rejected SIOA’s attempt to patent its trademark because of its anti-Muslim nature,

The applied-for mark refers to Muslims in a disparaging manner because by definition it implies that conversion or conformity to Islam is something that needs to be stopped or caused to cease.

“The proposed mark further disparages Muslims because, taking into account the nature of the services (‘providing information regarding understanding and preventing terrorism’), it implies that Islam is associated with violence and threats,” the government agency said.

“The trademark examining attorney refers to the excerpted articles from the LEXISNEXIS® computerized database referencing how many Muslims view terrorists as illegitimate adherents of Islam. … Therefore, the suggestion that Islam equates terrorism would be disparaging to a substantial group of Muslims,” it said.

Accordingly, the applied-for mark is refused under Section 2(a) because it consists of matter which may disparage or bring into contempt or disrepute Muslims and the Islamic religion

The reaction from both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer was unsurprising, to them it was a signal that Islam had permeated all of our government agencies. Pamela Geller wrote,

It is everywhere, folks, in every aspect of our lives from the big stuff (Major Hasan cover-up) to the minutia (trademark registration)

She doesn’t say what is “everywhere” but one can safely presume based on the written record freely available at her hate site that what she is referring to is the “evil tentacles of the Mooslims.”

SIOA

Undaunted by the rejection from the US Government, SIOA continued with its project. Pushing forward with their now infamous “Leaving Islam” ad campaign as well as opposition to the construction of Mosques and Muslim cultural centers, such as the high profile case of the Cordoba Center or what opponents are dubbing “the Ground Zero Mosque” because of its proximity to Ground Zero.

Both the anti-Mosque and anti-Islam Bus ad campaigns garnered a lot of media attention and were the scene of staunch anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In Miami, where the bus ads kicked off, the city having made a contract to run the ads became aware of the anti-Muslim and Islamophobic nature of the group and upon review made the right decision to remove the ads because they were “offensive.” Of course this riled up Geller and Spencer and they sued Miami which then essentially buckled rather then having to deal with law suits that would cause the city to lose money and time.

In New York, the bus ads went ahead without a hitch though many viewed it as Islamophobic and hateful. Detroit’s transit system however rejected the ads,

Detroit’s SMART bus system has rejected the button-pushing placards that read “Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?” – and direct Muslims to a Web site urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam.”

“It’s a purely anti-Muslim hate issue,” Dawud Walid of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Detroit News on Friday.

“The SMART bus company, or any bus company, should not be used to marginalize a minority group.”

Defenders of the ads, dreamed up by Manhattan-based right wing blogger Pamela Geller and the New York-based Stop the Islamization of America, say it’s a free speech issue and they have sued.

“Americans have a right to know the truth; Islam is a religion of intolerance and violence,” said Michigan lawyer Richard Thompson, who filed the suit.

In New York, the ongoing divisive saga over a planned cultural center has been the scene of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim agitation. Pamela Geller inserted her group into the fray and now SIOA is taking a leading role in the opposition to a planned cultural center which is being dubbed by Geller and company the “Ground Zero Mosque,” though as Reza Aslan put it, it is “neither a mosque nor is it at Ground Zero.”

Some weeks ago SIOA held a protest against the “Mosque” in which protesters attacked two Arab looking men who they mistook for being Muslim. The police had to save them from the crowd, even though they were Arab Christians who came all the way from California to join the protest. That gives you an insight into the kind of people SIOA attracts.

SIOA Facebook Group

SIOA has over 10,000 members on Facebook and it is growing. The SIOA Facebook page is administered by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Anders Gravers,

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It is truly an ode to hate mongering racism, incitement to violence, veiled threats of physical violence against Muslims, conspiracy theories, from birthers to Eurabia clowns.

Nuking Muslims and Mecca

One demented SIOA member believes that the “rules of engagement with Muslims” are “#1: Kill the enemy, #2: There is no rule #2,”

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Another doozie, this time from David Gaston. Apparently the Ghost Busters are out to start World War III,

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Another nuking fantasy from Ben Kjellssecondson (the last name sounds like it was put together by someone blindly tapping away at the keyboard),

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It isn’t only pyscho images, but in discussions members dispute with each other on which option, “nuking the Middle East” and killing all the “diaper heads” or wanting Israel to “conquer the whole Middle East” are better solutions to the Mooslim menace,

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There are more nuking and destroying Mecca and Muslim pics which we have saved but this gives you a taste and flavor of the annihilation of Muslims that many in SIOA want to see.

Murdering Muslims

David Gaston, still a member of SIOA posts what he calls “Army Math” next to a picture of dead Afghan civilians,

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This is particularly disturbing when we read that some SIOA members claim to be in the United States Armed Forces and add images with thinly veiled hints of physical violence against Muslims,

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This is something that the MRFF, Military Religious Freedom Foundation and the military should definitely look into. We are seeing a growing trend amongst members of the military who view Muslims as their enemy, and it is only simple mathematics to note that more than a few will not leave their hatred of Muslims at the battlefield but will bring it home.

Crusader Mentality

You can say that many in the SIOA have Biblical or Medieval mentalities — literally. They believe that Israel has a right to the land because it says so in the Bible, they believe the solution to terrorism is Crusades, they believe all of this is prophecy and that Jesus approves,

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More ghastly calls for violence in the name of Jesus,

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Did we mention that some of them really don’t like the Quran,

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Conspiracy Theorists

The paranoia and fear amongst many of the members of SIOA takes form in a number of ways. They hold all the crazy conspiracies that we are used to by now about President Obama: he is a Muslim, anti-Semite, Communist, anti-Christ, etc. They believe in the conspiracy theories of Eurabia, the myth that Muslim women’s wombs are the most dangerous weapons of all because they spell the demographic take over of the West, etc.

Obama and our leaders are anti-Semitic fascist Nazis,

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Obama wants to make America into a Muslim country,

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Another one from Ron Ben Michael, who earlier said Israel will rule the whole Middle East,

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Ron sees no difference between Obama and the other two. They’re all “evil Mooslims” trying to burn Israel.

Then there is the Muslim demographic time bomb, there were a number of pics related to this topic, but this one summed up all the craziness in one image,

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So what is the solution. Well, SIOA members won’t leave you dissapointed,

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Notice the comments. “Kick Muzzies ass out of Europe” and the prayer to Jesus, “I hope this one day happens.” Delightful.

The Fabulous Duo: Christian Zionists and Extreme Jewish Nationalists

While there are all sorts of wackos on SIOA, and some misguided ones who don’t know what they got themselves into, the majority of those attracted to SIOA seem to be Extremist Christians and Jews with a sprinkling of atheists. The SIOA Facebook page was littered with pics of Jesus, prayers to Jesus, Israeli flags, stars of David, etc.

For instance, what does this pic have to do with SIOA’s mission?

(Click Image to Enlarge)

The guy is totally insane, just look at his crazy comments.

Then there is this gem, from our friend Ron, which extolls the power of the Israeli Air Force,

(Click Image to Enlarge)

Disproportionate power anyone? How aboud David v. Golaith?

Conclusion

There are many more posts and pics that manifest the loonacy that is SIOA, and we have them all saved. The sad thing is that this is no laughing matter, these people are calling for murder and genocide. Some of it may be tongue in cheek but a lot of it reveals the inner depths of hatred that lurks inside and motivates this organization, which is one step removed from being the inspiration for an armed anti-Muslim vigilante group.

Even more reprehensible are the admins and creators of this organization, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller who allow such vile, conspiratorial and dangerous pronouncements from their members. How could we expect any less, as is clear from mounting evidence, both Spencer and Geller share in the above views though at times not as explicitly as their followers.

Stop the Islamization of America is nothing less than a hate group that deserves to be monitored and observed by Homeland Security and the likes of the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is one of a plethora of extreme right-wing organizations that have arisen since Obama has taken office and should be included in any further report or update on the rise of right-wing extremism.

Any organization that targets a minority that makes up one percent of the population of America, claiming that the minority is trying to take over is beyond hysterical, it is a threat to the fabric of our nation.

Mark Williams is the same cretin who said, Allah is a “monkey God” and that Muslims were his “animals.”

The animals of allah for whom any day is a great day for a massacre are drooling over the positive response that they are getting from New York City officials over a proposal to build a 13 story monument to the 9/11 Muslims who hijacked those 4 airliners.The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god and a “cultural center” to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.

Anyway, now he is saying that NAACP is racist though he defeats his point by writing a very racist fictional letter in the name of the head of the NAACP, Ben Jealous.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83X6T8T5JQA 350 300]

NAACP Passes Tea Party Racism Resolution

Brian Montopoli

The NAACP has passed a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement.

The resolution was approved in a vote by more than 2,000 delegates at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Kansas City.

Versions of the resolution condemned “explicitly racist behavior” in the Tea Party movement and called on people to “repudiate” what it described as racist elements of the Tea Party. The final text of the resolution has not yet been made available, however, and that language may have changed.

As the Associated Press notes, NAACP President Ben Jealous has said the Tea Party movement needs to “be responsible members of this democracy and make sure they don’t tolerate bigots or bigotry among their members.”

Members of the Tea Party movement vehemently deny that their movement is racist.

A CBS News poll in April found 52 percent of Tea Party members believe too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Far fewer Americans overall — 28 percent — believe as much. Among non-Tea Party whites, the percentage who say too much attention has been paid to the problems of black people is 23 percent.

The original NAACP resolution, submitted by the group’s Kansas City branch, said the Tea Party movement has “displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically.”

It condemned “racist elements” of the movement as “a threat to progress” and referenced instances in which black congressmen said they were verbally and physically abused by Tea Party activists.

Two Yeshiva students charged with threatening Arab MK Tibi

Jerusalem police arrested two 18-year-old yeshiva students Monday morning as part of an investigation into threats made on the life of Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi. The two have admitted making threatening calls to Tibi.

Police launched the investigation after the United Arab List lawmaker received a threatening letter claiming he had only “180 days to live”. According to the suspects, they called the MK on his personal telephone numerous times.

Police will ask the court for a conditional release for the two suspects, whose terms will include a court order to keep away from Tibi. Police say the investigation is still underway, as they have more suspects to question.

The death threats were produced by a group calling itself “Pulsa Denura,” a reference to a mystical Jewish ceremony in which a person is cursed. The group was responsible for the June 8 letter sent to Tibi, which made an explicit threat on his life.

“Because of your poisonous stance against Israel and Zionism, the group’s leadership has issued a pulsa denura against you,” the letter read. “You have just 180 days to live. Your death will be sudden and cruel, with great suffering…It is time to prepare your will. Your friends in the terrorist organizations will be happy to care for you in the final days of your life.”

On June 7, Tibi also received a threatening voice mail in Hebrew on his cell phone. The message included a great deal of cursing and the following comments: “Your days are numbered, you filthy Arab. I promise you that your days are numbered. You and all Arabs should die… If a beloved prime minister can be murdered here, what would it be to murder you?”

Imagine if these were two different strains of the same Muslim sect, people would be wailing that Islam and Muslims are racists. As of now I haven’t heard anyone say Judaism or Jews are racists. You can also bet that if these protesters against integration were Muslims, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller would be having a field day.

Orthodox Jews rally against verdict

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel have staged mass demonstrations against a court ruling that forces the integration of a religious girls’ school.

The rallies took place in Jerusalem and in other cities on Thursday in a show of mass defiance over the ruling by the supreme court.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said 10,000 police were deployed to maintain order as demonstrators held posters that read: “The Supreme Court is fascist.”

“The prisoners of Emanuel are the messengers of the Jewish people,” read another.

At the centre of the dispute is an Orthodox school in the Emanuel Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank.

Parents from the strictly observant Slonim Hassidic sect of Ashkenazi Jewry refused to let their children attend school with girls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.

They insist they are not racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls are not religious enough.

However, the court rejected that argument and ordered the jailing of at least 43 sets of Ashkenazi parents refusing to send their daughters back to school.

‘Most dramatic clash’

The dispute was described by the Israeli daily Haaretz as “the most dramatic state-religion clash to break out here”.

Sephardi religious leaders have not publicly criticised the demonstration or the parents’ conduct, suggesting a reluctance to drive a wedge within the religious community.

Nissim Zeev, a legislator from the conservative Sephardic political party Shas, said: “This is an example of something that should have been passed to a rabbinical court.

“It’s out of proportion, and a bit puzzling, that the high court should impose a prison sentence on these parents.”

Still, Zeev said the Sephardi girls had the right to choose to attend a mixed school. “If the children are together under one roof, then they are entitled to the same education,” he said.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox minority of some 650,000 Jews, just under 10 per cent of the nation’s population, is an insular community that has been known to riot over the state’s intrusion into its affairs.

"Bad Eagle" or just "Plain Loon"?

What happens when you cross a white supremacist with someone who claims to be half-white and half-Native American? Answer: David Yeagley (hat tip: Mallorcaman). Yeagley is a rare and strange specimen, self-described as the “lone Conservative Indian voice,” he rails against Native Americans and anyone who he considers to be liberals. He is known amongst Native Americans, for reasons we will come to shortly as the Indian apple,

apple n. An Indian who is red on the outside, white on the inside.
Tonto n. Sidekick, lackey, Indian Uncle Tom.
Tepee Tom n. Native American version of an Uncle Tom. Synonyms: Tonto, Fort Indian, Hang-around-the-fort Indian

Amongst his many peculiarities is that he claims to be the descendant of a Comanche Indian chief, Bad Eagle, while at the same time allying with and espousing White supremacist beliefs,

Yeagley is associated with a long list of figures on the far right, the John Birch Society, white nationalists VDare, neo-Nazis Stormfront, the White Boy Society, and the National Alliance, and eugenics groups Gene Expression and American Renaissance.

Native Americans find him offensive for many reasons and also dispute his claims of being a Comanche,

According to sources at the Comanche headquarters, David is not Comanche. His adopted mother is Comanche.

One website devoted to exposing Yeagley, DavidYeagley.blogspot.com, has skewered him and exposed him for the fraud that he is. It is run by Al Carrol, a scholar who is truly descended from Natives. On the site we find more expositions of Yeagley’s persistent White supremacy and anti-Native American stances,

Yeagley describing a gathering of white supremacists and anti-Indian groups:

“It’s their people that created America, not Indians. Only a diabolically self-righteous liberal politician would take America out of the hands that created it, and give it to those who either lost it, or never had anything to do with it.”
“The white blood flowing is the purest I’ve ever seen.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13399

“Superior beauty is in the white race, with its scintillating varieties of color: red, brown, amber, golden hair… green, blue, light brown, gray eyes. In the darker races, everything is always the same, dark brown and black a beastly bore.”

“These days the white woman is expected to humble herself before the darkie.”

“Judeo-Christian religion allowed the European Caucasian race to advance above all other people.The darker races now encroach through integration and intermarriage.”

“Maybe Hitler was partially right on ‘the hated white race’ thing.”

“There is a reason for differences. This is to keep the human race separated into smaller groups. Love of race is the only ‘saving grace’ left in the world.” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=273

“Indian men… and also typical of black women, together, is just the kind of thing that says these races deserve to be on the bottom of the barrel. They cannot appreciate good will, they are possessed by envy, and have no higher thought than lies.” http://www.indianz.com/board/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14169&whichpage=3 (Quoting from Yeagley on his Badeagle forum. Note that the poster quoting him was neither an Indian man nor a Black woman. It is typical of Yeagley’s racist paranoia to assume a “plot” by the races he hates.)

And as if to remove all doubt, Yeagley’s conversation with a white supremacist reluctant to admit it until he reassured her he believed the same:

“You are simply a white supremacist, complete with a theology to justify it.
THAT’s OKAY! I’m not knocking that. But you can’t talk about it. You have to guise it in different terms. That’s NOT exactly okay….you DON’t believe in equality, and THAT’s OKAY, TOO. I really mean that. ”
http://www.badeagle.com/cgi-bin/blog/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=650

Yeagley wrote a lot of these supremacist rants on Frontpagemag, David Horowitz’s zany far-right rag, where he was a regular contributor, and on his own website. Not too long ago he also posted a piece called White Man Rising: The Confederacy, which extols the South as the last bastion of true America.

Amongst Yeagley’s other novel pursuits has been his support for the portrayl of Native Americans as mascots. A touchy issue with Native Americans, amongst whom a consensus against such mascots exists. Isn’t it strange for a self-proclaimed descendant of a Comanche chief, who claims to want to help the Comanche, to then go and support the use of Indian mascots?

Yeagley’s maniacal hate and demented racism manifests itself when it comes to Muslims and Arabs. Yeagley writes about Rima Fakih nearly a dozen times on his site, bringing up the familiar wacko claims that she is a secret Hezbollah plant. He writes that she is a Muslim mascot propped up by Muslims to infiltrate and “rape the West.”

The Huffington Post’s Ahmed Rehab in an excellent piece entitled, Miss USA Scrutiny indicates Weird Obsession with Islam, ripped into the loon world who were obsessing over Rima Fakih for being a Muslim, and accusing her of everything from cultural infiltration to being a terrorist. He linked to Bad Eagle as an example, calling it a “Kooky blog.”  That really hurt David Yeagley’s feelings causing him to once again unleash his hate filled feelings about Islam, Muslims and all Americans,

Rima Fakih, the Lebanese immigrant supported by terrorists, who was “judged” to be the new Miss USA 2010, is clearly a nude mascot for Muslims. She is Islam, stripped of all pretense. Despite the pathetic defense of terrorist associate Ahmed Rehab, both on Huffington Post and Celebutopia, Islam is offensive to America. Muslims are repugnant. They have made their name to stink in all the free world. Rehab, typically Muslim, typically liberal, attempts to denigrate and demean Americans who happen to be offended by Islam, and by the unpredecented hypocrisy of the Rima mascot. Americans don’t have “a weird obsession” with Islam. We hate it!

…

I call you out, Mr. Ahmed Rehab, and everyone like you. I call you a deceiving coward, liar, and enemy of America. Go home. You, who are afraid to reveal your family background and country of origin; you who presume to represent American freedom, but speak only for Muslims, or Communist Democrat liberals; I challenge you, one on one, man to man. Was it not you who had the audacity to post your Twittered comment (No.21) on my site? Or was it some lackey in the office? It doesn’t matter. I call you an extremely offensive individual, and I don’t want you in the free world. You need to be in Saudi, or whatever country believes like you do. You are an unwanted and odious alien in this country. I despise how you think, and what you represent. You are not welcome here in this country. Leave. Now.

The delusions held by this self proclaimed descendant of Bad Eagle are momentous. To him Rima is Islam, and all Muslims are de facto terrorists, Islam not only isn’t American it is “liberal” and “alien.”

Ahmed Rehab must have really pissed Yeagley off, (not a hard task: just say you are a Muslim or not white) considering he wants to expel him from the “free world.” Does Yeagley notice the contradiction, or is his brain so muddled with right-wing racist propaganda that he can’t see the contradiction in wanting to expel someone from the “free world” for not believing or being the same as him? Freedom obviously has a different meaning for Yeagley than the one in the Constitution.

Moreover, in Yeagley’s typical self-victimizing fashion, the old kook tried to argue that he was being ridiculed by Rehab because he was “Indian” not because he was a Kook.

Rehab didn’t mention BadEagle.com in hisHuffington Post defense of Rima the Muslim Mascot, but instead mererly linked to my article behind the words, “kooky blog.” So, an American Indian patriot site is “kooky.” Kooky because I quoted Debbie Schlussel? Or kooky because I hate liars like Ahmed Rehab?

Arab Muslims immigrants apparently feel superior to all other races, and are anxious to demonstrate it. They come from a history of lording over others, from enslaving others, from humiliating others. This is their visceral way of exalting themselves. Equality is anathema to them. I am not suprised that Rehab should consider the American Indian the lowest of the low, or merely “kooky.” We’re easy to denigrate. And honesty is certainly not Rehab’s strong point. Truth he must demean, or nullify somehow. Rehab’s attitude is abundantly clear. Islam has no respect. Islam was the invention of an angry Arab. It is a military death cult from the day it was born. Deceptive, specious words in the societies of the free world may fool those willing to be fooled, but, not me.

I am an American Indian conservative patriot. I hate Islam, and everything it stands for. I hate liars, who attempt to pawn Muslims off as a blessing to the free world. Islam is the enemy of freedom. I love freedom, and I love what America has provided, despite the ironies of history. I defend America, at least verbally, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Amed Rehab is an invader, an enemy, and a lying deceiver. This is what I say, because this is what I see.

Rehab responded directly on Bad Eagle’s blog by calmly ripping him a new one,

Show me where I made any disparaging remarks about Indians. Copy and paste them here for all to see. I challenge you.

You will fail to do so because I never made a single negative remark about Indians, and you sir are a liar.

I merely called your blog kooky – because it is.

You generalized my opinion of your blog to an opinion of all Indians, mostly because you are a dishonest person; I myself did not and would not make that generalization.

Badeagle.com is not representative “Indians,” it is representative of “David Yeagley”

In the same vein, in venting your anger at my negative opinion of your blog, you proceeded to disparage Islam and Muslims at large, rather than to limit your reaction to me. Again, stupid generalization is your sin.

As to the “Kooky” designation for your blog, I stand by that. While your lackeys may entertain your madness, I have no doubt that any objective person will take a look at this blog and reach the conclusion that it is kooky, and that you sir are a classic kook.

Your blog posts are all over the place, your arguments make no sense, you seem to suffer from an ego the size of Alaska, and a good number of delusions, such as that you somehow speak for Indians just because you claim Indian ancestry or that you have the moral authority to decide who is an American and who is not. Your grammar sucks, your posts are filled with schoolboy typos, etc. Most significantly, your blog posts and the comments from your friends are filled with ridiculous generalizations and filthy hatred of Muslims.

I imagine that self-respecting Indians cringe to see someone like you claim to speak for them. You defile the sanctity, glorious history, and honor of the great native tribes of this country. I count Native Americans as friends, I find them to be compassionate, intelligent, and some of the least bigoted people I know.

That anybody would take you seriously is an enigma. Fortunately, your kookiness speaks for itself. I imagine most people who browse your blog can only laugh at what a silly individual you are.

Good luck to you sir.

Ouch. Bad Eagle down.

Yeagley’s filthy racist attacks are plenty, he writes about Arabs,

Arab Muslims should be immediately deported from the free world, and returned to their own homelands, with a travel ban placed on all of them for the next decade.

Not only does he believe that Arab Muslims should be immediately deported, he also believes that,

The Arab personality is the perfect cohabitation of fear and aggression. It reacts to itself. It comprises fear of the Jew, and the assertion of superiority, not only to the Jew, but to all other races. The Arab personality is desperate for superiority. It must achieve superiority–by any means. Words are first, then actions. It is characterized by impatience, argumentativeness, arrogance, violence, and cruelty. It is essentially a mindless reaction to its own fear. It is a most private writhing, manifested in offense to all other people. It seeks to overcome its fear by enslaving or lording over others. That is its natural way. That is its approach to reality–a jaded reaction to itself. There is no objectivity, no self-reflection, or moral evaluation.

He has a lot in common with other more savvy and less out right racist Islamophobes such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller (both people he cites favorably on his site). They hold common conspiracy theories such as “Obama is a Mooslim,” “Muslim demographic take over of the West,” etc.

In the end, David Yeagley is just another garden variety loon who belongs in the category of dejected and unknown backwater wingnuts such as Bob Beers, i.e the Loon blog dungeon. His semi-coherent verbal diarrehea and racist Hitler-esque meanderings serve only as a warning to mankind that such inanities and impossibilites are possible.

A great article from one of the foremost analysts of racism. (hat tip: iSherif)

Fighting anti-Muslim racism: an interview with A. Sivanandan

By IRR News Team

IRR News spoke to one of the foremost analysts of racism and Black struggle as to how to meet the contemporary challenge of anti-Muslim racism.

Should we look at Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism today as something new and apart, or as a continuation of the racism we have known in the UK?

A. Sivanandan: Every racism is different and every racism is the same.

Western culture, because it is a culture of conquest and subjugation, is impregnated with racist and nativist/anti-foreigner ideas. Such ideas develop into a fully-fledged ideology when harnessed to an economic or political programme such as slavery or apartheid. But they can still become a material social force, justifying discrimination and engendering racial violence, in areas and times of economic hardship when there is competition for jobs, housing etc between indigenous and foreign or immigrant workers

It is ‘natural’ for indigenous, poor, white people who have to compete for housing, employment, social services etc to be hostile to those who look like the obvious cause of their hardship, marked out by colour, foreignness or cultural difference. When such hostility is lent justification by government policies (domestic and foreign) and harnessed by political parties for electoral gain, racial ideas become firmed into a quasi-ideology which, in turn, feeds and justifies popular racism.

The components of racism are always the same – cultural, political, economic and social. But the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society gives the components of racism a different weightage.

The racism of industrial capitalism was connected to exploitation – slavery, colonialism, indenture, immigration. Racism was imbricated in labour exploitation. The economic factor was dominant in the way racism changed and was shaped and became functional. In post-industrial capitalism, where the exploitation of labour in the old sense is concentrated in the periphery; the political and cultural components are dominant. And ideas, in an Information Society dominated by the media, become material irrespective of the economic factor. There is, in other words, very little disjuncture between the racist idea and the racist act; they virtually flow into each other.

Are you saying that before we even look at contemporary Islamophobia, per se, we have to look at the way that the balance within racism itself has changed over the last thirty years or so?

A. Sivanandan: Yes. By and large, under industrial capitalism, racist views, filtered down through slavery and colonialism, were prevalent mostly among the working class. But in post-industrial society racial ideas run through the whole of society and culture. For, globalisation and the market have sundered the ethos of the nation state and opened the door to nativism.

Let me explain. Globalisation has shifted the role of the state from welfare to market. The welfare state was guided by principles of social equality, which made for social cohesion. The market state is guided by the principles of wealth creation and individual success, which fractures society, fragments communities, and reifies personal relationships. There is nothing organic now to cohere the nation. Hence the imposition from above of British values and programmes of social cohesion to hold the nation together – aided now by the politics of fear and the ‘enemy within’, creating in the process a faux nationalism evident in everything from foreign policy to oaths of allegiance in our town halls.

How does this then relate to how we tackle Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, are they really the same thing? Can the terms be used interchangeably?

A. Sivanandan: Yes and no. Yes, Islamophobia is implicated in anti-Muslim racism; but no, the one does not equate the other. I see Islamophobia as a term relating to a set of ideas which indicate an antipathy to Islam – which can range from the crude and direct demonisation we find in the tabloids to the intellectual sophistry we associate with people like Amis. Whereas anti-Muslim racism is the acting out of that antipathy, that prejudice – in violent attacks on the street or, when institutionalised in the state apparatus, in the impact of the anti-terror laws, in racial profiling by the police, and so on.

The distinction is important because Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism reside by and large in two different constituencies – and each has to be fought on its own ‘merits’. Islamophobia, in its most sophisticated form, is the province of middle-class opinion formers, erstwhile liberals, defenders of the true liberal faith against the encroachments of illiberal Islam, as defined by them, the ‘liberati’. Anti-Muslim racism is the province of the working class and is no different from past working-class racisms. Except that now it finds its justification in Islamophobia – suitably translated into the vernacular of stereotype and scapegoat by the tabloids, the carriers of racist culture. Racism is now justified not on notions of racial superiority but on notions of Islamic ‘barbarity’. And religion is racialised.

Hence the confusion that fighting Islamophobic discourse is tantamount to fighting anti-Muslim racism. But, as I have said, Islamophobia is not the cause of anti-Muslim racism but its rationale. Religion is not race. And unless we unravel race from religion and employ different strategies for the different sites of struggle, while still keeping their relationship in view, we will be rendered ineffective on both sites. Conversely, to let the fight against Islamophobia (ideological/theoretical) dictate the fight against anti-Muslim racism (strategic/practical) is to intellectualise both and undermine action. To concentrate on the anti-racist aspect of struggle without missing out on the fight against Islamophobia, however, is not only to be able to draw on the long history of that struggle but also to gain the support of allies that were made on its way, especially – at a time of British National Party (BNP) resurgence – the anti-fascists. Such solidarity is also important to make sure that the liberati’s use of the term Islamofascism does not let the real fascism off the hook.

There are other reasons, too, why we need to focus on the struggle against anti-Muslim racism. Firstly, because anti-Muslim racism has become institutionalised through the government’s ‘Muslim wars’, its anti-terror laws, its use of stop and search and its failure to curb the media’s excesses. (And institutional racism, as we know, reproduces itself at other levels of society.) Second, these in turn breed a culture of fear and suspicion and give groups such as the BNP and the English Defence League a hold on public opinion. Third, the government’s elevation of ‘British values’ (as opposed to universal values) to which we should all aspire – and therefore to British culture – confirms the popular view that Muslim values and Muslim culture are raw and threatening. And this gives a fillip to nativism which, in the hands of the Right, turns into the rough and tumble patriotism of the street.

Do you feel that the extreme Right in the UK has shifted, like other rightwing groups in Europe, towards recruiting on the basis of Islamophobia?

A. Sivanandan: In the past, the extreme Right’s fascist ideology was per se reprehensible to all sectors of society in a democracy. Today, the classlessness of Islamophobia, ie the fact that it runs through the whole of society, from the liberati to the illiterati, and is made respectable by government policies, has given groups like the BNP a new constituency within ‘middle England’ on whom they work for electoral purposes. Hence its two faces: one electoral and the other populist – and its bipolar tactics of putting on a respectable front for the first and a militant front for the second. And the politics of fear engages both constituencies. The middle-England constituency is frightened by the immolation of its culture and values, and the working-class constituency is frightened by the spectre of aliens taking their jobs, homes, shops, and marrying their children.

So are you really saying that activists should be just addressing anti-Muslim racism as it affects poor communities on the streets?

A. Sivanandan: At the risk of repeating myself, we have to fight both Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism when and where they are acted out. But the fights are at two different levels which need two different strategies and weapons. We need to dismantle and critique the intellectual arguments being put forward by Islamophobia’s intellectual protagonists and attack the media at every turn for popularising and disseminating that discourse. And we have simultaneously to take up the other fight, the fight against Anti-Muslim racism, be that at the level of government policy or the level of hate crime on the street.

Why it is important to understand the two fights as different but connected is because of the danger that, in confining ourselves to the religious aspect of the fight against Islamophobia without taking on its political translation on the street, we would once again descend into the inward-looking politics of identity.

Any Asian could be a Muslim. Any Asian wearing a headscarf or a beard must be a Muslim. Every Muslim is a fundamentalist. Every fundamentalist is a terrorist. We are in danger of creating a culture of suspicion and distrust not only between communities but within communities, indeed within families and between individuals – which can hardly count for British values or democracy!

There have been a spate of arson attacks and vandalism of mosques in Israel over the past year. It is due to the rising hostility of Orthodox Jewish/Nationalist settlers and the political situation. Imagine the reaction of Islamophobes  if Muslims had attacked another religions holy place. There would be pandemonium!

Mosque Vandalized in Bedouin village near Haifa

A mosque in the Bedouin village of Ibtin, east of Haifa, was vandalized overnight Tuesday with graffiti.

The graffiti was discovered by village residents at 4:30 AM.

The 3 slogans spray-painted on the building’s walls read: “There will be a war over Judea and Samaria,” “price tag” and “this structure is destined for demolition.”

“This is a serious crime that cannot be ignored,” Mohammed Omaria, a village resident who works at the mosque, told Haaretz. Omria also said the crime was the result of the recent wave of anti-Arab incitement in Israel.

A village resident who lives near the mosque said he saw three yarmulke-wearing youths in the mosque’s vicinity at around 2 AM Wednesday, and that when he asked them what they were doing there, they answered that they were searching for their dog.

Dozens of village residents and Muslims from nearby villages flocked to the mosque to inspect the damage.

The village’s leaders said they plan to involve Israeli Arab MKs in the affair and hold a conference at the mosque.

The mosque has come under attack in the past when arsonists set fire to it in 1988.

English Defense League Hooligans holding up Israeli Flag

The EDL has created a Jewish division, obviously playing off of the narrative they have created for themselves as big backers of Israel. Many Jewish organizations are truly appalled by this, and rightly see this as a ploy by the EDL, and that their support for Israel is in fact founded on a foundation of Islamophobia and intimidation.

A while ago we reported about a strange new nexus that has developed amongst right-wing Islamophobes. The hoisting of the Israeli flag as a badge of honor that is supposed to make them immune to accusations of bigotry,

one sees an emerging trend amongst some right-wing and fascist groups proclaiming their unconditional support for the state of Israel. What is likely is that many of these organizations, whose roots are steeped deep in a history of anti-Semitism are recreating themselves; dropping a now unpopular prejudice (anti-Semitism) for one more in vogue–anti-Muslim Islamophobia. Gone are the days when what they claimed to champion were the “Christian values and traditions of Europe” now they have added “Christian-Jewish” values to their slogans.

I wonder how Pamela Geller feels about this, considering she gives her unconditional support to the EDL? Will she accuse these groups of being dhimmis?

Jewish Leaders Condemn the English Defense League

by Daniel Trilling

The Jewish Chronicle reports that the English Defence League has established a Jewish division. The far right, anti-Islam protest group whose violent nature was exposed by the Guardian last week (and covered by the NS here) has professed support for Israel in the past and is now urging British Jews to “lead the counter-Jihad fight in England”.

But its advances have been swiftly rebuffed by Jewish leaders. Mark Gardner, communications director for the Community Security Trust, told the Chronicle:

The EDL intimidate entire Muslim communities, causing tension and fear. Jews ought to remember that we have long experience of being on the receiving end of this kind of bigotry.

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said:

The EDL’s supposed ‘support’ for Israel is empty and duplicitous. It is built on a foundation of Islamophobia and hatred which we reject entirely.

Sadly, we know only too well what hatred for hatred’s sake can cause. The overwhelming majority will not be drawn in by this transparent attempt to manipulate a tense political conflict.

How about the 300 Muslims who died?

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, leaders of the hate organization SIOA (Stop the Islamization of America), were going nuts advertising their protest against the Cordoba House, a center that will contain a mosque, gym, swimming pool and museum that is to be built a few blocks away from Ground Zero. According to the Islamophobic duo, and their “save-Western-Civilization-from-evil-Mooslims” crowd, this protest was similar to D-Day, when the allies stormed Normandy. Hysteria much?

The protest itself was filled with anti-Muslim and Islam hating personalities. Placards read that building the mosque would be similar to building a” memorial to Hitler at Auschwitz,” labeled Prophet Mohammed a “pedophile,” “terrorist” and other names and stated that “Islam Hates Women,” etc.

According to Pamela’s highly inflated estimate, 5,000 people showed up while in reality only around 200-300 came to the event.

Geller said the NYPD and security at the rally told her about 5,000 demonstrators were there. But NYPD spokesman Sgt. Kevin Hayes said the police department’s policy is to not provide crowd estimates and that he could not confirm Geller’s number. CNN iReporter Julio Ortiz-Teissonniere, who attended the rally and sent photos to CNN, said the number was closer to 200-300 while he was there for the first 45 minutes of the event.

Can this woman ever quit with the hysterical, disproportionate and excessive lies? Another news agency put the number of protesters squarely at 300.

According to Geller and Spencer this protest not only turned out large (fictional) numbers of people, but was also looked upon with approval from the heavens! Pamela wrote joyously that, “despite weather forecasts of thunderstorms and rain, the skies were clear and beautiful — but not as beautiful as this patriotic crowd of great Americans and Europeans.” Robert Spencer hinted at Divine approval,

And the truth is powerful. The forecast had called for rain, but it didn’t start raining in New York until after the rally had broken up. Many took it as a sign that we represented the cause of right and justice.

Debbie Schlussel, an open Islamophobe and bigot, whom Robert Spencer once dubbed a “freedom fighter” refers now to her former friend Pamela Geller only as Scamela Geller, had this scathing assessment of the protest (hat tip: BMD),

a cleverly designed PR vehicle for people like car loan fraud scammer Scamela Geller and others who are using them to raise money and get attention.  Because having a whole car dealership making gazillions by ripping off banks with car loan scams using Muslim straw buyers wasn’t enough.  Nor was the murder of an investigating cop and the execution of the one honest car salesman employee who told police.  Behavior worse than a mobster’s wife apparently breeds no shame.  But it does breed faux-outrage in a “battle” that we already know won’t be won.  It’s already lost.  They have the property.  Move on to something we can win, not a car loan defrauder’s attention-whore trick, just weeks before her book is about to be released and needs to earn back a bloated advance.  If you think it’s anything other than this, you are a malleable tool, easily manipulated and not of much substance.

Wow, did Debbie just drop the elbow from the sky on Pamela here? This assessment is from a woman who wants all Muslim immigration to America to stop and for there to be no Mosques in the USA, so it can’t be said that she is sympathetic to the plight of Muslims.

Also, I have to ask why no mainstream media outlet, cable or otherwise has taken Pamela to task not only for her crazy and loonie conspiracy theories, but the fact that she isn’t only against this specific center which will house a mosque, but against mosques in general. She is the same person who called for the DESTRUCTION of the Golden Dome in Jerusalem, and for it to be replaced with a Jewish Temple (insert World War III)! Someone needs to smack her with that question.

The height of irony probably came when two Christian Arabs who came to protest the mosque were mistaken for being Muslims, and became targets of their fellow protesters bigotry and harassment. I wonder if they will dispute whether Islamophobia really exists? From Mike Kelly’s great article, On this Ground, Zero Tolerance,

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

“Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.

“Get out,” others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

“I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.

The incident underscores how contentious — and, perhaps, how irrational — the debate over the mosque has become.

A mosque, for instance, has been located since 1983 on West Broadway, about 12 blocks from Ground Zero. After the 9/11 attacks, the mosque’s imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, began shaping plans to build an Islamic cultural center closer to Ground Zero as part of an attempt to build cultural ties between Islam and America.

Called Cordoba House, the center would rise 13 stories and would include a 500-seat auditorium, a swimming pool and a mosque.

I guess the lesson here is don’t speak Arabic or look foreign at an Islamophobic protest or you might get harmed.

Jerry Kane, a radical right-winger who belongs to the sovereign citizen movement gunned down two police officers and injured two others. Is this an instance of politics and race mixing with religion and ending in terrorism? Imagine if Kane had been a Muslim, this would be headline news across the nation, pundits and Islamophobes would be waying in on the “threat of homegrown terrorism” and we would all be frightened into hiding under our beds.

West Memphis Shooter: ‘If I have to kill one, Then I’m not going to be able to stop (via. Little Green Footballs)

Here’s some more information on the far right “sovereign citizen” wingnut who murdered two police officers in West Memphis before being shot to death (along with his son). Included is a video clip in which Jerry Kane says:

I don’t want to have to kill anybody. But if they keep messin’ with me, that’s what it’s gonna have to come out. That’s what it’s gonna come down to, is I’m gonna haveto kill, and if I have to kill one, then I’m not gonna be able to stop.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSFwg9V4RcA&feature=player_embedded 350 300]

Yesterday, May 20th was the Draw Muhammed Day which is extending into today, ostensibly put together to defend freedom of expression/speech. The original creators of the day have backed out, including Molly Norris, due to the tremendous amounts of bigotry and hate that it engendered, but others continued with the campaign.

Taking a glance at the Facebook page, most of the freedumb expressions are hateful and bigoted depictions of Muhammad meant to anger Muslims. Is it a coincidence that the ones who are reveling most in this day are racists and Islamophobes?

Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have both been utterly gleeful over the event. Unconditionally supporting it, Spencer got in the act himself drawing Prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his head, though the depiction looks a little bit like Spencer himself, and Geller added to the fray by drawing Prophet Muhammad with the face of a pig.

As Shahed Amanullah said, this is pretty much collective punishment on the whole Muslim community for the actions of a few. The inspiration for this event was the threats that the South Park creators received from a group called Revolution Muslim.

We reported at the time that this group is composed of four or five individuals, all with dubious backgrounds. Not only are they on the fringe in terms of their beliefs, they are completely rejected in the American Muslim community. Yet for some curious reason the media took this story and ran with it as if these Revolution Muslim characters represented or had any clout amongst American Muslims. It is as though anyone can say they are Muslim or represent Muslims and they will get airtime if they do or say something crazy.

The event itself was a mixture of self-righteous internet warriors who cared less about free speech and more about offending and disparaging Muslims. The initial fan page was deleted by Facebook, shortly after that another one was started.

There were pictures of Quran’s in toilets, of Muhammad depicted in all sorts of ways which I won’t repeat or reproduce here because they are vile and disgusting, and go beyond any justification of free speech and into the realm of outright hostility and bigotry towards Muslims.  People can view the site and judge for themselves.

However, I must say that if this event was put together to defend freedom of speech it has failed. Freedom of speech, the freedom to offend, to be a racist is not in dispute but when you get called out for it don’t begin whining. There also seems to be a level of incitement, the strange and morbid wish to receive death threats, as the moderator put it, “Did you receive any death threats? If so, post them online and share the fun. ”

Interestingly enough, a few participants in the Draw Muhammad Day expressed disappointment at not receiving death threats, one Jack Burns wrote,

Jack Burns

I’m really disappointed…I haven’t received any…I’m starting to feel left out!

Troels Jensen

damn, i did not get a death threat yet, darn…

The French government has gotten what it asked for, the “discussion” about the Burka, and now the legislation for banning the burka has created a volatile mix in the country. The discussion is provoking a lot of animosity and hate, now we have the case of a French woman ripping off the burka of a French Muslim, what is being dubbed “burka rage.”

Debbie Schlussel is a walking catastrophe. She has been hit by the green monster. No, not the “diabolical Islamic hordes marching to overtake the West” but…jealousy. It seems that the unsavory wingnut is up in arms that the Miss USA crown has gone to Miss Michigan Rima Fakih, a young woman who astounded judges with her beauty and intelligence during the pageant. Per her modus operandi, Schlussel is claiming that Rima Fakih should really be known as Miss Hezbollah. (Yeah, because you know how Hezbollah really loves women walking around in bikinis.)

Seriously, this is sad, but it is wonderful to watch how low Schlussel can go. Pathetic.

Donald Trump, Dhimmi: Miss Hezbollah Rima Fakih Wins Miss USA

It’s a sad day in America but a very predictable one, given the politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate in which we’re mired.  The Hezbollah-supporting Shi’ite Muslim, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih–whose bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist and immigration fraud perpetrator–won the Miss USA contest. I was on top of this story before anyone, telling you about who Fakih is and her extremist and deadly ties.

Rima Fakih: Miss Hezbollah is Now Miss USA

No, it’s not “just another beauty pageant.”  Donald Trump, Muslims (who mostly support Islamic terrorist groups, like Hezbollah, which features many of Fakih’s close relatives as top officials), and even Barack Obama will exploit this as propaganda for Islam.  Mark my word.  Hezbollah is laughing at us, tonight.  One of its auxiliary members won the Miss USA title without having to do a thing to denounce them and their bloody murder of hundreds of Americans, including the trampling/torture murder of Navy Diver Robert Dean Stethem aboard TWA flight 847, the 25th anniversary of which is next month.

Dhimmi Donald Trump simply didn’t have the guts to demand that Fakih denounce the Islamic group Hezbollah, whose martyrs and top terrorists are Fakih family members.  It doesn’t matter to the Donald that this is the terrorist group that murdered more Americans than any other after Al-Qaeda, and probably more, when you count its joint ventures with Hezbollah.  Trump made a bigger deal with Miss California USA and her bimbo activities, when–hellooooo–it’s a bimbo contest.  Now, Hezbollah has the chief USA bimbo.  And they’ll use it.

I don’t just wonder if this whole contest is rigged.  I have a feeling that it is.  Clearly, there is affirmative action for Muslim women in beauty pageants and other such “contests.”

We know that political correctness and bending over backward (and forward) to all things Islam, are the rules of the day.  I had a bad feeling they’d pick her to try to pander to the Islamic world some more because–ya know–the collective American nose isn’t yet brown enough from ass-kissing Islamic butt all around the world  . . . at least according to the conventional wisdom of idiots.  The Islamic world is especially laughing that a sequined gay man dressed like the world’s ugliest cross-dresser, Johnny Weir, helped make a woman from their intolerant world, Miss USA.  If they could, they’d still rip him to shreds and sever his penis, the way they torture their Israeli and even their own fellow Islamic victims.

Tonight, they celebrated and laughed at us from within at Dearbornistan’s Hezbollah restaurant, La Pita, where workers openly sing Hezbollah war songs and anti-Semitic “ditties” in the kitchen.  It was the site of Fakih’s victory party, where falafel, and hummus, and hate were all on the menu, as they usually are there and throughout Fakih’s community.

I wonder how much influence Miss USA’s Islamic sponsor Farouk Shami–the racist 9/11 Truther and Palestinian terrorism supporter whose Farouk Systems helped pay for the pageant and broadcast–had on this win.  A lot, I’d bet, especially since Fakih tweeted gushingly about hanging out with him.  He probably urged Trump and the judges to make sure his fellow Muslima won.  After all, it makes no difference that she’s a Shi’ite and he’s a Sunni.  She had the support of Sunni terrorists like Imad Hamad, who helped fund her bid.  And, as anyone who knows anything about the Islamic world knows, they’ll happily put their internecine Shi’ite-Sunni war on hold, if it means helping Islam in its propaganda war and fight to take over the West.

In her answer to a dumb question about insurance covering birth control, Fakih gave an even dumber answer.  But it was a feminist, big government, anti-business, politically correct answer.  And because she’s a Muslim, Fakih got away with her utterly conceited statement in a video profile:  “When people meet me, they see a very beautiful, very smart, very funny person.”  Hey, don’t be so modest.  We gotta beat that fake notion of “Islamic modesty” that really doesn’t exist in the real world.

I knew the classy Miss Oklahoma USA, Elizabeth Woolard–who gave a good and somewhat educated answer about Arizona’s immigration law (watch the video, above)–would lose, the minute she said she supported the Arizona law.  After all, the right answer was to say how “unAmerican” and “oppressive” this law is and how great these illegal aliens are for doing “the work that some Americans just won’t do” (like kidnapping, rape, stealing jobs, and driving down wages).  It doesn’t matter that the question–uttered by judge Oscar Nunez–was incorrect, since his premise was that the law allows authorities to check the immigration status of anyone they think is here illegally (That’s not what the law allows at all).  Since she said the right thing for America and Arizona, not the politically correct answer to win Miss USA, she lost.

Oh, and she wasn’t a Lebanese Muslim Hezbollah supporter with relatives who are top terrorists and “martyrs” in the group.  If you don’t have relatives that have died killing some Jews and relatives who’ve murdered hundreds of Americans, you really don’t deserve to be Miss USA.

Do you?

PREVIOUS:

**** UPDATE, 05/12/10: EXCLUSIVE: Miss USA Contestant is Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah Supporter, Used Pageant Name to Promote Muslim Female Subjugation; Hezbo Taqiyyah Allows Bikinis? ****

**** UPDATE, 05/13/10: Meet Miss USA Contestant’s Hezbollah Family ****

**** UPDATES, 05/16/10:
* You Stay Classy: Muslim Miss USA Contestant Has “High-Class” Supporters; More “Islamic Modesty”
* Confirmed: Islamic Terrorist Financed Miss USA Contestant
* Miss USA Pageant Sponsor Attacked “Whites,” Bragged About Dad’s Massacre of Jews, is 9/11 Truther, Anti-Israel

While we leave Debbie to spasm over someone a million times hotter than she could ever be, another Islamophobe, botox queen Pamela Geller who loves bikini modeling herself was feigning euphoria, praying for fatwas and claiming Fakih as “an icon for the advent of modernizing the Muslim world.” Of course, Pamela would love nothing more than to enlist Fakih into her goonish and fantastical scheme of stopping the “Islamization of America” but something tells me Fakih would recoil in horror from Geller’s reptilian drawl.

Daniel Pipes has also commented on the victory, stating that affirmative action played a part, from David Weigel,

I’ve been seeing plenty of links to Daniel Pipes’s blog post on Rima Fakih, the first Muslim to become Miss USA. But I only just decided to click through. Wow. Citing five Muslim victories in beauty pageants over the past five years, Pipes says that “this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action,” then offers an update from a reader:

“[O]n a more serious level, affirmative action appears to play a role in some of the Nobel Prizes.”

And more reader insight:

“No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it’s Muslims. That’s why most people ignore these rigged “events.” They are money losers and require controversy.”

This comes not from a penny ante blogger but from a former State Department staffer, former member of the United States Institute of Peace (holding a recess appointment after being filibustered by Democrats), and former adviser to Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Just wow.

Muslims from what I have gathered have mixed feelings, but there won’t be any fatwas, as one friend reminded me, there are hundreds of Rima Fakih’s in the Muslim world free to dress as they please, especially in her country of origin, Lebanon where women routinely dress in mini-skirts and tight-fitting clothes.

Other Muslims of course disagree with her participation in what they see as an event that focuses on objectifying and debasing women, but in the end the decision is her’s and it seems as though a lot of people in her community support her, including her family. I am sure Pamela wasn’t hoping for that, she wanted another Rifqa Bary case, hoping that her parents would want to kill her, but Pamela will be sorely disappointed if she’s looking for an honor killing.

In the end this throws everyone for a loop. The Islamophobes hate it when Muslims win anything and don’t know what to make of it. Jealous and hateful types such as Debbie Schlussel cast her as Miss Hezbollah while Pamela Geller and company hope against hope that some “Mooslim’ will threaten her, or in their dream world scenario, that she will join their hateful ranks.

On the other hand many American Muslims recognize, and some applaud this achievement and how it reflects that America is maturing and accepting Muslims/Arabs into the mainstream, but many are wondering if this is the right way? While individual Muslims might be happy for Rima Fakih, it seems not all American Muslims are accepting of the way she went about achieving her success, but one thing is for sure no one is going to say she is Miss Hezbollah in that bikini!

I was astounded when I came across this debate on RussiaToday’s CrossTalk between Dr. Norman Finkelstein, a thorn in the pro-Occupation extreme Zionist camp and Raanan Gissin, an ex-official with the Israeli Government. Raanan Gissin was formerly a senior adviser to Ariel Sharon and currently works as a PR man for Israel, making frequent public appearances on various cable and international networks.

He made statements that many Israeli spokesmen and PR gurus are reticent to make, at least to American and European viewers. If I was the Israeli Media Defense Force (yes, such groups exist) I would be praying and hoping he wont make anymore appearances on TV. In the encounter, Gissin essentially said the reason that Jews have rights over those of the Palestinians who lived on the land is because it was written in the Bible. He says his grandfather tried to be nice to the Palestinians and do business with them after taking their land but some of them had to meet his gun. He also goes on to justify the take over of Palestinian land by Jewish Eastern Europeans and Russians by saying American settlers did the same thing to Native Americans.

Norman Finkelstein calmly and logically obliterates him. This is high voltage ownage that you don’t want to miss. (Below is the video and a transcript of the relevant portion.)

Transcription begins from 6:20 of video one, up until 0:55 of the second video. Enjoy.

Video 1:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJvx5Y-jkY&feature=related 350 300]

Video 2:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUFhWF7glJg 350 300]

Ranaan Gissin: When my great parents, came from Russia in a hundred and fifty years ago they came because there was a Bible in one hand, my grandfather came with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in another, and his hand was extended to the Arabs who lived here, some did make business with him and others who fought him had to meet the wrath of his rifle, and that’s how you live in the Middle East.

Norman Finkelstein: It is an oddity that you say you are coming and that you want to live in peace with someone you come with a rifle in one hand. I often have friends visit me at home and when they come to my home they don’t come with a rifle.

Ranaan Gissin interrupts: So did the settlers in America…

Norman Finkelstein: That’s correct. I appreciate Dr. Gissin’s comparison because I think it is exactly right, the first Euro-Americans who came to North America, came with rifle in hand because they came with the intention of displacing and replacing the indigenous population, that’s why they needed a rifle, and most Americans now a days at least acknowledge that what was done to the indigenous populations of North America was wrong and it’s exactly for the same reason that Jews from Eastern Europe had to come to Palestine with a rifle in hand because their intention was not to live with the indigenous population but to displace and dispossess it in order to create a Jewish state in an area that was overwhelmingly Arab, and uh, I think everything pretty much ensued after that, followed that basic fact. Now a days I would say there are possibilities for Israel to live at peace with what remains of the indigenous population but unfortunately Israel is unwilling to resolve the conflict along the lines of international law which would allow for some sort of co-existence between Israel and the Palestinian population that was displaced and dispossessed.

Peter Lavelle: Let’s go back to Tel Aviv, does Israel want to have peace with its neighbors and can the Palestinians have their own state as well? I mean, consistently the United States and Israel are the only two countries in the world that block this, consistently, consistently at the United Nations. So does Israel want to have peace? Go ahead Dr. Gissin.

Ranaan Gissin: Dr. Finkelstein’s formula is a formula for committing suicide, not for living in the Middle East. You have to live with the realities in the Middle East. I would like the Middle East to be like North America, I would like the Middle East, after four hundred years of bloody wars to be like Europe, but it’s not, it’s still a young region, it’s fraught with conflict, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the only one, there are more conflicts than states in the Middle East, there are 22 states with one Israel and over thirty armed conflicts. Let’s face it, the largest conflicts are not between Israel and its neighbors but between Sunnis and Shi’ites, and Israel came with good intentions. Israel came with the intention to live alongside the Palestinians and let me say the way, when my great grandfather came from Russia, you know what he said, he had it very right and he had the Bible as his guide, he said the rights of the land are ours because this is our land. This is why I came back because this is our ancestral homeland, people who live on the land have rights and we tried to live with those people.

Peter Lavelle: We’re going to a break. Norman would you like to have a quick word before we go to the break?

Norman Finkelstein: Yes, I wonder Mr. Gissin if I came with a Bible in one hand and came to your home, I knocked on your door and said “according to my Bible, my family lived where your home is, my family lived there two thousand years ago,” would you pack up your bags and leave?

(Shouting)

I am waiting for your answer.

Gissin for some reason becomes obsessed with bringing his great grandfather into the picture. Maybe he was feeling nostalgic or reminiscing on olden’ time stories that he use to hear growing up, but it is quite chilling that he would think that the Bible is sufficient to justify taking another’s land. Just imagine a Muslim saying the same thing, “my grandfather came with a Quran in one hand and a rifle in another,” he would be branded a Jihadist terrorist in a split second. In fact, this is one of the stereotypical caricatures propagated by Orientalists and Islamophobes regarding Islam; the image of a Muslim warrior on an Arabian horse with a Quran in one hand and a sword in another.

Gissin has no intelligent rebuttal to Norman Finkelstein’s responses, his only retorts come in fumbling, high decibel, off topic spiels, at times he mumbles and stumbles over words. The most amazing portion might be where he justifies taking over Palestinian land by comparing what Jewish settlers did in Palestine to the actions of Euro-American settlers in North America. This is quite interesting because many pro-Israel defenders claim that it is not a correct analogy, and they say you can’t make that comparison; “it isn’t the same thing” we are told. There was just such a discussion in the comment section of a  previous article by our very own intrepid Danios, and yet here is an ex-Israeli official and one of their main PR men not only admitting that the comparison is true but using it as justification.

In my last article on Bill Maher I noted that one of the reasons for the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the claims that religious Jews hold on the land. For them there is no room to maneuver because as Gissin states, using the Bible as his guide, “the rights of the land are ours because this is our land.”

____________________________________________

For purposes of full disclosure, here is the third and final portion of the debate between Finkelstein and Gissin:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svENH7WGeMY&feature=related 350 300]

Art Exhibit Defaced

A mosque in Britain was the subject of an attack dubbed as “racist” by a local newspaper and in a glaring case of irony an art exhibit in Chicago that was about hate attacks on Muslims after 9/11 was the subject of racist vandalism.

Racist Attack on Islamic Centre in Renfrew (via. Islamophbia-Watch)

A frightening attack by a gang of hooded thugs on an Islamic centre was last night being treated by police as racist.

The group of neds in their late teens and early 20s who hurled eggs into the building while prayers were being held in the afternoon were yesterday branded despicable by one shocked worshipper.

At first those gathered at the centre were astonished at what was happening and didn’t have a clue what had been thrown. All that was heard were shouts of abuse and the loud noise of a main door banging shut. The alarming incident happened on Friday, May 7, at the Dar-Ul-Quran Islamic Centre in Paisley Road, Renfrew.

One man, who spoke to the Paisley Daily Express, said: “At the time it was scary. The attackers were very abusive and shouting at the tops of their voices. Then something was hurled into the building and we didn’t know what it was at first. This has never happened here before and we’re all disappointed. It was a despicable act.”

Police said there was a “racist incident” around 2.15pm while prayers were being held. There were a few worshippers inside when a main door of the centre suddenly opened and eggs were thrown inside.

Paisley Daily Express, 12 May 2010

Muslim art Exhibit Defaced

CHICAGO – A Muslim exhibit at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has been vandalized.

The work addresses racial profiling and violence directed at Muslim people after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The art work by graduate student, Anida Yoeu Ali, is just one part of a series of work at the school entitled, “1700% Project.” That series displays responses to hate crimes in the form of artistic expression.

Last Week, Ali was on National Public Radio’s “Worldview” program discussing the project as part of a discussion on Islamic reform and identity.

On Tuesday, Ali returned to the exhibit only to find it damaged and defaced with large caricatures and the words “Kill All Arabs.” The rest of the gallery was untouched.

Officers may have trouble tracking down potential suspects since the gallery does not have security cameras.

Chicago police say the defacement happened sometime between last Thursday and Tuesday. Ali believes the defacement happened Monday or early Tuesday because someone she knows told her the exhibit was “intact” on Monday. Ali says she will continue to present the artwork as-is.

Copyright © 2010, WGN-TV, Chicago

The Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller

Is this woman worth covering anymore? Do our readers even care to read the verbal diarrehea that she recycles endlessly? Contradicting herself at every turn? The lunatic, fanatic, charlatan Pamela Geller has now thrown her support behind a Nazi sympathizer and leading figure in the former apartheid regime of South Africa, Eugene Terreblanche.

For us at LW it is not surprising that she would throw her support behind Terreblanche. She is an avid supporter of Israeli Apartheid and supremacy and so when a historical parallel such as South African apartheid comes to the fore she has no option but to condemn Nelson Mandela and the struggle for freedom of the Black South Africans. For her it is a matter of consistency in hatred, oppression and injustice. She sees clearly that Palestinians are the new Black South Africans and the TerreBlanche’s of White South Africa are today’s Avigdor Lieberman’s and Benyamin Netanyahu’s.

One has to ask Pamela to step back for a moment. Maybe she is writing before thinking? Or maybe she just doesn’t care? Pamela, as a Jew can you honestly say you support a man whose emblem is eerily similar to the Nazi bent cross? Have you lost any shred of reason and integrity that you may have had left?

Eugene Terreblance addressing his followers

So what does Pamela have to say?

Every single headline calls Terreblanche a “white supremacist,” alluding to his position in the waning days of the apartheid government, thirty-odd years ago. But the real story here is not that Terreblanche was a “white supremacist” — if he really was (and I know how the left loves to throw around those labels).

Ridiculous. Only Pamela doesn’t seem to get the fact that Terreblanche was an avowed white supremacist.

we have been taught to believe that the ANC and Nelson Mandela are the “good guys.”

So now Nelson Mandela is one of the bad guys? This woman is in her own world. This is the exact same thing that Pamela and her buddies tried to do to Jimmy Carter. Paint him as some sort of crazy evil radical and an anti-Semite. Don’t be surprised if next Nelson Mandela is called an anti-Semite.

Maybe she should read the following article in the Daily Mail to remove her ignorance but my guess is we won’t be seeing a retraction anytime soon.

Funeral of Eugene Terreblanche Takes Place Amid Tight Security by Jane Flanagan

Their arms raised in a Nazi salute, thousands of angry white followers greet the coffin of Eugene Terreblanche as it leaves church.

The South African white supremacist was buried on Friday, six days after being hacked to death by two black farm workers.

Supporters travelled from across the country to mourn his murder and, in some cases, plot revenge.

Children and even babies were dressed in the uniform of 69-year-old Terreblanche’s party, the AWB.

Haunting: Mourners give the Nazi salute as a hearse containing the body of slain white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche drives by in South Africa today

Flags bearing the swastika-like emblem of Terreblanche’s party, the AWB, are waved as mourners give the salute today

A massive security operation was mounted for the ceremony amid fears of violent clashes between whites and blacks.

But there were few black faces to be seen. Some mourners muttered ‘housemaid’ in Afrikaans when a black government minister paying official respects walked past.

Despite calls for calm from political leaders following Terreblanche’s brutal killing, the crowd were united in the view that the death of the white supremacist leader was a political assassination.

‘None of us are safe,’ said Jan van der Merwe, a small scale farmer.

‘White farmers are always been murdered in this country, but now they have killed our leader, there must be consequences.’

Mourners still appear to be giving the Nazi salue as Terreblanche’s coffin goes by – but in reality they are simply taking pictures with their cameras

Enlarge

Enlarge

A little girl reads the order of service, left, while a dog and guard provide security, right

Terreblanche, the 69-year-old leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) was bludgeoned to death last weekend, allegedly by two of his farm workers.

But the Afrikaner community is increasingly convinced his death is part of a sinister plot to decimate the descendants of South Africa’s original white settlers.

Although the funeral, in Terreblanche’s rural home town of Venterdorp, passed off peacefully, the country’s worst racial crisis since the end of apartheid is far from over.

And with only nine weeks until the start of the World Cup, funeral goers expressed fears for the safety of the 32 competing teams.

‘This government has lost control of the country,’ Cornelia Jonck said.

‘They cannot even protect those of us who live here, how can they guarantee the safety of hundreds of thousands of football fans.

‘There will be bloodshed and then people of the world will know what we have to face every single day of our lives.’

Mrs Jonck, 61, was among the first to pitch a camping chair on the lawn in front of the brick church in the North West Province town, to hear the funeral broadcast on loud speakers.

As strains of the Afrikaner national anthem, Die Stem, meaning The Call, blasted out, police helicopters hovered overhead.  The bumper of an armoured police car, parked outside the church, provided a seat for some elderly mourners who were unable to find room inside.

Laid to rest: Terreblanche’s brother lays the flag of the AWB over the coffin

There was audible tutting and a vigorous shaking of heads among those lining the road outside the church as the convoy carrying family of ‘the leader’ was followed by police cars with black officers at the wheel.

‘It is not that we don’t like the blacks,’ said Margarite Dreyer, a lifelong member of Mr Terreblanche’s AWB party.

‘It is just that we want to be apart from them.  We have our God and our ways, and they have their ancestors and the things that are important to them.

‘God did not want us to be mixed like this. It is not a coincidence that Oom Gene [Terreblanche] died at Easter.

‘He died so that we may be saved – so that God will give us our own homeland at last, so that the Afrkaners may be alone, like the people of Israel.’

A number of homemade banners blamed the country’s President Jacob Zuma, and the firebrand leader of the ruling party’s youth wing, Julius Malema, directly for the killing of Mr Terreblanche, a father of one daughter.

Tension: Supporters of Eugene Terreblanche raise their hands in a Nazi salute and sing (above) while others waved supremacist flags (below) ahead of his funeral in Ventersdorp today

‘That black group from Julius, it doesn’t matter to them who you are, if your skin is white, they are going to kill you,’ shouted one tearful woman as she queued for a seat in the small church.

‘He is a monkey auntie, he belongs in the bush,’ a young boy added.

Mr Malema’s resurrection of the township refrain ‘Shoot the Boer’ has stoked anti-white feeling within the country in recent weeks, many in the crowd claimed.

A number of mourners called for Mr Malema to be ‘taken out’ for his part in creating an atmosphere of rural lawlessness.

At least two white farmers are murdered each week in South Africa.

‘I would have no trouble pulling the trigger myself,’ an AWB member from Ventersdorp said. ‘I am happy to kill him, but I don’t want to go to jail for doing it. I’d rather die myself.’

Andre Erasmus, a pastor who was among the crowd, was adamant that Mr Terreblanch was not murdered in a row with his workers over pay.

He believed that about 10 years ago, ‘a war was declared on the white man in the country and nobody has done anything about it’.

Enlarge

Loyal: AWB members stand guard outside the church grounds

There were audible wails of grief as the murdered Afrikaner’s coffin was carried into the church draped in the red, black and white Nazi-like flag of his AWB movement. Two men wearing the group’s military-style uniform stood at each end.

On the other side of town, the country’s trade union federation called a mass meeting to ensure there would be no repeat of the black versus white clashes that had taken place earlier in the week when the alleged killers appeared in court.

Police and army units were drafted into the tiny town to ensure the funeral service and burial on Terreblanche’s farm passed off peacefully.

Terreblanche was an iconic figure in the country; a large man with silver beard and piercing blue eyees, he attended rallies on horseback.

He was a fervent opposer of black rule.  He had lived in relative obscurity since his release from prison in 2004 after a sentence for beating a black man nearly to death.

Despite fears to the contrary, his death has not sparked wider violence.

The acrimonious aftermath of Terreblanche’s murder revealed strained race relations 16 years after apartheid collapsed and Nelson Mandela became president, urging all races to come together.

Terreblanche was hacked to death while he slept at his farm, apparently after a row over wages.  The attack with machetes and pipes is said to have been so violent that Terreblanche’s body was ‘unrecognisable’ .

His alleged killers worked for him on the farm outside Ventersdorp, north-west of Johannesburg.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1264753/Funeral-Eugene-Terreblanche-takes-place-amid-tight-security.html#ixzz0kvBLF30a

Muslim Couple say train attack was racial hatred

Police are searching for a gang of about 20 Derby men after an attack on a Muslim couple on a train to Nottingham.

Abida Malik said the men called her and her husband Asif Ahmed terrorists. One man put Mr Ahmed in a headlock saying he was making a citizen’s arrest.

The gang boarded the train at Loughborough on Easter Sunday evening, after what British Transport Police believe was a drinking session.

Officers have described it as an “unpleasant and nasty” incident.

Abida Malik, who wears the hijab – or headscarf – was travelling home after a wedding in Leicester with her husband.

She said: “I was full of fear, my heart was beating really fast and I felt so helpless because there was so many of them.”

“Everyone seemed too scared to do anything… Now I don’t want to travel on the train by myself, and I don’t want him (Asif) to go by himself. They could have stabbed him”.

BBC News, 8 April 2010

Geert Wilders

His star is growing in the circles of hate but rational people still regard him as a creep.

Dutch Populist Wilders ‘unwelcome’ in Eifel Town

The Dutch anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders has been told he is “not welcome” in the western German town of Monschau after he spent the weekend in the Eifel region.

The parliamentarian and leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, along with several armed bodyguards, stayed from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning in the town, according to police in the city of Aachen.

Wilders, who promotes a strongly anti-immigration and anti-Muslim platform, has called for the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands, among other incendiary positions. His party recently performed strongly in council elections.

Monschau Mayor Margareta Ritter said she was concerned that Wilders’ presence had tainted her town with the suspicion that it was sympathetic to his views. As a result, Monschau had unfairly been connected with extremism in the European press.

“Of course I care very much if such persons feel comfortable here,” she said. “Anyone who pollutes the integration debate in the Netherlands with poisonous right-wing populism as Wilders has, is not welcome in Monschau. I wanted to distinguish Monschau from that.”

But she was not in favour of a legal bar against Wilders’ coming to the area and if he wanted to return, he could, she said. The populist politician was briefly barred from entering Britain in 2009 for his unsavoury views.

Wilders presence in Monschau only became public knowledge because he suffered a dizzy spell there.

Whether Wilders was merely holidaying in Monschau or had been meeting with like-minded people, Ritter was unable to say.

Police were in contact with Wilders’ bodyguards drove past his hotel several times to check there was no trouble, according to a police statement. The outspoken opponent of Islam has received death threats from Muslim militants and therefore has his own, round-the-clock bodyguards.

DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

A Texas apartment complex was telling its employees to deny Muslims or Muslim looking people entry into or residency in the complex. Two brave employees, Daniesha Davis and Michelle Williams came forward and reported the discrimination.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNAgbxtljKc 350 300]

Euless Apartments accused of refusing apartments to Muslims

EULESS — A North Texas apartment complex is facing accusations that it segregates Muslims in buildings away from other tenants — or refuses to rent to them at all.

The complaint comes from former leasing agents at the StoneBridge at Bear Creek complex in Euless. They say Muslims were routinely denied apartments even when there were vacancies.

“If somebody called over the phone inquiring about an apartment, we were told that if they have an accent or a different name that we are supposed to tell them that we didn’t have anything available,” said Daneisha Davis, who worked there for a year-and-a-half.

Michelle Williams was Davis’ co-worker. She says Stonebridge’s manager told her, on a regular basis, to turn away potential walk-in renters if they looked Asian or Middle Eastern.

“Make it undesirable for them to want to come back,” is what Williams says she was told. “Even though we were only 80 percent full, or 75 percent full. We had plenty of apartments we could’ve rented out.”

“She referred to them as ‘curry people.’ And they used curry to cook with, that they smelled bad and they were dirty,” said Davis.

For the duration of the time the women worked at Stonebridge, they say they were told there was one condition under which they could rent to Muslims: If they were all kept in the same two buildings of the 21-building complex.

“She definitely made it clear to both of us that she didn’t want other residents complaining about having to live next to ‘curry people,’”  Davis said.

“Wow. Wow. That’s unfortunate,” said AbdulNasir Jangda, an Imam at the Islamic Association for the Mid-Cities. “When we start grouping people together, we’re creating a very divisive element. How are we supposed to understand and relate and appreciate one another if we can’t stand to live next together?”

In January, Davis filed a Federal Fair Housing complaint against Stonebridge, alleging discrimination. The complaint made, via e-mail, was sent on a Saturday.

The next Tuesday, Davis was reassigned to other properties inside the company.

She has since quit and is looking for work.

Though she hasn’t sued, Davis does have a lawyer. “It’s obviously suspicious in the case of the timing,” said attorney Ty Gomez.

Stonebridge denied a News 8 request for an on-camera interview. But on the phone, the company said Davis’ re-assignment had been in the works. It says an internal investigation found no evidence of discrimination or steering minorities into specific buildings.

And Stonebridge says it has residents of all ethnicities throughout the property.

The federal government has transferred Davis’ complaint to the Texas Work Force Commission — Civil Rights Division. She hopes the agency will be able to right what she sees as a fundamental wrong.

“People come here for a chance at a better life and to be treated fairly, and they’re not being treated fairly,” she said. ” And I don’t even think they know it.”

“I am paying a pretty high price, but it’s worth it.”

E-mail dschechter@wfaa.com

Wearing a Yarmulke (Yamaka) is okay but not the Hijab

Geert Wilders previously called for a tax on the Hijab, now a recent political event reveals a new tactic in his  discriminatory political agenda. On a side note this is a good compliment to Danios’ article, as it ironically reveals that it is contemporary, if marginal Westerners who want to repress religious freedom and are advocating repressive conditions and restrictions on minorities akin to the ones in the fabled ‘Pact of Umar.’

Wilders goes for headscarf ban in the Hague

A ban on headscarves for city council workers and in all institutions and clubs which get local authority money will be the most important point in the PVV´s negotiations to join governing coalitions in Almere and the Hague, says party leader Geert Wilders.

Speaking to RTL news, Wilders said the ban would be central to talks to form new local authority executives in the only two cities where the party is contesting the March 3 local elections.

The ban will apply to ‘all council offices and all other institutions and clubs which get even one cent of council money,’ he said.

The PVV is tipped to emerge as the biggest party in Almere and second biggest in the Hague.

Speech

Wilders brought up the ban again in a speech to supporters in Almere, where he entered the room to the Rocky theme tune Eye of the Tiger.

The ban will not apply to other religious items such as Christian crosses and Jewish skull caps because these are symbols of our own Dutch culture, Wilders said in his speech, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

The speech began with a ‘lengthy tirade’ against the ‘arrogant Labour party’, according to the Volkskrant report of the meeting. ‘If you translate the PvdA’s Arabic language election brochures they say ‘bring your family here. You get benefits, we pay for everything’, the Volkskrant quoted the PVV leader as saying.

‘Almere must become the safest city in the Netherlands,’ he said. ‘There will be an end to subsidies for Turkish macramé and Arabic finger painting. Not just the Netherlands but all of Europe will look to Almere.’

Discrimination

Wilders is currently facing charges of discrimination and inciting hatred against non western immigrants and Muslims. He always maintains he is opposed to Islam, not Muslims themselves.

Earlier this week, Wilders told the Telegraaf the PVV´s commitment to maintaining the current retirement age of 65 would be crucial in negotiations to form a new national government, following the collapse of the CDA, Labour and ChristenUnie alliance last weekend.

Most parties have already ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders. Only the Christian Democrats and right wing Liberals VVD have not done so.

Opinion polls make it likely that four parties will be needed to form a new government after the June 9 vote.

Racist Nazi Grafitti on French Mosque

Islamophobia doesn’t exist?

Racist Graffiti on Mosque for 6th time

France’s main Muslim group says a mosque has been defaced with racist graffiti in the sixth such incident this year.

The head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith says racist words were painted over the weekend on the walls of the mosque in Sorgues, in the picturesque Vaucluse region.

It is the sixth time this year that a French mosque has been tarnished by racist graffiti. Mohammed Moussaoui says that Muslims now have a right to ask about the “real objectives” behind these acts.

He noted that his group which brings together various Muslim tendencies has called numerous times for a parliamentary inquiry into Islamophobia, to no avail.

Islam is France’s second most-practiced religion after Roman Catholicism.

150 people joined this anti-Muslim group on Facebook, interesting considering how Pamela Geller seems to only think Muslims create hateful Facebook groups. (via Islamophobia-Watch)

Anti-Muslim Racists Arrested in Wales

Five men have been arrested after a Facebook site was set up declaring “all Muslims should be thrown out of Wales”.

Around 150 people joined the group on the social networking site claiming they would march through the Rhondda Valleys to make their feelings known. But South Wales Police have now stepped in and arrested five men for religiously aggravated public order offences.

It is one of the first occasions people have been arrested over comments posted on Facebook. The group has also been removed from the site. Police now believe the march will not go ahead, but they will be on standby in case anyone turns up.

Members of the group, which was entitled Rhondda March, said they would walk from Treherbert down to Pontypridd on February 28. And the organisers declared: “We Dont Want Musslims in our country move them out they are takeing over.”

The group’s message board was inundated with comments including “ai im in, gona put sum nails in a stick 4 the f******” and “Got my steel toe caps ready, wot a craking idea”. Another reads: “send the f****** bk. Join us u now u want 2 stand up tall”. A further message said: “Move these musslims back home”. And another read: “yeah support our local buissnes not forgin ones. Im in”.

Wales Online, 7 February 2010

Geert Wilders

It seems like Geert Wilders racism and anti-Muslim discourse is going to catch up with him, but don’t hold your breath.

This article is from the Morroco Post and is littered with a lot of grammatical mistakes but it is informative:

By Rachid Chelouah\ Cambridge \ England
The most popular Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders asked judges today 13 January 2010 during his first meeting at court for mitigation to reduce the penalty regarding his accusation of Islamophobia.

The far-right Dutch politician who is known for his hate for Muslims and Islam and who was once denied entry to the British territory   at London – Heathrow airport by the immigration officials because of his racist views towards the Islamic religion, asked judges to drop or reduce charges against him since his racist discourse is met with freedom of speech right.

The suspect is facing charges because of hate crime based on his intolerance and insulting Muslims as a group which makes of his trail very serious with few chances to be discharged or acquitted within the course of justice.

At Amsterdam District Court, Wilders tried to politicize his trial saying that the session was “the first day of a political trial” in an attempt to associate   his trail to political agenda of his party in a way to avoid or win the public support

The most popular politician in Netherland built his Freedom Party movement on anti-immigrant and anti-Islam principals while calling for banning the Quran in the Netherlands and deny entry to any immigrant to the country as well as taxing clothing commonly worn by Muslims, such as headscarves, because they “pollute” the Dutch landscape.

In retrospect to the year 2008, Geert Wilders linked Quran verses with terrorism and violence in his 17 minutes in length film “Fitna” . The MP Geert Wilders has been extended to include inciting hatred against Moroccans and non-Western immigrants

If found guilty Wilders could face a maximum sentence of two years in prison, though a fine of up to euro18, 500 ($26,800) can apply.

The paranoid calls to profile Muslims on airplanes have become louder in recent days.  Here’s a story from 2008 that ought to make us think twice about such an un-American response (hat tip: KevinMD.com):

Doctor Flying Southwest Tries To Go To Bathroom, Ends Up In Jail

By Chris Walters on September 24, 2008

A 65-year-old urologist, born in India but living in the United States for 38 years now, was flying from his home in Missouri to a medical convention in Las Vegas on June 26th, 2008. Did you notice that “born in India” detail? Apparently his attempts to go to the bathroom angered and frightened a flight attendant, who wouldn’t tell Dr. Sivaprasad Madduri why he couldn’t use the lavatory (the pilot was using it) and who wouldn’t listen to Dr. Madduri’s explanation that he was taking a medicine that acts as a diuretic. When the plane landed he was arrested, spent the night in jail, and was told the next day to plead guilty and pay $2500 if he wanted a quick resolution.

Southwest has since told Dr. Madduri, “We don’t want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future,” and they’ve offered him a $100 voucher. It turns out the “apology” was meant for the other passengers, and was in fact about Dr. Madduri.

From Rediff:

Ironically, even before he filed his complaint with the Southwest Airlines officials, he got a letter from Frederick Taylor Jr, senior manager at the airline’s customer service communications, offering a $100 voucher for a future flight.

“Sometimes, an explanation for the reason why things happen is not always possible, and the bizarre behaviour of the individual during your June 26 flight to Las Vegas supports this point,” Taylor said in a letter accompanying the voucher. “While I am unable to explain the circumstances surrounding the disruption, I think it is important to offer my heartfelt apologies for any concerns you may have had as a result of this event”.

“Naturally, we don’t want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future, or for it to be your last recollection of traveling with our company. In fact we would consider it a privilege if you gave us another opportunity to provide you with better memories.”

Here’s Dr. Madduri’s story in his own words:

[I am] a physician from India who immigrated to the United States 38 years ago and [has] been in private practice in South East Missouri for more than a quarter century.

On June 26, 2008, I traveled from St Louis to Las Vegas to attend AAPI annual convention by Southwest flight 1226. Two hours into the flight, I tried to go to the bathroom ( I take a blood pressure medicine with diuretic that makes one ‘go’ more often). As I was sitting in row six, I walked to the front lavatory. The flight attendant, named Lora Lee Minton, abruptly stopped me and essentially shouted at me, “Go back! This bath room is occupied, and you cannot stand here.”

Shocked and dumbfounded at this unfriendly behavior, I went back and sat in my seat. Two minutes later, I saw the lavatory door opening and I got up and walked towards the bath room again. The same flight attendant (Lora Lee Minton) screamed at me, “I told you not to go to that bathroom,” and started pushing me into my seat. I was totally confused at this erratic behavior, and told her that I had been taking medicine and I had to go to the toilet. I even tried to walk past Ms.Minton as I was very uncomfortable.

“I told you not to go,” she pushed me into my seat! I was lost. I flew many times but had never experienced a rude and unfriendly behavior like this. Confused and not knowing what to do, I went back and sat in my seat. I saw the pilot came out of the lavatory, walked into the cockpit and closed the door behind him. Later I could use the bathroom.

The sequence of events that followed were more frightening and beyond the scope of any one’s imagination. As the plane landed in Las Vegas , I was escorted by two police officers and was handed over to the FBI. The FBI interrogated me at length and for the first time, I was told that the flight attendant, Ms.Lora Lee Minton, reported that I was causing ‘disturbance’ during the flight. I was also told that when the pilot is out of the cockpit, no one is supposed get up from their seat, till the pilot goes back to his seat. This apparently is a federal law being enforced since 9/11 and no one ever told me, nor was it announced during the flight.

That night I was taken through federal centers for further investigation. I was hand-cuffed, finger printed and was ‘processed’ as a common criminal. I was told repeatedly that my background was checked and I had no criminal record. Even after checking my back ground and even after confirming it by calling my family members (Our two children that live in St Louis and Houston, Texas ) and my professional partner (urologist from Poplar Bluff, Missouri ), I still had to go through the harassment. I was dragged through Federal court buildings that night with hand and ankle cuffs, left in cells for hours before I was interrogated and was threatened repeatedly with abusive language: ‘Shut up,’ ‘I am going to kick your ass,’ to name a few. Finally I was taken to a federal detention center in Las Vegas and was ushered into a large jail cell! I spent the night in jail with 43 prisoners – most of them drug dealers and picked up at street fights!

The next day I went through processing in a federal court building and presented in front of a Federal Judge. The public defender told me that my ‘case’ was decided and I would be released if I pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $2,500. He also told me that I could refuse to plead guilty, contest the judgment and even could win, but could be taking a long time, cost more and might result in multiple trips to Las Vegas.

Exhausted, depressed and completely deflated, I agreed to what ever the public defender suggested and got out after 24 hours of ‘living hell’.

I endured the most horrifying and traumatic 24-hours of my life for a crime I sincerely believe I did not commit. A simple statement by the flight attendant (Lora Lee Minton) in normal tone of voice that I was not supposed to wait in front of the toilet when it was occupied by the pilot, would have saved the ghastly ordeal.

I was told repeatedly by the prison guards, some of the FBI officials (not all of them were rude), the prison inmates who heard my story that the reason I was targeted was because of my skin color (brown) and ethnic background (South Asian, Indian).

When I returned home, I did not feel like lying flat and take the abuse, more so the incident involved not only me but an entire race and ethnic group. I sent my story to local, state and national news papers including all the major Indian news publications. The response was overwhelming: the news papers were very receptive; I received numerous e-mails, letters, phone-calls, sympathy and supportive cards; every one wanted me to ‘fight-it-out’ and ‘not to keep quite and do nothing.’

I did send my story to ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Missouri and Nevada , yet I haven’t heard from them yet, though I was told that my experience had merit. I contacted attorneys locally as well as in St Louis and was told that they were looking for proper attorneys that specialize in civil liberties cases; I was told by some that I should not have pleaded guilty and should find eye-witnesses that would testify in my favor.

During 30 years of my stay in America , I never felt so threatened nor my rights so violated as I did that fateful night. ‘You are not guilty until proven otherwise’, the anthem we are made to believe all the time was turned out to be not true; I was guilty until prove my self innocent. I was treated like a guilty person and was never given a chance even to tell my side of the story. Even after the incidence, I am finding it difficult to prove my innocence. I want Southwest Air Lines to realize their mistake and drop charges against me. I did contact Southwest airlines and was informed that they were standing by their stewardess and the issue had no racial profile or bias.

Steve Walder-KFDM News

In the past week there has been an uptick in crimes against Muslims and “Mooslim” looking people. Two cases highlight this real well: In the first case we have a serial criminal, a white supremacist who killed Muslim store owner Naushad Virani in a robbery. Of course the killer,Stevie Walder was a filthy racist and at the time that he was apprehended by police stated, “I saw you behind me. I loaded my clip. When I saw that all of you were white I decided to give up and not fight.” Whether Walder was just trying to appease the police officers or not we do not know but it is clear that he relished killing Virani, who he no doubt, as his ilk is prone to do considered a “raghead” or “sandn*****.”

The Tyler County Sheriff told KFDM News a man who has ties to a white supremacist group and faces charges of capital murder in the Christmas night shooting death of a Liberty store owner has admitted to the crime and told a deputy he gave up and decided not to shoot when he was surrounded because the arresting officers were white.

Two Tyler County deputies, two state troopers and a Woodville Police officer arrested Stevie “Bubba” Walder, 31, at about 1 a.m. Sunday on Highway 69, just north of Woodville, according to information Tyler County Sheriff David Hennigan provided to KFDM News.

A judge set Walder’s bond at $2 million on a charge of capital murder in the death of Naushad Virani, 50.

Two customers found Virani at about 10:30 a.m. Friday behind the counter at Ridgewood Grocery Store in the 4300 block of North Main Street in Liberty. Virani was working on Christmas so his employees could have the night off with their families. Virani had been shot in the head and was found in a pool of blood.

The store’s surveillance video helped authorities identify Walder as the suspect.

Liberty police believe robbery was the motive. They’re trying to determine if the shooting was a hate crime.

Tyler County Sheriff David Hennigan spoke with KFDM News on Sunday afternoon and described the events leading up to the arrest.

He said one of his deputies received information from a DPS trooper about the murder in Liberty and the suspect.

“My deputy spotted Walder’s vehicle and fell in behind him,” said Sheriff Hennigan, “and he also saw the trooper who had given him the information about the homicide and the suspect. They confirmed with dispatch that it was the vehicle. My two deputies and two DPS troopers followed the suspect and a Woodville Police officer fell in behind them.”

Hennigan said the suspect pulled over on Highway 69, just north of Woodville. The officers conducted a felony stop and pointed their weapons at Walder.

“He told my deputy, ‘I saw you behind me. I loaded my clip. When I saw that all of you were white I decided to give up and not fight.’ He admitted to my deputy that he shot the store owner.”

Hennigan said people with ties to white supremacist groups are a problem in East Texas.

He praised the officers involved in the arrest for working together to take Walder into custody without any harm to themselves or the suspect.

We also have the case of the Sikh man who was attacked by crazed fanatic who obviously thought the poor guy was an evil “Mooslim.” Sikhs have had to endure a lot of hatred and violence in America and Europe because of the visible turban which ignorant people mistake all “Mooslims” as wearing.

A Sikh graduate student, working as a part-time pizza delivery person, was thrown into a swimming pool and brutally assaulted in West Texas, according to the Sikh Coalition, a community advocacy group.

When the young man, whose identity has been withheld for his protection, brought pizzas for delivery into a home, four men took the pizzas and started eating without paying, while hurling racial epithets and threatening him.

“I’m going to **** you up in Iraq, I’m going to **** you up in Afghanistan, I’m going to **** you up over here,” they were quoted as saying by the Coalition in a media release. But it did not say when the incident took place.

The four men then grabbed the Sikh student and threw him into a swimming pool. The four attackers surrounded the pool, kicking him in the head and body. Every time he tried to escape, they would stomp or hit at him.

For 20 minutes, he swam for his life trying to escape. He eventually seized an opportunity to flee and barely made it to his car with two men in pursuit, the community group said.

Though the local police were called shortly after the attack, they failed to respond adequately, the community group alleged. The police classified the incident as a misdemeanor, which means that the attackers may not have to serve any jail time, it said.

The local police also did not file the incident as a hate crime, the group said. “It is clear from the attackers’ references to ‘bin Laden’ and ‘Go back to Afghanistan’ and the fact that they kicked off his turban that this assault targeted not only him as an individual, but his Sikh identity.”

However the Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently investigating the matter as a possible federal hate crime after being contacted when the local police department refused to prosecute the attackers for hate crime, the Sikh Coalition said.

Allen West

The political season is turning out to be a hot one with elections in a lot of districts around the United States coming up in 2010, and there are sure to be some interesting races and good old political shenanigans. There will also be Republican contenders who will resort to the cheap strategy of xenophobia, hate and Islamophobia. We already have Lynne Torgerson, (who judging from her campaign picture looks as though she saves a lot of money by cutting her own hair), the Minnesota republican running against Rep.Keith Ellison and then there is Allen West.

We have to thank our long time reader James for bringing Allen West to our attention, we have heard of West before, mostly because Pamela Geller, other wise known as the looniest blogger ever, likes to take pictures with him and gloat on how anti-Muslim he is, in fact just today she wrote “West is America’s best hope.”  It also turns out that he isn’t only anti-Muslim but he is also somewhat of a racist who includes a highly dangerous degree of biblical literalism into his worldview, which wouldn’t be a problem if that would inform his personal life but it becomes a problem for all of us when it informs his policy ideas.

The truth is, it is not really clear how much of a chance Allen West has, hopefully next to none, though when he ran in 2008 he lost by only 29,000 votes, but crazier things have happened in Florida. Lets take a gander at what he advocates: he is a hawk on every issue, from Health Care and Immigration to National Defense.  As you can tell he wants no Health Care reform, agrees with Michael Savage on Immigration and on National Defense says in a bizarre sentence about fighting America’s “enemies”,

I pledge to never succumb to this enemy, seek out non-kinetic means, but will stand ready to go kinetic in order to “provide for the common defense”.

I don’t know if that means he will go nuclear or is willing to fight many wars but it sounds like jibberish.

Allen West with Pamela "the loon" Geller

On his website, Allen West has a whole page dedicated to his Christian Zionist/dispensationalist view on Israel. When you read it you understand why kooks like Pamela Geller love him so much, he essentially takes a position squarely outside of the mainstream in both the Middle East and United States by stating he is against the “creation of a Palestinian state.”

I do not support any creation of a Palestinian state, to do so would be to create a terrorist state. There is already a state for the Arabic people residing in the region called Palestine, Jordan. If the Arabs can build an indoor ski slope in Dubai, they can resolve the issue of their Arab brothers and sisters…I do not support any division of Jerusalem. If I recall from history and the Old Testament, David, Son of Israel built Jerusalem and his son Solomon made it great. The muslim claims to Jerusalem are based upon a very contentious story concocted by muhammad, and of course the latter conquering of the city, even by Salahaddin. One flag will fly over Jerusalem, the Israeli flag, never any other, certainly not a UN flag.

I don’t even know where to begin in deconstructing the enormous fallacies and clear bigotry on display in the above quotations. There seems to be a mammoth disconnect in reality here, two presidents, including a man West admires, George W. Bush clearly stated that a Palestinian state will be created. He obviously believes all Palestinians/Arabs are terrorists, that they are all “Mooslims,” and that their right to live or not live in their homes in Jerusalem are based on “stories” which somehow have less validity than the “stories” in the Old Testament.

Scary, this guy is like what would happen if Glenn Beck and Pamela Geller conspired to bring their wildest dreams to fruition in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. But that isn’t all, West also seems to believe that according to his twisted literal interpretation of the Bible, Arabs are stained forever with certain characteristics, this is the same kind of racist mindset that justified the Apartheid regime in South Africa and all other racist ideologies in the past.

Genesis Chapter 16, verses 11-12 states, “And the Angel of the Lord said to her (Hagar): Behold you are with child, and you shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against everyman, and every man’s hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.”

Ishmael of course became the beginning of the Arab people….and God’s word is immutable truth.

In closing, there are battle lines clearly drawn, I know where I stand, and that is to support the State of Israel.

This kind of religious zeal imbuing our politics is old, it was thrown into the trash heap when Bush’s term ended and the Republicans who relied on this kind of rhetoric were voted out of office. Allen West, hopes to resurrect it by positioning himself in a fantastical “Kinetic” battle pitting himself on the side of Israel against those spawns of Ishmael, the Arabs/Mooslims.

Muslim Graves Desecrated by Nazis

Vandals have targeted Muslim graves in Manchester again. (hat tip: Islamophobia-Watch)

Racist Yobs Vandalize Muslim Graves

RACIST vandals have targeted Muslim graves at a south Manchester cemetery for a third time.

Sometime between 4pm on Friday 20 November and 9am on Monday 23 November unknown offenders pushed over 20 headstones at the Southern Cemetery on Barlow Moor Road.

The vandalism is being treated as racially motivated as only a Muslim section of graves were targeted.

On 29 September 2009, 26 Muslim headstones were vandalised and on 2 November 2009, 27 were similarly targeted.

Police are now appealing to anyone who has information to come forward.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Eckersley said: “It is an absolute disgrace that whoever is responsible thinks it acceptable to repeatedly target the graves of loved ones.

“The repeated nature of these attacks and the fact the offenders are only targeting Muslim graves means we are treating this as a hate crime.

“This sort of mindless, racist behaviour must be utterly condemned and I’m sure the whole community will be outraged, that is why I want to reassure them, and in particular the families affected that we are doing all we can to catch the culprits.

“We have increased our patrols in the cemetery and surrounding area and I ask people using the cemetery to be vigilant and report anyone causing damage to the graves or acting suspiciously.

“To those who know who is responsible or have been told who is responsible I would like to ask how you would feel if someone damaged a grave of one of your loved ones and how hurt or upset that would make you.

“Please do the right thing, tell us what you know and help us put a stop to this.”

Anyone with information should call Greater Manchester Police on 0161 856 6151 or the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

Welsh Defense League

These hooligans don’t seem to get it. These are the same people that Pamela Geller has called “freedom fighters.”

Four Arrested in Protest against Mosques

Four people were arrested at an anti-Muslim demonstration amid a strong police presence in Wrexham. Around 40 members of a group calling themselves the Welsh Defence League (WDL) shouted racial abuse and gestured towards locals, saying they were protesting against plans for a new mosque.

Four people were arrested for public order offences, and North Wales’s Temporary Deputy Chief Constable, Ian Shannon said the day passed without “significant incident”. Meanwhile Unite Against Fascism held a counter-protest, near where the WDL gathered on Saturday.

And a Wrexham Communities Against Racism festival attracted around 200 people. Residents were joined by faith groups, the Wales TUC, Searchlight, Unison and members of Wrexham Council. Searchlight Cymru secretary Ian Titherington said none of the WDL protestors were Welsh, and they appeared to be members of the English Defence League (EDL).

He said: “This was the final humiliation for the EDL’s disastrous visits to Wales. The only way they could hold an event was to bus in 30 from Bolton, who on arrival went to the nearest pub, got drunk and bawled out racist chants. The EDL gathering did not exactly sell any local links, by displaying a Bolton Wanderers FC English flag and singing God Save the Queen.”

The WDL was formed in June 2009 as an off-shoot of the EDL, which claims to campaign against Islamic extremism. The group insists it is not fascist. But at a march in Swansea in October, onlookers were confronted by jeering men giving Nazi salutes, and one was arrested for a racially aggravated public order offence.

Daily Post, 23 November 2009

Rajinder Singh first non-White BNP Member

The BNP, the openly anti-Muslim political party that is steeped deep in racism and hatred has under threat of being banned lifted its “White only policy” and allowed a non-white member into their ranks. The man, known as Rajinder Singh say he only joined the BNP because he hates “Islam.” (hat tip: Islamophobia Watch)

An elderly Sikh who describes Islam as a “beast” and once provided a character reference for Nick Griffin during his racial hatred trial is set to become the British National Party’s first non-white member.

Rajinder Singh has been sympathetic towards Britain’s far-right party for much of the past decade even though he currently remains barred from becoming a member because of the colour of his skin.

But last weekend the BNP’s leadership took their first steps towards dropping its membership ban on non-whites after the Human Rights Commission threatened the party with legal action. The move will be put to a vote of members soon.

Martin Wingfield, the BNP’s communications and campaigns officer, has already put forward the case for Mr Singh’s membership, telling members on its website: “I say adapt and survive and give the brave and loyal Rajinder Singh the honour of becoming the first ethnic minority member of the BNP.”

A BNP spokesman said last night: “He is perhaps the kind of immigrant you want if you are going to have them.” Mr Singh, a former teacher from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, says he would be “honoured” to become a card-carrying member of the BNP.

Mr Singh and another Sikh from Slough who goes by the pseudonym Ammo Singh have previously co-operated with the BNP and have been used by the party’s leadership to try to woo Asian supporters, particularly Hindus and Sikhs living in areas where tensions with Muslims run high. The party has had little success, however, with all mainstream Sikh and Hindu groups widely condemning the BNP.

But Rajinder Singh and Ammo Singh – who keeps his identity secret but is thought to be an accountant in his late thirties – have answered Mr Griffin’s call, thanks to the BNP’s staunchly anti-Islamic rhetoric since September 11.

Mainstream Sikh groups said they were appalled. Dr Indarjit Singh, director of the Network of Sikh Organisations, said: “Sikhism stresses equality for all human beings. Therefore Sikhs who are true to their faith, will having nothing whatsoever to do with any party that favours any one section of the community.”

Independent, 20 November 2009

The view that Nick Griffin’s promotion of Rajinder Singh and Ammo Singh was an attempt to “woo Asian supporters” is rather one-sided.

It is true that Griffin began making a pitch for support among Sikhs (and Hindus) on an anti-Muslim basis years ago. But this was not because he wanted to win large numbers of Asian supporters to the BNP. Rather, he aimed at attracting a few extreme right-wingers from the Sikh and Hindu communities because he thought this would help the BNP deflect accusations that it is a fascist organisation and that its campaign against Muslims is racist.

But the problem he faced was that Sikhs and Hindus were excluded from joining the party, because membership was restricted to white people. As the Independent article notes, even Rajinder Singh hasn’t been allowed to join the party, despite the fact that he has written for the BNP press, spoken at their meetings and appeared on their election broadcasts.

Griffin first tried to change the BNP’s rulebook to admit non-whites back in 2002, and again in 2004, but he got nowhere. The BNP’s fascist core cadre who have gone along with other aspects of Giffin’s “modernisation” strategy couldn’t be persuaded to swallow that.

Now, as a result of court action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission – together with the provisions in the Equality Bill, which will ban political parties from racially discriminating over who they accept as members – Griffin will finally get his way and the BNP will amend its constitution to admit non-white members. And then no doubt a handful of extremist Sikhs and Hindus will indeed join the party.

Griffin will make a big thing about this, just as he has over the fact that the BNP has a councillor of Jewish origin, in order to assert that the party has put its racist and fascist past behind it – all in the interests of more effectively pursuing its campaign against “mass Third World immigration” and “Muslim colonisers”.

Via the Huffington Post:

Wolf Interstate Leasing in Wheat Ridge, Colorado has put up a billboard insinuating that President Obama is somehow tied to Jihadists and the Fort Hood shootings. The billboard features cartoons that show a caricatured President morphing from a suit-wearing politician into a turban-wearing jihadist. The words, “Remember Ft. Hood” appear at the bottom.

The manager of the store defended the billboard on David Sirota’s morning show on AM 760 this morning by claiming that the words “We are a christian nation” appear in the constitution.

The store owner also provided space for recent billboards that read “Where’s The Birth Certificate?” in reference to conspiracy theories that Obama is not U.S. citizen.

The Young Turks

Many of us here at LoonWatch.com are fans of The Young Turks, so we decided to post some of their videos on the Ft. Hood Shooting along with some commentary:

Crazy Conservative Bloggers on Fort Hood

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEzyPpCKU8c 300 250]

My comments: There were two Muslim American soldiers who shot their fellow soldiers, compared to tens of thousands of Muslim Americans who serve in the military, and millions of Muslim Americans who live in the country.  But surely two of them define them all, right?

Fox “News” Un-American Take on the Fort Hood Shooter

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l5kGWwHlbk 300 250]

My comments: At about four minutes into the video, the Fox “News” lady host argues that “political correctness” is the problem: the U.S. military knew about his radical postings online and didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to be PC about it.  Of course conservatives love to be politically incorrect–or rather, pathetically incorrect–and this is one of their favorite talking points.  They use the euphemism of “I’m going to be politically incorrect” instead of just saying “I’m going to be bigoted.”  Anyways, the entire theory is bogus because his military command already said that they didn’t know about his radical postings online.

Also, at the very end of the video, Cenk mentions the most important point: so many right wingers unfortunately think that they are “allowing” Muslims to be Americans.  We’ve had a few similar comments on LW, where a few posters would say something along the lines of “if Muslims want to be treated as Americans…”, not knowing that Muslims in this country are already Americans!  You didn’t “gift” that Americanness to them, and they are just as American as you are.  And your entire attitude of thinking that you get to decide who is and who is not a real American is the most un-American of all.

America was a country founded upon immigration, a melting pot by definition.  Unless you’re Native American, your ancestors were also immigrants to this country, and what difference does it make that they were from a European country as opposed to an Asian or African one?  Why is it that a third generation Arab American is treated as being a foreigner/immigrant, whereas an immigrant who just moved from Italy to the United States some three years ago is considered more American?  It’s absurd.  Get this through your thick skulls: you will treat every single American as a fellow American regardless of his race, religion, or ethnicity.  And if you don’t believe that, then you should be treated as being un-American.

Should Ft. Hood Shooter Been Racially Profiled?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0anLUrcgMY 300 250]

My comments:  Cenk, I think you missed the point here.  There was absolutely no need for racial or religious profiling here at all.  The fact is that if anyone had said the things Major Nidal Hasan had said–be it his radical postings online or his rantings in person–then that’s a red flag no matter what race or religion he is.  So that’s not racial or religious profiling if you pull a guy aside for saying those things.

Let me clarify: if there is a guy going through airport security and he says something like “I love Al-Qaeda,” then you can and should pull him aside for saying that.  This is regardless of his race or religion.  On the other hand, if you simply pull aside those who are of a certain race or religion, then that’s racial profiling.  Nobody on earth would have a problem with the former, but the latter is racist and 100% un-American.

The thing that is being missed here, with the Ft. Hood Shooting, is that there was no reason to racially profile this guy!  He could have been caught and stopped if people had just paid attention to the numerous red flags.  Major Hasan was saying crazy things, and doing crazy things (giving absurd and out of place presentations at work)…It was just a matter of picking up on those numerous cues and then looking into that.

If you start racially or religiously profiling people, then you alienate the same community within which the problem exists.  It’s counter-productive.  Instead of wasting time trying to screen tens of thousands of Muslim Americans, why not just investigate those people that are saying and doing things that are questionable?  And that’s the American thing to do: judge people based on their words and actions, not their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.  It’s about judging people for the content of their character.

Crazy Conservatives on Ft. Hood

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRKpzHsN1-w 300 250]

My comments: Of course, any sane person knows that it’s a lie that Muslims believe they must “kill all infidels.”  Pious Muslim Americans believe that they must obey the U.S. laws, and are thus not a threat.

The Islamophobe says “this is not Islamophobia, it’s Islamo-realism.”  That’s exactly what bigoted people say.  Cenk of TYT interviewed a racist guy earlier on his show, and that guy would call himself a “racial realist” instead of “racist.”

Anyways, the key point that Cenk raises is at 4:00 when he talks about how truly un-American these guys are, and how they really and truly don’t understand the ethics and purpose of this country.

UPDATE:

Pat Roberson: Islam is Not a Religion

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgL8FDUtkWQ 300 250]

My comments:  A bit over the top?  I don’t know.  But yes, I do agree that these right wingers shouldn’t throw stones when they live in glass houses.

Alright, that’s it for now.  Thanks a lot, TYT Nation!  Keep up the good work.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze5dbxPO8cU 300 250]

More myths about Barack Obama being a Mooslim and other nonsense from Tel Aviv streets documented by Max Blumenthal.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YtKpFctwrk&feature=related 300 250]

A great remix by Cassetteboy for Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on Question Time.

From Left to Right: Andrew Bostom, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller

Fascism’s new face in Europe, parliamentarian in the Netherlands Geert Wilders, proposes taxing Muslim women who wear hijab (head covering) 1000 Euros. He is a close friend of Robert Spencer who has proclaimed that “everyone should support Geert Wilders.” Wilders has also called for the banning of the Quran which he equates to Hitler’s Mein Kampf , has stated that Muslims are colonizing the Netherlands and has advocated the denial of religious freedom to Muslims.

Wilders Wants Headscarf Tax

Geert Wilders has done it again. The leader of the far-right Freedom Party managed to make the Dutch headlines during the annual general political debate.

Wilders’s newest proposal is to tax the Muslim headscarf. Any Muslim woman who wants to wear a headscarf – which he described as a ‘head-rag’ – would have to apply for a licence, and pay one thousand euros for the privilege. Wilders says the money raised would go toward women’s emancipation programmes.

Alexander Pechtold from the liberal D66 Party gives his reaction:

The rest of the Dutch parliament reacted to the proposal with disbelief. One after another, they asked Mr Wilders if this was a serious proposal. For instance, would he include other types of head covering in the tax? And how about orthodox Christian women who wear a headscarf quite similar to the Muslim version?

In reaction, Mr Wilders said he would actually prefer to ban the headscarf altogether, but that appeared to be legally impossible. He would not tax the Christian form of the headscarf, but he did not say how policy would make that distinction.

Mr Wilders has acquired a reputation for making shocking statements during general debates. Two years ago, he called for the banning the Muslim holy book, the Quran. Last year, he warned that Muslims were colonising the Netherlands. Last spring, he and his entire fraction walked out at the beginning of a debate.

The government still has to defend its new budget as part of the general debates. But in an unusual move, Mr Wilders has already announced that he plans to submit another motion of no-confidence in the entire cabinet. That will be the Freedom Party’s eighth motion of no-confidence.

Native American

Daniel Pipes–one of the “Dirty Dozen” leading Islamophobes of the country according to FAIR–recently taunted Palestinian people in a hate-filled post, saying:

The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.

A sensible commentator voiced LoonWatch‘s opinion:

“Isn’t the charge (and belief) that the Palestinians are a defeated people, however true, incendiary, at worst; taunting, at best? And to what purpose?”

The dwelling of the Palestinian "defeated people"

Amazingly, Pipes sees nothing wrong with his comment, saying: “The world may quote me on it…”  Racists and bigots in general have this problem: they say something completely offensive and inappropriate, and then not only do they refuse to rescind what they said, but are actually completely unable to see what is wrong with it to begin with.  This is because their mind operates differently than the rest of us: they are oblivious to the obvious. They say what we could never say due to human decency.

However, Pipes’ comment is not without precedent.  In fact, there was another ethnic group which was constantly referred to by white racists as “a defeated people.”  I’m talking about the Native Americans.  This idea–that Native Americans are a “defeated people”–was started by the American settlers who wished to steal Native American land.  We read (emphasis is mine):

Iroquois delegates at Fort Stanwix tried to argue for the Ohio River as the boundary to Indian lands, but the American commissioners would have none of it.  “You are a subdued people,” they lectured the delegates..When chiefs of the Wyandots, Chippewas, Delawares, and Ottawas said they regarded the lands transferred by Britain to the United States as still rightfully belonging to them, the American commissioners answered them “in a high tone,” and reminded them that they were a defeated people. At Fort Finney, when Shawnees balked at the American terms [for peace] and refused…one of the American commissioners…told them to accept the terms or face the consequences.

(The American Revolution in Indian Country, by Colin Gordon Calloway, pp.282-283)

I must of course thank Daniel Pipes for using the exact same phrase and of providing the perfect analogy, as the Palestinians are in a similar situation as the one the Native Americans found themselves in when the American settlers tried to steal their land. Just like there were American settlers back then stealing land, there are today Israeli settlers trying to steal Palestinian land.

The dwelling of the Native American "defeated people"

The above quote fits the analogy perfectly: the Palestinians define their land as West of the Jordan River (consisting of the West Bank and Gaza with the right of return), just as the Iroquois argued for the boundary of the Ohio River.  The Native Americans regarded the land as theirs, despite the fact that the British had “transferred” the land to the American settlers; again, the Palestinians still regard the land as theirs, despite the British transfer of the land to Israelis after the mandate period.  And of course the American settlers were of the view that the Native Americans “must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”  It was necessary for the occupier and colonizer to imbue in the natives a learned helplessness, a feeling of absolute demoralization and self-loathing, so that they would accept terms of peace that were completely slanted against them.

It is the language of the white supremacist and colonizer which Daniel Pipes has adopted.  The object of denigration has simply changed from the “warlike” Indian “pagans” to the “warlike” brown Muslims. The American settlers indoctrinated the Native Americans with the idea that they are “a defeated people,” until they started believing it themselves:

In the past, many Indians saw themselves as a defeated people whose land was occupied and whose lives were dominated by their conquerors…[which] caused major psychological problems in Indian communities.  In some ways the Native Americans shared a defeated status with Mexican-Americans…

Their reservations became virtual prisons…At an Indian conference held during the 1950s, the speakers concluded that as far as the Siouan peoples of the Plains were concerned “most Indian assumptions are negative, unenthusiastic and fearful–the outlook of a beaten people.”

…[Whites] recognized the Indians’ precarious status…as “Persons of little worth…”

(The American Indian: Past and Present, by Roger Nicols, pp.130-131)

Daniel Pipes

This concept of “a defeated people” is intrinsically imperialistic and offensive, and is no longer appropriate to use in the post-colonial era.  People should not be conquered.  One can only imagine the reaction if the American president taunted the Iraqi people by saying that “the Iraqis are a defeated people.”  Governments and regimes may be defeated; but should we seek to defeat an entire people?  This idea of one people defeating another is archaic and incendiary.

Nowadays, Native Americans are fighting these horrible stereotypes of being “a defeated people”–a label placed on them by the settlers.  A writer for The Native American Community Explorer writes:

It was recently said by a commentator that American Indians are “a broken and defeated people” …In actuality, American Indians are probably the most stalwart people in the United States.  Consider this – the American Indians as a group of people have suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of an unjust civil and criminal system that began with Manifest Destiny and continues through today and are still a proud and strong people that are carrying on their traditions and culture with laughter and life.  Despite concerted efforts by the colonizers and the US Government to eradicate all traces of the Indigenous population – we are still here.

Palestinians can also claim to be a “stalwart people” who refuse to disappear despite the concerted efforts of another form of Manifest Destiny, i.e. Eretz Israel or “Greater Israel.”  The Palestinians can proudly proclaim: “we are still here.”

A member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation lamented that the racist attitudes towards Native Americans as “a defeated people” persists:

[They] see us as nothing more than a defeated, broken down race of people who constantly complain about being victimized.

In a similar vein, Pipes and company view Palestinians as a “defeated, broken down race of people who constantly complain about being victimized.”

So this is the racially loaded and highly offensive terminology that Daniel Pipes uses; in fact, it is the same language used by white supremacists.  Emmeric, a senior member and active donor to the Stormfront forum, says of the Native Americans:

They are a defeated and broken race.

Bravo, Dr. Pipes!  You are in good company!

The undertones in Daniel Pipes’s statement are racist.  His use of the demeaning phrase “a defeated people” is purposeful, and it is a slur that has a history of abuse by racists.  Therefore, he cannot hide behind the claim that it is merely a definitional understanding.  Rather, it has a deeper historical connotation, and an imperial “high tone” to it.

Three year old girl, traumatized from watching her grandfather's brutal murder

We usually like to keep our tone of voice on this site cheeky and lighthearted, mostly because the zany antics of the Islamophobic loonies are, quite frankly, amusing. But there is nothing funny about the very real consequences that occur due to the environment of xenophobia that they seek to engender.

On September 8th, it was reported that a “Devout Muslim dies after savage beating by ‘race-hate’ gang.” A sixty-seven year old Muslim man was mercilessly beaten to death by a motley group of racists. Worse yet, the gang did it in front of the man’s three year old granddaughter, who remains traumatized from the incident:

Ekram Haque, 67, lost his fight for life a week after he was battered to the ground in front of his three-year-old granddaughter, Marian….Mr Haque – described by friends as a ‘gentle giant’ – had suffered horrific head injuries.

His granddaughter has been left ‘very shaken and disturbed’, said her father, Mr Haque’s son Arfan. Graphic images of the attack were caught on CCTV.

This is not an isolated incident, but rather one in a “series of other attacks” aimed at Moozlim-looking elderly people, or “Pakis” as they are “lovingly” referred to by bigots in the UK:

Police are linking the assault on the retired care worker to a series of other attacks on elderly Asian people near the mosque.

Three of the earlier victims were also pensioners. As local community tensions grew, police stepped up patrols near the Idara E Jaaferiya mosque where Mr Haque was attacked last Monday.

Police say they are treating the attack on Mr Haque as racially motivated.

What is perhaps most disturbing is the age of the assailants, ranging from twelve to fifteen:

* Two youths aged 14 and 15 have appeared before Wimbledon Youth Court accused of committing grievous bodily harm with intent on Mr Haque.
* They and another boy, aged 12, are also accused of conspiracy to commit GBH and two counts of assault on victims in their 40s and 70s. Another 14-year-old has been charged over the attacks, but has yet to appear in court.

It is only natural to assume that such hatred can only be learnt from elders. All of this takes place not in a vacuum but rather in an atmosphere of hatred and fear-mongering.

On a positive note, Mr. Arfan–son of the deceased–advised Muslims of the area to react in a calm manner, asking them only to increase their prayers to God:

Arfan, 35, a consumer law adviser, described the incident as ‘mindless violence’ but urged people in the Muslim community to remain calm.

He said: ‘I would urge people in our community to remember that Islam is a peaceful religion and does not condone revenge attacks. If you want to do anything, just pray.

Both Islamophobes and Islamic extremists–two peas in the same pod–like to tally up all the insults and injuries upon their own community in order to ‘compete’ in who is being abused more by the other, in an effort to demonize the other.

This dichotomous view of the world is unhealthy and only fuels more of the same. It’s time to abandon this medieval view of the world–this senseless ‘us vs them’ mentality–and let the peace lovers from both sides work towards a harmonious existence free from such communal strife. Perhaps even this phraseology of ‘peace lovers from both sides‘ is to be abandoned, since we are not two sides any more but now part of the same community, and as one community–of all different faiths (or no faith at all)–we need to extinguish to irrelevancy the voices of the hatemongers whose destructive rhetoric culminates in such dastardly acts like the one we so painfully report herein.

Robert Spencer with loon Pamela Geller

Loonwatchers, it seems the big bad blogger himself, Robert Spencer, is beginning to worry about our little blog over on Jihad Watch (hat tip: Mallorcaman). In a blog titled, Daily Kos Sides with Islamic Supremacists Who Want to Extinguish Free Speech and Oppress Women and Non-Muslims (how many stereotypes can you fit in a single title?), Spencer targets Daily Kos contributor Devon Moore who has written comments on our site previously and has linked to us on his site.

Spencer’s post is interesting both for what Spencer writes as well as the comments which end up proving the depths to which Spencer has sunk. I don’t know if Spencer is giddy at the mere fact that he received some mention on Daily Kos or if he is truly fuming in his traditional, up-tight and conspiratorial way that “stealth jihad” is being perpetuated under the guise of some dreaded and fanciful “leftist-Mooslim” alliance. There is probably an element of both in his paranoia, but as in his attempt to pick a fight with Bassiouni it looks as though it is more of the conspiracy card.

The title itself is quite perplexing and makes bold the fact that Spencer has a penchant not only for melodrama (to stroke his ego) but also misinformation. Whenever anyone disagrees with Spencer or disputes his claims (and the list of people is ever increasing) he takes it personally, and reacts with violently worded blog posts that sling innuendo to-and-fro.

The question is: why is it that Spencer can dish out the criticism but is unable to take it? Is it the hallmark of an objective scholar to think that he or she is above any criticism? That everyone outside of the choir he sings to is wrong and part of some Leftist-Mooslim alliance? The ALA is wrong? Muslim scholar and International Law expert Cherif Bassiouni is wrong? Chicago activist Ahmed Rehab is wrong? Islamic scholar Carl Ernst is wrong? Islamic scholar John Esposito is wrong? Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is wrong? Religious scholar Karen Armstrong is wrong? Islamic scholar Khaleel Mohammed is wrong? Academic historian Ivan Jablonka is wrong? Journalist and neo-Con Stephen Shwartz is wrong? Conservative ex-boyfriend of Ann Coulter Dinesh D’Souza is wrong? Spencer’s former friend Charles Johnson is wrong? Blogger and columnist for Commentary Magazine Kejda Gjermani is wrong? The list goes on and on.

Of course, the plain truth is that all of these diverse individuals are neither wrong or incorrect but they are on to something: Spencer is not an objective scholar, he is not in fact very scholarly, in fact he traffics in some of the oldest and well abused stereotypes about Islam and Muslims out there, while all at the same time putting up a front that he is objective and part of the elite vanguard safe-guarding Western values such as freedom of religion and free speech.

This methodology of Spencer is belied by the fact that he takes umbrage at other people expressing their right to free speech which is exactly what Devon Moore did. He stated his opinion (one shared by many), yet according to Spencer what he did was the equivalent to teaming up with “Islamic Supremacists who want to extinguish free speech and oppress women and non-Muslims.” Say what?

Spencer really should go through our website, especially the articles relating to him. He will see that all we do is report the facts — his instances of Islamophobia and anti-Muslimism. Like when he joined the genocidal Facebook group which called for the reconquista of modern day Turkey and its transformation through ethnic cleansing of the whole peninsula; driving out its Muslim Turkish inhabitants and replacing them with Christians.

Malkin's Book

We don’t have time to go through a detailed list of the odious friends and individuals of a very anti-Muslim bent that Spencer calls allies, but they include: Michelle Malkin of In Defense of Internment fame, Geert Wilders a neo-Fascist European politician (though Spencer thinks he is not a “genuine” neo-fascist) who wants to ban the Qur’an, Muslim immigration and deny religious freedom to Muslims, Serge Trifkovic one of the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs during the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims, the Gates of Vienna website which advocates an end to Muslim immigration and the dominance of the original indigenous White Europeans, and more. One day we will list all his buddies but just this small oeuvre should be a chilling reminder of who Spencer is: a biased, self proclaimed scholar who does not view Islam from a dispassionate and objective lens.

Spencer’s blog post also reveals a bit more of the strange world he inhabits. He writes,  first quoting Devon Moore,

The anti-Muslims cover a wide spectrum though most can be found slithering in the Right-Wing. They range from academics such as Daniel Pipes, self-declared scholars like Robert Spencer and his JihadWatch, to open racists such as Debbie Schlussel, Pamela Geller and the blog Gates of Vienna.

“Open racists”? When the Left can’t argue (which is most of the time), they smear and lie. Schlussel and Geller are freedom fighters, warriors for human rights. Only to a Leftist would that be “racist.” They are not open racists or closet racists or any kind of racists.

Moore made the incontrovertible point that Pamela Geller and Debbie Schlussel are racists, he could have also added loony extremists. Yet, according to Spencer, Debbie Schlussel and Pamela Geller are “freedom fighters” and “warriors for human rights.”

Pamela Geller, you may recall is one of the bloggers who initiated and pushed (and still is pushing) the Birther conspiracy about Barack Obama. That Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and that he is a secret Muslim subverting America through Jihad. She also “uncovered” somehow that Barack Obama was the illegitimate son of Malcolm X. This is what her WikiAnswer page has to say about her,

Pam Geller’s blog has earned her a spot in the Conservative limelight. She frequently attacks Barack Obama, pushing and originating conspiracy theories that include: Obama is a secret Muslim, Obama is not American, Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, Obama is an anti-Semite. She writes in an August 1st blog about Obama’s travel to Pakistan in the 80′s, “I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad.”

Debbie Schlussel

The other “freedom fighter” for Spencer is that delightful, if deranged blogger known as Debbie Schlussel. She gives us so much fodder that there should be a website devoted exclusively to her. Debbie Schlussel was the one who proclaimed after the Virginia Tech Massacre that the shooter was a Muslim, and when early reports came out that he was Asian, she wrote that “Pakis are considered Asian” and that the attack could have been “part of a co-ordinated terrorist plot by Pakistanis.” Even when it was revealed that the shooter was a Korean she persisted with her story that he could have been a secret Muslim. Not too long ago she was on the record making a genocidal joke about Palestinians, while writing about clashes between rival Palestinian forces which left six dead Schlussel stated, “As we say in lawyer jokes, that’s a start. Six down, a few million to go.”

Now with friends like those can we really take Robert Spencer seriously? Especially when he gives these crazies ringing endorsements as “freedom fighters” and “warriors for human rights.” It seems even some of his followers are a little queasy about his endorsement, one commenter on JihadWatch, JoeChill writes,

Sorry, Mr. Spencer–you make some excellent points, but Debbie Schlussel is a highly disturbed woman. Granted, the idiots at Kos don’t like her, but even a broken clock, etc.

Schlussel initially suggested that the VA Tech shooter was a Muslim (he wasn’t). She claims that one of the 9/11 victims, Jon Schlissel, was a “cousin” of hers (based on the idea that someone with a similar name had the same ancestor a few centuries ago) and she repeatedly attacks those she disagrees with by making unsubstantiated claims, or, more often, lies.

I agree with you that Islamic jihadists and those who follow Sharia law are little more than brutal thugs who are trying to remake the world into their own twisted image. But Schlussel’s pretty twisted herself, even though she opposes them. If conservative writers are guardians of the Constitution, Schlussel is a rabid German Shepherd. By espousing her, you weaken your otherwise excellent column.

Posted by: JoeChill at August 25, 2009 4:35 PM

It would be wise for Robert Spencer to take this advice from JoeChill, he should retract his endorsement of the racist Debbie Schlussel, apologize for it, condemn her and distance himself from her. Then he should do the same with Pamela Geller. That way he might be on the road to rehabilitating his image as an apologist for fascism and an endorser of racists, instead of boohooing about a fictitious “Leftist-Mooslim” alliance.

Robert Spencer: Exposed

We recently wrote about the bruhaha that occurred when it was revealed that anti-Muslim polemicist Robert Spencer was invited by the ALA (American Library Association) to participate on a panel discussing the topic, Perspectives on Islam: Beyond The Stereotypes.

To summarize, close to the date of the event one of the panelists, Dr. Marcia Hermansen, discovered that Spencer would be on the panel. She informed the other panelists, one of the panelists decided to drop out in protest while Hermansen and the other panelist decided to stay on.

In the meantime various scholars, ALA member librarians, concerned citizens contacted the ALA to lodge their protest and demand to know why a notorious Islam hater was on a panel meant to dispel stereotypes about Islam, as did groups like CAIR-Chicago and CIOGC later on. The ALA lagged in their response and the remaining two panelists decided to drop out which lead the ALA to cancel the event.

It turns out the ALA did not know a thing or two about Spencer when he was curiously lobbied for by Ellen Zyroff, the co-chair of ALA’s EMIERT’s Jewish Information Committee and a leader at the San Diego chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, and were caught like a deer in headlights when it later became apparent to them that they had invited a discredited hatemonger. They are not entirely innocent however, how they let Zyroff decide who gets to be on a panel about Islam as opposed to someone on the Islamic Information Committee (if one even exists) is an untold story in and of itself.

In response to the cancellation and unanimous rejection to his participation Spencer started to cry “bloody censorship.” He accused CAIR of orchestrating a campaign to silence him and attack free speech when in reality all of the panelists had decided to drop out independently of CAIR contacting the ALA. By their own admission, they cited the ALA’s “failure to address their concerns” as well as the ALA actively misrepresenting the event to them.

As a result of most self-respecting people not wanting to associate with his rabidly anti-Muslim discourse, the apocalyptic Spencer and his shock troops began to cry that our whole Western Civilization was now under threat.  Closer to the truth seems to be that increasing incidents, such as these involving Spencer, reinforce his marginalization and highlight who he is: a bitter, bigoted Islamophobe with an ego the size of Alaska.

Unable to let the incident go with one 2300 worded diatribe, he penned another (shorter) assault in which he turned his venom from his former ally Charles Johnson onto CAIR-Chicago Director, Ahmed Rehab, in what seems to be an outrageous display of juvenility and senility that further exposes his lack of serious academic prowess or professional standards. In it, he claims that Ahmed Rehab “strong armed” the ALA into canceling the event, and that it is all part of his campaign “against free speech” and the so-called “truth of Islamic Jihad.” In reality, Ahmed Rehab had performed his organization’s stated mission of fighting bigotry by simply exposing the facts about Robert Spencer’s discredited methodology that would earn him an F in the academic world.

Ahmed Rehab, in his own article on the Huffington Post, articulately laid out the facts and even pre-empted this obvious line of attack from Spencer by stating that,

In fact, CAIR-Chicago’s call on the ALA to rescind Spencer’s invitation was not about Spencer but about the ALA, specifically: a) questioning why a respectable organization like the ALA would secretly invite an Islam-basher for an event designed to dispel stereotypes about Islam, and b) demanding that the ALA take responsibility for its misrepresentation of the panel event to the other panelists involved and to the public, and to provide an appropriate remedy for their error.

In Spencer’s self-inflated grandiose world he is unable to see that what concerned the diverse coalition of Americans that rejected him had nothing to do with him, or censoring him, but everything to do with the ALA and what it stands for, as well as the obvious incongruity in providing a platform to someone who makes a living from perpetuating stereotypes to speak on dispelling stereotypes.

Is that really so hard to understand?

Spencer further claimed that the participants knew about the event a month in advance, but he seems to be caught in a contradiction. On July 6, a few days from the event, Dr. Marcia Hermansen discovered that Spencer would be on the panel,

From: Marcia Hermansen
Date: July 6, 2009 8:07:26 AM CDT
To: xxxx@LISTS.xxxx.EDU
Subject: Marcia Hermansen and Robert Spencer
Reply-To: Marcia Hermansen

Thanks–I didn’t know about this–I thought I was on an informational panel for librarians–I guess this turns up the heat!

“xxxx” [xxxx@xxxx.xxxx] 07/06/09 3:06 AM >>>
Dear Colleagues,

I just found out on from the MELA list that Marcia Hermansen and Robert Spencer will be on an invited panel at the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) panel at the American Librarians Association annual meeting on July 12.

What Spencer may not want to admit is that this episode was never about censoring free speech which, when one considers Spencer’s explicit endorsement and support for Geert Wilders who is on the record stating that the “Qur’an should be banned” and that “freedom of religion should not apply to Islam”, seems just a tad bit hypocritical and disingenuous.

It was about principles of consistency, of not giving a platform to Islamophobes just as we don’t give platforms to racists and holocaust deniers. In that vein it seems the overwhelming majority of people agree and as one librarian expressing her own and her colleagues’ sentiments wrote:

Being a librarian I did my own homework. I verify my sources. I can tell that Ahmed Rehab did an excellent job in laying out the facts. Just check the facts again. Call the panelists and ALA organizers. Do your own investigation. The format of this panel was totally UNETHICAL. The main reason was to sneak Robert Spencer and impose a “fait accompli” to other panelists. The whole thing was flawed.

So, let Spencer claim that the world is out to get him and there is a nefarious plot to subvert his free expression of speech. It is his right, under — you guessed it — freedom of speech, but he shouldn’t be such a sore loser when others exercise their free speech and call him out for using his free speech to push lies and support for hatred and bigotry. He can always take solace in that while the sane world rejects him, he will always have his troop of “Crazy McCain ladies” cooing over his innuendo at his David Horowitz-funded extremist blog, “Jihadwatch.”

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.

Click on the above image

I am never amazed by the Republicans or the Democrats, their mundane and consistent descent into a sort of ritualistic behavior reminds one of visiting the zoo and seeing the zoo animals go about their daily routine without nary a change.  You might say, ‘What did you expect, their symbols are the Elephant and the Donkey?’ Well let’s just say I am tired of them.

First ritualistic behavior: It occurred when Audra Shay who at the time was running to be the Chairman of the Young Republicans responded to one of her friends bigoted and racist remarks on her Facebook page by acknowledging and supporting it. Her friend, Eric S. Piker wrote at 1:54 pm (grammatical mistakes his),

“Osama bin Lauden is the new terrorist….muslim is on there side …..need to take back this country from all these mad coons………and illegals,” eight minutes later at 2:02 Shay responded with “You tell em Eric! lol”

Some young Republicans on her page took exception to her response to the bigotry and racism. When Shay realized her mistake and that it might hurt her chances for the Chairmanship she released a statement,

I immediately deleted the derogatory and outright disgusting comments and subsequently posted a statement on my Facebook Status stating that in no way, shape or form are the comments posted by other individuals a reflection of me or my beliefs as an American, a Veteran, a Mother or a Candidate. I do not, nor would I ever, condone that type of language or behavior.

Did she also delete her comments in immediate response to Eric? She claims that she was unaware of the racial comments until later and that she was replying to her friend’s other comment. This doesn’t make much sense considering she had at least eight minutes to see and read her friend’s comments and what she was replying to. Even if this were the case it is highly suspicious considering that she has made equally ugly remarks in the past.

The Daily Beast noted, after an effigy of Sarah Palin was hung, she said,

What no ‘Obama in a noose? … I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose.” She’s also written that President Obama “attacks white people” and posted a video claiming Obama believes he has to help African-Americans over whites to “ensure his own salvation.”

The ritualistic aspects in this is another Republican caught saying or supporting racist and demeaning things about minorities. Also the knee jerk response when feeling the heat to apologize and distance themselves from views that they have a track record of holding.

Second ritualistic behavior: The Democrats in their usual reactionary manner jumped all over this to score political points. In reality, they have a right to jump on this and mock the Republicans but what they fail to do because either they don’t see it as a problem, or they see that they can’t score any political points off of it, is condemn not just the racist reference to remove “coons” and “illegals” but also the implication that all Muslims are with “Osama bin Laden.” No one, not the Huffington Post or any other liberal commentator even brought that up.

It continues the passive and narrow reactionary behavior of the Democrats — to feed off of the present sentimental feelings in culture while not being consistent on their principles by condemning bigotry in all its form and not be selective. We saw this during the Democratic primary in which accusations were leveled at Barack Obama that he was a Muslim. Instead of responding to these charges properly like Colin Powell did when he said, “the proper answer is he isn’t Muslim, but even if he was it shouldn’t matter” the Democrats reacted by in effect saying it was a “smear” to be a Muslim and called on supporters to “combat this smear.”

The lesson is that not much has changed with Republicans or Democrats and their perpetuation, enabling and disregard for anti-Muslimism and Islamophobia needs to be brought to their attention. Most importantly it highlights the fact that Islamophobia is not disconnected from other forms of prejudice. Many times, and this seems to be the rule, when you see an Islamophobe he is also a racist and vice-versa.

Islamophobes Inc., Robert Spencer and Geert Wilders

Recently the American Library Association & the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Roundtable was to hold a discussion around the topic of Perspectives on Islam: Beyond the Stereotyping. For all intents and purposes the forthcoming discussion seemed very promising. It would confront and discuss the important issue of stereotypical portrayals of Islam and all that is associated with it such as myths and smears.

The program ran into trouble when without the knowledge of the other panelists, and seemingly without any sort of vetting, the ALA invited a well known anti-Islam and anti-Muslim blogger and writer — Robert Spencer. To say the least this made more than a few people scratch their heads. How could a reputable organization invite a well known Islamophobe who traffics in perpetuating stereotypes to speak at an event that is supposed to go beyond stereotypes?

To understand just how strange this was just imagine if the ALA had invited David Duke as a speaker on matters of race, say on a panel discussing the topic Perspectives on Race: Beyond Stereotyping. Does anyone believe he would be invited?

This was the very reason that a group of librarians, scholars and individuals sent a letter to the ALA protesting the inclusion of Robert Spencer on the panel. In it they detail their reasons and their apprehension at the severe lapse of judgment and error on the part of the ALA,

Even the most cursory overview of Mr. Spencer’s oeuvre makes it clear that in fact he has no place on a panel whose aim is to dispel stereotypes about Islam. Indeed, we, as librarians, scholars, and individuals are deeply concerned by ALA & EMIERT’s choice of Mr. Spencer for such a panel: Mr. Spencer espouses a view of Islam as a system of belief which is essentially violent, undemocratic, totalitarian, exclusive and at war with all non-Muslims. Mr. Spencer in fact goes as far as to equate Islam with fascism. According to him,

The misbegotten term “Islamo-fascism” is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.” (www.jihadwatch.com/islam101)

Hence a question arises as to the justification for inviting a speaker who cannot see anything positive about Islamic beliefs, cultures, societies, histories, etc. to talk to an audience in order to dispel negative views of Islam. We are indeed saddened and puzzled by ALA’s choice for their panel, especially in that this appears to be a rare opportunity to educate people about Islam against the backdrop of an overwhelming atmosphere of ignorance, and negative stereotyping.

The open letter to the ALA resulted in the other three panelists withdrawing their participation in protest against the inclusion of Robert Spencer who they only learned was going to be a part of the panel a few days ago. This resulted eventually in the ALA canceling the event.

This cancellation served as a continuing repudiation of Spencer by scholars and his growing inability to cross over into the mainstream. Increasingly, Spencer’s voice is limited to the echo chamber that is the cottage industry of Islam-bashing which contains such “luminaries” as Debbie Schlussel, Brigitte Gabriel, and Andrew Bostom (!).

In response to being outed by the academics and librarians Spencer wrote a usual shrill diatribe in which he attacked his former friend Charles Johnson, CAIR and accused the ALA of “caving-in” to pressure. Yet by responding it seems Spencer has just dug himself further in a hole that leaves him wide open to further accusations, of at the very least, brazenly supporting loony anti-Muslimism and Islamophobia.

This is all the more revealing in light of a recent comment on Loonwatch from an obvious Spencer fan by the name of John Jackson on a post about Debbie Schlussel. In it Jackson agrees with another commenter Sami and says, “You do a great disservice to Robert Spencer by lumping him in with Debbie Schlussel as ‘Islamophobes’. Schlussel goes off the deep end frequently. I have never seen Spencer do the same.”

It may be true (though I don’t think so) that Spencer doesn’t go off the deep end “frequently” but he does go off the deep end — a lot. Also he takes issue with Spencer being lumped in with the likes of Schlussel, but why not? The only difference between Debbie Schlussel and Robert Spencer is that Debbie doesn’t hide her hate and vitriol against Muslims or Islam nor does she attempt to couch it in an air of objectivity. Furthermore, it wasn’t Loonwatch that first lumped Spencer in with Schlussel but the excellent report produced by FAIR titled Smearcasters.

In Spencer’s response to ALA’s cancellation he lashed out against Smearcasters and to the chagrin of John Jackson he didn’t qualify his attack by saying that some of the profiled such as Debbie Schlussel go off the “deep end frequently” or that Debbie was a “retard” as Sami wrote,  instead he defended them saying, “In reality, the “Smearcasters” report was a political hit piece on an array of the opponents of CAIR and its allied groups.”

For Spencer those profiled by Smearcasters were the victims of a “hit piece” on mere “opponents of CAIR and its allied groups.” Yes, nothing to do with their hate and bigotry Spencer! This is nothing less than an indirect endorsement of all those in the report, and so it is not us lumping in Spencer with what Spencer supporter Sami called “retards” but Spencer himself.

In the same response Spencer further goes after CAIR and defends his alliance with Geert Wilders, the controversial and fascist European politician stating,

CAIR’s Honest Ibe Hooper doesn’t have to resort to such circumlocutions. I didn’t actually have anything to do with that conference in Florida, but Hoop could just say straight out that I support Wilders. And so should anyone who holds dear the Western values that are threatened by Islamic supremacists — notably, as I said above, the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of all people before the law.

There it is straight from his pen and that’s why Spencer keeps digging himself a hole. His support for Geert Wilders is his downfall because any objective and thorough understanding of Geert Wilders, what he has said and what he represents will prove the lie to the claim made by Spencer that he cares about Democratic freedoms and Rights because if he did he wouldn’t support Wilders and company.

Wilders is on record stating that religious freedom, a cornerstone of the foundation of modern democracies everywhere should not apply to Muslims,

Islam is not a religion… the Quran is a book that calls for hatred, that calls for violence, for murder, for terrorism, for war, and submission…We should also stop pretending that Islam is a religion…the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam.

This is not the only place that Wilders has made this statement he has repeated it to roaring applause at Synagogues and conferences.

It is unbelievable that Spencer would now attempt to posit himself as an objective academic researching and writing on Islam when he unabashedly “supports” odious and reprehensible individuals such as Geert Wilders. Who can take Spencer’s grandiose claim seriously that he is fighting for the freedom of speech, freedom of conscious, indeed for Western civilization itself against “Islamic supremacism” when he supports and calls on us to support one who would infringe on the right of individuals to freely practice their faith.

What can you expect though from one who joined a group that aimed for a reconquista of modern day Turkey, forcibly replacing its Muslim population with a Christian one?

Also Read Svend’s take: Joke of the Day: Robert Spencer as Bridge-Builder

Glenn Beck

Recently, as many who follow the news are aware we were given a glimpse of hatred and racism with the shootings at the Holocaust Museum.  It was a tragic hate incident in which a security guard lost his life reminding us that there is a lot of prejudice out there directed at many different communities. It also revealed the strange and obscurantist pathologies that exist amongst the extreme right-wing and those who attempt to pass themselves off as mainstream media.

So it is not hard to believe that even with this shooting, which was carried out by 89 year old James Von Brunn, a right-wing White Nationalist, there are those who want to blame it on Islam and Muslims! This highlights something well known, though not much talked about, in which loonie Islamophobes and Muslim haters will attempt to tie every event that they can to Muslims regardless how unrelated it may be. Such was the case with  Steven Emerson who claimed that the Oklahoma City Bombings revealed a “Middle Eastern trait,” or Debbie Schlussel claiming that the Virginia Tech Massacre was committed by a Muslim even when it was clear that it was a Korean male with no link to Islam.

These are the times we live in, with heightened suspicion of Muslims translating itself into absurd ideas that Muslims are behind every plot, they are the boogey men in your closet and the monsters underneath your bed.

This time we have Glenn Beck and none other then — you guessed it — Debbie Schlussel outlandishly linking the Holocaust Museum shooting to Islam and Muslims. As Gawker noted,”Beck, with a straight face mind you, looked into the camera and said that America as it stands today is a “boiling pot” fueled by extremists groups like Al Qaeda and 9/11 truthers who are sowing the seeds of extremism and hatred in this country.”

Beck implies somehow in his warped world that America is brimming with extremist (Muslim) terrorists from groups such as Al-Qaeda. To prove his point he shows footage of a man speaking about a crazy plot in Arabic. We aren’t told who the guy is, where he said what he was saying or how that indicates that America stands today at a “boiling pot.” It is a strange point to make especially when the shooter James Von Brunn had nothing to do with Islam or Muslims, in fact it highlights what seems to be Beck’s attempts to cover up for his incendiary rhetoric which really does fuel extremism,

Beck…doesn’t make mention, much less offer an apology for, the lunacy he’s been promoting over the radio and television airwaves over the years, lunacy that directly feeds the derangement of people like James von Brunn, inflammatory rhetoric he’s been spewing about America turning into a totalitarian communist regime under Obama, the New World Order, Mexicans pouring over our borders to take our jobs and rape our children, FEMA concentration camps, ACORN rigging an American Presidential election for Obama, that dark, powerful, unseen forces are controlling the American economy, how liberals might to assassinate him—We could go on and on and on.

Debbie Schlussel

Debbie Sclussel, described by Gawker as an “Anne Coulter wanna-be” goes further than Glenn Beck stating explicitly that “It is because of Muslims…that neo-Nazis feel comfortable manifesting their views about Jews.” Can it get anymore loony than that? This is coming from a woman who recently joked about the genocide of Palestinians, while writing about clashes between rival Palestinian forces which left six dead Schlussel stated, “As we say in lawyer jokes, that’s a start. Six down, a few million to go.” Does the irony of these peoples statements go right over their heads?

Here is the totality of the absurdity spewed by Schlussel,

It is because of Muslims—who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels—that neo-Nazis feel comfortable—far more comfortable!—manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn’t been, in general, 89-year-old White guys.

Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn’t feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now—this new era of “tolerance,” in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments. It’s, in general, not 89-year-old White guys telling people at churches worldwide and in religious schools that the Jews are the devil incarnate, a filthy tribe, the sons of pigs and monkeys, subhuman, etc.

No, it’s guys with names like Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets who make Mr. Von Brunn far more at ease in 2009 than he was even in 1999 to attack places associated with the Jews. They created the comfort zone for James W. Brunn to engage in today’s shooting.

Moreover, not only do White supremacists and neo-Nazis work with Muslims in many, many documented cases and investigations. But they are basically one and the same. The only difference is that one guy is named James and the other guy is named Ahmed. And the former only has a few thousand discredited, marginalized compatriots.

Whereas the latter has over a billion followers and a U.S. President kissing their collective ass.

Not only is she attempting to blame the Holocaust Museum tragedy on Muslims but she attempts to blur the obvious-as-day-and-night difference between Muslims and Nazis by saying, ‘Neo-Nazis/White Supremacists and Muslims are one and the same thing.’ Really Debbie? This fairy-tale from Debbie world would probably not sit well with the many Muslims who have faced violence from White supremacists and Nazis or Black Muslims who are part of Islam or Arab Muslims who are a Semitic people despised by the Nazi Aryan ideology.

In  “Debbie in Wonderland” all rationality goes out the window when you swallow the Islamophobic pill — anything goes. Up is down and down is up, black is white and white is black, and Nazis are Muslims and Muslims are Nazis.

Brigitte Gabriel

Brigitte Gabriel is a notorious apologist for the fascist Phalange group, Kataeb, and the terrorist group, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), who were responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres that slaughtered 1700 to 2000 Palestinians (mostly women and chidren).

Her story is that she grew up during that nation’s long, and bloody civil war.  It was a war that claimed many lives and saw many factions shift alliances and allegiance. Groups that were enemies in the morning became allies at night. Indeed, Muslims fought Muslims and Christians fought Christians.

She seems to play up this milieu to justify her views, as if we should – moved by her “alibi” – automatically excuse and accept them. But her alibi is objectionable since most Lebanese who grew up during this same war did not turn out as rabidly racist as she did.

Gabriel believes Arabs “have no soul!”

The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil [applause]…. this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic world, They have no SOUL !, they are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah” which is very different from the God we believe….[applause] because our God is the God of love.

(No soul? An oddly dehumanizing thing for an alleged Christian to say, don’t you think?)

It is no wonder then that theThe New York Times Magazine describes her as a “Radical Islamophobe.”

Brigitte’s self-contradiction is notable. At times she seems to acknowledge that “moderate” Muslims exist,

It’s the duty of all moderate Muslims to speak against the hate, against the Jihad… the people in the West must support the moderates.

The same Brigitte Gabriel on another day scoffs at the notion that a Muslim can be moderate,

America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about Wahabbi and Salafi Islam as the only extreme form of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are wonderful moderates. Closer to the truth are the pictures of the irrational eruption of violence in reaction to the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a Danish newspaper…derived from one source: authentic Islam.

And she spills out to the Australian News her bizarre definition of a radical Muslim:

a practising Muslim who goes to mosque every Friday, prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of God, and who believes that Mohammed is the perfect man and (four inaudible words) is a radical Muslim.

Let me get this straight, so a Muslim who essentially observes the basic five pillars of Islam is a radical? That leaves us with 1.4 billion radical Muslims, so who gets to be the “moderate” Muslim, I’m confused.

So Brigitte, what is it? Are there any moderates or not? Brigitte seems to be telling us that the only acceptable Muslims are the ones who don’t practice Islam altogether? Or perhaps, she’s even implying that the only good Muslim is an ex-Muslim? 

The question becomes, how can someone so blatantly clueless get airtime anywhere other than on America’s Funniest Home Videos?

The answer, Brigitte has found her very own litte niche to settle within the lucrative business of Muslim-bashing. Her forte is to parlay her “otherness,” and so-called “insider knowledge of the Muslim world,” (the “I’ve been there, I know” line) into a cash cow. Meanwhile we are supposed to be duped into freaking out and running back to her for more “expert” advice brought to us from our loyal friend who ventures into the other side on our behalf.

Gabriel started two organizations, American Congress for Truth (ACT) and (she seems to be running out of ideas)  Act! for America  that receive plenty of funding and “donations” from the likes of the goonish Christians United for Israel and others. Maybe she thinks Americans are gullible or maybe she is a true hypocrite as Andre Gide said,

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

This very well may be the case with our merchant of intolerance and misunderstanding, Brigitte Gabriel.