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Robert Spencer: Muslim Appointees Deserve Special Loyalty Test (Video)

By on March 7, 2012 in Feature

Faith in Public Life (FPL) just interviewed Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer.  I’ve reproduced their excellent article below, which is where you can see the video yourself.  In it, Spencer endorses a special loyalty test for Muslims:

FPL: Do you think Muslim appointees to office deserve a special test or a special kind of investigation before they are appointed?

Spencer: Well, I think it’s entirely reasonable.

In light of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is, in its own words, dedicated to eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house, then certainly any Muslim official that [sic] has ties to the Brotherhood organizations in the United States–of which there are very many–should be vetted very carefully.

FPL: So you think any Muslim that is appointed should be investigated for any of those ties before they are appointed?

Spencer: Yes, certainly.

FPL also points to Robert Spencer’s double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to Islam and his own religion, Christianity (specifically, Catholicism).  Those of you familiar with my writing know that whenever I point this out, Spencer starts crying “tu quoque, tu quoque fallacy!”  That’s because his own religion can’t withstand the same standard he applies to Islam.

FPL asked Spencer if he found it problematic when Muslims called themselves “Muslims first, Americans second.”  Spencer responded emphatically in the affirmative, saying: “It’s a big problem.”  Then, FPL asked Spencer if he himself was American first or a Christian first.  Spencer was caught off-guard and tried to evade answering the question.  When FPL pushed him further on the issue, he refused to answer the question, saying: “Neither one.” Then, he finally admitted that he in fact placed his faith first, even above American law.

Anybody see the glaring hypocrisy here?  It’s in fact the same double standard applied by pro-Israel Islamophobes who attack American Muslims for having “dual loyalty” to their ancestral homelands and “the Ummah”, when in fact they themselves have “dual loyalty” to America and Israel, often placing the latter’s interests above the former.

Spencer tries to justify his double standard by arguing that Christianity “isn’t incompatible with the constitutional freedoms” whereas Islam is “is manifestly incompatible” with them.  In other words, it simply hasn’t been an issue with his Christianity.

Yet, Spencer contradicts himself in the very next sentence:

FPL: So would you describe yourself as an American first and a Christian second, or Christian first and American second?

Spencer: Neither one.  I think it’s a distinction when it comes to Christianity that thus far, there has not been a problematic issue of allegiance. If it comes down to the new Obama directives with the Catholic Church, for example, forcing it to go back on its own policies and its own doctrine…then obviously those are unjust laws that ought not to be passed.

Spencer is here alluding to the issue of abortion.  It should be noted that “the Supreme Court ruled that women had a constitutional right to abortion”, yet Catholics like Robert Spencer want to deny this right to women.  Isn’t this exactly the sort of conflict that Spencer found to be “a big problem” when it comes to Muslims?  Isn’t this, using Spencer’s own standard, “a problematic issue of allegiance” between Catholic doctrine and the Constitution?

But remember: don’t dare apply the standard Spencer does to Islam to his own religion!  Only a leftist dhimmi would do that!

Here is the article:

Robert Spencer’s Double-Standard on Religious Freedom

Anti-Muslim activists often complain that Muslims living in this country don’t effectively assimilate into American culture, that they consider themselves Muslims first and Americans second. Despite the fact that polling has found that Muslim Americans are actually the most loyal religious group in the nation – 93 percent of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to America, and Muslims have the highest confidence in the integrity of the US election process – far-right pundits continue to further the myth that Muslims lack commitment to this country because their faith puts them in conflict with constitutional law.

In fact, the concept of prioritizing faith principles before the law is not unique to Muslims. Prominent Christian figures such as Pat Robertson have publicly remarked that they consider themselves Christians first and Americans second. Perhaps even more telling is the extent to which the current contraception mandate controversy is dominating the political conversation, with some Catholic leaders suggesting they would shut down their hospitals and schools or perform civil disobedience instead of complying with a law they believe conflicts with their faith.

At the recent CPAC conference here in Washington, Nick interviewed prominent anti-Islam activist Robert Spencer and found this exact double standard. Spencer criticizes Muslims for prioritizing Islam over US law, while going on to say he would put his Christian faith first in a situation where Christianity came into conflict with the law:

FPL: A lot of people point to polls that Muslims in various countries suggest that they’re Muslims first and then loyal to that country second – American second, or Spanish second. Do you think that’s a problem and are you worried about that?

Spencer: It’s a big problem, and it’s something that has to be taken into account…when it comes to Islamic law and the constitution, there are many, many ways in which Islamic law contradicts the constitutional freedoms. Then if somebody has a loyalty to Sharia, to Islam first, then that’s very problematic.

FPL: And would you describe yourself as American first, or as a person of faith first?

Spencer: I’m an American and a person of faith. And I believe that my faith, as a Christian, isn’t incompatible with the constitutional freedoms. But Islamic law is manifestly incompatible with constitutional freedoms.

FPL: So would you describe yourself as an American first and a Christian second, or Christian first and American second?

Spencer: Neither one. I think it’s a distinction when it comes to Christianity that thus far, there has not been a problematic issue of allegiance. If it comes down to the new Obama directives with the Catholic Church, for example, forcing it to go back on its own policies and its own doctrine…then obviously those are unjust laws that ought not to be passed.

FPL: So if there was a conflict between your faith and the law, you would choose your faith?

Spencer: Yeah.

The hypocrisy is apparent. If conservatives are concerned with religious liberty, then that liberty ought to be applied to faith traditions across the board, including Islam. At the same conference, conservative paragon Grover Norquist made this same point (around the 2:42 mark):

FPL: So do you think it harms the conservative argument for religious liberty…when [Republican candidates] have previously expressed some similar concerns to extending this [liberty] to Muslim Americans?

Norquist: You can’t be for religious liberty for some people and not others, or the whole thing falls apart. No one in court is going to rule that way. The court will either go with, yes you can ban synagogues, mosques, missionaries and Catholic hospitals– or you can’t do any of that…I’ve noticed that all faith traditions recognize that an attack on one is an attack on all.

As Norquist points out, Spencer’s duplicitous arguments about Islam fall flat. When it comes to religious freedom, the far right cannot have its cake and eat it too.

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    • revenge

      @fredrick Honestly, what’s the point? Any genuine jihadist will simply lie anyway. And furthermore, where’s the loyalty test for Christians? Christianity has committed far more atrocities in America and around the world than Islam ever has.

    • fredrick

      I’m down with loyalty tests for muslim appointees. In an increasingly violent world in which muslim jihadists play a prominent role its much better to be safe than sorry. There’s too much at stake.

      It can and did happen here.

    • Lloyd Miller

      Please can you back up your comments. I am particularly interested in your backing up these:

      “YES, Islam DOES CALL for the destruction of all other religions.”

      “Islam is in total opposition to the essence and scope of Western Institutions, especially the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution”

      Please use Islamic sources etc etc, not Mr Spencer. The one about Islam being against the US Deceleration of Independence was the most amusing, are you aware which state was the first to recognize the USA? It was a place called Morocco…

      Thanks, no reply expected.

    • Lilly

      Sorry Lloyd… It does not, and neither does TRUE Christianity…. Too bad people twist words and religion to suit themselves and their desires instead of just following their moral code/religious code.

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Why Islamophobes Hate Ron Paul

By on January 2, 2012 in Feature, Loon Politics

(image from an Islamophobic website)

DISCLAIMER: LoonWatch has not endorsed any candidate for President of the United States.  This article should not be seen as such.

Islamophobes absolutely hate Ron Paul.  Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs–the King and Queen of Islamophobia on the internet–dedicate page after page on their hate blogs lambasting the Congressman and presidential hopeful.

Why do they hate Ron Paul so much?

There are three major reasons why they detest him:

(1) Ron Paul stands up for American Muslims against Islamophobia.  For example, he defended the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” arguing that the entire controversy was “all about hate and Islamophobia.”

(2) He has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Bush-Obama curtailments of civil liberties that specifically target Muslims.

(3) Paul is the only major presidential candidate to oppose America’s wars in the Muslim world.  Even more importantly, Ron Paul links reason #1 above (the Lesser Islamophobia) to reason #3 (the Greater Islamophobia), arguing that “in order to perpetuate this foreign policy…they have to perpetuate this hate toward Islam.”

This third reason is also why mainstream politicians and the mainstream media dislike Ron Paul and have tried their utmost to destroy him.  Fox political pundit Bill O’Reilly argued that Paul’s views on foreign policy “disqualifies him” as a candidate for president.  Here is exactly what O’Reilly said:

His foreign policy disqualifies him in my eyes as an American…

Bill O’Reilly has inadvertently touched upon something very deep and meaningful:  “As an American,” foreign policy must include waging war.  To do without war would simply be un-American.

One recalls the words of H. Rap Brown, the chairman of the civil rights group Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who famously declared in 1967:

Violence is as American as cherry pie.

Brown uttered this statement during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.  While blacks were being beaten up and hosed down in the streets of America, the United States was raining death down upon the Vietnamese population halfway across the earth.

H. Rap Brown was not the only one in the civil rights movement who linked the struggle of blacks in America to the struggle of the darker skinned peoples of the world.  For instance, Martin Luther King, Jr. called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” for its war-making:

The Soviet Union brought attention to America’s “Negro problem.”  Michael L. Krenn writes on pp.89-90 of Race and U.S. Foreign Policy During the Cold War:

By 1949, according to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, “the ‘Negro question’ [was] [o]ne of the principal Soviet propaganda themes regarding the United States.” “[T]he Soviet press hammers away unceasingly on such things as ‘lynch law,’ segregation, racial discrimination, deprivation of political rights, etc., seeking to build up a picture of an America in which the Negroes are brutally downtrodden with no hope of improving their status under the existing form of government.”  An [American] Embassy official believed that “this attention to the Negro problem serves political ends desired by the Soviet Union and has nothing whatsoever to do with any desire to better the Negro’s position.”

Apparently, only the United States is allowed to saber rattle and invade countries on the grounds that the “existing form of government” is discriminatory or unjust to part of its population.

With the world’s spotlight on America’s treatment of its darker-skinned citizens–and those same citizens linking their struggle to America’s foreign wars against darker-skinned peoples–the United States moved in the direction of racial integration in the 1970’s.  America’s longest war was also grudgingly brought to an end.

But today, despite the fact that we have been waging wars for two decades in the Muslim world and in just the last couple years bombed over half a dozen Muslim countries, the anti-war movement is, at least compared to the 1960’s and 70’s, all but dead.

Ron Paul is one of the only major political figures–and the only major presidential candidate–to oppose America’s wars.

And that is why he is in the cross-hairs of anti-Muslim bigots, who see the world in apocalyptic holy war terms: the jihad will bring an end to Western civilization as we know it so we must destroy them first!  This is their fundamental world view, which is why sustaining and protracting the wars against the Muslim world is their greatest desire.

Ron Paul threatens that paradigm.  He dares to cogitate that it is our military interventions in the Muslim world that result in Islamic terrorism against the United States and her allies.  He had the chutzpah to include 9/11 in this: “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.”

In the American national discourse, this is next to blasphemy.  But, in the rest of the world (especially in Muslim countries), this is not just common knowledge, it’s common sense.  In fact, nothing could be more obvious.

It’s precisely because this idea is so obvious and self-evident that it must simply never be uttered in the United States.  Anyone who does so must be condemned as unpatriotic and, worse, as Unserious.  Such a person’s character must be viciously attacked.

That’s exactly what is happening to Ron Paul.  Unfortunately, Paul deserves much of the blame for making himself such an easy target.  The racist newsletters are a gold-mine for his opponents.  Pamela Geller gleefully called them a “bombshell,” arguing that his presidential bid is now “unrecoverable” and that “[h]e is done.”

The evidence against Ron Paul, that he wrote those vile things against black people, is certainly very strong.  The only saving grace for Paul is the fact that those racist screeds do not sound anything like him.  Whether or not this alone can outweigh the proof against him, I do not know.  Whatever the case, Paul’s delay in disassociating himself from the letters, his ever-changing excuses, and his questionable associations are enough to condemn him.  (A balanced article on Ron Paul was written by the indefatigable Glenn Greenwald.)

Under normal circumstances, I’d have nothing but absolute contempt for Ron Paul.  In fact, even if he didn’t have such racism-related baggage,  a progressive like myself would have nothing to do with a man who wants to get rid of social welfare programs, the Department of Education, etc. etc.  When it comes to domestic issues, there is probably very little Ron Paul and I would see eye-to-eye on.  Worse yet, I find many of his views on such matters to be outside the realms of reasonableness–I’d go so far as to call them loony.

Yet, many progressives like myself are finding themselves inexorably drawn to Ron Paul.  That is because he is the only major presidential candidate to oppose America’s wars.  Stated another way: the rest of the candidates–including the incumbent president (who expanded the War on Terror)–are war-makers.  Ron Paul is the only peace candidate.

This says a lot about the state of our union more than it does about Ron Paul.  War-making has become such a staple of American life that the only man who stands a chance (and a slim one at that) of bringing an end to Endless War is a loony, fringe candidate with a questionable and possibly racist past.

I have been criticized by some Islamophobes for daring to say anything positive about Ron Paul.  But, the fact that a person of my views (a progressive peacenik) is forced to consider Ron Paul is indicative of how truly violent and warlike our country has become (or, rather, has always been).  This underscores my main counter-argument to the Supreme Islamophobic Myth: we, as part of the Judeo-Christian West, have been and are still, just as, if not more, violent and warlike than the Muslim world.

This fact is underscored even more by the fact that the reason why Ron Paul has been “disqualified” as a realistic candidate is because, in the words of Bill O’Reilly, of his peace-loving foreign policy.  Imagine, for instance, if an Iranian candidate for the Iranian presidency could never realistically win unless he advocated for war against other countries.  What would it say about Iranians if they, by convention and consensus, refused to elect someone who advocated peaceful relations with the rest of the world?

One would expect that progressive peaceniks like myself would have more options to choose from than just one candidate.  But because warmongering is an essential component of being president of the United States (and serving in the military is almost a prerequisite to getting elected–imagine if Iranians would demand that their leaders must have sometime in their lives fought jihad), there is virtually nobody to vote for.

In an earlier article, I wrote of how war has been a part of the American psyche since the very beginning, from 1776 all the way to the present.  We’ve never gone a decade without a major war, and no president in our history can truly be considered a peacetime president.  Yet, somehow even after waging wars for more than 91% of our existence, we look at ourselves as peace-makers and “those Moozlums over there” as violent and warlike.

A verse from the Quran is most fitting here: “When it is said to them: ‘Do not make mischief on earth,’ they say: ‘We are but peace-makers.’  In fact, they are the mischief-makers, but they realize it not.” (2:11-12)

*  *  *  *  *

Something else that reinforces my argument is the fact that even Ron Paul, the single peace proponent in the presidential race, does not seem to oppose war based on peacenik principles.  He usually raises financial and political arguments against the wars, instead of humanitarian ones: We’re bankrupting ourselves.  Or: These wars result in terrorism (against us).

Our moral compass should not be dictated by money or self-interest.  We should oppose these wars because killing innocent civilians is morally atrocious.  This is what should be the main argument:

Not this:

Let me clarify: there is nothing wrong with raising financial and political arguments as secondary reasons to end the wars.  In fact, I would encourage doing so.  But, the primary motivation behind opposing wars should be less self-centered (the war is costing us too much money, they may retaliate with terrorism against us, too many of our young soldiers are risking their lives over there), but more humanitarian towards the victims of our aggression: we are killing innocent civilians.

Ron Paul’s emphasis on financial and political reasons, as opposed to humanitarian concerns, seems to be consistent with his ideology.  (After all, he supported Israel’s bombing of Iraq in 1981 and seems unconcerned if Israel bombs Iran on its own accord.  This indicates to me that it is not the dead in Iraq or Iran that bothers him so much, but only that it would cost us money to kill them or would risk retaliation against us for doing so.)  What does it say about America if even the one and only supposed peace candidate is against wars not out of humanitarian reasons but financial and political concerns?

Even if I am being too harsh on Ron Paul and it’s just a political consideration to focus on financial and political reasons, what does it say about us Americans that we can only be convinced based on our wallets and not on our consciences?

*  *  *  *  *

I don’t say this very often, but Pamela Geller was absolutely right when she said  about Ron Paul that “[h]e is done.”  He most certainly is.  And so dies the only candidate who could have ended America’s Endless Wars.

One should point out, however, that just because the Islamophobes have found the Kryptonite that will kill Ron Paul (the racist newsletters) this doesn’t change the fact that Paul’s foreign policy views were correct.

Let this be a lesson to groupies and fan boys of Ron Paul, a lesson that groupies and fan boys of Barack Obama should also heed: do not put your hopes in a man, because if you do, that man will often, if not always, disappoint you. Put your faith in a conviction instead.  If you hold on tightly enough to the conviction and not the man, it will persevere.

Danios was the Brass Crescent Award Honorary Mention for Best Writer in 2010 and the Brass Crescent Award Winner for Best Writer in 2011.  

DISCLAIMER: LoonWatch has not endorsed any candidate for President of the United States.  This article should not be seen as such.

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    • donnel fenton

      Why would anyone vote for Ron Paul.(1) He doesn’t like wars (2)against the draft(3)Backs the constitution(4)wants to bring back morality,snore. 5.Repeal US Supreme court rulings on full immunities to judges and prosecutors, Forced arbitration on Americans wiping out due process,AT&T case. allowing inlimited corporation donations to politicians thus owning them(99.9%)–.(6) wants to bring our troops home-Boooooooooooooooo, party pooper! Whats wrong with what we have had over the past fifty years, corruption, low IQ Washington DC politicians, New world order, Tarper banks who steal our tax $$$ and now want to do away with the Constitution and I say Yes to that. Groupie party voters(demos/repubs) unite for more of the same. Polish up your children to offer themselves up to the War profiteers.

    • Saladin

      @Danios & @Believing Atheist Ben Swan has revealed the ghost writer

      @Danios you should update this article to include that

    • Ilisha writes: The point is that visitors don’t need to have a debate among themselves because the administrator sets and enforces the policies.

      Exactly. My point is that starting such a debate is no more than an attempt at censorship and a way of taking a discussion off-topic, as in “Divert, distort, denigrate, disrupt or destroy any discussion of anything adverse to any agenda of the enemies of humanity.”

      I’ve been watching the enemies of liberty take advantage of short attention spans to keep people from thinking things through, for over a decade. On any subject related to Islam or Israel it’s a professionally-directed organized activity with partisans at least monitoring virtually every Web forum for any discussion that needs to be dominated or disrupted. Muslims are just as intent on spreading their “message” ~ which usually contains something true, relevant to the reader or not ~ as are the zionists on spreading their “hasbara” ~ which usually contains something true, relevant or not.

      John Deere, owner of the now-defunct LibertyForum.org political discussion forum, refused to believe that disrupting deliberative discussions, a time-honored strategy of partisan political warfare, was organized and running in his forum even after we proved it with forensic evidence. The loons had already taken over his forum, and he couldn’t hear the warning. His forum became a cacophony of trivial mindless contentions, and died.

      The loons are here, at LoonWatch, obviously and more subtly. The “Divert, distort, denigrate, disrupt or destroy any discussion of anything adverse to any agenda of the enemies of humanity” is in full play here, and some of it is organized and professional. LoonWatch is a real threat to the loons, and is being taken seriously.

      What is most threatening to them is that LoonWatch is not a “muslim” party effort, but more “secular” and oriented on human rights rather than religious liberty per se. It’s not part of the “religious squabble,” it’s about the essential wrongness of demonizing and dehumanizing people. The loons have refined the “religious squabble” to a boring art, concealing the fact that it’s contention over “religion as a tool of oppression” as opposed to “religion as liberation,” with undeniable history showing both. But here, their “religious squabble” arguments fall flat ~ they have to fall back on tactics of provocation and disruption.

      “Blog-pimping” (whatever that is) isn’t a debate, it’s a provocation and disruption. It has nothing to do with Why Islamophobes Hate Ron Paul.

      The polis was the ancient Greek city-state. The word politics comes from this Greek word. The polis was the central urban area that may also have controlled the surrounding countryside.

      When we step into the political arena, we’re dealing with parties, not the individuals who make up those parties. The loons are a party, connected financially to another party, which in turn is related to another party. We see the individuals ~ we also have to see the parties, which we can do by recognizing the tactics and strategies ~ and aims ~ of the parties controlling “the surrounding countryside,” the individuals we see. When we see someone trying to disrupt the discussion, that is the party; ad hominem attacks are the party; provocation is the party; obfuscation, misrepresentation, and falsity are the party. It’s not necessary to name names, and it’s seldom possible to tell whether an individual is part of the party or part of the countryside ~ but the tactics work (or don’t) whether the individual knows what he’s doing or has just acquired a habit from compulsory public education or at the fringes of political activism.

      Why do Islamophobes Hate Ron Paul? Because he speaks plainly and sincerely, which the loons and the liars and the leeches cannot do, and just that exposes the sell-out, bait and switch shell game of “American democracy,” and there’s nothing they can do to stop it short of killing him.

      But they might be able to divert discussions about Ron Paul and what he’s saying and doing, at LoonWatch, by talking about that crime of the century, “blog-pimping,” which is a red herring in the first place. LoonWatch and LoonWatchers can do nothing for me, I have nothing to gain here by posting links to the Muslim America website. And that’s my point: the aim is censorship and disruption, not any imaginary “offense.”

    • Ilisha

      @Hajj Dawud

      “Posting links to websites is fine as long as you’re not affiliated with the site? What kind of a mind can wrap itself around that?

      You left off the first part: “Visitors are allowed to link to their blogs and other resources they feel are relevant to the discussion.”

      The second part was directly addressing the “blog pimping” allegations that were being debated. The point is that visitors don’t need to have a debate among themselves because the administrator sets and enforces the policies.

    • Anticipated Serendipity

      @Geji The internet connection went faulty then disappeared for a week, sorry for the late reply.

      There’s no point in flogging a dead horse, dear. I think the evil West gets more than its fair share of criticism on this site. It baffles me how anyone can have the audacity to state: “Islamist group in Nigeria kills Christians, it must be the West or the Evangelical Christians fault”, because the possibility that there are some Muslim extremists in Nigeria who are of the conviction that Christians must be eradicated is just too far-fetched. There’s no way the most logical conclusion can be the correct one, right? The West must be involved. That said, I don’t support any form of imperialism and would like proof of your assertion that I support Western/American imperialism. You appear to support sitting around and blaming all of the ummah’s problems on the omnipresent Western imperialists, rather than doing something about it or at the very least acknowledging it.

      When I’m on “anti-jihadist” website and there are comments linking everything from Hitler to McVeigh (yes, I’ve read McVeigh was in cahoots with “Muslim terrorists”) to Muslims, I similarly point out the lunacy of that.

    • Anticipated Serendipity

      @Khusboo Obama is only continuing the wars and path to destruction that Bush the Younger started, two wars and a decline that could’ve been avoided had Bush not been elected to begin with.

      I’m not an Obama fan, nor am I an American and my country is actually doing relatively well amid the global financial turmoil, despite us being more “socialistic” than the US. By most standards the US is very far from being anything close to a socialist country, and I thought it was all the market deregulation and unlimited spending of the Bush era that started this mess anyway? I suppose everybody should get a tax cut and more regulations be scrapped. I’m sure that’ll work.

      LOL, you’re an Obama voter but somehow he’s “my Obama”.

      No I’m not happy at all with the NDAA bill. Detention without charge or trial is not right, not for anyone, but the cold truth is that the US has almost 200 non-US citizens detained in its foreign dungeon in Cuba and arbitrary detention has been okayed for us non-Americans for a long time now, so welcome to the party!

    • Ilisha writes: If the administrator determines there is too much “blog pimping,” offenders will be contacted directly and asked to scale back.

      Or comments are deleted, when a particular link is unwanted. It’s not always clear what will be “acceptable” and what not ~ the persistent troll posts, and replies to them, make it impossible to know that, but “disappeared” comments are sometimes instructive.

      Since October 26 (2011), at least 110 Loonwatchers have followed links to our website 187 times ~ 104 of the 187 were from links in comments, not the link in my screen name. At least three Loonwatchers have followed most, if not all, of the links I’ve included in comments. Sixteen Loonwatchers had done some exploring on the site by the time I stopped keeping track of the LW traffic after the first couple of weeks. Those numbers don’t include visitors whose browsers don’t identify the location of the link they followed, which statistically runs about 30%, so they’re certainly “lower” low numbers than they would be.

      So LW administrators can compare “110” (LW visitors to the MA website) with the number of LW regular readers (which we suspect is much larger) and draw any conclusions they want ~ I really don’t care, I’m not a “fame” or “popularity” junkie and I don’t measure the worth of the Muslim America website by the volume of traffic it gets. The public website tells us whether more or fewer people are realizing that “faith” might have something to do with their lives ~ that information is in the search engine queries that bring visitors to the site, not the traffic statistics.

      People in most web forums post links to pages they think other readers might want to see. There are muslim readers at LoonWatch ~ some actually practicing and doing Islam, and some learning, thinking, and talking about doing that. We could post links to “talking about Islam” websites all day long ~ but we have a “doing it” website that we think is more worthwhile than “talking about it.” Some agree, some don’t ~ that just tells us about them, it tells us nothing about ourselves. But the enemies of liberty will stop at nothing to prevent anyone from seeing a “doing it” muslim website ~ and that identifies them.

      Posting links to websites is fine as long as you’re not affiliated with the site? What kind of a mind can wrap itself around that?

    • Ilisha

      Visitors are allowed to link to their blogs and other resources they feel are relevant to the discussion.

      If the administrator determines there is too much “blog pimping,” offenders will be contacted directly and asked to scale back.

    • There you are, HajjiDawud pimping his blog. That was an example

      To gain exactly what, “Inspired”? I’ve been at the top of my field for over thirty years, our needs are satisfied with no effort on my part, and the only interest I have in people like you is keeping a good distance between us. So for what purpose am I “pimping” a website whose main traffic is from search engines that routinely put it at the top of highly specific searches?

      Your devotions are not my devotions. Whatever you imagine that I “want,” based on what you would want, is most probably the opposite of what I actually want. And with reference to the Muslim America website, I doubt whether you could even imagine what I might want.

      Muslim America’s active website is hosted on our Local Area Network that serves Madrasat al-‘Ulum-e-Shar’iah (the Muslim America School of Law), the Muslim America Children’s Forest, Masjid al-Amr, administrations of communities of faith associated with the indigenous sector of Muslim America, and a few discussion forums and chat rooms. It all sits on machines under the direct physical control of our Network Operations Center, inside our offices. You couldn’t gain access to that website even if you knew the domain names that lead to the password screens ~ you’d never reach the password screens, the connection request would be ignored.

      So who’s “pimping” what here? And for what purpose? We’re already established with more dominion than we ever wanted, and threatened by nothing.

      As for your notion that webmasters and forum hosts commonly prohibit linking to participants’ websites, that’s nonsense. Forum hosts routinely ask participants to post links to “off-topic” material on the off-topic posters’ websites or ISP “home pages.” Here at LoonWatch, trolls take discussions completely off-topic all day long ~ perhaps some twisted notion of “Free Speech” allows that.

      Your aim is censorship, plain and simple. There are views, facts and perspectives you don’t want seen by LoonWatch readers.

      And that’s how you’re “Inspired by Mohammad,” who didn’t even stop a Bedouin from peeing on the wall of the mosque in Madinah.

      Which is all you’re doing.

    • Sir Stephen writes: I suggested that anyone who wishes to see what I believe will find the answer at my blog. Now to my way of thinking, that’s just reasonable.”

      As you can see from a recent post above, the “pimping your own blog” nonsense is aimed primarily at me. Here’s why:

      I’ve been fighting the loons ~ the “Islamophobes” and the enemies of humanity ~ on the Web, on their home ground ~ FreeRepublic, MSN, LibertyForum, the USS Liberty Court of Inquiry, and some other “public Web discussion forums” that are openly or secretly run by “Islamophobes” ~ since 1997. I’ve been banished from those four ~ and others ~ because I debunk their false representations effectively.

      I don’t publish a blog ~ what I write that’s appropriate to a “blog” goes to a private mailing list with educated, professional subscribers on four continents. What I write at the blogs and forums goes into a text file and is sent to that list, partly for peer review, after which it goes on the Muslim America website for reference use by writers who take on the loons on their home ground ~ solid, on-point refutations of the habitual contentions of the anti-Islam brigades, the hasbara teams, and the nut cases. My laptop recently ate one such text file, erasing over year’s worth of writings that I had sent to our mailing list ~ and received from a subscriber a complete copy of everything sent to the current list, and to all of its predecessors, for the last seven years, which included everything I’ve posted to anti-Islam blogs and forums for those years.

      And when I can address a contention by referring to something I’ve written twenty times before, refining it each time to shorten it and make it more directly effective against the propaganda attack, I link to the appropriate page and sometimes include a short extract or introduction.

      At the Muslim America website visitors can find over ten years of debunking the lies of the loons, in Christian forums, Republican forums, technical forums, libertarian forums, and “cacophony” forums (like Daily Bell, BoingBoing, CNN, Freedom Portal, the Seattle Times, USAToday, and the Washington Post) to which someone has sent me a link to refute a specific lie. Over ten years of defeating the agenda to “Divert, distort, denigrate, disrupt or destroy any discussion of anything adverse to any agenda of the enemies of humanity.” And over ten years of being the target of the “Dismiss, discredit, denounce, demonize or deny any proponent or professor of humanly effective inspiration” agenda that those with eyes to see are watching ~ now ~ at LoonWatch.

      Google the phrase “muslim america” and you’ll find the Muslim America website at the top of the list of hits ~ yesterday it was the first four links at Google. The Muslim America website has been at the top of that list for at least seven years. We don’t “promote” it ~ we don’t need to. We don’t use any of the “tricks” to put it at the top of the list ~ we do nothing at all. Search on any number of topics related to Islam or religion, or the stock lies of the enemies of humanity related to Islam, and you’ll find the Muslim America website in the list. We don’t use “keyword” headers on our web pages. We don’t care about traffic, the site is located on an Internet backbone with no bandwidth limits ~ DDoS attacks fail regularly.

      We just added Dominions of Faith: Humanity is the Crown of Creation yesterday, because it is (in my opinion) too long and too tangential to LoonWatch’s purposes to post here as a comment. It’s the first page that’s been added to the website since we set up “The Priceless Muslim America Bookstore” ~ where there are no prices, everything is there for free download. There’s no advertising on the entire website. There are no “donation” requests ~ the “donations” page, if you can find it, discourages donations. Go to the Wayback machine and you’ll find that there have never been any “fund” requests on the website. Muslimamerica.net is in the “top ten million” websites for traffic, which is just the way we like it. Our other three domain name sites aren’t even visible, and two-thirds of the muslimamerica.net site is not accessible through the public pages, you have to find links somewhere else ~ if you can at all, most of the pages are not linked in any public forum.

      We’ve also hosted graphics for others engaged in this “war in the heavens” against humanity. Our Network Operations Center runs chat rooms inaccessible from the Muslim America website. We run several Majordomo mailing lists not accessible from the Muslim America website. None of our password-protected or encrypted pages are reachable through the Muslim America website. And we host a library of literature from, about, or related to Islam on three terabytes of web space not accessible from the Muslim America website, on a server physically located in our offices, on machines to which no one else has any access.

      We didn’t start fighting the loons yesterday or even two years ago ~ we’ve been at it for a while, and we know the dirty ways they fight ~ Geller isn’t even the tip of one of the icebergs they’re running on the Web to sink efforts such as LoonWatch, fighting lies with truth.

      That’s why the “pimping your own blog” nonsense is being injected ~ off-topic ~ into a discussion of “Why Islamophobes Hate Ron Paul,” and why “Hajji Dawud/Shaykh is the most avid pimper of his own blog here.” And Hajj Dawud doesn’t even write a public blog.

      It’s just lunacy.

    • Sir David,

      Though Hajji Dawud/Shaykh is the most avid pimper of his own blog here, in all fairness others do it too, i’ve seen other bloggers posting links to their own blogs, it’s not their fault because Loon Watch allows it, and it is irritating, and unprofessional.

      Other websites I go to, ban people immediately if they pimp their own blogs. Rightly so, in my opinion.

  • Sir David

    Inspired by Momammed Not that you are promoting a website in any way Is that a link I see on your name or are you just pleased to be coloured red /orange ?

    Read my comment carefully. I said it was sufficient that a blog can be linked in the comment where it says ‘website’.

    Talking about or promoting your OWN website when writing comments at another website is strictly forbidden in most forums. It’s called ‘pimping your own blog’. The rule makes sense. It ensures that people who post comments are genuine supporters (or enemies or whatever ) of the cause, and not just there to pick up traffic and divert readers to their website.

    My linking to a website in the ‘website’ box, does not mean i’m pimping it. because first it’s not my website, and second, I don’t talk about it.

    Why do i get the feeling you did not read my comment properly

Ana Kasparian Calls Robert Spencer a Loser and a Sad Sack of …

By on December 20, 2011 in Loon-at-large

The whole All-American Muslim controversy had the upside of giving birth to this video by The Young Turks.  Ana Kasparian basically calls JihadWatch’s Robert Spencer a loser and a sad sack of …

Cenk Uygur calls Robert Spencer a “clown-o-ramo” and his site to be “full of morons.” Ana Kasparian delivers the elbow from the sky when she asks: “How depressing is it that you dedicate any time at all to creating a website called JihadWatch?”

Ana, believe it or not but this portly man named Robert Spencer has dedicated his entire life to blogging about jihad.  This grown man is nearing the age of 50 and this is how he not only spends his time but it’s his career.

Whenever I visit Neo-Nazi websites like Stormfront (which I do from time to time in order to marvel at the sheer insanity found there), I cannot help but marvel at how these people are obsessing over how much they hate “the blacks”.  Don’t these grown men have anything else to worry about?  Families, mortgages, actual careers?  What could be sadder than a group of old white men meeting in uniform to talk about how much they love Hitler?

It’s the same hate and level of obsession on JihadWatch.  Robert Spencer is their Grand Wizard, and they are all absolute, 100% total losers.  Their unhealthy level of obsessional hatred scares away friends and makes it impossible for them to ever get dates from normal women.  So, most of them hide this hatred in real life and just spend hours trolling the net in their basement.

As for Robert Spencer, one has to wonder what set him off: maybe some Muslim girl broke his heart long time ago by getting with some Muslim dude.  Now, Spencer is getting his revenge out on all Muslims.

That’s very similar to the founder of the Florida Family Association, the man behind the whole All-American Muslim controversy: his reason for dedicating his whole life to hatred has something to do with how he hates himself for being a frustrated porn addict:

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    • “Most wingnuts cry about the Armenian Genocide while denying the Bosnian Genocide. How do you explain that?”

      The same way you explain tides going in and tides going out… You just can’t.

    • “Most wingnuts cry about the Armenian Genocide while denying the Bosnian Genocide. How do you explain that?”

      The same you can explain tides going in and tides going out. You just can’t.

    • deccal

      HA. Ignorance abounds.

      As a matter of fact, most Arabs do recognize the Armenian Genocide. My characterization of Kasparian as a ‘race traitor’ isn’t wrong, as she works with the same person who denies the genocide of her people. As for the young turks, I never mentioned that they didn’t support secularism. In fact, I didn’t mention Islam at all, but is a reflexive habit of you loons to go all wishy washy and protective in case of “islamophobia”, is it not?

    • Believing Atheist

      @dan15,

      Well I can’t speak for wingnuts but I assure you that I am not a wingnut. I am a liberal/progressive and I do believe that the Bosnian Genocide took place.

      I have said many times on Loonwatch that I am proud of the fact that the U.S. intervened in Bosnia to stop the genocide. (I believe I repeated this in my defense of Christopher Hitchens, which you can go see, it’s in the latest article Loonwatch published on Hitchens).

    • “So Cenk is no better than a Holocaust denier.”

      Most wingnuts cry about the Armenian Genocide while denying the Bosnian Genocide. How do you explain that?

    • SKhan

      “deccal Says: December 23rd, 2011 at 5:07 pm Funny how they call themselves the “Young Turks”, after the group which committed the Armenian Genocide. And shame on that race traitor Kasparian!”

      Oh my god. I think you may be on to something. And I don’t think it’s just your anti-Muslim bias manifesting itself, this time. Maybe you are right: there must be some sort of evil hidden meaning to TYT choosing “Young Turks” as their name. Of course, it can’t be because they support secularism, just like the Young Turk Movement did, no only a rational person would think that. Maybe being a news show is just a front for another genocide of some sort…yes, that’s obviously very plausible. I guess Dawkins, Dennet, Hitchens, and Harris calling themselves the Four Horsemen must then somehow link themselves to the…

      Race traitor in deed. The use of such a term indicates that you dabble in the same sort of racial pseudoscience that Don Black and David Duke do.

    • Senor

      Of course Muslims are remaining peaceful. They have been for a long time. The problem is the other side likes to use wars to kill them, especially in the name of national security.

    • TheBig_T

      @deccal

    • Oh can I be a race traitor too? I do love my Malaysian wife to be…

      Jack

    • Awesome

      And shame on that race traitor Kasparian!

      – Only a racist believes in something as nonsensical as a “race-traitor”, and consequently “deccal”, with that comment, has just exposed himself as just that; a racist bigot.

    • deccal

      Funny how they call themselves the “Young Turks”, after the group which committed the Armenian Genocide. And shame on that race traitor Kasparian!

    • Farlowe

      “What could be sadder than a group of old white men meeting in uniform to talk about how much they love Hitler?”

      LOL….what about a group of people who meet in uniform to pledge their submission to an imaginary entity whom no one has seen or spoken to?

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Israel Withdraws Islamophobic Claim that Flotilla Linked to Terrorists

By on June 7, 2010 in Feature, Loon Politics

Israeli commandos illegally raid the Freedom Flotilla, ensuring that the Gazans are “put on a diet”

One of the common ways in which Islamophobia manifests itself in the public discourse is when far right wingers, extreme Zionists, and Islamophobes label a Muslim a “terrorist” in order to discredit that person’s legitimate criticisms.  Alternatively, and perhaps more commonly, these bigots don’t go that far but instead suffice themselves by claiming that the Muslim is “linked” to terrorists.  They will, for example, claim that so-and-so is associated with Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.  Very little proof is needed to make such claims; instead of providing actual evidence, the usual tactic is to provide tangential and circumstantial “proof” and to simply repeat the charge again and again.

If a lie is repeated enough, it begins to stick.  It is not dissimilar to what the right wing did to ACORN, when they launched spurious, sensationalist, and absolutely preposterous charges against the organization in order to demonize it.  Even though there was no basis for these allegations, ACORN was eventually forced to disband.  Similarly, countless Muslims and Islamic organizations have been discredited using this very same tactic.  At the very least, these Muslims and Islamic organizations are forced to dedicate all their (very limited) time and resources to countering the negative propaganda waged against them.

Islamophobes can use six degrees of separation to link virtually any Muslim to terrorists.  In fact, they even smeared poor Rima Fakih–winner of the Miss America contest–accusing her of being linked to Hezbollah.  If a Muslim-sounding name prevents you from being a bikini-clad stripper pole beauty pageant winner, then you can imagine how easy it is to smear Muslims who speak up against the far right wing, extremist Zionists, and Islamophobes–or those who would more daringly question the United States government…or in this case those who try to breach the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza.  Being a Muslim has become a huge liability, as you open yourself to all sorts of crazy accusations by the bigots.

So when the Freedom Flotilla, which had on board many Muslims, was illegally attacked by Israeli commandos, it was all too easy for the Israeli PR machine to claim that those on board were terrorists–or at least linked to terrorists.  Was there any evidence to support such a claim?  Of course not.  But such claims are taken seriously only because Islamophobia runs rampant.  If an Israeli says a Muslim is a terrorist, then it must be true, right?  Because Israelis are Jews, and Jews are the good guys.  Conversely, Muslims are terrorists–well, at least all terrorists are Muslims, right?  Such endemic bigotry is the equivalent of a white man assaulting a black guy, and then claiming in court–without any proof whatsoever–that the black guy was a criminal.  After all, black men are criminals, right?

The terrorist smear against the Freedom Flotilla was propagated all over the media, such that it became common for people to associate the people onboard the ships with terrorists.  Now, after the flotilla raid no longer dominates the headlines, the Israeli PR machine quietly withdraws its ill-founded and baseless claims. (The damage is already done after all.) The Israelis have confessed that they have no evidence to back up their allegation.  This is hardly surprising, considering that Israel tends to call whoever is killed by its missiles to be “terrorists.”  It’s quite clear that you don’t need evidence to accuse Muslims of terrorism.

The prevalence of Islamophobia in the U.S. can be gauged by the muted public reaction (or in this case, lack of reaction) after hearing of the brutal execution of a U.S. citizen by Israeli commandos.  Mr. Furqan Dogan was shot once in the chest and four times in the head at close range. Cenk Uygur writes:

The Israeli commandos that boarded the Free Gaza Flotilla shot Furkan Dogan once in the chest and four times in the head at close range. Was he still resisting after the third head shot? Did five different commandos happen to shoot him all at the same time in the middle of the night with stunning accuracy? No, someone shot Dogan at close range and did so enough times to make sure he was dead well after there might have been any resistance. That’s generally known as an execution.

Dogan is an American citizen. That’s an uncomfortable fact for a lot of people, especially for our politicians who will do anything possible to cover for what Israel has done here. It’s hard to cover for the summary execution of an American citizen. But they’ve managed pretty well so far. Do you hear any cries of outrage coming from America? No, didn’t think so.

Now, let’s be fair. Dogan was born in Troy, New York, but he moved to Turkey when he was young. Maybe that’s why the American government or media haven’t made a big deal out of it.

So, imagine if Hamas had boarded a ship in international waters and shot a Jewish American who had lived in Israel most of his life. Now imagine they shot him in the head four times. Does anyone really believe we would say that doesn’t really count because he’d been living in Israel too long? Does anyone believe we wouldn’t be apoplectic about that? And rightfully so.

Anybody know what we would call it if Hamas had shot an American citizen in the head? Yeah, you guessed it. Terrorism.

So, I’d like to ask the Obama administration – which one is it? Was his life more expendable because he was a) Turkish-American b) Muslim-American c) lived outside the country for awhile or d) because Israel killed him rather than another country?

I’m genuinely curious about that. The US government so far has reacted with what appears to be complete and utter indifference to the brutal slaying of one of its citizens. So, what was it that made this guy’s life irrelevant?

I’m about to have a son. He will be partly Turkish-American. Can he be executed by Israel or any other country? Will our country protect him? Will they consider him a real American? Does he count?

Is there any other country that also has immunity in killing US citizens? We’re apparently very good allies with Saudi Arabia. Do they get to execute of any our citizens? I’m just trying to figure out the ground rules here.

Does it still mean something to be an American?

Muslims can only be citizens of this country so long as they don’t criticize the U.S. government.  If they do that, they are told “go back to your own country” and even linked to terrorists.  Meanwhile, people like Glenn Greenwald, Norman Finkelstein, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomksy, etc. (all great people who I admire a lot) are immune from such attacks.  I’ve heard from Muslim Americans themselves who say that they appreciate the efforts of such non-Muslims because they themselves must be more constrained in what they say, for fear of being accused of disloyalty or of being linked to terrorism. In other words, Muslims might technically be Americans, but they are not real Americans.  Mr. Furqan Dogan doesn’t really count because he was a Muslim American, and so it cannot be said that a real American was killed.  And because he was a Muslim, it is very easy to dismiss him as a terrorist sympathizer; he probably had it coming.

Read this:

Under Scrutiny, IDF Retracts Claims About Flotilla’s Al Qaeda Links

by Max Blumenthal

When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June 2, the IDF blasted out a press release to reporters and bloggers with the shocking headline: “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries.” The only supporting evidence offered in the release was a claim that the passengers “were equipped with bullet proof vests, night vision goggles, and weapons.” A screen capture of the press release is below:

The IDF distributed this press release on June 2. The following day, it changed the headline, essentially retracting its lurid accusation.

Not content to believe that night vision goggles signal membership in Al Qaeda, reporter Lia Tarachansky of The Real News Network and I called the IDF press office to ask for more conclusive evidence. Tarachansky reached the IDF’s Israel desk, interviewing a spokesperson in Hebrew; I spoke with the North America desk, using English. We both received the same reply from Army spokespeople: “We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the [Israeli] National Security Council.” (The Israeli National Security Council is Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet of advisors).

Today, the Israeli Army’s press office changed the headline of its press release (see below), basically retracting its claim about the flotilla’s Al Qaeda links. The new headline reads: “Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers” (the top of the browser screen still contains the original headline about Al Qaeda). The more Israel’s claims about the flotilla’s terrorist links are challenged, the more they fall apart.

After admitting “there is no evidence” to back up its claim about the flotilla’s Qaeda links, the IDF quietly changed the headline of its press release.

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    • Imad

      Well it was compiled in July 2007 before the gaza offensive, so it may be a little outdated. And it’s not rly an article it’s just notes.. How can I send it to u?

    • Danios

      Imad: It depends. Both on the quality of your article and the relevance to the site, two factors I cannot evaluate until I see it. Thanks for your help.

    • Imad

      Hey Danios, I’m reading a UN report of israels occupation that’s 150 pages, and I’m taking bullet-point notes that I’m not giving to anybody.. If gave them to u, would u like to make an article of it? Thx

    • With US mood turning, Israel lobbyist urges approach to Russia (‘we share values’) by Philip Weiss on June 10, 2010

      Things are getting desperate in the U.S. Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi of the Israel Project, an Israel lobby group, writes in the Jerusalem Post that America will never be the same, and it’s time to remember Israel’s shared values with the Russians:

      http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/with-us-mood-turning-israel-lobbyist-urges-approach-to-russia-we-share-values.html

      Steven Cook of CFR works overtime to make sure US shares Israel’s new enmity to Turkey by Ibn Tufayl on June 10, 2010 I am really bothered by Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. Check out his page 1 soundbite in the Times yesterday (piece on US-Turkey relations by Tavernise/Slackman). There he confused and conflated Israel’s critique of Turkey with the US. http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/steven-cook-of-cfr-works-overtime-to-make-sure-israels-view-of-turkey-is-shared-by-us.html

      Shadow Elite: Neocons Blast Back, On Israel’s Behalf Linda Keenan and Janine R. Wedel “[Neoconservatives] always continue to sort of lurk in the framework and look for opportunities to animate their crowd and bring in their fellow travelers..” – Steve Clemons, head of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation in The Nation, March 18, 2010

      The chance for neoconservative activists to “animate” the true believers came with Israel’s deadly flotilla raid on May 31, and they certainly ran with it. “We Con The World,” that satire video suggesting that the real mission of those on board the Mavi Marmara was to aid terror, was produced by Latma, a media site run by Caroline Glick, an editor at the Jerusalem Post. But it’s her other title that’s more relevant here: Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. Glick launched Latma through the CSP, which she says fully funds its operations.

      CSP is the think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, who was also a founding member of the effort known as the Project for the New American Century. PNAC, in a letter to President Clinton in 1998, called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-keenan/emshadow-eliteem-neocons_b_607187.html

      Neocons Have Disturbing Amounts of Influence Over Obama June 10, 2010 For those who thought the end of the Bush Administration spelled doomsday for the neoconservative movement, think again. http://www.alternet.org/world/147156/neocons_have_disturbing_amounts_of_influence_over_obama/?page=entire

    • Adam

      “Terrorist-linked” jibe = a pre-emptive speculative guilt tarring smear, playing to Pavlovian media priming.

    • Sir David ( Illuminati membership number 5:32)

      I read the transcript Where does she get these “facts” from ? Walmart? a dime a dozen? unblievable

    • iSherif

      Danios, just wanted to let you know that Europol has released their latest terrorism situation and trend report. I believe you wrote an article once covering the previous reports?

      “Islamist terrorism is still perceived as the biggest threat to most member states, despite the fact that only one Islamist terrorist attack – a bomb attack in Italy – took place in the EU in 2009,” Europol said.

      You can find the report at:

      http://euobserver.com/9/29968

      There is a link to the report at the bottom of the article.

    • Ryan

      Rueter’s did alter the images, but the Israelis still handled it badly.

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South Park angle unlikely; Marriott Hotel, not Viacom, probable target

By on May 5, 2010 in Loon Politics
Faisal Shahzad

Faisal Shahzad

Following the failed Times Square bombing and the arrest of a Pakistani-American suspect named Faisal Shahzad, questions remain about his possible motivations.  Some have suggested that the recent South Park controversy could have something to do with it: perhaps Mr. Shahzad was retaliating against Viacom, which owns Comedy Central.  According to this theory, the grievance was over a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad by the satirical cartoon show South Park, which runs on Comedy Central. The Viacom building is in close proximity to the intended blast site.

The police have not ruled out this South Park angle (and I do not think they should), although officials have conceded that it is one out of a hundred possibilities.  However, certain extreme right-wingers and anti-Islam ideologues (such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller) have invested a lot in this South Park-Times Square connection, and pray that it turns out to be true.  It would certainly allow them to paint the Muslim community in the worst possible light: “Those crazy Moozlems bomb and kill innocent civilians simply for drawing a cartoon of their prophet!”

Proponents of the South Park-Times Square connection argue that both the (1) location and (2) timing fit.  As for the location, it is said that the the parked SUV was in close proximity to the Viacom headquarters.  This is true, but it is unlikely that the blast would have significantly damaged the Viacom building.  Instead, it seems more likely that the intended target was the Marriott Hotel, which is right next to the blast site.  Most importantly, the reaction of the emergency response teams gives us a strong indication of what the terrorists’ target was.  It seems to have been the Marriott Hotel, which was evacuated and shut down.  USA Today reports:

NYC’s Marriott Marquis partly evacuated due to car bomb scare Saturday

Update, 12:13 pm: Earlier this morning, I learned more about what Marriott Marquis guests experienced last night from Kathy Duffy, who handles public relations for Marriott’s New York hotels. Since the suspicious vehicle was parked on the 45th Street side of the Marquis, NYPD told the hotel to evacuate that side of the building. Since the hotel was sold out, that meant evacuating several hundred people who had rooms between floor 10 and 45, she said. The Marquis provided the guests with temporary cots and blankets in the banquet room (see CNN iReport photo link below), where they stayed until around 2 to 3 a.m., when they were allowed back to their rooms, Duffy told me.

Because the Marriott Hotel–and not the Viacom building–was evacuated, it seems pretty safe to say that the former was the target and not the latter.  Furthermore, the attack was on Saturday night–after hours.  The Viacom building would likely have been virtually empty.  Wouldn’t a bloodthirsty terrorist have struck during peak office hours in order to kill as many Viacom employees as possible?  The New York Times commented:

Times Square on a Saturday night is one of the busiest and most populated locations in the city, and has long been seen as a likely target for some kind of attack.

We can further reasonably assume that a bloodthirsty terrorist would want to kill as many people as possible, and therefore a “sold out” Marriott and a heavily “populated” Times Square were the more likely targets than the unoccupied Viacom building.  If it was truly the Pakistani Taliban involved in the attack, the chosen target (the Marriott) would fit their M.O.  This is not the first time the Marriott would have been targeted.  In 2006, Islamic extremists detonated a bomb outside the Marriott in Karachi, the same city where Faisal Shahzad allegedly met with radicals.  In 2008, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was bombed, as well as another Marriott in Jakarta.  In 2003, the Marriott in South Jakarta was bombed.  In addition to the Marriott, several other hotels have been bombed in Pakistan.  In fact, two of the prime targets chosen by terrorists in Pakistan are consulates and hotels.

As for the timing of the attack, proponents of the South Park-Times Square connection argue that the bombing attempt occurred almost immediately following death threats made by Revolution Muslim. They argue: how can this just be a coincidence?  However, it is in fact the incredibly short time duration–between when the South Park controversy took place and the attempted Times Square bombing–that works most against the South Park-Times Square theory.  It is unlikely that the terrorists could have planned the attack so quickly.  Furthermore, and most importantly, numerous reports have come out saying that Faisal Shahzad went to Pakistan to receive terrorist training.  This happened long before the South Park controversy.  Hence, something else radicalized him and convinced him to bomb his adopted country.  If we assume that the Pakistani Taliban trained him (and instructed him to bomb NYC), then all this preceded the South Park affair.  Mr. Shahzad, and his Taliban teachers, had intended to bomb us long time ago.

It is highly unlikely that Revolution Muslim has anything to do with the bombing, as they are under constant scrutiny by the FBI.  They are known for their antics and tall talk, not for their actions and walk.  And surely they would have bombed the place first, before announcing to the world their intention to do that and placing themselves under the watchful eye of the government.

It could be argued that Revolution Muslim issued the call and other extremists hearkened to it.  However, as I discussed above, the bombing took place too soon afterward.  Furthermore, the Pakistani Taliban–who claimed responsibility for the bombing–have not (to my knowledge) ever expressed outrage over the South Park cartoons.  The South Park controversy seemed to be a decidedly North American affair, and it is unlikely that the Taliban took notice of it.  If they had, where were their bellicose condemnations and flamboyant threats?

Lastly, there seems to be no motive to attack Viacom.  Comedy Central had, to the dismay of the South Park creators, cowed to the threats from the Islamic extremists, and refused to show the Prophet Muhammad on their channel.  Faisal Shahzad is a highly educated man; certainly, he would have known that it would makes no sense to attack Viacom or Comedy Central, considering they met the extremists’ demands.  Had this recent bombing had anything to do with South Park, it would have been the creators of the show–not Viacom–whom would have been targeted.

In conclusion, it seems unlikely that the failed Times Square bombing had anything to do with the South Park controversy.  This is so because neither the location, timing, or motive fits.  Rather, the intended target seems to have been the Marriott Hotel and Times Square, both of which would have resulted in the greatest number of deaths.  As such, it is extremely unlikely that the Times Square bombing had anything to do with a cartoon’s depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.  I believe that the extreme right wing and anti-Islam camp wish to pin it on the South Park affair only to exploit the Times Square bombing to further their hate-filled agenda.

There is a concerted effort to hide the fact that our country’s horrific foreign policy–the interventionist policy in the Islamic world in general and the predator drone attacks in Pakistan in specific (which have killed hundreds of Pakistani civilians)–could be (and most likely is) what motivated the Times Square bombing. (I argue this here, and more convincingly here.)  Instead, it is easier to blame it on a heathen religion.

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    • Justin

      It is so tiring to play this media game with Islamophobes. Any incident can be spinned any way to support any ideology. And anyone who really knows about media knows that they are selective in their reporting. Or in other words, the media doesn’t always tell the whole story.

      Robert Spencer is a sad, pathetic man who sits on his ### all day long and searches for bad news about Muslims (which to him is good news because it means more hits and book sales).

    • Ustadh

      I was suspicious of the possibility of South Park as the motivation for the bombing from the beginning for the same reasons given in this article.

Half of Europeans oppose headscarf, support crucifix in classrooms

By on April 29, 2010 in Loon Politics, Loon Radio

hijab-ban1

(hat tip: Islamophobia-watch)

Nowadays, racists and bigots usually come up with justifications to cover up their racism and bigotry, to give cover to it and to package it in something nicer.  Bans on the Muslim headscarf (hijab) were no doubt a reflection of deep-seated Islamophobia, yet we heard politicians claiming that the bans were not targeting Muslims.  Rather, we were told, it is a reflection of Europe’s secularism, and would apply equally to religious gear of all faiths.

A recent poll, however, says otherwise: over fifty percent of Europeans favored banning the hijab from schools, but were meanwhile perfectly fine with (and in fact supported) the placement of crucifixes in classrooms.  To us Yankees, that seems downright backwards.  The hijab is something the individual chooses to wear, not the state–and therefore does not at all impinge on secularism.  Meanwhile, the crucifix is placed in the public school classroom, thereby breaching separation of church and state.

Belgium and France lead the pack when it comes to hijabophobia, and France even seems to be considering a law banning hijab in public altogether.  Secularism my ass (forgive my French).

50% of Europeans opposed to Islamic veil in schools: Study

MADRID – Just over half of Europeans surveyed opposed allowing Islamic headscarves in schools but backed the presence of crucifixes in classrooms, according to a Spanish study obtained by AFP Wednesday…

Opposition to the veil was highest in Bulgaria with 84.3 per cent against and France with 68.7 per cent opposed and it was lowest in Poland with only 25.6 per cent against followed by Denmark with 28.1 per cent opposed.

By contrast 54.4 per cent of those polled were in favour of classrooms displaying crucifixes.

In Spain and Italy, two nations with a strong Roman Catholic tradition, support for the use of crucifixes in classrooms stood at 69.9 per cent and 49.3 per cent respectively.

Support for the use of crucifixes in classrooms shot up to 77 per cent in Britain and 78.8 per cent in Denmark.

The issue of the use of Islamic headscarves has been thrust into the spotlight once again in Europe due to controversial moves by France and Belgium to ban Muslim full face veils.

Last week France announced it would seek a law to ban Muslim residents and visitors from wearing a burqa or a niqab in public, while Belgium was poised to pass a similar ban until its ruling coalition collapsed on Thursday…

source

Apparently, many European Christians don’t like this headscarf thing too much, but love the crucifix.  I’m pretty sure that’s a bit strange considering that the man who they believe died on the crucifix was born to this woman here:

mary

If the Virgin Mary was alive today, Europeans would say to her: you have to take that heathen headscarf off!  You can keep the crucifix, though.

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    • George Carty

      @Durendal:

      “As to the painting of the Virgin Mary it is important to understand that the Virgin Mary as well as Jesus Christ are often depicted as European royalty.”

      That isn’t actually a rebuttal — if you’re right then female European royals must have dressed “hijabi” style — in other words this manner of dress was viewed as something worthy of respect…

    • nat

      @ Ferret

      “I thought headscarfs were to discourage Muslims from getting bad thoughts about the opposite gender.”

      Te reasons for hijab are multidimensional. Some have to do with gender relations, others carry transcendental meaning. Muslim women pray with their hijabs on, in the privacy of their homes, even when they are all alone. In that context, the hijab has nothing to do with the ‘male gaze’, and everything to do with piety and religious practice.

    • Asma-bint-Marwan

      Erratum: the militias of Kamal Ataturk went everywhere,on the streets, from Istanbul to Anatolia, and stripped the veils off the faces of the women. By the way, I know that, after what you call “moderation”, neither this post, nor the precedent one will be published. The contrary would be surprising! Anyway,I made my point.Please, learn democracy and respect for the opinions of those who do not share your credo.That would be the beginning for your arabo-ultranationalist and essentially anti-jews party disguised in cult ( in order to seize the Kaaba), to become a real religion. Regards

    • Asma-bint-Marwan

      It is not about headscarfs, but about women completely masked, just like gangsters preparing a hold-up, in public places.If you were working at the shalter of a bank, and saw such vampire silhouettes coming in, would not you call the police? Muslims did not invent the veils.Before The Virgin Mary, whose holy name you should keep out of your propaganda,the antique greek, roman,yemeni,indian,ethiopian(the list will be too long) women used to wear veils, as a protection against dust or sunburns, or just because they found it feminine.In preislamic Arabia too!But they were not forced into it.The problem with the muslim veil,is that even if a woman claims that she is wearing it voluntarily (Taqqiya!), there is always a man behind such a choice: a big brother, an uncle, a father, a husband, even a fiancé, liberal while courting, but jealous after the first kiss. In France and other european countries, there have always been laws which prohibit to go on the streets or in public offices with a mask or any kind of “travestissement”,out of the period of carnaval.Unless one has been invited to a masked ball!They apply to men and women. It would not be necessary to create new law if muslims were not using the head scarf as a political mean. In arabic french colonies too, some women wore scarfs and veils, but they were peasants,illiterate, or…militants carrying bombs under their “safsaris” in order to let them explode in front of the cafés. We know how it ended, especially in Algeria. Besides, Kamal Ata Turk,alias Mustapha Kamal, the father of the turkish modern nation, used to send militia men through the streets of Ankara,to strip the veils from the faces of the women. There a film documentations about that. Ask the turks.In Syria, last week,the parliament just voted a law against the Hidjab. So, stop acting as if you did not know what the whole fuzz and buzz around the hijab are about.For muslims,alas, everything that is not forbidden,can become compulsory. That is why all the people who cherish freedom have to react firmly against them. You want to conquer the world by all means, as you always did. Not the hearts, but the fear of the people!

  • Danios

    Ferret:

    Muslim boys will often wear a cap, and girls the headscarf during mosque observance. Furthermore, according to orthodox Islamic belief, a Muslim female–no matter what age–should wear the headscarf when performing her five daily prayers. The intention here would be to be modest in order to promote a state of piety in front of God.

    In the picture above, the answer is simpler: she is attending a rally protesting the headscarf ban.

Witch Hunts: A Muslim Problem Only?

By on April 18, 2010 in Feature, Loon Politics

witch 2

Ali Hussain Sibat, a Lebanese national and fortune teller, was recently arrested in Saudi Arabia and charged with the “crime” of sorcery.  Many sincere human rights groups raised awareness about his case, and international outrage prompted the Saudi government to issue him a stay of execution.  Islamophobes, such as Robert Spencer, have chosen to exploit Mr. Sibat’s plight to demonize Islam and Muslims.  For those of us living in the West, the arrest of a “sorcerer” seems beyond insane, and it is quite easy for the Islamophobes to use this incident to reinforce negative stereotypes of Muslims: “wow, those Moozlems must be really backwards.”

Yet, few Westerners realize that witch hunts are now an international problem…and it is not an area of concern limited to Muslim majority countries like Saudi Arabia.  Would it interest the Catholic apologist Robert Spencer to know that witch hunts are much more prevalent amongst Christians than Muslims?  Some Evangelicals continue to take the Bible quite literally, following its commandment: “Thou shalt not allow a sorceress to live” (Exodus, 22:18), and “sorcerers amongst you must be put to death” (Leviticus, 20:27).  The Huffington Post recently wrote a piece on the upsurge of witch hunts in Africa brought on by hardliner Evangelicals:

African Children Denounced As “Witches” By Christian Pastors

…Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files. [Exodus, 22:18]

…The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

Saudi Arabia has recently arrested one individual for the “crime” of sorcery (it seems about five people in the last few years), and the Islamophobes like Robert Spencer have expressed their ardent outrage.  Yet, there were “15,000 children [who] have been accused…and around 1,000 have been murdered” by Christians in Africa…Where is your outrage, Mr. Spencer?  If we must conclude that Islam is the most dastardly of religions due to the persecution of a handful of people in Saudi Arabia, then should we not conclude the same for Christianity when there were 15,000 who stood accused and 1,000 executed recently?

Christian witch hunts are not limited to Africa.  In Papua New Guinea, a country which is 96% Christian, the government passed the 1976 Sorcery Act, which prescribes imprisonment for the practice of black magic.  An article written in 2009 details how one hundred “witches” were executed in Papua New Guinea in just the last year.  Witch hunts have in recent years taken place in Haiti, again by Christians (in this case aimed against non-Christians); a human rights lawyer told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that “literal witch hunts have been launched [by Evangelical Christians] against priests and practitioners of this [traditional Haitian] religion.” Similar witch hunts have been launched in Kenya, Nepal, and other regions, reaching a global stage:

Witch Hunts Are Now An International Epidemic

Yesterday a coalition of U.N. officials, NGOs, and representatives from affected countries addressed the United Nations asking for governments to face the full extent of witch hunts across the world. Far from being a localized phenomenon in “primitive” or isolated villages, witch hunts and witch killings are now global in nature and spreading.

“Murder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is spreading around the world and destroying the lives of millions of people, experts said Wednesday … “This is becoming an international problem — it is a form of persecution and violence that is spreading around the globe,” Jeff Crisp of the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR told a seminar organized by human rights officials of the world body.”

According to some U.N. experts tracking the issue “at least” tens of thousands have died due to witch hunts, while millions have been beaten, abused, isolated, and turned into refugees. While economic hardship is given as a reason for the recent escalation in witch-related violence, experts at the UNHCR also claim that the rise can also be attributed to”religious practitioners” who exploit local fears and superstitions.

“Some religious practitioners make a living from exorcising alleged witches and charging exorbitant fees to those who request the ritual. In Foxcroft’s experience, the most vulnerable members of society – children and the elderly – are often the victims of these accusations.”

Who, exactly, are these “religious practitioners”? The IHEU is far more specific.

“Witchcraft is still widely practiced in many countries in Africa by witchdoctors who often use human body parts in their spells. Some witchdoctors employ gangs of young men to attack and kill victims, often young children, for their body parts, which are frequently removed while the victim is still alive. An estimated 300 people are killed each year in South Africa alone as a result of this practice. But horrific though this practice is, it is only part of the problem. In Nigeria, in both the Muslim North and the Christian South, witch hunts are not uncommon and this has led to a second form of abuse. Some unscrupulous pastors, many linked to Pentecostal churches, have a lucrative trade in making unfounded accusations of witchcraft against young children. [The pastors then agree to “cure” the witches for a substantial fee. Many children are being ostracized and abandoned by their parents as a result of these accusations.]“

These Christian pastors aren’t isolated to Africa, they tour churches in America bragging about their battles with the occult, and have established ministries in Ireland and the UK. Commingling with an increasing anti-occult fervor among some Western Christian groups. Meanwhile, actual modern Pagan communities in places like India and South Africa are facing the possible ramifications of intensifying witch-hunts and witch persecutions…

Reuters reports:

Reuters – Murder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is spreading around the world and destroying the lives of millions of people, experts said Wednesday.

And community workers from Nepal and Papua New Guinea told the seminar, on the fringes of a session of the U.N.’s 47-member Human Rights Council, that “witch-hunting” was now common, both in rural communities and larger population centres.

The experts — United Nations officials, civil society representatives from affected countries and non-governmental organization (NGO) specialists working on the issue — urged governments to acknowledge the extent of the persecution.

“This is becoming an international problem — it is a form of persecution and violence that is spreading around the globe,” Jeff Crisp of the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR told a seminar organized by human rights officials of the world body.

Aides to U.N. special investigators on women’s rights and on summary executions said killings and violence against alleged witch women — often elderly people — were becoming common events in countries ranging from South Africa to India.

Witch hunts are of course not limited to Christians.  An article written in 2006 discusses how 10 witches were killed in India in the past year alone. Here is a CNN report that shows an Indian woman being punished by a Hindu mob, on grounds of her being a witch:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEI6qeOk0pY&feature=player_embedded 300 250]

The purpose here is not to bash Christianity, Hinduism, or any other religion.  It’s simply to point out that witch hunts are a problem throughout the world.  If you just follow Islamophobic sources like Robert Spencer, you’d come to think that the only “culprits” are Muslims, but like I said before: it’s simply not true.  The selective outrage of Spencer et al. shows that they don’t really care about human rights at all.  Their indignation is not principled, but political in nature.  Let me, however, not mince words: as a self-proclaimed progressive, I support human rights groups that seek to rid the world of witch hunts, be they in Muslim majority Saudi Arabia or Christian majority areas of Africa.

Addendum:

Islamophobes will claim that the Prophet Muhammad said: “The punishment for the magician is that he be struck by the sword.”  So, they argue, isn’t Saudi Arabia just following Islam?  Isn’t it Islam that is the problem?  Well, first off, I already reproduced what the Bible says about sorcerers, which is to kill them.  (Note: the Quran does not mention any worldly punishment for sorcerers.)  Therefore, we could use the same line of argumentation here: the Nigerian Evangelicals are just doing what the Bible commanded them to do, and as such, Christianity itself is the problem.  (Of course, I reject such a simplistic view.)

With regard to the saying (hadith) attributed to the Islamic prophet, it is found in Sunan al-Tirmidhi.  The compiler of said hadith, namely al-Tirmidhi, commented on this hadith as follows: “The correct saying is that it is mawquf .”  According to the Islamic science of hadith, this term mawquf means “stopped” and what this means is that the chain of transmission does not reach the Prophet Muhammad (but rather stops before it reaches him).  Said in simpler terms: the Prophet Muhammad is not the one who said it.

Yes, the Prophet forbade sorcery (in line with the Abrahamic belief of relying on God alone for any form of supernatural help–what Muslims refer to as tawhid) and called it a form of fraud.  However, not a single statement can be authentically attributed to him in which he calls for a corporal punishment against a sorcerer.  In fact, a self-proclaimed sorcerer by the name of Labeed ibn al-Asam tried to do black magic on the Prophet in order to hurt him.  When his wife asked him why he didn’t seek any retaliation or punishment against Labeed, the Prophet Muhammad replied by saying: “I hate to cause harm to anyone.” (Sahih al-Bukhari)

After the Prophet Muhammad’s death, the early Muslims introduced corporal punishment for witches, but it never became nearly as big an issue as in the Christian world, where–according to an estimate by A.L. Barstow in Witchcraze–up to 100,000 witches were executed from the year 1480 to 1700.  Indeed, laws against sorcerers (or whatever you want to call them) fell into disuse in the Islamic world.  Today, aside from Saudi Arabia, it has become largely a non-issue.  One need only walk down the streets of Pakistan or Egypt to see this quite clearly: on every other corner sits some fortune teller or other occultist.

Videos:

While I was doing the research for this article, I stumbled upon this documentary, which depicts quite graphically the victims of witch hunts in Africa.  Clearly, the problem is not limited to Muslims.

Part 1:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbGzFN_NalI&feature=PlayList&p=CB1EE2F36DB76BDF&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1 300 250]

Part 2:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWSUAsC3ITg&NR=1 300 250]

Part 3:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgALUdzfs1s&NR=1 300 250]

Part 4:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDgyp1M0Hg&NR=1 300 250]

Part 5:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zktMwd6xLg&NR=1 300 250]

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← Older Comments
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    • Jerilyn

      This is sooo sad. I learned a lot and am saddened by this suffering of people. Especially the children. I knew of some of this still going on but did not know to this extent. Very sad. What can we do to help? Money? We can’t change peoples beliefs. This was all so very hard to watch!

← Older Comments
 →

Hate Crime Goes Unpunished

By on March 13, 2010 in Loon Flashback
Greek Orthodox priest rushed to hospital; found guilty of "looking Arab

Greek Orthodox priest rushed to hospital; found guilty of looking Arab

We reported this in November of last year; Jason D. Bruce, a Marine reservist, physically assaulted a Greek Orthodox priest, mistaking him for an Arab (and thus a terrorist, since we all know that Arab = terrorist).  Bruce hit the Muslim-looking man with a tire iron, chasing him for three blocks.  The Tampa Bay Times had reported:

Tampa police: Marine reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist

By Alexandra Zayas and Demorris A. Lee, Times Staff Writers In Print: Wednesday, November 11, 2009

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Bruce had done the same thing to a Jewish or black person?  The book would have been thrown at him.  Well, this was just a hate crime against a raghead. (Ok fine, he wasn’t really a raghead…but the point is that Bruce thought he was a raghead.)

Anyways, here’s an unfortunate update: James D. Bruce is getting off scot-free;  the Tampa Bay Times recently wrote:

Charges dropped against Marine reservist accused of attacking priest in Tampa By Colleen Jenkins, Kameel Stanley and Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writers In Print: Wednesday, March 10, 2010

…

Bruce was arrested on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. The case gained national attention and drew strong reactions from the public, most of it negative toward Bruce.

On Tuesday, the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office announced it will not pursue any criminal charges against him.

Maybe now Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller can honor James D. Bruce like they do other hate-mongers.

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    • Umar

      Of course the DA dropped the charges. He only want convictions on his record, and anyone knows that when the accused shows up in his dress uniform, we will never be convicted.

      Convict a “Hero”???? you must be joking…..

    • george beres

      Why was this Orthodox priest imported from overseas without knowing much English? He did not deserve this attack. But his communicants– if they are serious about communicating with their god surrogate– are cheated by having a monolingual cleric. – George Beres, one-time Greek Orthodox

    • What the @%#$!?!?! They dropped the charges on this steroid-filled ape? That is not good… not good at all. His next victim (and I guarantee he WILL attack again; he has a history of it) will be on the DA’s hands. When you have a rabid dog like Jansen, the only sane choice is to put it down.

      I get a sneaking suspicion that the fact that he was a Marine, and that he beat up on a Greek priest he thought was Muslim, played a big part in getting the charges dropped. Jansen is seen as ‘white,’ ‘American’ and ‘heroic’. His victim… not so much. And it happened shortly after the Fort Hood shootings, which may have earned Jansen some sympathy…

      Disgusting. And its especially disturbing that we are all being lumped together. Muslim, Arab, Indian, Sikh, Greek, Hindus, Latino… apparently we ‘all look alike’ to the bigots. And while this may reveal something about their prejudice, it also puts so many people at risk. You know, I have friends from many cultures. Colombia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, Greece,… I don’t want my friends, Muslim and non-Muslim, getting targeted. Heck, I DON’T want to get targeted by these loons either.

      Maybe those of us with swarthy good looks should form our own mutual support network, haha….

    • Color me unsurprised

      The book thrown at him if he had attacked a Black person? Doubtful, especially in the state of Florida. It is not at all surprising that charges were dropped– in fact, it is typical.

    • Biz

      @ Lawrence

      You got the right idea. We should all act on our fears and not critical thinking. We should attack everything that scares us with tires irons. First thing to go will be clowns, then spiders, and final public speaking. Let’s give into our fears and stop being a country of freedoms. Let’s forget the lessons that our greatest generation taught us and give into the hate and fear they fought against in World War II.

      I do not agree with people that blame the victim for somehow in sighting the attack. That is equivalent of blaming a rape victim for dressing to provocatively.

      Do not try to mask your hate by calling it fear. That is the same thing Bruce tried to do and no one here is following for it.

      Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

    • Rachael

      I know several Russian and Greek Orthodox priests. Only a BLIND, xenophobic moron could mistake a traditional priest’s cassock for Afghani clothing. Besides, according to the Marines, Bruce has never been deployed to Afghanistan.

      Fr. Makaris is 5’4″ and a vowed pacifistic celibate. Jasen Bruce is 6’2″ and a bodybuilder. WTF is wrong with this picture?

    • Les

      “Very convenient of you to leave out the fact that the ‘priest’ made a homosexual pass at the Marine. Too bad he didn’t kill the faggot.”

      LOLOL. Who else do you hate? Don’t use the term ‘faggot’ here.

      And that was the excuse this marine used after he realized what he did. He’s a liar.

    • Juan P

      @ BarenakedIslam. You are a moron, and a massive one at that. Lets have a look at what really happened shall we? http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1050707.ece

      “Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:

      1.The man tried to rob him. 2.The man grabbed Bruce’s crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English. 3.The man yelled “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week. “That’s what they tell you right before they blow you up,” police say Bruce told them.”

      It’s a bit weird of Bruce to have used the ‘he was gay and coming onto me’, given his own questionable sexual preferences…. http://madabouttheboys.blogspot.com/2008/10/jasen-bruce.html

      (I hope you don’t take that as some sort of insult to the gay community Danios. It sounds kinda harsh when you read it back but I don’t mean to insult anybody :-S ).

    • Imad

      @ barenakedislan:

      great. So ur not only an islamophobe (u don’t deserve being called a critic), but also a homophobe?

    • barenakedislam

      Very convenient of you to leave out the fact that the ‘priest’ made a homosexual pass at the Marine. Too bad he didn’t kill the faggot.

    • What a tragedy that a person can be so brainwashed with bigotry and hatred, that he automatically assumes that a man with a beard and a turban (or what looks like a turban) must be a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest – apparently thought to be asking directions to the target he intended to blow up! And of course, being a ‘good’ marine, he just naturally aggressively attacked and injured the supposed terrorist. May the All Merciful, All Powerful One open the eyes of the spiritually and morally blind, and lead us all to the path of true justice and righteousness. Grant both repentance and forgiveness!

    • What a great story by paranoid Danious.It shows how much fear the Muslims have created among the Non-Muslims who also react out of fear and anger.You live in America where the tide is turning against the Muslims.One more attack like 9/11 will open the flood gates of hatred against the Muslims in America and they will be interned before being expelled.Some Muslims and Muslim looking could be killed. Non-Muslims can never win the loyalty of a Muslim. Comment by Danios: How hard are you praying for this one more 9/11 type attack so that this happens?

    • Mahmoud

      This reminds of how Sikhs are being perscuted in New York because they are mistaken for Arabs/Muslims. What got people worried wasn’t that there were people who would randomly attack Muslims on the street, but Sikhs were being mistaken for Arabs. So rather than campaign against hatred of Arabs/Muslims, They started campaign for icreased Sikh-awareness, and how you shouldn’t confuse a Sikh with an Arab. Some even pointed that the way to tell the difference is by the moustache, since Muslims shave it but Sikhs don’t.

  • Sir David

    Sorry I dont understand. Did the priest slip on a bar of soap ? WTF is going on here ? Land of the free , Free to beat up lost strangers? Anyone know a blogger with an orthodox back ground who may have a view on this

Response to the “Murdered by Muslim Terrorists” Plaque

By on October 29, 2009 in Feature, Loon Politics, Loonwatch Updates
Peter Gadiel

Peter Gadiel

On September 11th of 2001, nineteen Al-Qaeda affiliated hijackers coordinated a series of horrific suicide attacks, killing almost three thousand innocent men, women, and children.  What motivated these young men to throw away their lives–and take away the lives of others–was a deep-seated and overwhelming hatred towards America.

The 9/11 attacks brought out the best–and at times the worst–in Americans.  Whilst certainly the desire to help out victims and their families reflected the best, there were other parts of society who co-opted the situation for their own nefarious hate-mongering purposes.  For Islamophobes, it became the casus belli against Islam and Muslims in general.  And so, in a horrible irony, the hatred of Al-Qaeda–of Muslim extremists–was internalized by some.  It is a truism–as trite as it sounds–that hate begets hate.

The rhetoric of the Islamophobes mirrors that of the Islamic extremists.  One merely needs to take out the word “Muslim” and substitute it for “Christian” and “Allah” with “Jesus.”  If one listens to the justifications Al-Qaeda gave for 9/11, they are remarkably similar to the justifications given by the Islamophobes to justify the excesses and casualties of aggressive wars.

It is unfortunate that many good meaning Americans may have been influenced by these Islamophobes.  Most impressionable and vulnerable to the hate-mongering are those directly affected by the Islamic extremists.  Nobody could be affected more by Al-Qaeda than the families of the 9/11 victims.  People often get emotional, and it is easy to substitute rage for rationality.  There is a desire to lash out at the other.  Simplistic answers seem comforting.

Peter Gadiel, a resident of Kent, Connecticut, suffered the loss of his son, who died in the horrific 9/11 attacks.  We here at LoonWatch extend our heartfelt condolences to Mr. Gadiel.  Furthermore, we understand that he is going through a difficult time, coping with the loss of a child, something that no parent should ever go through.  However, we urge Mr. Gadiel not to react to the hatred that killed his son with bigotry.

FoxNews reports:

KENT, Conn. — Peter Gadiel wants everyone to remember his son, James, who was killed during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

And he also wants people to remember how he died: “Murdered by Muslim terrorists.”

For Gadiel, any tribute to his son would be woefully incomplete without those words.

“I think it’s important, because I think there’s a nationwide effort to suppress the identity of the people who were involved in the attacks,” Gadiel told Fox News.

Eight years ago, 23-year-old James Gadiel worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center. He died when a hijacked plane crashed into the North Tower.

For years, Gadiel’s hometown of Kent, Conn., has wanted to honor the young man with a memorial plaque next to its town hall. But the tribute has hit a snag because James’ father wants to include the phrase, “Murdered by Muslim terrorists,” under his son’s name.

For Peter Gadiel, it is a central fact of the Sept. 11 attacks that is often left out.

“It isn’t just overlooked, it’s suppressed,” Gadiel said. “It’s simply wrong to imply that people just died. The buildings didn’t just collapse, they didn’t just fall down — they were attacked by people with a specific identity, a specific purpose.”

Town officials call the phrase too controversial for a small town memorial, and they recently voted against erecting the plaque if Gadiel insists on the language.

“We perceive ourselves as a very warm, loving town,” said Ruth Epstein, a Kent selectman and one of two town leaders to vote the plaque down. “To disparage any one ethnic group is just against everything that we stand for here.”

Epstein noted that other Sept. 11 memorials, like the one at the Pentagon, don’t mention Muslim terrorists, and she said she does not want to alienate any members of her small and close-knit community.

“We have at least one Muslim family living here with children and it — it would be just awful to have them see something like that,” Epstein told Fox News.

But for Gadiel, it’s an important message that he insists be present on any tribute to his son.

“Muslims have to acknowledge that it was their co-religionists who committed this act in their name,” he said. “I am offended that unlike so many others, they refuse to acknowledge that it was their people who did this.”

This would be a dangerous precedent.  Should the memorial plaques in honor of the Native Americans read “Murdered by White Christian Genocidal Butchers?” According to IraqBodyCount.org, over a 100,000 Iraqi civilians–including men, women, and children–have died due to the war.  Should the graves of the dead be emblazoned with “Murdered by Christian Crusaders?”  Hundreds of civilians died in Gaza due to Israel’s obscene offensive; should memorials be raised to honor them with the words “Murdered by Jewish Terrorists?”

The Islamophobes might ask “weren’t the 9/11 hijackers Muslims and terrorists, so what is wrong with having the plaque say exactly that?”  Well, on this line of reasoning, what’s wrong with erecting memorial plaques for white suburban kids “Murdered by Urban Blacks?”  Or if a Jew killed anyone, then plaques boldly saying that “Jews Murdered This Man.”  Maybe we should start identifying every race or religion in this manner?

The truth is that if all people did this, then there would be no religion–and no ethnic group–that would be left without “blood on their hands.” Luckily, most human beings agree with the principle enunciated in the ancient scriptures that, ‘there is no collective guilt.’ In the Quran it states, “Every soul earns only to its own account; no laden soul bears the sins of another” (6:164) and in the Bible: “Each is to die for his own sin.” (Deut. 24:16).

The phraseology chosen by Mr. Gadiel seems to associate the sin of the 9/11 attacks to all of the Muslims.  Any sensible person can see that, which is why the officials refused to include such an offensive and inflammatory inscription.  Ruth Epstein, one of Kent’s town leaders, said quite correctly: “To disparage any one ethnic group is just against everything we stand for here.”  In fact, it is exactly what the Al-Qaeda hijackers stood–and died–for.

Mr. Gadiel said: “Muslims have to acknowledge that it was their co-religionists who committed this act in their name. I am offended that unlike so many others, they refuse to acknowledge that it was their people who did this.”

The way he phrased the statement tells us a lot about Mr. Gadiel’s frame of mind.  It’s as if he sees Muslims as one monolithic group, as if Muslims are the Borg, with one master leader who makes all the decisions.  So somehow, in his mind, he sees all Muslims as collectively denying that they had anything to do with the attacks.  Even that idea–that somehow ‘they’ are involved because their co-religionists were involved–is certainly questionable.

And he’s just quite frankly wrong about this; all of the major Muslim organizations condemned Al-Qaeda (an Islamic extremist group) for what they did on 9/11.  Is that not acknowledging who did it? It is often erroneously claimed by some that Muslims have remained silent about 9/11 or terrorism in general.  Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.  The major Muslim organizations have issued statement after statement about their abhorrence of terrorism and condemnation of 9/11 in specific.  It is to the point of exhaustion.  Here is one non-exhaustive list of condemnations of 9/11 and terrorism, from the major Islamic organizations.

Many Muslims would argue that while they have bent over backwards to condemn the 9/11 attacks ad nauseum, few non-Muslim Americans have recognized the deaths of millions of Muslim civilians who have died as the result of interventionist policies, those that are in fact fueled by the same type of hatred that brought down the World Trade Center.  Would Mr. Gadiel like to admit that “his people” did that, or would he simply “refuse to acknowledge” it?  In Kent, there is a Mr. Gadiel mourning the loss of his son, who died at the hands of the Islamic extremist group Al-Qaeda.  In Kirkuk, there is a Mr. Gamal mourning the loss of his daughter, who died at the hands of the Christian extremist group Blackwater.

Of course, the dead of America have one advantage over the dead of Iraq.  The former have names and faces, whereas the latter are left by the mainstream media as nameless and faceless.  The former are recognized in memorial services and plaques (as they should be), whereas the latter are forgotten in the rubble that they died under.  One sees this double standard in the media quite clearly: the lives of those who died in 9/11 are covered in detail in order to personalize them (as should be done), whereas the death of Iraqis–of “Mooslims”–is just a meaningless statistic.

As for the phrase “their people” that Mr. Gadiel employed, that is questionable as well, since many Muslims in this country–nay, most–see themselves as Americans, so they are “our people.”  Our people and part of the pluralistic country we live in.  LoonWatch.com condemns all forms of bigotry and hatred.  We do not agree with the binary world view, the ‘us vs them’ mentality that fuels this holy war between Judeo-Christianity and Islam.  Yes Mr. Gadiel, a group of extremists killed your son, but do not let them kill American values: our pluralistic tradition that embraces people of all races and religions.

Mr. Gadiel, your son died.  Do not co-opt his death to spread hatred.  Use his death to spread love, compassion, and understanding–values that you no doubt preached to your son when he was alive.  Al-Qaeda wants you to hate Muslims in general.  What they don’t want is for you to embrace Muslims as brothers in humanity.

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    • Mehdi

      Oh yes, it is

    • Morocco was the first country to acknowledge the US as a country. Imagine that.

    • “I honestly don’t see how this isn’t cut and dry.”

      Legally this could be, and probably is more of a public safety issue as well as a freedom of speech issue, as well as the appropriation of public funds for a religious statement (in light of his rejection of AlQaeda on the memorial and insistence on religious targeting could this be hate-speech instead?)

      And if another technicality were to be observed, one that is equally important to those singled out, the designation of a mukital harbibah (one who fights illegitimate battle) is non-muslim without the repentance of hudud (criminal punishment by death – without the chance – as they have perished they have no chance for redemption). There is also the instance of suicide being used in an offensive battle… with the one falling on the knife also falling into the hellfire.

      So are they muslim? The very application of the legal theory of the faith would call this designation into question. This man says yes, some scholars say no. Who decides religious designation in a country where “congress shall make no law…”

      The fighting of a tyrant in open battle while AVOIDING the innocent CAN fall under a different ruling, with legal conditions, but the targeting of “soft targets”, such as Osama is claimed to have done (though the US has refused evidence) and the CIA in documentation admit that they did in Nicaragua is prohibited in Islam and prior to the cold war, was also disallowed under US law. So are they terrorists or freedom fighters?

      I would also find it offensive for it to say anti-democratic apostate freedom fighters.

      Technically if the US did what AlQaeda has said to have done, under The removal of such laws in writing by US law with the Boland Amendment complicate the matter of “and thus unto them”, the human idea of justice – of reciprocal contractual actions between nations and persons – (without deference to International law which says otherwise), and could be said to justify such actions (though in no way opens legality to the actions taken by either group mentioned under International law)…. thus putting my statements above in a theological and legal limbo that those with more knowledge of truthful events than I would have to decide.

      I hope that you see here that the point I am making is that of the complexity of the true issue, and that a public proclamation of one man’s views on the muslim community, no matter how well intended, is damaging to a larger number, and may even lead to the justification (also subject to interpretation of appropriateness) of violence against muslims in retaliation in the hearts and minds of others.

      I am also pretty sure that the city council is smart enough to avoid a costly (even if won) lawsuit and wishes the security and well being of ALL of its citizens.

      Everyone loves freedom of speech, but not the freedom to be held responsible for the consequences. This man is in pain, and thus it is quite appropriate for him to feel the way he does, but the actions based on those feelings must also be appropriate.

      Would the continuing of escalating animosity truly help this man and his family with the pain they feel?

      You may see my assessment as to justify one side or the other. That is not my intent. I am merely laying out the complexity of the facts as they are. I in fact condemn both violations of Shariah and International law, and condemn both the 9-11 atrocity against human life and those same actions taken in the name of anti-Communism in South America. I am just pointing out that this matter is not just one of stating what on the surface seems obvious, for it is not, and if you think I sound confusing… wait till lawyers on both sides of the argument get a hold of it…

      Probably the real reason for the city council deciding the way they did, was to decide on the side of fairness and pragmatic application of law to deter further problems.

      I hold no animosity to this man’s wants. He is probably (most likely) supported by those who feel the same anger he does without even the justification for it that this man is entitled.

      I know what i speak of when I say that losing a child can bring emotions to mind that go contrary to the normal spirit of a man. I sincerely hope that this man can get past the blame stage of his grief and come to acceptance and possible even rise higher to heal.

      So clear cut and dry… no. The ones who hit the trade towers thought so, and so did Reagan. Let us not fall into that folly ourselves. Everyone wants the simple solution, especially those that wish to take advantage of this want for their own needs.

      I would be very agreeable to the statement that names the persons who killed him, and even stating that they did so in the name of their faith.

      “The prophet said to go into battle in your own name, a repudiation of the idea of holy war, but an acknowledgement of the human condition and the need to fight when need be”

    • Abdullah

      I’m really tired of this shit. People are being led like sheep and any country in the world can be invaded under the “guise” of combatting terrorism.

      Google “Operation Northwoods” and see what this government planned in the 60’s. I will never believe that this was either a surprise or allowed to happen, or even done by this government itself, must look at the who’s who in ‘Iraq of OIL Corps. Iron melted but a passport was found intact….ofcourse it was. And people can light me up all you want. I could care less. I’m not a sheep, maybe some like to bahhhhhhhh. NOT ME

    • Correct me if I am wrong but did not George Bush and Tony Blair both say after the war they felt they where guided by God? Exactly what Bin laden thought about 9/11, All the troops may not be Christians but their commander in chief was and he cited his faith as a cause for war. If one reads into the crusades the vast majority of those who went to fight did so only for the promise of land and wealth, only the elite went to fight for religion. Much the same as today!

    • Argon

      I honestly don’t see how this isn’t cut and dry. Terrorists who happened to be Muslim murdered the son on 9/11. The epitaph is true. It’s not like the epitaph said “Murdered by Muslims, who cares which ones, they’re all the same and should die,” it was not opinion, it was fact. If it can be proven, and I’m sure it could be, that a particular native was murdered by an individual or group of white christian bigots, the epitaph could include that fact.

      I don’t know why it would be insensitive to Muslim-Americans. Aren’t Muslim terrorist the enemy of all moderate Muslims as surely as they are the enemy of all Americans. They certainly kill a lot of other Muslims in the many indiscriminate bombings in the Middle East.

    • sock-puppet

      Hey, ‘Name’,

      Will that be the same ‘Fiqh Council of North America’ that were implicated in the HLF trial (largest terrorist-funding trial in US history) and whose key trustee, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, is currently serving 23 years on a terrorism-funding rap? Are they the same guys you’re talking about? Just want to be clear here.

    • Jeff

      iSherif, Brian, James, Schlaftius, thank you for your responses and insights. I am currently composing a letter-to-the-editor for our local news paper in order to get this reality into the public. Your replies will be helpful in this process.

      Billy, thank you for the suggestions… but I will stick by my FACTS. I will continue to wave the American flag, as I always have, and carry my Quar’an in the other hand. Morocco is one of the places I plan on traveling to soon, I hope to see you there.

      ~The Pragmatic Patriot

    • iSherif

      Oh just give it a break billy…you’re just a big sad FAIL and all of your lies about every Muslim being a terrorist have been exposed one by one. The only thing that’s really up for debate now is your IQ son, since your ridiculous babble is taking stupidity to new levels and it’s kinda worrying. My friend, tragic bigots like you are pathetic and few….

    • billy

      Jeff — WAKE UP !! support your wise nieghbor, not the Muslim terrorists. Your “facts” are inaccurate, & terrorist – seriving.

      time to put down your ‘koran” bro, & wave the American flag — or move to morocco.

    • billy

      HOOORAY FOR THIS GUY FOR TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !!

      Too bad he had to lose his son…. to the MUSLIM TERRORISTS !

      Since 1981 EVERY American, civilian or miltary, that has been killed by a terrorist — guess what ? THEY ARE ALL MUSLIMS !! hmmmmmm… pattern ?

      2 types of muslims — those who are open & spewing terrorists & those who hide it, so they can kill us some day, when we ar not looking.

      negative reality.

    • Brian

      did know that Schlaftius…very nice info

    • Schlaftius

      Hubert,

      McVeigh, throughout his childhood, he and his father were Roman Catholics and often attended daily Mass. In a recorded interview with Time magazine[14] McVeigh professed his belief in “a God”, although he said he had “sort of lost touch with” Catholicism and “I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs. He maintained Christian Core beliefs, which could be interpreted as violence. He was not an atheist, more of an agnostic. He never left Christianity or was an atheist, so my point was accurate.

    • James

      Great post Jeff. I wish there were more people like you in this world.

    • Brian

      No, the Freedom of Speech issue ends as soon as he tries to post this sign up on the community owned property…Thats why this issue is a non issue… He can put that sign up and vandalize his house all he wants, but the town has the right to vote that down which they did. And keep in mind folks, this isnt his sons tombstone, this is a memorial. Also, he rejected the offer made by the city to put on there “Murdered by Al-Qaeda” which tells me that the word Muslim is something he really wanted to get across to people, showing signs of hate…thats just my personal opinion tho

  • iSherif

    Thanks Jeff…if all the world were made up of Jeffs like yourself, am pretty sure this world would be a better world…

Fathima Rifqa Bary Under the Influence of a Christian Cult

By on October 27, 2009 in Feature, Loon Pastors, Loon Politics, Loonwatch Updates
Lou Engle, a Joel's Army pastor

Lou Engle, a Joel’s Army pastor

Fathima Rifqa Bary, has claimed that her parents are “radical Muslims,” yet the reality seems to be that it is actually she herself who has fallen into the ranks of radicals.  We’re already very familiar with the extremist church she is involved with, the Global Revolution Church, which preaches that there is today an Armageddon between good (the Christians) and evil (the Muslims).

Now, let’s look into a different group she has associated herself with, namely The Call, another End of Times Armageddon invoking group. Here she is on a conference call with Lou Engle, the fanatical leader of the cult:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRhCIxiY5OA&feature=player_embedded 300 250]

Up until about four minutes into the video she sounds fairly sane,  but at about 4:20, suddenly she becomes possessed by what we can only assume is the Holy Spirit.  She enters a trance-like state that to us normal human beings seems bizarre, to say the least.  I’ve seen some preachers, Imams, and Rabbis have some crazy highs and lows in their speeches, but usually they build up to it.  On the other hand, Fathima Rifqa just turned on the crazy from the very start; one second she’s talking like a normal human being and the next she starts yelling in a crazed delirium, reaffirming the view that she’s been brainwashed by fundamentalists.

By 5:44, she does her best Glenn Beck impression, i.e. fake crying. When the initial story broke, I saw some YouTube users claim that Fathima Rifqa was fake crying.  I was skeptical, and gave her the benefit of doubt but when I saw the video of her talking to Lou Engle, I was really forced to reconsider my benevolence.  It does seem that she can turn on the fake crying at will.  It is therefore not so difficult to believe that she could also be faking this entire thing.

One other thing: in the Lou Engle conference call, pay close attention to the end of the video: they make it clear that Fathima Rifqa doesn’t care about her own safety; she will–as she says herself–go wherever God takes her.  The reason for all of this–according to these people–is not to protect Fathima Rifqa Bary (since she is ready to be martyred) but to advertise Christianity to 50 million Muslims who need salvation.  But wasn’t the entire court case about Fathima’s safety?  I think the video really shows that it’s not about that at all; it’s about publicity.

A writer for RightWingWatch.org wrote:

For the last few days, I’ve been covering the right-wing effort to mobilize it own Christian forces to counter the “dark spiritual content” of the upcoming Muslim prayer rally.  Tonight, activists gathered for a conference call/prayer rally hosted by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, headed by Shirely Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, Lou Engle of The Call, and featuring other activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Cindy Jacobs.

Tonight, this effort revealed itself to be part of the much larger Religious Right battle against Islam in America when the Religious Right’s latest cause célèbre, Rifqa Bary, joined the conference call.

At the beginning of the clip, Lou Engle is told by one of the other participants that “their little sister” is on the line, at which point Engle introduces Rifqa Bary to the conference call participants and asks her to share her story.  Bary, sounding like a somewhat nervous but otherwise perfectly average teenager, recounts her conversion to Christianity and her decision to flee from the home of her Muslim parents in Ohio.  Following that, Engle declared Bary to be “an Esther for such a time as this” and asks her to lead the call in prayer, which she agrees to do, at which point she becomes seemingly hysterical and rather incoherent while sobbing and praying, making it nearly impossible to understand what she is saying outside of her repeated cries to Jesus.

And then, just like that, she stops, seemingly catching the other participants off guard until Engle then chimes in with his own fervent prayers to God to “use Rifqa to be an Esther.” Soon Engle is joined by various others, all of whom pray for this modern day Esther who will lead Muslims out of Islam and into Christianity while asking God to spread Rifqa’s “so that the testimony of Jesus will go out to CNN, will go out to talk shows and use this little story so that all across America the Gospel will be preached” and to “expose the hidden darkness that is rolling into the nation through these ideologies.”

Eventually, Engle unmutes the conference call’s participants and asks them all to pray for Rifqa, at which point the call the descends into little more than chaos and static.

So this is all a publicity stunt to advertise Jesus.  Here’s what I think happened: Fathima Rifqa was attracted to some fringe Christian groups due to their rhetoric.  These Bible thumpers saw Fathima Rifqa as a tool they could use to boost their own publicity–a way to call the Muslim heathens to Jesus.  They convinced a young and impressionable Fathima Rifqa that she wasn’t just some ordinary high school student but a prophet sent to the heathen nations.

Let’s investigate Lou Engle and The Call to see what kind of company Fathima Rifqa keeps.  Engle is quite the loon.  At first, I thought he had what psychiatrists would call akathisia, or the inability to sit still–a common side-effect of anti-psychotic medications.  On closer examination though it seems that it’s malingering–part of his ploy to dupe impressionable young people that he speaks through the Holy Ghost.  One mainstream Christian critic of his wrote:

As he spoke, Lou Engle constantly rocked back and forth, as apparently he almost always does now when preaching, under what he would claim to be the anointing of the Holy Spirit. His spiritual manifestations are supposed to be a sign that he speaks under the unction of the Holy Spirit and when the jerks, grunts, twiches and miscellaneous experiences and feelings get stronger, they supposedly bear witness to him and the audience that what he says is true and prophetic and the ‘glory’ and ‘anointing’ of the Lord is there testifying to it.

To see this conman bobbing and rocking, watch this here (it’s long so just watch a bit of it to see what I mean):

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h88lNYKpDVQ&feature=player_embedded 300 250]

And here he is doing the same even when nobody is in the room except for the camera:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5SQgNS5sw 300 250]

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, cites Lou Engle as a prominent Joel’s Army pastor.  Proponents of this theology (considered heretical by mainstream Christians) believe that the Christian youth will become a part of Joel’s Army that will physically “conquer the earth” and forcibly convert “the nations” to Christianity.  Democracy will be overthrown and a literalistic Biblical law will reign supreme.  Keep in mind that the Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller try to convince us that Muslims secretly want to conquer the entire world for Islam, overthrow democracy for a harsh understanding of Sharia, and convert the world to their religion.

Yet, here we have a girl (Fathima Rifqa Bary) associating with a man (Lou Engle) who is linked to a warlike theology that endorses the idea that Christian youth armies will conquer the entire world for Jesus, overthrow democracy, and forcibly convert non-believers to Christianity–and look at what side Spencer and Geller are on!  On pp.226 of his book The Pathetically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Spencer demands that Muslims must “renounce sharia’s expansionist imperative,” yet I don’t see him demanding that radical Christian dominionists must renounce their desire to conquer by force the entire world for Christ.   Well, it’s not surprising, since in his book, Spencer himself calls for a Crusade against Islam (Ibid., p.231), not unlike these Joel’s Army lunatics.  So we’re coming full circle here.  The nutters defending each other.

I urge you to read the article by SPLC, as well as this expose by another hate watch site known as the Box Turtle Bulletin.  Here is an excerpt:

Lou Engle also echoes Brown’s embrace of martyrdom. Engle, whose own ministry is known as “The Call,” is closely aligned with a militant Christian Dominionist movement known as Joel’s Army.

Going back to the earlier article, Casey Sanchez (of the Southern Poverty Law Center) describes Engles as follows:

Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers…

Joel’s Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they’re members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel’s Army…

“The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008,” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.”

‘Snorting Religion’

Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism…Joel’s Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city…

The atmosphere is less charged with violence at “The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel’s Army pastor Lou Engle and held every summer in a major American city (this year’s event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August)…

As even his critics note, Engle is a sweet, humble and gentle man whose persona is difficult to reconcile with his belief in an end-time armyof invincible young Christian warriors. Yet while Engle is careful to avoid deploying explicit Joel’s Army rhetoric at high-profile events like The Call, when he’s speaking in smaller hyper-charismatic circles to avowed Joel’s Army followers, he can venture into bloodlust.

This March, at a “Passion for Jesus” conference…Engle called on his audience for vengeance.

“I believe we’re headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground,” said Engle. He was referring to the Baal of the Old Testament, a pagan idol whose followers were slaughtered under orders from the prophet Elijah.

“There’s an Elijah generation that’s going to be the forerunners for the coming of Jesus, a generation marked not by their niceness but by the intensity of their passion,” Engle continued. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on everything that hinders love, with his eyes blazing fire.”

Although Joel’s Army theology is mainly directed at people in their teens and early 20s via events like The Call and ministries like IHOP, sometimes the target audience is even younger. In some of the most arresting images in “Jesus Camp,” a 2006 documentary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dakota, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and conduct military field maneuvers. “A lot of people die for God and they’re not afraid,” one camper told ABC News reporters in a follow-up segment.

“We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” added another, “only in a funner way.”

Engle has a bunch of other views considered heretical by mainstream Christianity, such as the belief in “God men” and blood atonement.  It is strange that so many Christians would want to place their trust in Fathima Rifqa Bary who has made her bed with such shady groups and people.

Her fascination with Lou Engle began long before.  As Davi Baker of the SF Examiner notes, it was discovered that Lou Engle’s book entitled Digging the Wells of Revival was part of Fathima Rifqa’s reading material. Additionally, the group she found refuge in, the Global Revolution Church, has similar metanarratives. Baker writes:

On the pen drive found in her room was a reading list, and on that reading list was a book titled “Digging the Wells of Revival” by Lou Engle.  The final chapter of that book is titled “The Hinge of History: Raising up the Nazirites.” …Some have teased that Rifqa’s writings indicate that she wants to be a prophet, but this is exactly what Lou Engle has in mind. Lou writes that God said to him, “America is receiving Her apostles, prophets, and evangelists, but She has not yet seen Her Nazirites!” Lou Engle has a long history of claiming direct communication with God, as well as prophetic dreams…

They seem to imagine some kind of army of super Christians who will appear in a moment of National crisis and win the day. What’s the crisis? Consider these statements from Lou’s homepage, TheCall.com. “There is a great spiritual conflict with a rising tide of Islamic boldness being manifested… we must have spiritual discernment as to the spiritual dark powers that are being invoked into our nation.” Compare that with similar statements from Blake Lorenz, the pastor of Global Revolution Church who housed Rifqa, “These are the last days, these are the end times, and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater.”

The radical cult members and Fathima Rifqa are feeding off of each others’ delusions.  As one astute blogger wrote:

These Evangelical Fundamentalists see signs and wonders everywhere while they look for the new prophets among this last generation the Elijahs and the Esthers who will lead others into the battle against the Devil. So as we have noted Lou Engle,Bill Johnson & other Evangelicals who adhere to these beliefs read into certain situations what may be more than what’s actually there.

So enter Rifqa Bary a convert from a Muslim American family who refers to herself as an Esther chosen to play a special role in the last days by God.She says she has had visions of angels and demons of God and Satan and hears God speaking to her directly . So to some she is a prophet to others possibly just a rather enthusiastic convert to Christianity and to others they wonder if she is either just delusional or whether the Evangelicals with whom she was in contact encouraged and fed her delusions. For instance like any true prophet she too must suffer and be ridiculed and harassed and victimized by non-believers so she may exaggerate all out of proportion certain events and encounters and the speech of others. In her case with the help of these anti-Islamic Evangelical Christians she has come to believe her parents want to kill her or that other Muslims are looking for her so they can kill her.

These “True Believers” latch onto her narrative and so believe that Rifqa is being persecuted by her family by Islam and by those who are in authority in part because they recognize who Rifqa is though they may not know this on a conscious level. So all facts surrounding her case are seen through this prism of signs and wonders and the persecution of the “Real Church” or “body of Christ” so they are not going to be easily convinced that they are wrong about Rifqa that she may just be another confused impressionable anxiety ridden teenager with a touch of meglomania.

I think Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Global Revolution Church, and The Call have used the psychological defense mechanism known as projection: they themselves are the radicals and extremists, but they project that onto Fathima Rifqa’s parents and the Mooslims in general.  From what we can tell, Fathima Rifqa’s parents don’t seem too passionate, zealous, or dogmatic about their religion, not nearly as much as Fathima Rifqa and those she has joined.  So the real question is: who is the real extremist here?  Who is espousing the whole ‘holy war between Christianity and Islam’ ideology?  Ironically, the group that Fathima Rifqa has associated herself with is linked to a theology that dictates that non-believers should be forced into the faith of Christianity.

We can draw some broader conclusions from this: those Islamophobes who have taken up the Fathima Rifqa case as their casus belli–including Robert Spencer and Pam Geller–are the real extremists, not the vast majority of Muslims whom they always point the finger at.  It is after all Spencer, Geller, et al. who believe in a modern day Crusade, one they justify by fear mongering about the other.  What peace loving people should ask–when confronted by their rantings–is: who are the real extremists here?

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    • Imad

      Mike:

      I’ve only been to Amsterdam airport honestly so all I can say is I still see beautiful blonde woman on the store advertisments, and the way that these woman dress is un Islamic. So as far as I can tell Amsterdam is not under any totalitarian Islamic regime.

      But the BS about Muslims taking over the world and the holocaust against the whites… Really? Is that not a little too far fetched for u? Let me tell u now tho cuz I don’t feel like writing a whole big comment of how ridiculous ur post is: when this holocaust against the whites as u, the great Anonymous Commentator predicts, happens, then u can “make me eat my own guts, ass-first.” until then, plz don’t say anything that far out.

    • Gordon Bennet

      Mike

      “deaf, dumb and blind” well you said it sunshine :-), your post was pure comedy you should be on stage. You are being ironic aint ya? That must be a parody of the retards who cast judgements about places like Brussels or Amsterdam and Gaza which they have never been to, but read somewhere from someone equally as retarded.

    • Sir David

      What a sad paranoid world you live in Mike and you are not even 100% White I know what you are 100% though . Can anybody guess?

    • Mike

      You must be deaf, blind and stupid if you do not see that the muslims want to take over the world. You can even look it up in the quran.

      But now from personal experience. In amsterdam west gays, blond woman and jews can not walk because the will got beaten up by muslims. In brussels, belgium, the new gaza is rising. Please compare pictures gaza with them of brussels, no difference. In Holland, amsterdam, culemborg, zaltbommel, utrecht(kanaleneiland.) More and more places in europe where not everyone is welcome.

      If you even post this reply from this islamofoob, maybe it may be a good idea for you to get out of your cocoon. Dress up as a jew/gay/blondine and visit some of the mentioned places i named. And have a look for yourself if my islamofobic observations are correct.

      The new holocaust is against the white people of the west. And I am not even 100% white myself.

    • hellosnackbar

      Looks like Riqma has jumped from the frying pan into the fire! i.e from one death cult to another. The one thing that stands out about dogma as promulgated by various religions(vestigies of primitive superstition)is that “dogma”always trumps commonsense. Islamophobia is a stupid word since it suggests that suspicion of Islam is irrational. There’s nothing irrational about a dislike for a religious dogma that is blatently supremacist and whose history is one of failure. Mustafa Kemal Attaturk was the best example of a Muslim who recognised this principle and tried to remedy the situation. Sadly his love for alcohol ended his productive life prematurely. I’m amazed that Pat Condell is not a subject for discussion here. He’s become amazingly popular on youtube.(read the death threats from your coreligionists they’re a hoot!)

    • Stinger

      Salaam,

      Thanks for this excellent post, I’m wondering when the media will pick up the stories of the thousands of people who become Muslim each year and are kicked out of their homes and threatened. I personally know of some people who were forced to leave their home for turning Muslim, I don’t see any FOX or CNN reports asking to interview them.

      The media is really twisted and will continue to lead us to wars unless it is reformed and people actually start conducting true independent journalism.

      PS: The first video is really strange but it revealed their true intentions. People may plot and plan but Allah’s plans are always greater.

    • TYO

      “Muslims are most difficult group of people to convert to any other religion, and that is proof of the superioritiy of it’s message…If you research, you discover that as these pagan converts move up the social scale they dump Evangelism for Islam… Meanwhile Islam grows stronger, and neo con and likud agenda grows weaker. Kind of shows whose side God is on.”

      This sound just as loony a person with a superiority complex as the Christian loons. Equally unpalatable.

    • Thanks James, it started on my old blog which was then still titled “What Would Charles Martel Do?”. Some of the funniest stuff (on both blogs) was Dymphna from Gates of Vienna writing me (one private communication that I did post since it was talked about so much in comments at GoV) saying she was taking my link “hostage” and keeping it on GoV to make me supposedly look bad…ROFLMAO!

      From Adam and Danios–I don’t post or comment on stuff that was given in confidence unless I forget that something was in a mail and not posted on the blogs of these wingers. The things they post are incriminating enough. HAHA! Had anyone told me that I’d be starting a blog mocking my then-friends with two Muslim co-bloggers a few years ago I’d have LMAO at them. The Sphinx has taught me so much and I count myself lucky to have such a forgiving and knowledgable friend (and co-blogger) as him. And lately, meeting MT Akbar has been another big treat and another great addition to our blog. His own blog is fabulous also. The only trouble is that they are both very busy and I have been ill, so our blog has faltered a bit, and everything’s covered here at Loon Watch anyway now! HAHA!

      FromAdam–I’ve mailed quite a bit with Spencer, and we are both half Ionian Greek (Greek-speaking Christians from the West of what is now Turkey). I am Roman Catholic personally, but Spencer is not RC but I believe of the Chaldean Rite. I may be off there, it may be a different Rite…it’s posted at Jihad Watch in his Bio stuff I believe. I know that he regrets the schisms between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, as do I. The thing that irks me is that the populations of the near Izmir/Smyrna area have been marrying and breeding for a few centuries now, and I don’t want to be related to Spencer! AHHHHH!!!!

      P.S. he searches comment threads as do his fans, so he may well show up here soon. In which case, Hey there Robert, sorry if I got the denomination wrong, didn’t want to have to visit your site to fact-check. Please don’t write me 40 emails over it now. And once again, my family were NOT VICTIMS OF JIHAD, and yes, I’m still working with Turks for peace between our peoples.

      P.P.S. I was known back then as “Pim’s Ghost”.

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