Fascists, Cowards, and Morons: Combating Anti-Muslim Bigotry While Maintaining Free Speech

Fascists, Cowards, and Morons: Combating Anti-Muslim Bigotry While Maintaining Free Speech

by Matt Cerami 

Andrew Cummins once said, in a quote often misattributed to Christopher Hitchens, that Islamophobia is “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

It can be that word—we’ve certainly seen the word used as a conversation-stopper in any and all discussions about Islamic theology, and we’ve seen it used as a protective linguistic shield wielded by those who view honest criticism as inflammatory and religion as something untouchable or by various leftist intelligentsia in defense of a community who they implicitly believe are unable to defend themselves. We’ve also seen it used by Muslim communities who desperately want to protect their faith from the piercing gaze of rationalism. The fascists are those religious and political leaders who wish to impose a kind of intellectual tyranny where certain ideas are immune from criticism; those cowards are the privileged few who would restrain free speech and withhold inquiry for fear of backlash or causing offense; and those morons—well, I’ll leave that one alone, for now.

But there is something to be said about punching down. Anti-Muslim bigotry and hate crimes against Muslims are now, in the US, at the highest they’ve ever been, surging past even their immediate post-9/11 numbers—no doubt the result of a decade’s worth of wartime propaganda and the demonizing, xenophobic sentiments espoused by right-wing pundits daily.

And as I’ve contended before, language is not innocuous. Rhetoric can, and often does, manifest itself as action—this is particularly true when it comes to marginalized groups and the hegemonic discourse that can come to define them. The language of hate has once again morphed into the action of hate, and structurally oppressed minority communities are again suffering as a result. Examples of this have been cropping up in the news with frequency. It’s not by accident that Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, the man behind the recent shooting in Chattanooga, was almost immediately considered a possible terrorist—meanwhile, the word terrorist has not been once used, in any official context, to describe Dylann Roof, the ideologically motived shooter of nine African-American churchgoers. White-conservative-as-terrorist does not fit into our currently thriving political narrative—an unfortunate fact, considering that right-wing groups and individuals are responsible, by a wide-margin, for most of the terrorist attacks that occur in the United States.

We have a responsibility to combat this bigotry wherever we may find it, recognizing that even diplomatic and academic criticisms of Islam have been perverted—adopted by the ignorant and employed to more malicious ends. But we also have a responsibility to protect and promote freedom of speech absolute. At a recent briefing on anti-Muslim bigotry I posed the question (though without receiving a sufficient answer): how do we maintain the right to criticize ideas openly and freely without also perpetuating bigotry against people? Is there a divide between the two?

There is a divide, but I also believe there needs to be. Ideas are not people—criticizing the former does not by default imply a criticism of the latter. That Charles Darwin discovered biological evolution does not mean he’s accountable for the social Darwinists who later looked to his ideas for inspiration. Likewise, critical, respectful, and academic critiques of Islamic ideologies shouldn’t be censored just because others pervert that criticism for a more insidious purpose.

But we can also be honest about Islamophobia. I don’t think religion has much to do with the prejudice. The kinds of Americans who’ve been pushing for discrimination against Muslims aren’t necessarily known for their nuanced worldviews. Islamophobia is just racism. It’s bigotry against Arabs and Indians. It’s unlikely that someone who thinks “all Muslims should be deported” could tell you the difference between Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism, let alone their adherents; they just know that some people are brown, and brown people are bad. When US General Wesley Clark recently suggested that we throw all “radicalized” Muslims into internment camps, I don’t think he meant White Muslims, or Black Muslims, or Asian Muslims—he meant Arabs. When we see “No Muslims Allowed” signs pop up in storefronts and gun ranges across the South, I doubt that the proprietors mean to interrogate each customer on their religious beliefs—what they mean is no people who look like Muslims allowed; in other words, the imagined Arab-Muslim caricature that they warn their children about. I dare say that an Arab-Christian with a Middle-Eastern name would face as much discrimination in America as any Muslim would. Is it Islamophobia if the anti-Muslim bigot can’t tell you—or doesn’t care to know—the first thing about Islam? Or is it just good, old-fashioned, American racism?

The phenomena transcends political divisions—it’s a racism that the left has, in their insistence on tying ideology to race in this one instance, also been complicit in perpetuating. When Sam Harris calls Islam the “mother lode of bad ideas,” is he being Islamophobic? Perhaps—but it’s a curious thing that I’ve yet to see that damning suffix attached to any other faith name: that critics of Christianity (of which there are many on the left) are not ever called Christophobic, that Jewish critics are not called Judaiphobes, that Karl Marx, hero of the left, has never been called a capitalistophobe. Submit your ideology of choice and we could play this game forever.

So how do we navigate this? How do we maintain the right to criticize ideas while avoiding the negative affects of doing so? We’ve got to first separate ideas from people—ideologies do not constitute race. This must be done by people across the political spectrum. A liberal who suggests that criticism of Islam is racist does much to solidify the bond between Islam and people who look like Muslims in the mind of a conservative. We also have to identify American Islamophobia for what it is—racism—and use the appropriate rhetorical tools to fight it. Religious and racial discourses are not the same.

But above all, we must continue to forcefully condemn and excoriate bigotry in all of its forms. We can critique religion while also acknowledging that other critiques are ignorant, harmful, or unfounded. We can acknowledge that the Texans of Collins County, who recently expressed their fears at the prospect of having a Muslim cemetary in their town, are maybe not the morons of Cummins’ statement, but are morons nonetheless.

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Matt Cerami is a freelance contributor for TheHumanist.com and the Humanist magazine. He has BA degrees in English and philosophy, and an MA in bioethics from Stony Brook University. He also studied religion as a graduate student at the University of Missouri. Follow him on Twitter @CeramiMatt.

Far Right Jews Seed Sectarian Hatred as Toxic as Trumps

‘Jewish Communal Fund’ seeds Islamophobia as toxic as Trump’s

via Philip Weiss

The Jewish Face of Hate –  Conspiracy loon and Right Wingnut hatemonger, Pamela Geller

Donald Trump’s disturbing comments about registering Muslims have put Islamophobia on the front pages. Even Jeb Bush has condemned them. And Jews have been outspoken. Andrew Rosenthal at the New York Times and the Anti-Defamation League have likened the racism to that faced by Jews in an era gone by, and J Street has called out the “bigoted” rhetoric.

Now we learn that one of the main sowers of Islamophobia in the United States, Pamela Geller, has had the support of the Jewish community. “Why is a mainstream Jewish charity funding Pamela Geller?” Eli Clifton asks, and reports in the Forward that Geller has gotten contributions through the Jewish Communal Fund.

Jewish Communal Fund, a mainstream philanthropic fund that describes itself as “dedicated to the welfare and security of the Jewish community at home and abroad,” has funded Geller’s work. JCF’s annual tax filings show contributions of $30,000 in the 2012 tax year and $70,000 in the 2013 tax year, the last tax year for which filings are available, directed to Geller’s AFDI [American Freedom Defense Initiative].

JCF functions as a donor-advised fund, meaning donors to the fund deposit money and receive an immediate federal income tax deduction

And JCF has strict rules about who gets money: “[T]he Board of Trustees of the Jewish Communal Fund retains the right to deny any grant request where the purposes and activities of the recommended charitable organization are deemed to be adverse to the interests of the Jewish community.”

No one will answer Clifton’s questions; but it turns out it’s not just Geller:

JCF’s contributions to anti-Muslim groups aren’t limited to the AFDI. In the 2013 tax year, JCF contributed $36,200 to the Clarion Fund, adding to a $27,880 grant made in 2007.

The Clarion Fund, an offshoot of the Jewish Orthodox fundamentalist Aish HaTorah, gained notoriety for its distribution of the film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” to 28 million swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election between then-Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican in Arizona. The film’s central thesis was that fundamentalist Islam is as bad as, if not worse than, Nazism.

As for Geller’s Islamophobia, the Southern Poverty Law Center describes her as the “figurehead” of Islamophobia; and of course it comes out of support for Israel:

Pamela Geller is the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead. She’s relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims, such as that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X. She makes no pretense of being learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to her Stop Islamization of America partner Robert Spencer. Geller has mingled comfortably with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists, defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps. She has taken a strong pro-Israel stance to the point of being sharply critical of Jewish liberals.

Geller is pro-Israel. The JCF is also pro-Israel. That’s why Clifton’s report is so meaningful to me. Defining the Jewish community as pro-Israel was the great project of Zionists in the years following the Biltmore program of 1942 and leading up to the Yom Kippur War in 1973, by which time the American Jewish community was wholly identified with support for Israel. Israel needed us; and we became one! as propagandists exclaimed. In fact, the Jewish community lost other broad bases of Jewish identification outside of Israel; it became completely Zionist– which is why members of that community assert with sincerity that anti-Zionists are anti-Semites.

Plainly Jews have a strong need for community, as so many other American minority groups do. But that community definition has been so circumscribed along Israel lines that virulent pro-Israel groups like Pam Geller’s or the neoconservatives have been included as brothers and sisters. The inclusion of militants led to fatal mistakes in the community, as when the Reform Jews endorsed the Iraq war; because they’d heard from friends and relatives that it would be good for Israel.

That is what is so stirring and important about Jewish Voice for Peace. It understands the importance of community but is offering a very different definition of Jewish community, one that condemns Islamophobia, opposes Israel’s crimes and has a welcome mat out for non-Jewish progressives.

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How Far Right Catholic Fanatics Like Robert Spencer, Manufacture Islamophobic Hoaxes

The far Right, corporatist, religious and political lunatic fringe, has an extensive history of fabricating and manufacturing hoaxes to demonise perceived enemies, or competitors.

Mere reality is insufficient to satiate their lust for unbridled power, sociopathic hatreds and extreme paranoia, so that fantasies and fabrications are routinely manufactured to nourish their pornography of paranoia.

Conspiracism, the manufacture of the ‘demonic other’ and group, cultural ‘scapegoats,’ has persistently played a vital and core role, in far Right propaganda.

The grubby, listed hate preacher, Robert Spencer, adored by neo-Nazis, fascists and Catholic/Christian/Jewish extremists, is an intermediate cog in the larger, manufactured Islamophobia Industry machinery, which has been staple cash cow for far Right religious and politicised extremists, hate mongers and fascists preying and profiteering from real and fabricated cultural tensions.

Whilst innumerable examples could be cited, here’s a recent faux ‘news’ ruse, promulgated by the superstitious, Rightist Catholic fanatical loon, Robert Spencer who deludes that despite his lies, disinformation and deception, he is doing ‘the work of god.’

 

 

Via by Richard Bartholomew

Here’s one I missed from a month ago. From the Daily Caller:

A group of 51 refugees were brutally assaulted outside a night club in Murmansk, Russia, after they groped and molested women at a night club Saturday.

The refugees had previously been ordered to leave Norway for “bad behavior” and tried their luck in Russia. What they didn’t realize when they went out clubbing in Murmansk is that Russians have less tolerance when it comes to sexual assault on local women than other European countries.

…The refugees tried to flee but were quickly captured by the Russians. They then took them out to the street and gave them a beating they will remember. Police arrived to break up the fight but locals report that they threw a few punches at the refugees before arresting 33 of them. Eighteen refugees were in such bad condition they had to be take to the hospital.

As shown above, the story is illustrated with a photograph of a gang of burly men, one of whom has a club, beating up another man, who cowers on the ground.

The source given in the link above is an Italian report from Imola Oggi (without the photo), which in turn cites Fort Russ. The Fort Russ article is in English (“translated by Tom Winter”), and states that it “was prepared from material on social network sites.”

However, it followed an earlier report on the same site (“translated by Ollie Richardson”) which has a somewhat different version of the story:

Several refugees from Arab countries were beaten in the middle of the night of Saturday in the city of Polyarnye Zori (Murmansk oblast), reported a FlashNord source in the law enforcement bodies of the region.

The incident occurred in the nightclub Gandvik.

“According to preliminary data, five refugees were beaten in the entertainment establishment. According to witnesses, they behaved insolently and had been pestering local girls,” — said the Agency’s interlocutor.

“Five”. As opposed to “51”. And no reference to any arrests. But there’s more: the original article from FlashNord can be seen here. It was followed up on the same day with a second article, confirming that there may have been a fight outside the nightclub, but that details could not be confirmed from CCTV and it was all over by the time the police arrived.

So, it looks like there was an incident of some kind – but it is far from clear that it was anything more significant than the kind of fight that tends to occur sometimes near venues where young men have been drinking and are perhaps “on the pull”. Were refugees involved? Was the incident provoked by anti-social behaviour towards female clubbers? Nothing in the report confirms any such details (and I can’t find further evidence elsewhere) – and the story of a mass incident involving dozens of arrests appears to have been a fiction.

The photograph used by the Daily Caller doesn’t make much sense: it shows just one man being attacked, and – somewhat crucially – it was taken in middle of the day. The site either didn’t bother – or forgot – to remove the photo’s metadata caption, which identifies it as actually showing Russian Cossacks assaulting a Ukrainian in Sevastopol in 2014. It was published in its correct context in the media at the time (see below).

Did the Daily Caller intend to deceive? Robert Spencer, always eager to spread stories about how Muslims are depraved, appears to have taken it at face value as evidence, as did other right-leaning sites.

Perhaps it was intended merely to be illustrative – but given that the Daily Caller clearly approves of the outcome in their version of the story, such a photo serves to titillate, and perhaps to exhort.

Have we really reached the point where a photo of a bunch thugs beating someone up is to be celebrated because someone has said that it shows a refugee, and has further assured us that the victim did something anti-social and deserves his fate?

Rudd/Gillard adviser: Abbott drums up Islamophobia to help his election chances

Rudd/Gillard adviser: Abbott drums up Islamophobia to help his election chances

The Abbott government and its supporters are doing Daesh’s work for it in creating a culture of fear. Wonder why that might be … Jeremy Hillman, former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, explains.

Phobia, or irrational fear, is an unfortunate hallmark of social and political discourse throughout the world, often exploited for gain by those who have a responsibility to do exactly the opposite. Rampant homophobia is used to stoke fears that gay people were sexual deviants out to destroy our way of life. Now rampant Islamophobia advances a fear of Muslims as terrorists who are out to destroy our way of life. And the government is driving a lot of it.

Although the Prime Minister has admitted he feels threatened by homosexuality, these days neither he nor his government would dare to publicly suggest that the gays are coming to get us (even if some still feel that way in private). Furthermore, if a public figure does spout any homophobic bile — think Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi and bestiality — they are rightly howled down by a cacophony of voices of reason and decency. But with few notable exceptions, Islamophobia in the public domain is running rampant and is largely unchallenged.

Back in 2011, a 10-year study on Australian attitudes to other cultures found almost half the population to have anti-Muslim sentiment. Undoubtedly this number is even higher in 2015. Our entrepreneurs of fear — certain public figures and media outlets — are irresponsibly riding this wave, content in the knowledge that such fear is useful to their cause and likely to result in political and ratings gains. In opposition, Scott Morrison urged his fellow cabinet to better exploit growing community concern about Muslims in Australia. In government this has clearly been embraced, with an unrelenting focus on terrorism and border protection, and even a parliamentary inquiry into halal certification.

Islamophobia appears to be a general fear of Muslims synthesised with our fear of terrorism, and compounded by our general inability to distinguish radical extremists from ordinary Muslims. Despite the likelihood of being harmed by terrorism being negligible, the fear created by terrorism has huge and enduring effects on human behavior and hampers our ability to assess risk objectively.

Exploiting such fear in politics is as old as politics itself, and is a tactic that all sides of the spectrum frequently deploy. Afraid of losing your job? Vote for X. Afraid of catastrophic climate change? Vote for Y. Afraid of asylum seekers? Vote for Z.  So much of our political narrative is based on nurturing people’s fears and then offering a “solution” to them, and it persists because it works.

But when these fears are deliberately stoked and grossly exaggerated, it takes us from fear to phobia and further distorts reasonable thought, action and debate. All too often it also leads to the formation and growth of groups such as One Nation, the Q Society and Reclaim Australia. What do we gain when Abbott tells us that this “death cult” is coming to get us?  What do we gain when the media airs sensational footage of Daesh (also called Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL) militants training, marching, fighting or torturing? The real winner is Daesh.

Since our media aren’t exactly there on the ground, nearly all the footage is propaganda — written, directed and produced by the terror group. Naturally they supply us with images that show them looking more powerful, organised and respectable than they really are. Terrorism aims to instil fear, and when we overtly promote that fear, we are aiding the cause. What does Daesh want most after it has conquered and subdued?

Ongoing legitimacy, power and attention. Excessive media coverage of Daesh might not directly encourage terrorism but at the very least it legitimises, promotes and strengthens such groups, and we should debate the security ramifications of this more openly. By broadcasting their propaganda, we freely give Daesh more power and fuel Islamophobic sentiment. We forget Muslims in the Middle East are the overwhelming victims of Daesh terror while Muslims in Australia are indirect victims, frequently deemed guilty by association. We increasingly fear and blame Muslims in equal measure and are encouraged to do so by the entrepreneurs of fear. There are no easy solutions, but it’s clear we need more “entrepreneurs of calm” to countenance the fear merchants and inject some context and sensibility into the discourse.

Malcolm Turnbull briefly tried to be one such voice, cautioning overreactions to the fear of terror or Muslims. Undoubtedly he will be increasingly silenced as the federal government gears up for the mother of all fear campaigns leading into the next election. Islamophobia feeds into our worst instincts and needs to be courageously opposed, not elevated further in the public domain. When prejudiced views are articulated by those in high office, they gain a degree of social currency and legitimacy that perpetuates them further.

John Howard wanted us to be alert but not alarmed while Tony Abbott wants us to be in a permanent state of alarm. He knows it’s his best, and perhaps only, chance of being re-elected. Like the activists who challenged the prevailing culture of homophobia, we need to confront the prejudice and phobias of those around us and those entrepreneurs of fear who stoke them.

Via: CRIKEY

http://www.crikey.com.au/

Far Right, Theocratic Fascism | Reclaim Australia Dominated by a Christian Cult Leader

Reclaim Australia Dominated by a Christian Cult Leader

by Hugh Harris

Many may be surprised to find out that fervent nationalist group Reclaim Australia is driven primarily by a religious cult, Catch the Fire Ministries, and its political arm, Rise Up Australia. And the group wanting to “Keep Australia Australian” is headed by a Sri Lankan evangelist, Daniel Nallian, who moved to Australia in 1997.

Stating this fact by no means implies recent immigrants can’t have legitimate views about traditional Australian values, and multi-culturalism, (of course they can and do), but this challenges the common perception of Reclaim Australia as an extreme racist movement. Whilst convenient to the apologists of Islam to label them this way, the strange evangelical focus and multicultural nature of half its members provides a different narrative, albeit not one which is necessarily more conducive for an intelligent discussion regarding the perceived clash of Islamic and Western values.

According to “Evangelist Daniel’s” bio, Hillsong founder, Frank Houston, unsuccessfully “prophesied” over him in Sri Lanka, prior to his conversion by a member of his rock band. The Assembly of God evangelist claims that Jesus has saved his life multiple times.

Three months after experiencing salvation he came across his first trial during the communal violence in Sri Lanka when he was confronted with a mob who wanted to kill his parents. But praise God, his prayer as a new Christian was answered when the mob left without touching anyone. That day he said, “Lord, I will serve you as long as I have breath”.

Daniel Nalliah moved to Saudi Arabia to attempt to convert Muslims to Christianity, and was miraculously saved by Jesus again.

Pastor Daniel and his family were most miraculously saved from death and torture twice. He says, “If not for Jesus being alive, we would not be alive”! His testimony has touched the hearts of many all over the world.

Well, it’s good to have Jesus on your side.

The President of Rise Up Australia also believes Jesus communicates with him personally, and has ordained him with a special mission from God.

 While in Saudi Arabia, following an encounter he had with Jesus on 21st July 1997 (from 3.40am to 6.00am), in obedience to this, he decided to move to Australia and set up a base known as Catch The Fire Ministries Inc.

Then, Jesus appeared to Daniel again.

Dear Family in Christ,

On April 9, 2000 at 5:00am while in Ethiopia the Lord Jesus Christ woke me from sleep and spoke about Australia. He very clearly told me, Son, if my people will rise up and be proactive, they will stop the disaster which is coming on the land. But if my people sit back, relax and be reactive they will pay a heavy price to take back their land spiritually. He then spoke to me through (The Bible) 2 Chr. 7:14 and said, Gather my people across the land together and tell them to humble themselves, repent, pray and seek my face in one accord, then I will heal their land. This was the start of RISE UP AUSTRALIA prayer meetings.

There’s nothing like an argument from authority. Besides the obvious charlatanism these comments indicate a providential connection with “the land” which only aboriginal Australians lay claim to. One suspects the nationalism espoused by this particular Sri Lankan born follower of Jesus is subsumed by a larger cause.

Daniel Nalliah has claimed the Black Saturday bushfires were the result of the Victorian Government decriminalising abortion. The Queensland floods were due to Kevin Rudd speaking against Israel. He ran for a Senate seat for Family First party and disseminated brochures asking people to pray for God to pull down “Satan’s strongholds” which included bottle shops, gambling houses, brothels, mosques, and Buddhist and Hindu temples.

Reclaim Australian oppose multiculturalism, not multi-ethnicity. They oppose the melting pot of various cultures, insisting we enforce puritan Christian values on the whole society. Opposing Islam, abortion, gay marriage, promiscuity, pornography, and seeking Judeo-Christian focussed education, and other values of the religious right.

Unfortunately, this group adds nothing to debate on Islam, and the appropriate government response to jihadism.

Opposing Islamism with equally extreme ideas only adds height to the walls shielding Islam from appropriate examination. The core beliefs in jihad, martyrdom, the dar al-Harb, subjugation of women, and enforced religious belief underpin the ideologies of terrorist groups. The religion provides the ideology, and social network, to sustain the hatred, warmongering and predisposition towards violence which disenfranchised young men find so attractive.

Reclaim Australia provides succour to liberals whose knee-jerk response to any criticism of Islam is to brand it racism. Note the following in an otherwise well written expose by Jeff Sparrow:

 Let’s leave aside the question of how you can be “against Islam” without “targeting Muslims” (rather like being against Judaism without targeting Jews, one would have thought).

Many people say bad things about Christianity without facing accusations of “targeting” white Christians. Could we be against Nazism in the 1930’s without “targeting Germans”? Conflating the race of Jews and cultural traditions of Muslims provides a shield of political correctness.

Although, Sparrow’s remark paled in comparison to the apologetics of Anne Aly, who views criticism of Islam as the same thing as criticism of Muslims, at the hands of “bigots” and “racists.” Way to give your culture a free pass.

Applying the “racist” label too often shuts down debate, and censures the freedom to discuss the very ideas central to the conflict. Accusations of “racism” are too easy, and too convenient, a blunt instrument used to disarm opposing arguments. They also divert attention away from what appears to be significant motives within groups like Reclaim Australia, which is the debate about religious values, and the culture wars.

Reclaim Australia consists of a front for evangelical Christians. Those goose-stepping for God, combining religious zeal with associating with hate groups, are only reclaiming an historical bigotry. Australia was once a Christian country but never the sort of hollering, miracle worshipping, tele-evangelistic freak show that the backers of Reclaim Australia imagine.

This isn’t our country they are reclaiming. We should disavow their ideas, but for the right reasons. Opposing one totalitarianism with another misses the point altogether, providing a contradictory argument which undermines the Secular argument, the argument for tolerance and pluralism, freedom of speech, and religious freedom without religious coercion, within the framework of an agreed set of human rights and values.

No, Islam is not a race. Yes, you are still a racist

No, Islam is not a race. Yes, you are still a racist

by Daniel Lopez

Anti-Islamic bigotry is racism. How can that be when, as is frequently pointed out, Islam isn’t a race?

Biological race doesn’t exist. But the concept of biological race is an invention with a long history. Its transformations help answer the question.

One of the earliest and most detailed systems of biological racial classification existed in the French colony of St Dominguez. According to the historian C.L.R. James, the system of classification contained more than 150 gradations of “blackness”.

Only people who could prove that they were “purely white” were granted full rights. This system was overthrown by a slave rebellion and revolution. The “aristocracy of skin”, a term used by the Parisian masses to describe racism, was temporarily defeated. Those 150 gradations of blackness, which were regarded as a natural fact, have long been forgotten.

Roughly 80 years later, biological racism enjoyed a renaissance, as all sorts of new so-called races were discovered. This was the advent of pseudo-scientific Darwinian racism. For example, the Irish were considered a separate race to the English, and closer to apes. Skulls were measured, intellects compared and, lo and behold, the Irish were found inferior. This conveniently explained the Irish famine, in which between 800,000 and 1.5 million people starved to death while the British exported their food.

Nowhere did social Darwinism go further than in Germany. Prior to the late 1880s, Jewishness had been regarded purely as a religion. Of course, Jews had suffered religious discrimination, but they could escape this through conversion, as many did. Yet, from the late 1800s onward, with the aid of “science”, Jewishness was transformed into a race, which was then associated with a series of visual and cultural markers, involving facial hair, big noses, dishonesty and suspicious customs such as kosher food.

These examples highlight how racism was never really about “natural” differences. It was a manufactured ideology of oppression. Racism is really about power.

Biologically linked racism started to go out of fashion with the fall of the Third Reich. But this didn’t mean that racism disappeared. It just changed form.

Take the example of the USA. Since the Declaration of Independence, the USA has concealed real inequality under a constitution and political system premised on formal equality.

In the past, the contradiction between real and formal inequality was justified by the alleged inferiority of non-white races. But the struggles and achievements of those non-whites increasingly made such claims untenable.

Today, no one credible argues that inequality and poverty stem from innate racial differences. Rather, we are told that “cultural problems” are to blame. The new rationalisation is not biologically based, yet it is the politically acceptable code for the same old racism.

Anti-Muslim racism, which exploded following 9/11 and the “war on terror”, fits into this mould. Small-l liberals have played a special role in promoting it. The polite arguments that Islam is more repressive than other religions, that Muslims lack respect for women or democracy, or are particularly violent, are all coded signals which, like a dog whistle, prick the ears of rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth racists.

This is what happened at the Cronulla riot in 2005, where men of Arab appearance were bashed by a white mob trying to defend “their” beach and “their” women. It was referred to by participants as “Leb and wog bashing day”.

Racism always relies on stereotypes and visual or cultural markers. So, the racists portray Muslims as big-nosed, fat, fanatical, bearded misogynists who want to slaughter animals and non-believers alike, impose sharia law, prohibit tasty food and beverages, destroy liberty and reason and generally fuck things up for the “enlightened” West.

Why do they want to do this? Well, who knows, but one thing is for sure – they aren’t as civilised as us.

All of these tropes are based on racial stereotypes of Arab people, which are as old as they are repulsive. Edward Said’s magnificent book Orientalism traces this tradition of representation through Western art and literature. It turns out that “good Muslim” vs. “bad Muslim” is just an updated version of the colonial era “good savage” vs. “bad savage” trope.

Christopher Hitchens took war-mongering atheism to new depths when he endorsed cluster bombs and said that the death toll in the Iraq war wasn’t high enough. But the tradition of atheism and Enlightenment values being used as the spear tip for colonial-style racism goes at least as far back as the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.

Racism has changed with the times, but it is still a system of oppression that commits violence towards whole swaths of humanity, who are depicted through a few crude stereotypes.

So sure, Islam is a religion. But the statement “Islam is a religion, not a race” remains the most transparent of covers for real racism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Serial Fraudster Milking the Islamophobia Cash Cow

Exposing Anti-Islam Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Latest Deception

One of America’s most prominent Islam bashers has a long history of making things up.

By Max Blumenthal

While promoting her new book, Heretic, on a March 23 episode of “The Daily Show,” Somali-born author and anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali made a staggering claim: “If you look at 70 percent of the violence in the world today, Muslims are responsible,” she told host Jon Stewart.

Stewart did not demand any evidence and Hirsi Ali provided no citation. However, she made a strikingly similar statement in a March 20 essay previewing her new book for the Wall Street Journal: “According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies,” Hirsi Ali wrote in WSJ’s Saturday Essay, “at least 70% of all the fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims.”

I contacted the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading British foreign policy think tank, to inquire about the source of Hirsi Ali’s statistic. According to IISS spokesperson Kat Slowe, IISS did not state such a figure in its research.

“I have spoken to a number of our experts and they cannot identify where this statistic may have come from,” Slowe told me.

“Their best guess is that the journalist in question [Hirsi Ali] may have access/a subscription to the [IISS] Armed Conflict Database and may have calculated this statistic independently. There are some concerns that it could be misleading as, without Syria (near 200,000 total deaths, and almost half of last year’s global conflict deaths) the figure would look massively different (and of course, this conflict did not have its root in religion),” Slowe added.

Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation did not respond to my request for a citation on the statistic, nor did the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute that employs Hirsi Ali as a resident scholar. My email query to Hirsi Ali’s personal account at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where she serves as a fellow, also went unanswered.

Around 24 hours after my initial query, Hirsi Ali publicly backed off her claim that Muslims are “responsible” for most of the violence in the world. “Depressing that 70% of fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims,” she declared on her personal Twitter account.

Hirsi Ali linked to a survey of casualties in global conflicts by IISS’ Hanna Ucko Neill and Jens Wardenaer which made no reference to Muslims or religiously inspired violence. Apparently Hirsi Ali calculated the statistic on her own by using an IISS report that documented conflicts in territories from eastern Ukraine to sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East to Mexico, where drug gangs fueled widespread killing. The IISS’ Slowe noted that the year’s surge in conflict-related deaths occurred thanks to the fighting in Syria, explaining that Hirsi Ali’s claim was “misleading” because “this conflict did not have its root in religion.”

Instead of responding to my question about her statistic, Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation forwarded my email query to the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing publication with its own history of Islamophobic tall tales and hoaxes. In a currently un-bylined article about the query, the Free Beacon accused me of anti-Semitism.

History of fraud

Hirsi Ali’s highly suspect statistic is only the latest deception by one of the world’s most prominent opponents of Islam. While other anti-Muslim activists like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have marginalized themselves on the fringes of the far-right, Hirsi Ali remains a darling of the American mainstream media. In Heretic, a polemic recycling many of her past arguments against Islam, she calls for the emergence of a Muslim Martin Luther — the authoritarian 16th-century zealot who called for burning down the synagogues of Jews, whom he compared to a gangrenous disease. With the book’s release, Hirsi Ali has been welcomed with open arms by the BBC, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and a relatively accommodating Jon Stewart. ABC News has even run an excerpt from Heretic, while the New York Times Book Review hosted her for an interview filled with hardball questions about her favorite children’s books.

Hirsi Ali’s power to persuade lies in her dramatic personal story and the public persona she has constructed. She has marketed herself as a expert native informant who has emerged out of the dark heart of radical Islam and into the light of Western civilization. Her tale is an uplifting, comforting one that tells many Westerners what they want to hear about themselves and their perceived enemies. With anti-Muslim attitudes at their peak across Europe and the US, her sweeping critique of Islam as an endemically violent faith has enormous cachet. The only problem is that like her writings on Islam, much of what she has told the public about herself is questionable.

In May 2006, the Dutch television program Zembla thoroughly debunked the dramatic story Hirsi Ali had told to advance her career, concluding that Hirsi Ali had sold the Dutch public “a story full of obscurities.”

Born Ayaan Hirsi Magam, she migrated to the Netherlands in 1992, changed her name to Hirsi Ali, and lied to Dutch authorities about her past. Contrary to the story she told the government, she arrived in the Netherlands not from war-torn Somalia, but from Kenya, where she lived in a secure environment and under the protection of the United Nations, which funded her education at a well-regarded Muslim girls’ school. Though she told immigration authorities and the Dutch public she had fled from civil war in Somalia, she left that country before its war broke out. Indeed, she did not live through a war there or anywhere else. Thanks to her fabrications, Hirsi Ali received political asylum in just five weeks.

Hirsi Ali told astonished audiences on Dutch talk shows that her supposedly devout family had forced her to marry a draconian Muslim man, that she had not been present at her own wedding, and that her family had threatened to kill her for offending their religious honor. However, Zembla told a drastically different story. Hirsi Ali’s brother, aunt and former husband each testified that she had indeed been present at her wedding. It turned out that Hirsi Ali’s mother had sent her brother to a Christian school, not exactly an indication of Islamic fanaticism.

“Yeah, I made up the whole thing,” Hirsi Ali admitted on camera to a Zembla reporter who confronted her with her lies. “I said my name was Ayaan Hirsi Ali instead of Ayaan Hirsi Magan. I also said I was born in 1967 while I was actually born in 1969.”

Hirsi Ali’s claim of honor killing threats also appears to be empty; she remained in touch with her father and aunt after she left her husband. In fact, her husband even came to visit her in the Dutch refugee center where she lived after leaving him. Even though he had paid her way to Europe on the grounds that she would join him in Canada, Hirsi Ali’s husband consented to the divorce she sought. (Watch the full Zembla program on Hirsi Ali.)

Fabrications that toppled a government

In 2003, just a decade after gaining political asylum in the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali was elected to the Dutch parliament on the ticket of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. VVD leadership knew that the story Hirsi Ali told on her immigration forms was a gigantic lie — she had told them as much — but covered up the fraud and even advanced it to propel her career.

“She’s witnessed five civil wars in her youth, and has fled with her family many times. She’s made of iron and steel,” the VVD’s Neelie-Smit Kroes said of Hirsi Ali at the time, reciting claims her party knew were false.

A year after joining the Dutch parliament, where she said she attempted to ban Islamic schools in the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali teamed up with Dutch director Theo van Gogh to produce a documentary called Submission. The film portrayed violence against women in Muslim communities as a logical result of Islamic belief, relying on actresses to portray abused women and featuring semi-nude, niqab clad women with Quranic verses scrawled across their torsos. Van Gogh, a filmmaker and columnist who had taken to calling Muslims “goat fuckers,” was gunned down and stabbed to death soon after the film’s release by a Dutch Islamist radical. Before fleeing the scene, the killer pinned a note to van Gogh’s body threatening Hirsi Ali with death. Hirsi Ali’s persistence in the face of the episode helped earn her hero status across the West, particularly in post-9/11 America, where Time magazine named her one of its 100 Most Influential People in 2005.

Zembla’s revelations of Hirsi Ali’s lies in May 2006 interrupted her ascent and threw the Dutch government into chaos. No one was more damaged than her friend and close party ally, Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk. Nicknamed “Iron Rita” for her ruthless anti-migrant crackdowns and her demagogic appeals to xenophobia, Verdonk was shamed by the revelations of Hirsi Ali’s deceptions. When she announced her intention to strip Hirsi Ali of her citizenship, however, she was skewered in parliament and forced to relent.

Days after Zembla aired its exposé, Hirsi Ali announced her plans to leave parliament and take up a position with the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington-based think thank that housed many of the neoconservatives who helped orchestrate the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of the furor she caused, Verdonk introduced the so-called “Law on Integration,” one of Europe’s harshest anti-immigrant bills. Only one member of the Dutch House of Representatives opposed it. However, the governing coalition soon collapsed because of the scandal Hirsi Ali’s deceptions inspired. With a new coalition seated in February 2007, and without Verdonk and Hirsi Ali in power, the government was able to adopt a more tolerant approach to immigrants.

Winning a Harvard fellowship, defending Breivik

Upon her relocation to the US, Hirsi Ali was embraced by a coalition of liberal interventionists, neoconservatives and “New Atheists” like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Bill Maher. With extended appearances on the Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson, who blamed homosexuality for the 9/11 attacks, self-proclaimed feminist Hirsi Ali won droves of fans among the Christian right. Despite her views on Islam, which she called a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death,” or perhaps because of them, she received a fellowship from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

As she rose in prominence among America’s intellectual elite, Hirsi Ali’s history of lying tumbled conveniently down the Orwellian memory hole. In promotional material for her best-selling 2007 memoir, Infidel, Hirsi Ali’s publishers at Simon & Schuster have pushed the discredited claim that “Hirsi Ali survived civil war.” More recently, conservative pundit Peggy Noonan glossed over the reasons behind Hirsi Ali’s flight from the Netherlands, writing, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali got death threats and eventually fled to America.” Few, if any, American outlets have noted that Hirsi Ali left the Netherlands as her public credibility collapsed and her anti-immigrant party fell into crisis.

With support from across the American ideological spectrum, Hirsi Ali sharpened her rhetoric against Muslims. In a candid 2007 exchange with Reason Magazine, she declared that the religion of Islam had to be “defeated.” “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful,” Hirsi Ali stated. “It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now….There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.”

Junketed to Berlin in 2012 to receive the Axel Springer Honorary Award from the right-wing German publisher, Hirsi Ali appeared to blame liberal defenders of multiculturalism for the killing spree committed by the Norwegian extremist Anders Breivik, claiming they left Breivik with “no other choice but to use violence. (Breivik cited Hirsi Ali’s work in his 1,500 page manifesto explaining his plans to commit a series of terrorist attacks across Norway.)

“[T]hat one man who killed 77 people in Norway, because he fears that Europe will be overrun by Islam, may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill. He says very clearly that it was the advocates of silence. Because all outlets to express his views were censored, he says, he had no other choice but to use violence.” (Her words were met with an extended standing ovation.)

When Brandeis University canceled plans to award Hirsi Ali an honorary degree in April 2014, it appeared that her increasingly vitriolic tirades against Islam and its adherents had caught up with her. But then came the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, a seemingly clarifying moment that Hirsi Ali and fellow anti-Islam activists seized on as confirmation of their darkest prophecies. Two months later, she released Heretic.

Having rebranded herself a brave “reformer” following in the footsteps of the Selma marchers, Hirsi Ali has found her way back into the mainstream limelight. While American media demonstrates an endless appetite for her polemics about Islam, holding her to account remains taboo.

Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. Find him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

In Europe, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia go hand in hand

In Europe, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia go hand in hand

Both scourges are projections of the illiberal mind

 

by Paul Hockenos

Paris — The spate of anti-Semitic violence in Europe might appear to justify Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for European Jews to move to Israel where, he claims, Jews can be safe.

“Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country,” Netanyahu said on Feb. 15, “but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters, ‘Israel is your home.’ We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe.”

Europe’s Jewry should nevertheless reject Netanyahu’s call. It’s a populist ploy ahead of Israel’s March 17 election. Jewish citizens in Europe should instead be active participants in the societies in which they live, continuing to promote democracy, civil liberties and tolerance of diversity as they have done energetically in the past, to Europe’s enormous benefit.

Nowhere, even in long-established democracies such as France, can the liberal order be taken for granted. Every generation has to fight anew to maintain (or even, in a best case scenario, improve on) the quality of democracy as its circumstances change. Anti-Semitism is one challenge to this struggle, Islamophobia another. The two illiberal ideologies and their implications for open societies are more closely linked than they appear.

Anti-Semitism in Europe

Anti-Semitism is on the rise across Europe, propelled by familiar and new antagonists. The Jan. 9 shooting of four Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Paris followed a string of lethal assaults on Jews across the continent in 2014. Last month an attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark, left one man dead and two police officers wounded. The incident forced Jewish schools in Belgium and France to close temporarily. Last year the Jewish Museum in Brussels was bombed. At least eight synagogues were attacked in Europe in July 2014. In Germany, Jewish men wearing the skullcap, or kippa, were harassed, cursed and beaten up on the street.

A 2012 European Union survey of 6,000 Jews in eight European nations, which together account for 90 percent of Europe’s Jewish population, found that 66 percent believed anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe; 76 percent said anti-Jewish sentiment increased in their country since 2007. In a survey a year later, almost half of the respondents said they were concerned about being verbally insulted or attacked in public. Seventy years after Auschwitz’s liberation, which is being commemorated across Europe, Jewish graves have been desecrated, and Jewish citizens are uncomfortable in certain neighborhoods, particularly those with high proportions of Muslims.

Anti-Semitism is not a new phenomenon in postwar Europe. But its usual standard bearers were Europe’s far-right groups. Far-right and populist groups still propagate hatred toward Jews, although in its more muted form than in recent decades. (There’s an anti-Semitic stripe in the far left as well, closely linked with anti-Americanism and sympathy for the Palestinian quest for statehood.) Parties such as the National Front in France, Austria’s Freedom Party and Belgium’s Vlaams Bok have long traded in anti-Semitism. Opinion polls show residual anti-Semitism in most European populations, which is largely understood as a reaction to globalization, modernity and urban values. In Central and Eastern Europe, where there was no postwar reconciliation, anti-Semitism burns hotter as part and parcel of old-school volkish nationalism.

Muslim leaders have to fight anti-Jewish mindsets as actively as Europe’s Jews must help dispel the falsehoods fueling the anti-Islam discourse.

But the far-right anti-Semites now have a more opportune target: Islam. The same tools and tropes that were once used to create fear of and resentment toward Jews have been turned against Muslims. They claim that Muslims are swamping their countries and diluting their national cultures — claims once made against Jews. Whereas Jews were claimed to partake in blood rituals, Islam is cast as an inherently violent religion and all Muslims as threats to European security and identity.

Germany’s PEGIDA movement, which took to the streets in Dresden and elsewhere in Germany in late 2014 and early 2015, offers a perfect example. While PEGIDA’s foremost target was the Muslim community, its closeness to neo-Nazi groups and anti-Israel currents was manifest. One man with an Israeli flag was chased from a PEGIDA demonstration, and marchers carried posters reading “Just say no to Israel” and “Let Germany finally be Germany,” the latter a resentful reference to Germany’s war guilt and coming to grips with the Holocaust. Just as contemporary anti-Semitism is often strongest in places with no Jews, PEGIDA support was the highest in Dresden, a city with a population less than 0.5 percent Muslim. In other words, as with anti-Semitism, Islamophobia is highly irrational.

Muslim anti-Semitism

The chief perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence and terrorist attacks, however, are not the far right ideologues but radicalized elements in Europe’s Muslim community. It goes without saying that not all Muslims are anti-Semitic. (Collective guilt is almost always wrong-headed.) But polls show that anti-Semitism is strikingly high among European Muslims, particularly younger Muslim men and women.

A recent French survey found that 74 percent of French Muslims said they believe Jews have too much influence over the nation’s economy. (The figure among non-Muslim French was 25 percent.) Seventy percent of French Muslims said that Jews control the country’s media. A 2013 study by the EU found that Jews in Europe felt most threatened by Muslims in their societies. Günther Jikeli in his new book, “European Muslim Antisemitism,” corroborates these findings and argues that anti-Semitism is pervasive in the beliefs of young European Muslims.

The reasons for the new anti-Semitism are part socioeconomic, part political. So far, the young Muslims involved in the recent attacks against Jews have almost always been the kind of poor, disenfranchised young men whose circumstances breed resentment and anger. In Islam they find a home and identity. The politics of Israel in the Middle East have thrown fuel on the fire consistently over the last two decades; the ongoing violence against the Palestinians in Gaza is only the most recent agony. The emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has facilitated the mix of a toxic cocktail that targets Jews across Europe.

But Jews are not necessarily safer in Israel than they are on the streets of Paris or Berlin. Europe is facing an enormous challenge in reacting to this new element in its midst and defeating it without encouraging more converts to radical Islam. We saw this happen in the aftermath of United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in response to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the Central Intelligence Agency’s black sites and the drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

On Feb. 14, the European Jewish Congress called for enhancing existing anti-racism legislation, which is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. It envisions prohibiting the wearing of the full-face veil everywhere in Europe, punishing denial of the Holocaust and hate speech and outlawing praise for a terrorist act. But the proposal is not constructive in the long run. Such measures cast suspicion on all Muslims and would work to alienate rather than integrate.

European countries must devise a way to make Muslims feel part of their societies. Here in Paris it is stunning to experience firsthand how abruptly the City of Light ends at the banlieues, the tenement housing on Paris’ periphery where much of the migrant population lives. Here one leaves the urban wonderland of museums, fine restaurants, graceful apartment buildings and good jobs and enters the underworld of poverty, marginalization, unemployment and ugliness.

There are many ways that French and other European societies can reach out to their Muslim neighbors. This could mean interfaith dialogue, common civic initiatives, integrated schooling and more inclusive governance structures. Projects such as Germany’s Schule Ohne Rassismus, a nonprofit that fights racial bias against Jews, Muslims and others in secondary schools across the country should be replicated elsewhere in Europe. Ultimately, all Europeans, including Muslim communities, must insist on more democracy, civic culture and tolerance. Muslim leaders have to fight anti-Jewish mindsets as actively as Europe’s Jews must help dispel the falsehoods fueling the anti-Islam discourse. This is the way to beat the twin menaces of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Paul Hockenos is a journalist living in Berlin. He has covered the transformations of the EU for over 25 years.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.

Blame the Muslims: how government and media stoke the fires of Islamophobia

Blame the Muslims: how government and media stoke the fires of Islamophobia

Muslims are portrayed as fanatics and extremists, caught in a clash of civilisations where the good guys are representatives of western civilisation.

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BLAME the Muslims. That seems to be the message from governments and media across Europe in the wake of the terrible attacks in Paris.

Muslims are to blame for terrorism. Not just the tiny number of Muslims who carry out such attacks, but all Muslims must carry some responsibility. It is argued that their religion is too amenable to terrorist ideas, that they don’t denounce their co-religionists sufficiently and in strong enough terms, that their schools and mosques are breeding grounds for terrorism.

We are now being told that not enough Muslims are signing up to join the British army while at the same time young men from the Muslim community are flocking to fight with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

The way that Muslims dress, the food that they eat and the regularity with which they pray are under scrutiny, and the message is all too often clear: that Muslims are seen as the “enemy within” western society. Indeed this is the explicit argument of the racist Pegida movement in Germany, which is now planning a demonstration in Newcastle, northern England.

Those Muslims who renounce violence as a means of achieving political change do not thereby absolve themselves from blame. Demands for change, or non-violent extremism as it has come to be called, only leads to violent extremism. Or at least that was the contention of the journalist John Ware on a recent edition of Panorama, an investigative programme aired on the BBC.

Many Muslims feel that these are examples of double standards. Most terrorism in Europe is not Islamic terrorism, but connected with separatist groups or with the far right.

The biggest single terrorist attack in recent years was in Norway, carried out by a far right ideologue against a left party youth gathering. This week’s shooting of three young Muslims in North Carolina, which police said may have been over a parking dispute but many have suspected was carried out by a militant atheist, has not led to denunciations of his act as the armed wing of atheism. Other atheists have not been asked to search their consciences to see whether atheism may lead to this sort of extremism. Gatherings of atheists are not targeted by security forces.

Why are the approaches to different groups of terrorists so different? Part of the reason is racism: Muslims are portrayed as fanatics and extremists, caught in a clash of civilisations where the good guys are representatives of western civilisation while the bad guys are identified with backwardness, superstition and barbarity.

This dichotomy conveniently ignores western lack of civilisation, whether through two world wars and a holocaust or through the creation of empires which ruled over whole peoples – many of them the same who are being demonised here. It also ignores the record of Muslim culture historically.

There is one overwhelming reason why this happens however: the wars themselves. There is a refusal to link terrorism with the wars which have taken place over a decade and a half, and a refusal to see that one of their outcomes is a rise in Islamophobia.

There is a hideous symmetry in this: as the wars involving Britain and the US have become more mired in failure, so civil liberties have come under greater attack and the rise in Islamophobia has become more pronounced.

When the war on terror was launched in October 2001, those who opposed it predicted not just a devastating series of wars but a crackdown on civil liberties and a rise in racism against Muslims. Not a single pro-war politician would have predicted its outcome 14 years later. Instead we were told these wars would root out terrorism, encourage democracy and protect human rights.

The war on terror has created the exact opposite of its aim: a massive increase in terrorism.

The war initially was to root out terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Despite the fuss about the killing of bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are still there. Terrorism is now widespread in the Middle East and Africa.

Western Embassies have been closed in Yemen and Libya, which is in a state of civil war and strife, only four years after the western bombing of the country. IS controls large parts of Syria and Iraq. The rise of IS has been partly facilitated by western allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as part of their intervention in Syria.

Despite this, the response from western governments has been more of the same. The US and its allies are bombing IS in Iraq and Syria and this week it was announced 2000 British troops were being sent to Jordan.

We are now in a vicious circle: more terrorist attacks, more crackdowns, more wars, more racism.

The atmosphere after the Paris attacks will lead to much more of that. Already the calls for free speech in defence of Charlie Hebdo have been somewhat compromised by draconian sentences even for those making drunken remarks to police about the attacks.

In this country those returning from IS camps, often with having had no involvement in fighting have been given up to 12 years in prison. Whatever one might think of their behaviour, it is surely counterproductive to send those who have returned, often disillusioned with IS, to prison for such long periods of time.

This open season on Muslims is fuelled by government and media. Stories negative to Muslims are highlighted, those which show them in a positive light or refute previous negative ones, receive much less publicity. The UK government’s Prevent strategy – designed ostensibly to prevent violent extremism – targets schools, colleges and Muslim organisations, demanding that they are vetted for speakers and activity.

This is an attack on free speech, on civil liberties, on the right to think ideas that might be unpopular but which should not be forbidden.

Muslims are repeatedly told they have to apologise but what exactly do they have to apologise for? The Muslim community in Britain has played a large part in campaigning and political organising over the years, most recently on the major demonstrations over Israel’s attack on Gaza last summer.

They have been the backbone of a movement which tried to stop the wars and change government foreign policy. There is little doubt that Britain would be a safer place if we had succeeded.

– Lindsey German is convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and co-author of A People’s History of London.

Source: Middle East Eye

Phony “Counter Jihad” Fascist Loons Imploding

Crumbling “Counterjihad”? EDL, SION, SIOA and the Transatlantic Kerfuffle

The so-called counter jihad, like you can counter stupid with stupid

We have noted the unstable nature of the “counter-jihad” fascist movement since the day Loonwatch began. Cracks and fissures between various groups and websites were apparent from the start.

One of the first to depart the “counter-Jihad” was Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (LGF) who has continued to expose the extremism of former allies Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

It was Charles Johnson who first alerted us to the fact that Robert Spencer had joined a group calling for the extermination of Turks and the Reconquista of Anatolia. For this revelation Spencer and Geller have been relentless in their vitriolic demonization of Johnson, regarding him not only as an apostate but also– their favorite epithet– “dhimmi.”

The reasons for the inherent instability in the “counter-Jihad” reflects the fissures in ideological make up between the various personalities, as well as incongruities between their inflated egos.

A brief history of the internecine civil wars amongst the counter-Jihad on this point is informative: Debbie Schlussel vs.: Brigitte Gabriel, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Zuhdi Jasser, Walid Shoebat, etc. Logan’s Warning against Brigitte Gabriel. Spencer vs. Andrew Bostom. Roberta Moore of the JDL vs. the EDL and now the latest kerfuffle: Geller and Spencer vs. Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll.

All that binds them is Islamomisia and Islamophobia. On the surface their ideological backgrounds provide a motive: a belief in the need to preserve Christianity in the face of post-Modernity and a rise in Secular Humanism, a belief that it is good for Israel and Zionism, a desire to keep White Europe pure, the nostalgic belief that they are the vanguard “defenders of freedom” who will not only save the “West” from a resurgent Islam but harken in a golden age and if not–Armageddon.

When you dig a little deeper underneath the surface of ideology and identity politics one sees there is another more primitive motive at work; garnering dead presidents and Euros.

Recenlty, I have taken an interest in the famous medieval Muslim theologian Ghazali who it seems to me has identified, in universal terms, the reasons for the sickness that pervades the Islamophobia movement:

“The greatest of all desires is ravenousness, the source of all spiritual maladies, followed, in second order, by lasciviousness. Ardently seeking to fulfill these desires inevitably involves one in garnering wealth, in turn leading to indulgence in both spheres. It appears Ghazali posits a causal link between these two instincts, on the one hand, and the personal desire to acquire power and influence, on the other. To protect wealth and power, it is inevitable for the covetous individual to engage in competition and envy, which in turn engender greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, and hatred. And once these become habits of the soul, it is a short step for the individual to be implicated in morally repugnant acts.” (Hallaq, The Impossible State, p.131)

“Counter-Jihad” is a lucrative business as the reports by Fear, inc. and CAIR have made plain. The economy of Islamophobia isn’t going out of business anytime soon as long as wealthy Right-Wing foundations and individuals continue to support the industry.

Ex-EDL Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Kevin Carroll Haven’t Changed

It has been two weeks since the announcement by former EDL chief Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll that they were leaving the organization. In that time there have been several major developments, including the supposed termination of an official relationship between Geller/Spencer and Robinson and even accusations that Robinson is a poster boy for “stealth Jihad.” (h/t: Jai Singh)

Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll’s closest international allies, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, have publicly terminated their involvement with them and thrown them off the board of their “SION Presidents Council”. Geller has announced this in an article published on her Atlas Shrugs website.

The reason is partly due to Robinson and Carroll’s current involvement with Quilliam and Mo Ansar (Geller’s full article provides further details), but apparently it also has a lot to do with some statements Robinson made to The Daily Beast, specifically the reasons that he has been refusing to publicly denounce Spencer & Geller. Furthermore, Geller herself makes some accusations about the real reasons for Robinson’s resignation from the EDL.

Pamela Geller: A month ago, Tommy Robinson called me…..Not being on the ground in the UK, and having worked with him at a distance for four years, I understood his concerns, and looked forward to a new organization — perhaps even SIO-England. I did not know when he was going to make his move away from the EDL, and he did not tell me. The only thing he told me was that he was going to make the break before his upcoming court case — perhaps to incur the sympathy of the court.

Then, the night before he made his announcement, Tommy tried to contact me numerous times on Skype and by phone while I was busy with other matters. It was clear that it was urgent. Finally, we spoke on the phone, and it was on that phone call that he told me that he would be resigning from the EDL the next day, and that the Quilliam Foundation was going to be at the press conference — but he made that a minor point. I had no idea that it was a Quilliam press conference, and certainly had no idea that Tommy and Kevin Carroll would be led around like dogs 0n a leash. It was after that phone call, and before I had any idea that Tommy would be closely allying with false moderate Muslim deceivers who would crow about “decapitating the EDL,” that Robert Spencer and I composed our first statement, supporting Tommy and his decision. We never would have come out in support of him if we had known that he would soon be parroting politically correct nonsense about “extremists on both sides.”

Tommy told me that his move would not be announced until 6PM London time the next day, and asked me to hold our statement until then, but when I woke up the next morning, it was already all over the international media. That was the first indication that he had not been entirely up front with me about what was happening. Then at the press conference, both he and Kevin Carroll were the showcases of a Quilliam victory dance.

…..I only subsequently learned, after releasing our initial statement of support, that he had been meeting with Islamic supremacist deceivers like Mo Ansar for 18 months, and was taking instruction on Islam from the false moderates of the Quilliam Foundation. And I didn’t hear about it from Tommy, who never gave me any hint of any of this — I read about it in the press along with everyone else.

…..He made a deal with the devil. He didn’t want to go back to jail, and this looks like his bid to stay out.

Today at the Daily Beast, the gleeful reporter doesn’t quote Robinson, but says that he “distanced himself from some of Geller’s most egregious remarks.” I challenge the Daily Beast reporter to produce the quotes. What exactly did Tommy distance himself from? And then he quotes Tommy explaining why he won’t denounce me now: “I went to America to speak at one of their events. I feel indebted to Pamela. I have a great deal of respect for her personally because she helped my family when I was in custody. She provided a roof over our head.” This cop-out from Tommy — that he wouldn’t denounce me because I supported him financially — was the lowest blow of all. I was not supporting the EDL financially. We gave some money to his wife and kids when Tommy was in jail. And Tommy has said that before, implying that his loyalty was bought, and was not because of ideological agreement. He’s been using the quiet help I gave to his wife and kids as one mom to another. I didn’t do that for the organization. I did that as a human being.

It is clear what is happening. Now he is the poster boy for the stealth jihad. It seems they have taught Tommy well. His deception to friends and colleagues mirrors the Islamic teachings of kitman (lie by omission) and taqiyya. So Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll are no longer on the SION board.

According to the Huffington Post Robinson has claimed that the EDL’s publicly pro-Israel stance was to garnish support and “attract funding from Zionist organizations.” [which failed to materialize in the way that he had hoped]

Robinson also appeared as a guest on the BBC’s “Sunday Morning Live” program on October 13th, discussing “Does the English Defence League represent a view that needs to be heard?”:

– There is very little change in Robinson’s anti-Muslim views. He is simply expressing them more carefully. – Throughout the discussion, Robinson essentially continues accusing the entire Muslim population of collective guilt and collective responsibility. – 12m 30s: Robinson describes the Quran as “extremely evil”. – 20m 08s: Robinson claims “There are two types of Muslims: Radicals/extremists and apologists”. – 21m 10s onwards: Robinson enthusiastically praises the EDL, including its current demonstrations. – Debate continues from 53m 40s onwards: Robinson claims that he will not give the Police any incriminating “inside information” on EDL members.

Robinson has not changed, he admits that he is only shifting tactics.:

Screenshot of Robinson’s comment on his new Twitter account on 12 October 2013, responding to a member of the EDL’s “Oldham Division”, stating “I’ll continue the fight, and wake up the nation”:

Spencer and Geller have co-authored a detailed statement, cross-published on their respective websites. They excoriate Robinson for being an ignorant, gullible lad who has facilitated the “decapitation of the EDL” and has capitulated to the government funded Quilliam which they laughably describe as representing the “forces of Jihad and Islamic supremacism.”

Richard Bartholomew has also published an excellent article highlighting Spencer & Geller’s other statements on the matter, including Spencer’s confirmation that Robinson “has repeatedly stated that he hasn’t changed his views.”

Robert Spencer himself has now written an article on these developments. Spencer’s indignant, confused and “betrayed” reaction is definitely worth reading. Seems that Robinson’s “secret” discussions with the popular British Muslim commentator Mo Ansar during the past 18 months are a particularly sore point.

Tommy Robinson is continuing to refuse to denounce Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

TellMAMA’s new article documenting Robinson’s continuing behaviour on his new Twitter account. Take particular note of the recent screenshot where Robinson claims that his time with Mo Ansar has actually strengthened his opposition to Islam.

Note on the Quilliam Foundation:

The Guardian has an excellent summary of the plausible reasons for the organization’s new found involvement with Robinson and Carroll, specifically detailing the problems that Quilliam has recently been experiencing.

Another Guardian article includes revealing information about “the next steps” involving Quilliam and Robinson, including the fact that Robinson has contradicted his statements on the BBC regarding cooperation with the Police:

[Maajid] Nawaz said he would work to introduce [Tommy] Robinson to his own contacts in government and the Home Office in an attempt to procure government funding. Robinson said his future work would involve taking on radicalism on all fronts, although he could not support anti-fascist groups because they also subscribed to “communism” or were “anarchists”.

When pressed as to whether he would work with the police to root out criminal racists in the group he helped form four years ago, he agreed he would now talk to the authorities.

Robinson, whose financial assets have been frozen because of ongoing criminal proceedings for public order offences, said he did not doubt he would be successful again in any endeavour he pursued as long as he was passionate about it.

Related articles

• Quilliam v Geller: The Battle For Tommy Robinson’s Soul (barthsnotes.com)
• Quilliam Foundation “Facilitates” EDL Leaders’ Exit From Organisation (barthsnotes.com)
• Crumbling “Counterjihad”? EDL, SION, SIOA and the Transatlantic Kerfuffle (loonwatch.com)
• Phony “Counter Jihad” Fascist Loons Imploding (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)

Atheists Face Extensive Discrimination, UN Rights Council Told

Atheists face extensive discrimination, UN rights council told

Humanist group raises concerns amid new efforts by Muslim countries in UN to ban denigration of religion

Atheists, humanists and freethinkers face widespread discrimination around the world, with expression of their views criminalised and even subject to capital punishment, the United Nations has been told.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) said atheism was banned by law in a number of states where people were forced to officially adopt a faith.

“Extensive discrimination by governments against atheists, humanists and the non-religious occurs worldwide,” said the union, which has 120 member bodies in 45 countries.

In Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan “atheists can face the death penalty on the grounds of their belief”, in violation of UN human rights accords, the IHEU said in a document submitted to the UN human rights council.

In several other countries legal measures “effectively criminalise atheism [and] the expression and manifestation of atheist beliefs” or lead to systematic discrimination against freethinkers, it said.

Three of the states on the rights council – Pakistan, Mauritania and Maldives – have legislation providing for death for blasphemy against Islam, a charge that can be applied to atheists who publicly reveal their ideas.

The paper was submitted as the council opened its annual spring session against a background of new efforts in the UN by Muslim countries to obtain a worldwide ban on denigration of religion, specifically what they call Islamophobia.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, told the council there was a “rising trend” of Islamophobia. “We condemn all sorts of incitement to hatred and religious discrimination against Muslims and people of other faiths,” he said.

This month a senior official of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) said the body would focus on getting agreement on criminalising denigration of religion in coming talks with western countries.

Last November the head of the 21-country Arab League told the UN security council in New York that his organisation wanted a binding international framework to ensure “that religious faith and its symbols are respected”.

The IHEU and other non-governmental rights groupings argue that many Muslim governments use this terminology and the concept of “religious blasphemy” within their own countries to cow both atheists and followers of other religions.

A number of these governments “prosecute people who express their religious doubt or dissent, regardless of whether those dissenters identify as atheist”, the IHEU document said.

Islamic countries including Bangladesh, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey had also stepped up prosecution of “blasphemous” expression of criticism of religion in social media such as Facebook and Twitter, it said.

OIC countries have 15 seats on the council, all from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, making up almost a third of the rights body.

Related articles

• Atheists face extensive discrimination, UN rights council told (guardian.co.uk)
• Atheists face increased discrimination around the world (thecommentator.com)
• Atheists‚ humanists face discrimination around the world (thehimalayantimes.com)
• U.N. Told Atheists Face Discrimination Around Globe: IHEU Report (americanhumanist.org)
• Humanists call for freedom of speech at the UN Human Rights Council (secularnewsdaily.com)
• U.N. told atheists face discrimination around globe (richarddawkins.net)

Investigator Questions Pamela Geller’s Influence On Murder And Hate Crime In NY Subway

Muslim Hater Erika Menendez Charged With Murder And Hate Crime In NY Subway Shove Pamela Geller Put Up Anti-Muslim Posters In NY Subways.

Thanks to BILL WARNER

December 30th, 2012 NEW YORK…. A woman who told police she shoved a man to his death off a subway platform into the path of a train because she has hated Muslims since Sept. 11 and thought he was one was charged Saturday with murder as a hate crime, prosecutors said. Erika Menendez was charged in the death of Sunando Sen, who was crushed by a 7 train in Queens on Thursday night, the second time this month a commuter has died in such a nightmarish fashion.

Erika Menendez, 31, her photo above, was awaiting arraignment on the charge Saturday evening, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said. She could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. She was in custody and couldn’t be reached for comment, and it was unclear if she had an attorney. Menendez, who was arrested after a tip by a passer-by who saw her on a street and thought she looked like the woman in a surveillance video released by police, admitted shoving Sen, who was pushed from behind, authorities said.

“I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up,” Menendez told police, according to the district attorney’s office. READ MORE CLICK HERE.

December 12th, 2012….Anti-Islam Subway Ads By Pamela Geller Feature Exploding World Trade Center, Quote From The Quran.  New York City’s resident Islamophobe is back with yet another anti-Islam subway ad. Pamela Geller’s latest features a photo of the World Trade Center exploding in flames next to a quote from the Quran that reads, “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.”

When Geller last bought ad space in the NYC underground, New Yorkers didn’t react too kindly. Nearly all of the signs– which read “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad”– were vandalized.  As a result, The Observer reports Geller doubled her ad buy this time, and that “the new ads will be plastered across at least 50 different locations.”  “I refuse to abridge my free speech so as to appease savages,” she said.

Photo above Pamela Geller with racist EDL thugs from the UK.

Southern Poverty Law Center lists anti-Islamic NYC blogger Pamela Geller, followers a hate group. Manhattan blogger Pamela Geller and her posse of anti-Islamic protesters were branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Feb. 2011. Stop the Islamization of America was included in the civil rights organization’s annual roundup of extremist groups – a rogue’s gallery that includes everything from the Ku Klux Klan to white supremacists and Nazis. Pamela Geller’s group was one of the most vocal opponents of the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero. The group was also behind ads that were placed on city buses urging Muslims to leave “the falsity of Islam.” Pamela Geller runs a blog called Atlas Shrugs.

Related articles

• Subway Pusher Erika Menendez ‘Cackled’ During Court Appearance (nymag.com)
• CAIR: NY Man Pushed to His Death Because Killer Thought He was Muslim (prnewswire.com)
• Judge: No bail for NYC subway-push suspect Erika Menendez (newsday.com)
• Death by brown skin (salon.com)
• Anti-Muslim violence spiralling out of control in America (aljazeera.com)
• After Islamophobic hate crime in New York City, mayor wants public to ‘keep death in perspective’ (mondoweiss.net)
• Muslim Hater Erika Menendez Charged With Murder And Hate Crime In NY Subway Shove Pamela Geller Put Up Anti-Muslim Posters In NY Subways. (pibillwarner.wordpress.com)
• Catholic Fascist Robert Spencer and Jewish Harpy Pamela Geller United in Hate With Christian Taliban Hatemonger (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Insane Islamophobe Pamela Geller | Petraeus Resignation Is an Obama Plot to Put a Muslim in Charge of the CIA (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Investigator Questions Pamela Gellers Influence On Murder And Hate Crime In NY Subway (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)

Catholic Fascist Robert Spencer and Jewish Harpy Pamela Geller United in Hate With Christian Taliban Hatemonger

Meet Catholic Talibanist Robert Spencer’s Fellow Christian Extremist: “Usama Dakdok”

Posted b Dorado

Pastor Usama Dakdok, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer

by Garibaldi

Robert Spencer is in his own right an extremist anti-Muslim who is motivated by a belief that he is in a militant Christian Crusade against Islam.

“We wanted Catholics to become informed about Islam because not only is Islam the church’s chief rival in terms of religion but Islam is a serious threat to the peace and well-being of the Western world in general.”

Spencer’s extremist allies in this cause are many, on the other side of the pond it’s the EDL, Geert Wilders, etc. and here in the USA it’s individuals like Pastor Usama Dakdok, who has said things like, “every Muslim is a demon.” Dakdok has gotten high praise from Islamophobic rags such as the David Horowitz funded and operated FrontPageMag which described Dakdok as a “scholar.” Well, he must be, right? Just look at the company he’s in,

“scholars like Dakdok, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat”

Yup…Walid Shoebat. I’m willing to agree with this assessment by FrontPageMag, Spencer certainly is in the field of scholarship and caliber of the likes of Dakdok and Shoebat. I’m just waiting for these two to get blurbs from Spencer for any of their upcoming “scholarly” books.

Dakdok is also a presenter on the Aramaic Broadcasting Network (ABN), an anti-Islam extremist Christian proselytizing group that features Spencer very often, usually with him debating the likes of useful idiots Anjem Choudhary and Omer Bakri. Interestingly, Spencer still refuses to debate Danios.

Recently, Dakdok was speaking at a Tea Party conference in Ohio where he stated that we are “at war with Islam,” Barack Obama was the product of Muslim rape, Muslims were infiltrating the government, Muslims will kill children in America for not eating halal through beheading and other really vile nonsense. Of course Spencer will never repudiate these remarks or his association with Pastor Dakdok.

What’s disconcerting is all the applause and cheers Dakdok received at the Tea Party conference. (h/t: JD)

See Video: Tea Party Anti-Muslim Hate Comes to Ohio School

(Vimeo)

(CLEVELAND, OHIO, 12/19/12) – The Cleveland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Ohio chapter (CAIR-Cleveland) today released a video highlighting anti-Muslim hate preached at a recent Tea Party event at a school in that state, which included claims that American Muslims “will kill your children” and that “we are in war with Islam.”

At the December 10 event, titled “Infiltration of Islam in America?” and sponsored by the Mansfield North Central Ohio Tea Party, at Mansfield High School in Mansfield, Ohio, speaker Usama Dakdok called Islam a “wicked cult” and made hate-filled claims such as: (NOTE: Speaker’s linguistic errors retained.)

“The day will come and Muslim in America will have the upper hand, and they will kill your children for not eating what is liked. For not eating the lawful foods.”

“What happened to the women and the children? They were raped. By who? By Muhammad and his followers. And they got pregnant, and they had babies, and the baby was born by the name Fatima, and Khadija, and Obama, and Hussein, and Barack, and all those wonderful Muslim names.”

“[W]ithout Allah they will die and for sure they would spend eternity in hell with Muhammad and with all previous Muslims, and Baptist, and Presbyterian, and Catholic, and everyone who’s think by going to some church will make it to heaven.”

“Killing you is a small matter [for Muslims].”

“We were not in war with Bin Ladin, we are in war with Islam.”

“[T]hen you have a revival in America among the Muslim, and that’s when they start beheading your children and your grandchildren.”

“So they say this month two and a half percent of the profit [American banks] made will go to Egypt. To help to get rid of illiteracy. What do they mean by illiteracy? They meant Christian. We are gonna kill some Christian. Or this month we are gonna get rid of some AIDS. What is AIDS? That is the Jews.”

CAIR-Cleveland had called on people of conscience to ask the Tea Party group to drop Dakdok from the December 10 program.

“Our nation’s schools should be havens from the kind of hatred spewed by Mr. Dakdok,” said CAIR-Cleveland Executive Director Julia Shearson. “We urge Ohio’s religious and political leaders to repudiate this and all other forms of bigotry being promoted by a vocal minority nationwide – bigotry which can and does lead to violence.”

Shearson noted that another charge was added yesterday to those filed against an armed Indiana man arrested for burning the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo in September.

Also yesterday, New Jersey white supremacists faced hate crime charges for allegedly attacking several men of Egyptian descent in 2011. One of the alleged attackers wrote on a website: “(W)e went to hunt down some sand n**gers, it was me and my other bro on like 6 or eight and we whooped them.”

As an example of recent campaigns to promote anti-Muslim bigotry, CAIR cited efforts of the designated hate group headed by blogger Pamela Geller to place Islamophobic ads in transit systems nationwide.

A scheduled 2011 speech by Dakdok at the same school was cancelled by the Mansfield City School Board after complaints from the NAACP and CAIR, but the decision was challenged by a lawsuit brought on behalf of the Tea Party.

With legal fees mounting, the Mansfield School District recently settled the law suit and granted permission for the hate preacher to speak at the school.

Related articles

• SIOA/SION/AFDI & JihadWatch’s Robert Spencer Exposed: The Facts (loonwatch.com)
• Profits of Hate, Con Men and Women | Who’s Who In The Islamophobia Industry (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Pamela Geller’s New Ad: A Picture of the 9/11 WTC Attack and a Quote From the Quran (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Hate Peddlers Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Link to Neo-Fascist Thugs and Criminals (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Hate Peddlers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencers Euro-Fascist Buddy Stephen Lennon Charged with Mortgage Fraud (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer Raise Funds for EDL Leader’s Legal Defence (barthsnotes.com)

Profits of Hate, Con Men and Women | Who’s Who In The Lucrative Islamophobia Industry

[See download link at end of articles]

Fraudsters: New report highlights how Islamophobes have no expertise in the religion they claim to know

Screenshot of a new Muslim Public Affairs Council report

The overwhelming majority of the people who make up the Islamophobic right in the U.S. have no formal credentials on Islam, a new report from a Muslim-American group says. 24 out of 25 of the figures the group profiles “lack the formal academic qualifications to be classified as an expert on Islam and/or Muslims,” the report reads.

The report, titled “Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s Top 25 Pseudo Experts on Islam,” was released by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Muslim-American advocacy group.

MPAC’s report looks at some of the more prominent figures on the anti-Muslim right, and skewers their claims of expertise on Islam. Daniel Pipes was the only person profiled in the study to have formal, academic qualifications on Islam.

MPAC defines an expert on Islam as “as an individual who has formal academic qualifications in Islamic Studies from either 1) an accredited institution of higher education in the West or 2) an institution of higher education in a Muslim-majority country that rank among the world’s top  500 universities. In order to be classified as [an] expert, as defined above, one’s credentials must also be publicly verifiable.”

The profiles include a look at Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson and more.

Despite their lack of qualifications to be talking about Islam and Muslims, these figures, while representing a fringe, have reach beyond their small community of pseudo-scholars. Their talking points are often blasted to the public by Fox News and some have taught U.S. law enforcement. Spencer’s book, The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, was recommended by the FBI in 2009. Spencer is a leading anti-Muslim activist in the U.S. and a close ally of Geller.

But Spencer has never studied Islam. He holds a master’s degree in religious studies related to early Christianity from the University of North Carolina.

Another lesser-known figure profiled by MPAC is former FBI agent John Guandolo, who taught law enforcement in Tennessee about Islam and terrorism. But Guandolo has “no formal academic credentials in Islamic studies.” He only holds a BA in engineering from the US Naval Academy.

Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s Top 25 Pseudo Experts on Islam

Muslim Public Affairs Council, USA

Executive Summary

Based on the tracking of media coverage on American Muslims, anti-Muslim sentiment seems to be at an all-time high. The negative sentiment appears in many venues, from state legislatures debating anti-Sharia bills to opposition over construction of new Islamic centers. At the same time, media coverage has begun to focus on anti-Muslim activists in the United States and their corrosive effects on American pluralism.

Within a national security and law enforcement context, there is no denying that extremists constituting the leadership of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates explicitly articulate their justifications for violence in “worldly” political terms – including the now-deceased Osama Bin Laden.3 They have also manipulated religious beliefs for their propaganda and terrorism recruitment purposes. This fact makes it important to understand how violent actors like Al-Qaeda and its affiliates manipulate Islam, among other factors, for operational and ideological purposes.

For the benefit of national security and the American public at large, we must ensure that those speaking about terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam are qualified. At a minimum, individuals who speak about Islam and its co-opting by violent actors need to be properly informed (or at least ground themselves in human resources who do have the proper qualifications)

Of course, this is nothing to say of those individuals who also speak about national security related issues yet lack formal and relevant qualifications. An example would be someone such as Zuhdi Jasser, who claims to be an expert on political Islam, yet only has an M.D. and whose primary profession is a physician. (See P. 51 for more information.)

In America’s free society, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution allows everyone the right to freely express their opinions. However it is one thing to give an opinion, it is entirely another – either explicitly or implicitly – to claim that a person is an expert on a particular topic. As the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

There has already been significant and groundbreaking research on the anti-Muslim hate industry by the Center for American Progress as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center, among others. Their research focuses primarily on anti-Muslim hate activists’ sources of funding and their possible connections to other forms of hate. No study that we know of has focused on the qualifications of the so-called “experts” on Islam and Muslim extremists. This study seeks to fill in this research gap by focusing on the academic qualifications of 25 individuals who comprise – some of the most vocal voices and activists in the anti-Muslim circuit. We specifically focus on highly visible personalities who engage in anti-Islam rhetoric and who frequently and inaccurately speak not only about extremist Muslims, or even Muslims  at-large, but who also claim to be knowledgeable about the fundamental beliefs and tenets of the Islamic faith.

The study asks the question: Do these individuals have the formal academic credentials to back their explicit and implicit claims of expertise on Islam?

Within the context of our study, we define an expert on Islam as an individual who has formal academic qualifications in Islamic Studies from either 1) an accredited institution of higher education in the West or 2) an institution of higher education in a Muslim-majority country that rank among the world’s top 500 universities. In order to be classified as expert, as defined above, one’s credentials must also be publicly verifiable.

Our research finds:

•  Of the 25 people examined, only 1 (4%) had the qualifications to be considered an “expert” on Islam.
• Most of these individuals do not have a college degree in Islamic studies. A few, such as Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel, do not have a college degree.
• The individuals in the study fall into three broad categories in terms of the public role they play: 1) “Scholars” 2) “Validators” and 3) “Activists”. Scholars are further classified as “religious interpreters”, “security analysts” and “terrorism talking heads.”
• Several of the “validators” in our study have made unsubstantiated, odd, and inaccurate statements that raise serious questions about their subject matter expertise, and at times, personal authenticity. For example, one of the people examined in our study claimed to be an ex-terrorist, but an investigation by CNN found this to be false.
• These facts have severe negative consequences for our national security:

1. At a pragmatic level, such rhetoric is counterproductive for two reasons. First, it undermines community oriented policing efforts by sowing seeds of distrust between law enforcement practitioners and the American Muslim communities they are sworn to protect, and which have been crucial in keeping the nation safe. Second, anti-Muslim rhetoric plays into the very grievance narratives that terrorist organizations use to radicalize individuals.
2. At a legal level, when conspiratorial rhetoric is employed at training events, the likely outcome is the undermining of the American legal philosophy that the law enforcement community is sworn to uphold, which is based upon the guilt or innocence of an individual actor based upon their individual behavior, as opposed to collective guilt based upon group membership (and not behavior).
3. At a professional level, public servants take pride in subordinating their personal politics to the higher calling of their mission and the values enshrined in the Constitution. Arguments that leverage the freedom of speech in order to undermine freedom of religion, while distasteful, are protected by our nation’s Constitution. However, they have no place in our federal, state, and local government practitioners who serve the public in accordance with the law.

Here is the list of 25 Individuals (and page numbers) covered in the MPAC report are

1. ANDREW G. BOSTOM  21 2. WILLIAM BOYKIN 23 3. STEPHEN COUGHLIN 24 4. NONIE DARWISH 26 5. STEVEN EMERSON 27 6. BRIGITTE GABRIEL 31 7. FRANK GAFFNEY 34 8. DAVID GAUBATZ 36 9. WILLIAM GAWTHROP 38 10. PAMELA GELLER 41 11. JOHN GIDUCK 42 12. SEBESTEYEN (SEBASTIAN) GORKA 43 13. JOHN GUANDOLO 45 14. TAWFIK HAMID 47 15. DAVID HOROWITZ 48 16. RAYMOND IBRAHIM 49 17. ZUHDI JASSER 51 18. ANDREW MCCARTHY 53 19. WALID PHARES 54 20. DANIEL PIPES 56 21. PATRICK POOLE 59 22. WALID SHOEBAT 60 23. ROBERT SPENCER 61 24. ERICK STAKELBACK 63 25. DAVID YERUSHALMI 65

Please click here to download the whole report in PDF format.

Related articles

• Insane Islamophobe Pamela Geller | Petraeus Resignation Is an Obama Plot to Put a Muslim in Charge of the CIA (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Key members of the Congressional ‘Islamophobia caucus’ swept from Congress (mondoweiss.net)
• 3 steps towards ending intolerance towards American Muslims (onefilm911.wordpress.com)
• US media helped anti-Muslim bodies gain influence, distort Islam (wired.co.uk)
• Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s Top 25 Pseudo Experts on Islam (theislamicworkplace.com)
• The Islamophobia Industry (islamphobia.wordpress.com)
• Islamophobia and American dilemma: Erosion of US credibility! (abdulruff.wordpress.com)
• Brigitte Gabriel Was Aligned with an Israeli Proxy Militia Guilty of Heinous War Crimes (loonwatch.com)

Profiteer of Hate and Religious Right Heroine Brigitte Gabriel Linked to Militia Guilty of Heinous War Crimes

Brigitte Gabriel Was Aligned with an Israeli Proxy Militia Guilty of Heinous War Crimes

Posted by Emperor

by Emperor

Brigitte Gabriel, a fanatic anti-Muslim bigot with a long and detailed history of Islamophobia has largely been discredited in the mainstream media. Gone are the days when Gabriel would get air time on Real Time with Bill Maher, feature profile articles in the New York Times, etc.

Gabriel is however still a darling favorite of the Christian Right-Wing and their associates and so her propaganda tactics have not ceased (there’s also the sticky fact that she make$ a lot of money in the hate industry). She gets coverage in the cocooned industry of Right-Wing media as a “terror expert” where the only voices allowed are those who confirm the prejudices she promotes. Just today Gabriel was quoted in another Right-wing media twilight-zone portal “One news Now” in an article titled “More Americans anti-America, Pro-Jihad” where she fear-mongers about the exaggerated threat of “homegrown terrorism” and puts forward another bizarre “Muslim Brotherhood infiltration conspiracy.”

She makes the following contradictory claim,

“‘We’re already seeing a rise of homegrown jihadists in the United States. In the last four years, since President Obama became president, we have arrested on American soil 426 jihadists,’ she reports. ‘[Reports are that] 186 of them were Muslim.’”

426 jihadists, 186 of whom were Muslim? huh? Logic clearly doesn’t prevail in the anti-Muslim propaganda machine.

In a twist to the usual MB infiltration conspiracy theories Gabriel goes onto claim Muslim Brotherhood recruitment centers exist and operate in the inner cities,

“‘One of the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and their operation in the United States is to set up recruitment centers in the inner cities and recruit from the African-American communities and from the Hispanic communities, as well as from the prisons by appealing to them with the Islamic ideology as the ideology that’s going to raise their heads, give them pride,’ Gabriel explains.”

Has anyone seen any of these phantom recruitment centers?

The reality is Gabriel is projecting her own background as an ally and associate of extremism and terror. In a must read report released by MPAC titled “Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s Top 25 Pseudo Experts on Islam” we are provided with the testimony of Andrew Exum who is a former US Army officer and “Lebanese political specialist” on her exploits and involvement with a heinous terrorist Israeli proxy militia in Lebanon,

More disconcerting is the fact that Gabriel has ties to a violent Lebanese militia group that engaged in war crimes and other egregious human rights violations. According to Andrew Exum, a former U.S. Army officer, counter-­‐insurgency expert, and Lebanese political specialist:

‘The Lebanese Civil War was a conflict in which all the armed factions were guilty of some pretty heinous crimes at one point or another during the conflict and that Ms. Gabriel herself worked for and was aligned with an Israeli proxy militia in southern Lebanon that was responsible for some particularly horrific brutality — including widespread and systematic torture at the detention center in Khiam.‘

This is not new information (we’ve covered it before) but it is worth highlighting as it once again sheds light on the hypocritical nature of the Islamophobia Movement and exposes their true propagandistic intentions.

Related articles

• The Islamophobia Industry (islamphobia.wordpress.com)
• Has the Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated the Romney Campaign!? (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Brigitte Gabriel Was Aligned with an Israeli Proxy Militia Guilty of Heinous War Crimes (loonwatch.com)
• Anti-Muslim bigotry is being funded by the Israel-right-or-wrong crowd (mondoweiss.net)

The Kremlins Conspiracy Theorists and Islamic Fundamentalism

The Kremlins Conspiracy Theorists and Islamic Fundamentalism

Islamic Fundamentalists in the Kremlin

By Michael  Bohm

The wave of anger in North Africa and the Middle East  over the anti-Islam video “Innocence of Muslims” underscores several  troubling similarities between anti-Americanism in Russia and the  Muslim world. Injured pride is at the top of the list.

Prominent journalist Maxim Shevchenko has suggested that  the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may have stood  behind the production of “Innocence of Muslims.” Shevchenko, who  made his remarks on Sept. 13 on Ekho Moskvy radio, isn’t alone  in embracing this conspiracy theory, which has been circulated in the  Russian blogosphere. The motive behind provoking the Muslim world with  the video, Shevchenko reasoned, was to boost Obama’s popularity two  months away from the U.S. presidential election by creating  a major crisis, much like the 9/11 attacks initially consolidated  Americans around President George W. Bush and increased his ratings. This,  Shevchenko said, may explain why there was so little security protecting  the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and why  the ambassador and three other Americans ended up dead.

Russians’ fondness for conspiracy theories is exceeded perhaps only  by Muslims’. In Egypt, for example, 75 percent of Muslims  believe U.S. authorities carried out the 9/11 attacks, according to a  2011 Pew poll. In Russia, the figure is 16 percent, according  to a 2008 Levada poll, with 20 percent having difficulty answering.

Yet if there were any government forces that used the anti-Islam video  to provoke a crisis, they were located in North Africa, not  in Washington. This crude, amateurish video had gone unnoticed since June,  when it was first released by U.S.-based producers in English,  and it would have remained unnoticed if Salafi forces in Egypt hadn’t  translated the video into Arabic.

Al-Nas, a Salafist pan-Arab television station based in Cairo,  translated the video several days before the 9/11 anniversary  and distributed it in Egypt and other Muslim countries.  The Arabic version then went viral in days, with 10 million Muslims  watching it, which led to violent protests at U.S. embassies  and consulates in more than a dozen cities around the globe.

The political goal of the Salafist fundamentalists — presumably  with a silent nod, or even the active participation, of Egypt’s  ruling Muslim Brotherhood — was clear: to mobilize angry, poor Muslims  against a time-honored foreign enemy, the United States,  to deflect attention from the region’s domestic problems.

Clearly, flawed U.S. policies in the Middle East, including  the Iraq invasion and decades of support for secular  autocrats, have fueled anti-Americanism in the region. But Husain Haqqani,  formerly Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, believes that  anti-Americanism among Muslims has other important roots as well. In a  Sept. 13 comment in The Wall Street Journal, he wrote: “At the heart  of Muslim street violence is the frustration of the world’s  Muslims over their steady decline for three centuries, a decline that  has coincided with the rise and spread of the West’s military,  economic and intellectual prowess. … The image of an ascendant  West belittling Islam with the view to eliminate it serves as  a convenient explanation for Muslim weakness.”

For Russia watchers, this should sound familiar. This phenomenon also  underlies the anti-­Americanism stoked by the Kremlin.  The only difference is that the Kremlin’s propaganda hasn’t led  to angry mobs storming the U.S. Embassy or consulates. Rather, it is  limited to anti-American comments by the nation’s leaders  and crude propaganda programs on state-run television. The latest  example was “Provocateurs: Part Two,” shown on Rossia 1 last week,  and suggested that the West, along with self-exiled tycoon Boris  Berezovksy, organized Pussy Riot’s purported attempt to undermine  the country’s cultural foundation and values.

In addition, for months the Kremlin has carried out attacks  against U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations, which have been labeled as  fifth columns whose mission is to weaken the state and organize  an Orange-style revolution. The Kremlin’s campaign reached  a climax this month when the Foreign Ministry gave notice to the  U.S. government that the Russia office of USAID, a major sponsor  of Russian NGOs such as Golos, must be closed by Oct. 1 because  of USAID’s “meddling in Russia’s domestic politics.” Notably, Egypt’s  Muslim Brotherhood government has also increased its crackdown on U.S.-funded  NGOs operating in the country, claiming that they, too, carry out subversive  activities.

Like in many Muslim countries, Russia’s state-sponsored anti-U.S.  propaganda helps boost ratings for the country’s leaders and deflect  attention from domestic problems. In both cases, the Kremlin and Islamic  fundamentalists in the Middle East and North Africa use anti-Americanism to  manipulate public opinion among the masses.

The irony, however, is that against the backdrop of the attack  on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi,  Libyans stand in long  lines every day at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to get visas  to study or work in the United States. The lines are much longer  for U.S. visas in Moscow.

There is another similarity between anti-­Americanism in Russia  and the Muslim world: the need for Potemkin victories. Both  Muslims and Russians want to look like they are successful in the  absence of real international victories and development  at home.

Thankfully, Russia’s Potemkin victories against the United States are  not violent like in North Africa and the Middle East. But they do take  the form of playing the spoiler role on the United Nations  Security Council — Syria being the latest example — largely to spite  the United States and to force Washington to acknowledge that key  international issues cannot be solved without Moscow.

The Muslim world’s steady 300-year decline has arguably played  an important role in shaping its worldview and, specifically,  anti-Americanism. Of course, Russia’s decline from its superpower  status is more recent and less severe but hardly less painful.

Still, Russia should take a lesson from Britain on how  to recover gracefully from lost-superpower status. Much of Russia  is, indeed, stuck in the nostalgia of the past — in an  overglorified version of Soviet power and influence. The past is  a bad place to be. There is no future in it.

 

Related articles

• In Politicizing Benghazi Attack, Republicans Ignore Their Own Terrible Security Record – 9/11 Happened on Their Watch, As Did Seven Attacks on U.S. Diplomatic Sites Overseas (pensitoreview.com)

Insane Allen West and Key Wingnuts of The Congressional ‘Islamophobia Caucus’ Swept From Power

Key members of the Congressional ‘Islamophobia caucus’ swept from Congress

Via:- Alex Kane

Former Florida House Republican Allen West poses with corrupt anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller (Phota via DownWithTyranny.blogspot.com)

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/category/pamela-geller-corruption-money/

Key members of what has been termed Congress’ “Islamophobia caucus” went down in their re-election fights last night, dealing a blow to anti-Muslim activists’ efforts to influence policy and the national discourse. National Muslim organizations celebrated their victories today.

Allen West (R-FL), Joe Walsh (R-IL) and Adam Hasner (R-FL) were three Republicans that had used anti-Muslim rhetoric throughout their elected careers. But now they’re out of a job (though Hasner was running for a Congressional seat he did not hold).

“Folks in their districts wanted to send a message: we will not allow divisive politics, we will not allow extremism to run our political conversation,” said Haris Tarin, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Washington, D.C. office. “It also tells people that trying to divide Americans, by using anti-Muslim rhetoric, will not work in the long run.”

West, a former U.S. Army colonel, went down in Florida’s 18th Congressional district after Patrick Murphy squeaked by in a slim victory. West’s political career from the outset was marred by controversy; he is alleged to have threatened an Iraqi prisoner with death during an interrogation and to have fired shots near the prisoner–something that Murphy attacked him for in the campaign.

The Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib has more background on West’s Islamophobia:

In the House, West earned a reputation as a ferocious right-wing attack dog. The unfounded accusations that dozens of Communists populate the Congress’s Democratic caucus were nothing new, but his most novel legacy may be West’s inflammatory rhetoric about Muslims. Along with Reps. Steve King (R-IA) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN), West used his time in Congress to press his case that Islam is “not a religion” but a “totalitarian theocratic political ideology,” and that terrorism is inherent to the faith—not radical Islam, but Islam, writ large. He’s accused a fellow Member of Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, of “represent(ing) the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established.”

If all that wasn’t bad enough, West has shared a stage with America’s foremost anti-Muslim activist, Pamela Geller (who was recently in the news again). When he was called out for his ties to bigots like Geller and asked to respect Muslims’ right to worship freely, his one-word response made an apparent comparison between the request and Nazi overtures for an American surrender in World War II.

Illinois’ Walsh lost his Congressional seat to Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth. “With 93 percent of the unofficial vote counted, Duckworth had 55 percent, with 45 percent for Walsh,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Walsh, in addition to his far-right advocacy on the Israel/Palestine conflict, has also spewed anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In August, Walsh warned that radical Islamists were “trying to kill Americans every week” and that the next 9/11 was inevitable. Walsh also claimed that radical Islam “was here” in the Chicago suburbs. Shortly after Walsh’s remarks made waves, two Chicago-area Muslim centers were violently attacked.

Hasner was a former Florida state representative until 2010, and decided to run for a Florida House seat in 2012. But he lost to Lois Frankel last night. He was an up and coming Jewish Republican who is really cozy with Pamela Geller, the nation’s leading and most virulent anti-Muslim activist. Hasner also was a leader in ginning up fear over the non-existent threat of Sharia law coming to the U.S, and once invited notorious anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders to a “free speech” conference.

“These encouraging results clearly show that mainstream Americans reject anti-Muslim bigotry by candidates for public office and will demonstrate that rejection at the polls,” Nihad Awad, executive director for the Council on American Islamic Relations, said in a statement. “This election witnessed an increased political awareness and mobilization effort among American Muslims that dealt a major blow to the Islamophobia machine.”

And while Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the undisputed leader of Islamophobia in U.S. government, ultimately won her race last night, it was extremely close. Despite spending 10 times the amount her opponent Jim Graves did, Bachmann only won by a few thousand votes. Bachmann is the woman who claimed, with no evidence, that there was Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. MPAC’s Tarin said that the message voters in Bachmann’s district sent was, “if you continue to use this anti-Muslim rhetoric as your main platform issue, to divide Americans, it’s not going to work.”

In a press release, CAIR also noted some other races where anti-Muslim politicians went down: “In Arkansas, Rep. James McLean defeated Republican Charlie Fuqua, a candidate who advocated the deportation of all Muslims in a self-published book. In Minnesota, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) lost his seat. Cravaack was a key supporter’s of Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) series of anti-Muslim hearings.”

Related articles

• 3 NY Jewish groups condemn Pam Geller’s ‘savages’ ad in subways (mondoweiss.net)
• Pamela Geller’s 9/11 gathering features speaker calling for Islam to be ‘wiped out’ (mondoweiss.net)
• The 10 most Islamophobic moments in the 2012 elections (salon.com)
• Has the Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated the Romney Campaign!? (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Rabbis Against Jewish Fascist Harpy and Hatemoger Pamela Geller (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Majority of Americans Reject Hatemonger Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Incitement to Hate (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• American Muslims celebrate defeat of congressional critics – Articles (religionnews.com)
• Islamophobes Lose Out in Congressional Races (desertpeace.wordpress.com)
• Key members of the Congressional ‘Islamophobia caucus’ swept from Congress (mondoweiss.net)
• Caught on Camera | Mitt Romney Coddles Islamophobic Bigots and Neo-Fascist Extremists (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)

Caught on Camera | Mitt Romney Coddles Islamophobic Bigots and Neo-Fascist Extremists

Mitt Romney, Pamela Geller, EDL’s Tommy Robinson, Robert Spencer and John Bolton

A photo montage

• Exhibit A: Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney with hate group leader Pamela Geller

Mitt Romney and Pamela Geller

About Pamela Geller:

Pamela Geller is the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead. She’s relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims, such as that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X. She makes no pretense of being learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to her Stop Islamization of America partner Robert Spencer. Geller has mingled comfortably with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists, defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps. She has taken a strong pro-Israel stance to the point of being sharply critical of Jewish liberals.

Continues.

• Exhibit B: EDL’s Tommy Robinson, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller

Tommy Robinson, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller

About Tommy Robinson:

Geller invited the notorious British anti-Muslim group English Defence League (EDL) to her September 2010 anti-mosque rally in New York. The previous May, a report by the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the EDL as thugs who hold anti-Muslim protests intended to provoke violence. Because of its racism and history, the EDL’s leader, Tommy Robinson, was denied entry at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and sent back to England.

About Robert Spencer:

Proving yet again that nothing is beneath him, anti-Muslim propagandist Robert Spencer has put himself firmly in the camp of open white nationalists with an article published yesterday in Crisis magazine, a conservative Catholic publication. Replete with fawning references to the superior accomplishments of Western culture and the Catholic Church, the piece, titled ‘Is Multiculturalism Evil?,’ proposes that Western civilization is superior to all others and that multiculturalists (aligned with ‘Islamic supremacists’) are colluding to bring it to its knees.

• Exhibit C: Mitt Romney Campaign Senior Foreign Policy Adviser John Bolton and Pamela Geller

Romney foreign policy adviser with hate group leader Pamela Geller in numerous meetings.

About John Bolton:

John Robert Bolton (born November 20, 1948) is an American lawyer and diplomat who has served in several Republican administrations. Appointed on a recess appointment, he served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 until December 2006. He resigned in December 2006, when the recess appointment would have otherwise ended, because he was unlikely to win senate confirmation.

John Bolton and Mitt Romney

Bolton is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), frequent op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, Fox News Channel commentator, foreign policy adviser to 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and of counsel to the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, in their Washington D.C. office…

The reader should be reminded of the connection between Anders Breivik and Pamela Geller. There is also a connection between Anders Brevik and Robert Spencer. Tommy Robinson’s hooliganism and right-wing extremism is notorious and too extensive to cover here. You can however find many articles covering his organization, the English Defence League, which has been covered extensively at LGF including his connection to Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.

There is no vast conspiracy at play here. However, it should be disturbing enough that the senior foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney, John Bolton, has the ear of anti-Islam extremist, Pamela Geller. Her connection with the EDL makes this plainly obvious. This my friends is the post-modern conservative movement, where we find odious characters in the Republican big tent whose lives are intertwined; in this case from Mitt Romney to Pamela Geller; Tommy Robinson (EDL), Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller; and most importantly, the close relationship of John Bolton and Pamela Geller.

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• Aaron Labaree: Counter-Jihad Takes to the “Information Battle-space” (guernicamag.com)
• World NUT Daily Promotes Debunked Crackpot “Obama Wears Muslim Ring” Conspiracy (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Pamela Geller’s 9/11 gathering features speaker calling for Islam to be ‘wiped out’ (mondoweiss.net)
• Majority of Americans Reject Hatemonger Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Incitement to Hate (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• British Fascism | EDL Riddled With “Nazis Within” (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Coptic Christian leader of organization that produced anti-Muslim film spoke at Pamela Geller’s anti-mosque rally (mondoweiss.net)
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World NUT Daily Promotes Debunked Crackpot “Obama Wears Muslim Ring” Conspiracy

WND Still Promoting Debunked “Obama Wears Muslim Ring” Conspiracy

via Richard Bartholomew

Claim endorsed by William Murray, Mark Gabriel, and Pamela Geller

Last week, WND‘s Jerome Corsi put forward the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama wears a ring engraved in Arabic with the words “In the Name of Allah”, the firth part of the Muslim declaration of faith or Shahada. The theory relied on an image blown up to such an extent that it was seriously blurred, although Snopes has since published a large and very clear photo which should have put the whole non-story to bed. Snopes judges the story to be “probably false” rather than just “false”, but it is obvious that the supposed Arabic inscription is simply a loop pattern. It’s not in the least amenable to any other interpretation.

However, although that should have been the end of the matter, WND and Corsi have ploughed on regardless with follow-up articles, and the story remains a banner headline on the WND homepage. They have even managed to prompt a short piece in a Turkish newspaper.

Corsi writes:

Joel Gilbert, who was first to conclude that the ring bears the Shahada, has issued a detailed analysis he prepared with the assistance of Yousef Shehadeh, a native Arabic speaker from Nazareth who studied Arabic for 13 years in the Holy Land and now works as a graphic artist in Los Angeles.

Gilbert, who has studied Arabic himself, told WND he sent close-up photographs of the ring to Shehadeh “cold,” without offering any opinion, and asked Shehadeh to evaluate them.

Shehadeh replied to him that the script on Obama’s ring is Arabic, and it is the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith.

You’ll note that that link is dead; Gilbert appears to have lost confidence in his “detailed analysis”, and he’s also taken down a YouTube video on the subject. Gilbert featured on this blog a couple of weeks ago; he heads a Bob Dylan tribute band, and he recently produced a documentary claiming that Frank Marshall Davis was Obama’s father and that Ann Dunham had appeared in pornographic magazines. Gilbert also describes himself as an “Islamic history scholar”, although he appears to be basing this claim on his undergraduate studies in the 1980s.

A couple of individuals who have set themselves up as experts on the dangers of Islam staked their credibility on agreeing with Gilbert’s claim:

Staffers in Jordan with William J. Murray’s Religious Freedom Coalition also believe the ring, which Obama wore on his wedding-ring finger for at least a decade before he married Michelle Robinson, pays homage to Allah.

The Amman staffers said they have seen other rings like it.

Egyptian-born Islamic scholar Mark A. Gabriel, Ph,D., as well as a native-Arabic speaker employed by WND who has provided translations of critical Arabic statements, believe the ring is Islamic. A Duke professor interviewed by Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze.com news service also confirmed their conclusion.

Given that Obama’s ring comes from Indonesia, it’s not clear why Murray’s “Amman staffers” would see a special resemblance to rings in Jordan.

The “Duke professor” wisely kept his name “off the record”. William Murray has also featured on this blog previously: last year, he took part in the “Constitution or Sharia” conference in Nashville, at which speakers included the likes of Christian Concern’s Paul Diamond. Gabriel, meanwhile, is Founder and President” of the Union of Former Muslims, and the author of Culture Clash: Islam’s War on America.

Also more or less on board was Andrew Bostom, who declared that Corsi’s and Gabriel’s evidence “appear to be” sound, as was Pamela Geller:

She said Obama’s “anti-freedom, pro-jihad foreign policy has given the global jihad a new lease on death, and clearly he is happy about that, as this ring indicates.”

Robert Spencer, meanwhile, was slightly more cautious:

[Spencer] said that should the ring on Obama’s finger prove to include an inscription of an Islamic prayer, it could explain his foreign policy attitudes and actions regarding freedom in the Middle East.

Other sites, meanwhile, have suggested that the ring shows that Obama is “married to Allah”. This is not a concept that is found in normative Islam.

Oddly, one person who was unimpressed was Glenn Beck’s End-Times prophet Joel Richardson:

Joel Richardson… said he was skeptical that there was an Arabic script on the ring, which he has not examined personally.

What a shame that Richardson wasn’t similarly sceptical when his associate Walid Shoebat  claimed that the Arabic contours of “In the Name of Allah” are present in the Biblical Greek for “666″. Arabic letters seem to be particularly amendable to this kind of “reading in”: some Muslims themselves have sometimes claimed to have found the words “In the Name of Allah” present in natural phenomena.

Snopes also raises the point that

One might also consider the incongruity that a politician who has long been dealing with (and denying) rumors that he is a Muslim would openly wear a symbol demonstrating those rumors to be true.

Actually, I doubt very much that Obama himself spends time “dealing with” such a rumour, but there’s an implied further element in the conspiracy: perhaps Obama is secretly signalling his Muslim allegiance to other Muslims, who are collectively keeping it to themselves. Hence we recently saw discredited fake “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem explain to Frank Gaffney that when Obama recites the pledge of allegiance  he holds his hand in a special way that shows he is really performing an Islamic prayer. In 2009, WND‘s Joseph Farah claimed that Obama had made a speech “in code” to the Muslim world in which he conveyed a promise to revive and continue Hitler’s Holocaust (no, really).

UPDATE: I wasn’t aware of just how deeply Geller invested in this. On Wednesday 10 October, she wrote:

I’d like to see one member of the press corps ask Obama about this. It certainly jives with Obama’s islamophilia and his pro-sharia foreign policies, and with his extensive Muslim background, as detailed in my book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.

The implications of Obama’s ring aside, the level of his dishonesy is breathtaking. Jerome Corsi over at WND has this blockbuster story.

That entry in her Atlas Shrugs blog has now been deleted – and, as expected, she has felt no need to offer her audience either an apology or an explanation. Robert Spencer behaves in the same way (see here and here for two examples). I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: any blogger dealing in current affairs is likely to make a mistake from time to time; but what separates a serious person from a charlatan or demagogue is how one attempts to put a mistake right (H/T The American Muslim).

Related articles

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• If anti-Muslim ads are protected, so must be my free speech right to protest | Mona Eltahawy (guardian.co.uk)
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Majority of Americans Reject Hatemonger Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Incitement to Hate

America’s anti-Muslim ads backfire

---

NEW YORK // Anti-Muslim posters that have gone up in subway stations in New York and Washington, DC, have drawn muted reactions from Muslims, but Christian and Jewish organisations have countered with ad campaigns of their own.

And a United States congressman even called for a boycott of the capital’s metro system. “The right to free speech is a right I will defend to my grave,” Mike Honda, a Democrat from California, said last week.

“The right to not support hate speech is also a right, which is why I encourage people to boycott, if possible, [the subways] until the ad buys are finished.”

Mr Honda, who was interned with his family in a US camp for people of Japanese descent during the second World War, added that, “We learn from history that hate speech and hysteria have dire consequences, the result of societal complacency, failed political leadership, and the lack of courage to stand up and speak out against hate.”

The advertisements, paid for by the American Freedom Defence Initiative (AFDI), a right-wing, self-described anti-jihad organisation that has been labelled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, read: “In any war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

Authorities in both cities initially blocked the advertisements from running: in New York, on the grounds that they contained demeaning language, and in Washington because officials said federal agencies had warned them about terrorism threats. They also cited passenger safety if any fights broke out on subway platforms because of the posters.

The AFDI filed suits against the New York transport authority’s decision in July and in Washington in September, and federal judges in both cases ruled that the advertisements were protected by free speech laws and ordered that they be allowed to run. They were posted at 10 subway stations in New York at the end of September and at four metro stations in Washington on October 8.

Muslim groups and activists did not organise protests but instead responded to the AFDI’s campaign with ironic jokes on Twitter, using the hashtag “mysubwayad”.

“What’s been rewarding about this experience is seeing our interfaith partners and New Yorkers of all stripes rejecting these ads,” said Cyrus McGoldrick, a spokesman with the Council on American-Islamic Relations pressure group, after the court ruling in New York.

Christian groups and an alliance of Jewish rabbis have both taken out advertisements of their own in reaction to the AFDI campaign.

One of the Christian groups, United Methodist Women, placed ads in the same subway stations as the ads, sometimes next to them. They read: “Hate speech is not civilised. Support peace in word and deed.” And, in a nod to the Muslim activists’ Twitter response, ends with “#mysubwayad“.

Rabbis for Human Rights – North America posted their own adverts: “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbours.”

“[Pamela] Geller thinks she is speaking for the entire Jewish community,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, told The New York Times, referring to the co-founder of the AFDI.

“We are a group of 1,800 rabbis and we want everyone to know that we have to work in partnership with the Muslim community and do not believe in dehumanising them.”

Activists not associated with any religious group have also defaced the advertisements.

The Washington Examiner reported that a school teacher covered one of them with notes that read: “If you see something hateful say something peaceful.” A spokesman for New York’s transportation authority told the Times that the advertisements had been defaced at least 15 times.

Mr McGoldrick said that when the AFDI ran a similar campaign in August on trains in suburban New York state that read, in part, “It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism”, commuters tore down many of them.

“Most of the anger wasn’t from the Muslim community,” he said. “It was a very interesting response.”

Related articles

• Anti-Muslim ‘Savages’ Ads Invade DC’s Metro (thinkprogress.org)
• If anti-Muslim ads are protected, so must be my free speech right to protest | Mona Eltahawy (guardian.co.uk)
• Civil rights group condemn anti-Muslim New York subway ads (guardian.co.uk)
• New Yorkers Plaster ‘Racist’ Stickers Over Islamophobic Subway Ads (thinkprogress.org)
• ‘Inflammatory’ support Israel’ adverts up on New York subway (thejc.com)
• Methodist Group Fights Back Against Anti-Muslim Ads (thinkprogress.org)
• Pro-Muslim Ads Begin Appearing In NYC Subway (transportationnation.org)
• Jewish groups join coalition against anti-Muslim subway ads in D.C. (jta.org)
• New Subway Ad Calls For End To Bigotry Against Muslims (manhattan.ny1.com)

The Dumbest Politician On Earth | Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Claimed Blasphemy is a Crime Against Humanity

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan: Blasphemy is a Crime Against Humanity

_{Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 2011
Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty}

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan thinks that blasphemy should be banned as a crime against humanity. And when he says “blasphemy” he seems to have in mind specifically “whatever offends Muslims.” So basically, absolutely anything can be banned so long as it offends enough Muslims who complain loudly enough.

What Prime Minister Erdogan wants to do is make certain thoughts and beliefs crimes. The only reason he has for this is the fact that certain thoughts and beliefs are offensive to some Muslims. Is that a reasonable foundation to make something a crime, though? Not in any civilized society. So why is Erdogan trying to make Turkey less civilized?

If Muslims have the power to ban some thought or word or belief by claiming offense, can I have that right too? Can I claim that their protests offend me and then have those protests banned? Can I claim that their Qur’an offends me and so have it banned? If not, then this isn’t really about protecting people’s freedom of belief; instead, it’s about protecting religion from being criticized or challenged.

“I am the prime minister of a nation, of which most are Muslims and that has declared anti-semitism a crime against humanity. But the West hasn’t recognized Islamophobia as a crime against humanity — it has encouraged it. [The film director] is saying he did this to provoke the fundamentalists among Muslims. When it is in the form of a provocation, there should be international legal regulations against attacks on what people deem sacred, on religion. As much as it is possible to adopt international regulations, it should be possible to do something in terms of domestic law.”

He further noted, “Freedom of thought and belief ends where the freedom of thought and belief of others start. You can say anything about your thoughts and beliefs, but you will have to stop when you are at the border of others’ freedoms. I was able to include Islamophobia as a hate crime in the final statement of an international meeting in Warsaw.”

Source: Today’s Zaman

Erdogan’s comments here are ambiguous – almost to the point of being incoherent, which may be the point. After all, the less clear you are the harder it is for critics to pin you down on what you are saying. This is important when you’re talking about criminalizing belief and thought.

When he says “You can say anything about your thoughts and beliefs, but you will have to stop when you are at the border of others’ freedoms,” does he mean that you cannot say anything about others’ beliefs, or merely that you cannot say anything critical or negative about others’ beliefs?

His statement “Freedom of thought and belief ends where the freedom of thought and belief of others start” is clearly a reference to the idea that “your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose starts,” but the analogy is strained to say the least. You swinging your fist causes demonstrable harm once it reaches my nose, but what demonstrable harm is created by a belief or a thought?

Of course apologists for censorship and oppression like Erdogan will never even try to demonstrate that thoughts or beliefs cause real harm. Since the goal is simply to protect Islam from critique, all they need to do is show that someone, somewhere is offended. That’s certainly easy enough to do.

What’s significant, though, is the fact that Erdogan thinks that Islam in particular or even religion generally need to be protected at all. It’s significant that he wants to make blasphemy a crime which implies that he thinks his god needs to be protected. This all means that he and like-minded believers all regard their religions as weak and impotent. That’s why the need the police powers of the state for protection.

Via:- Austin Cline

Related articles

• HumanistLife : Calls for international ‘blasphemy’ law must be resisted (humanistlife.org.uk)
• Turkish party ‘model for Muslims’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Be wary of playing Turkey’s great game (telegraph.co.uk)
• Erdogan: Islamophobia should be recognized as crime (worldbulletin.net)

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia Sues Over Innocence of Muslims Schlock

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia sues over Innocence of Muslims

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has gone into hiding since his name was linked with the film

Anti-Islam film protests

A US actress who appeared in an amateur anti-Islam video that sparked protests across the Muslim world is suing the film’s suspected director.

Cindy Lee Garcia accused Nakoula Basseley Nakoula of duping her into a “hateful” film that she was led to believe was a desert adventure movie.

She is also asking a judge to order YouTube to remove the film.

A clip dubbed into Arabic provoked widespread anger for its mocking portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

The film, Innocence of Muslims, which was made in the United States, has sparked protests across the Middle East, North Africa and as far away as Sri Lanka, with some demonstrations turning into destructive and violent riots.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stephens, were killed during an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

According to Ms Garcia, the script she received had made no mention of the Prophet Muhammad or made references to religion.

She claims she has received death threats since the video was posted to YouTube, and says her association with the film has harmed her reputation.

In a court filing lodged with Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, Ms Garcia alleged fraud, slander and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Dialogue dismay

Lawyers for Ms Garcia contend that changes in dialogue during post-production casts her in a false light.

Protests are continuing in the Muslim world, including in Pakistan

“[Garcia] had a legally protected interest in her privacy and the right to be free from having hateful words put in her mouth or being depicted as a bigot,” the lawsuit says.

“There was no mention of ‘Mohammed’ during filming or on set. There were no references made to religion nor was there any sexual content of which Ms Garcia was aware,” it adds.

Mr Nakoula denies being “Sam Bacile”, a pseudonym used by the person who posted the video online.

He has gone into hiding after telling US media he was the manager of a company that helped produce the film, but US officials believe him to be the director.

Mr Nakoula was convicted of fraud in 2010 and ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was released in June 2011 with the provision that he did not access the internet or use any aliases without permission.

Authorities questioned him last week over whether he had violated any of those conditions.

YouTube has so far refused Ms Garcia’s requests to remove the film, according to the lawsuit, although it has blocked it in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt.

“This lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment nor on the right of Americans to say what they think, but does request that the offending content be removed from the Internet,” the complaint states.

Google, which owns YouTube, has blocked the film in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt.

A spokesman for YouTube said they were reviewing the complaint and would be in court on Thursday.

Related articles

• Actress sues over anti-Islam film (bbc.co.uk)
• Actress in anti-Muslim film to ask for injunction (news.yahoo.com)
• Actress in Anti-Muslim Film Sues (abcnews.go.com)
• Actress wants judge to block anti-Muslim film clip (miamiherald.com)
• Actress wants judge to block anti-Muslim film clip (hosted.ap.org)

Catholic and Jewish Right Wing Extemists Behind anti-Muslim Schlock

Inside the strange Hollywood scam that spread chaos across the Middle East

A group of rightwing extremists aimed to destabilize post-Mubarak Egypt and roil US politicians. They got their wish

Via:- Max Blumenthal

Palestinians protest against The Innocence of Muslims. Officials confirmed ‘Sam Bacile’ was an alias used by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Photograph: EPA

Did an inflammatory anti-Muslim film trailer that appeared spontaneously on YouTube prompt the attack that left four US diplomats dead, including US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens? American officials have suggested that the assault was pre-planned, allegedly by of one of the Jihadist groups that emerged since the Nato-led overthrow of Libya’s Gaddafi regime. So even though the deadly scene in Benghazi may not have resulted directly from the angry reaction to the Islamophobic video, the violence has helped realize the apocalyptic visions of the film’s backers.

Produced and promoted by a strange collection of rightwing Christian evangelicals and exiled Egyptian Copts, the trailer was created with the intention of both destabilizing post-Mubarak Egypt and roiling the US presidential election. As a consultant for the film named Steve Klein said: “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen.”

The Associated Press’s initial report on the trailer – an amateurish, practically unwatchable production called The Innocence of Muslims – identified a mysterious character, “Sam Bacile”, as its producer. Bacile told the Associated Press that he was a Jewish Israeli real estate developer living in California. He said that he raised $5m for the production of the film from “100 Jewish donors”, an unusual claim echoing Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style fantasies. Unfortunately, the extensive history of Israeli and ultra-Zionist funding and promotion of Islamophobic propaganda in the United States provided Bacile’s remarkable statement with the ring of truth.

Who was Bacile? The Israeli government could not confirm his citizenship, and for a full day, no journalist was able to determine whether he existed or not. After being duped by Bacile, AP traced his address to the home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a militant Coptic separatist and felon convicted of check fraud. On September 13, US law enforcement officials confirmed that “Sam Bacile” was an alias Nakoula used to advance his various scams, which apparently included the production of The Innocence of Muslims.

According to an actor in the film, the all-volunteer cast was deceived into believing they were acting in a benign biblical epic about “how things were 2,000 years ago”. The script was titled Desert Warrior, and its contents made no mention of Muhammad – his name was dubbed into the film during post-production. On the set, a gray-haired Egyptian man who identified himself only as “Sam” (Nakoula) chatted aimlessly in Arabic with a group of friends while posing as the director. A casting notice for Desert Warrior listed the film’s real director as “Alan Roberts”. This could likewise be a pseudonym, although there is a veteran Hollywood hand responsible for such masterpieces as The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood and The Sexpert who goes by the same name.

Before Nakoula was unmasked, the only person to publicly claim any role in the film was Klein, an insurance salesman and Vietnam veteran from Hemet, California, who emerged from the same Islamophobic movement that produced the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Styling themselves as “counter-Jihadists”, anti-Muslim crusaders like Klein took their cues from top propagandists like Pamela Geller, the blogger who once suggested that Barack Obama was the lovechild of Malcolm X, and Robert Spencer, a pseudo-academic expert on Muslim radicalization who claimed that Islam was no more than “a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers”. Both Geller and Spencer were labeled hate group leaders by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Klein is an enthusiastic commenter on Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugged, where he recently complained about Mitt Romney’s “support for a Muslim state in Israel’s heartland”. In July 2011, Spencer’s website, Jihad Watch, promoted a rally Klein organized to demand the firing of Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca, whom he painted as a dupe for the Muslim Brotherhood.

On his personal Facebook page, Altar or Abolish, Klein obsesses over the Muslim Brotherhood, describing the organization as “a global network of Muslims attacking to convert the world’s 6 billion people to Islam or kill them”. Klein urges a violent response to the perceived threat of Islam in the United States, posting an image to his website depicting a middle-American family with a mock tank turret strapped to the roof of their car. “Can you direct us to the nearest mosque?” read a caption Klein added to the photo.

In 2011, during his campaign to oust Sheriff Baca, Klein forged an alliance with Joseph Nasrallah, an extremist Coptic broadcaster who shared his fear and resentment of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nasrallah appeared from out of nowhere at a boisterous rally against the construction of an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2010, warning a few hundred riled-up Tea Party types that Muslims “came and conquered our country the same way they want to conquer America”.

Organized by Geller and Spencer, the rally was carefully timed to coincide with the peak of the midterm congressional election campaign, in which many rightwing Republicans hoped to leverage rising anti-Muslim sentiment into resentment against the presidency of Obama.

Through his friendship with Nasrallah, Klein encountered another radical Coptic separatist named Morris Sadek. Sadek has been banned from returning to his Egypt, where he is widely hated for his outrageous anti-Muslim displays. On the day of the Ground Zero rally, for instance, Sadek was seen parading around the streets of Washington, DC, on September 11, 2010, with a crucifix in one hand and a Bible implanted with the American flag in the other. “Islam is evil!” he shouted. “Islam is a cult religion!”

With another US election approaching, and the Egyptian government suddenly under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, Klein and Sadek joined Nakoula in preparing what would be their greatest propaganda stunt to date: the Innocence of Muslims. As soon as the film appeared on YouTube, Sadek promoted it on his website, transforming the obscure clip into a viral source of outrage in the Middle East. And like clockwork, on September 11, crowds of Muslim protesters stormed the walls of the US embassy in Cairo, demanding retribution for the insult to the prophet Muhammad. The demonstrations ricocheted into Libya, where the deadly attack that may have been only peripherally related to the film occurred.

For Sadek, the chaos was an encouraging development. He and his allies had been steadfastly opposed to the Egyptian revolution, fearing that it would usher in the Muslim Brotherhood as the country’s new leaders. Now that their worst fears were realized, Coptic extremists and other pro-Mubarak dead-enders were resorting to subterfuge to undermine the ruling party, while pointing to the destabilizing impact of their efforts as proof of the government’s bankruptcy. As Sadek said, “the violence that [the film] caused in Egypt is further evidence of how violent the religion and people”.

For far-right Christian right activists like Klein, the attacks on American interests abroad seemed likely to advance their ambitions back in the US. With Americans confronted with shocking images of violent Muslims in Egypt and Libya on the evening news, their already negative attitudes toward their Muslim neighbors were likely to harden. In turn, the presidential candidates, Obama and Romney, would be forced to compete for who could take the hardest line against Islamic “terror”.

A patrician moderate constantly on the defensive against his own right flank, Romney fell for the bait, baselessly accusing Obama of “sympathiz[ing] with those who waged the attacks” and of issuing “an apology for America’s values”. The clumsy broadside backfired in dramatic fashion, opening Romney to strident criticism from across the spectrum, including from embarrassed Republican members of Congress. Obama wasted no time in authorizing a round of drone strikes on targets across Libya, which are likely to deepen regional hostility to the US.

A group of fringe extremists had proven that with a little bit of money and an unbelievably cynical scam, they could shape history to fit their apocalyptic vision. But in the end, they were not immune to the violence they incited.

According to Copts Today, an Arabic news outlet focusing on Coptic affairs, Sadek was seen taking a leisurely stroll down Washington’s M Street on September 11, soaking in the sun on a perfect autumn day. All of a sudden, he found himself surrounded by four angry Coptic women. Berating Sadek for fueling the flames of sectarian violence, the women took off their heels and began beating him over the head.

“If anything happens to a Christian in Egypt,” one of them shouted at him, “you’ll be the reason!”

Related articles

• ‘Sam Bacile, Israeli Jew,’ May Actually Be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Coptic Christian (theatlantic.com)
• Coptic Christian leader of organization that produced anti-Muslim film spoke at Pamela Geller’s anti-mosque rally (mondoweiss.net)
• Inside the strange Hollywood scam that spread chaos across the Middle East | Max Blumenthal (guardian.co.uk)
• Inside the Islamophobic-Religious Right Alliance Whose Film Sparked a Crisis in the Middle East (alternet.org)
• Actor: Anti-Islam filmmaker ‘was playing us along’ (cnn.com)

Should Atheists Ignore Islamophobia?

• Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril
• By Chris Stedman

• 
• Chris Stedman is the Assistant Humanist Chaplain and Values in Action Coordinator for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His memoir, Faitheist, about his experiences as a former evangelical Christian, a queer person, and an atheist, is due out in 2012 from Beacon Press.
• When I first heard that a white supremacist opened fire on a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin a few weeks ago, I froze. My stomach lurched and my thoughts turned to the friends I’d made in the Sikh community through my work as an atheist and interfaith activist.

  In the wake of the horror I reached out to friends directly and logged on to Twitter to express my shock, outrage, disgust, and sadness—as a Millennial, I suppose you could say this is one way I engage in the collective processing of such traumas. Within minutes of my first tweet, I began to get responses from other atheists saying that interfaith work is bad, that I should be more concerned about atheists than Sikhs, and that “religion poisons everything.” The next day, I was called “a traitor” when I tweeted about efforts to raise funds to rebuild a mosque in Joplin, Missouri that was burned to the ground. When I tweeted about reaching out to the Sikh community and expressing solidarity, I was accused of trying to make atheism a religion.

  And I wasn’t alone in facing such criticism. When skeptic blogger Kylie Sturgess wrote a post about the Joplin mosque she was called “a terrorist” by a commenter.

  Of course, it’s hardly reasonable to be concerned solely on the basis of comments made by Internet “trolls.” Unfortunately, there are worrying indicators that public figures in the atheist movement are perpetuating and enabling a hostile stance toward Muslims—in many cases, above and beyond the criticisms they direct at other religious communities. One of the most widely-known atheists in the world, Bill Maher, for example, is alarmed by the number of babies being named Mohammed in the U.K., and said the following of Muslims and Islam: “What it comes down to is that there is one religion in the world that kills you when you disagree with them. They say, ‘Look, we’re a religion of peace and if you disagree we’ll cut your fucking head off.”

  In December of last year, the president of American Atheists posted a status update to his public Facebook profile that read: “Never give up a right without a fight. I will defame Islam if I want to. It doesn’t mean I hate Muslims. It means Islam is a shitty religion that worships a pedophile as morally perfect.” When I expressed my concern about those comments, atheist blogger JT Eberhard wrote the following:

  Islam is a shitty religion (more shitty than most, and try me if you don’t think we can defend that statement) and Muhammad was a pedophile, which has resulted in several Muslims continuing the practice. If Chris doesn’t like the word “shitty”, I wonder what adjective he would suggest. Horrible? Morally repugnant? Should we greet the anti-science, morally fucked up religion of Islam with an, “Oh shucks, that is pretty anti-humanity and doesn’t make much sense now does it?” How softly would be enough to get Stedman to relinquish his iron-clad grip on his pearls? Frankly, to call Islam shitty is like calling the surface of the sun warm.

  Later in the post he claimed to just be “factually criticizing” Islam and Muslims, but even if that were his aim, several of the claims he put forth about Islam and Muslims were not only false, but were framed in a way that is likely to inflame anti-Muslim sentiment. Another example is Ernest Perce V, the Pennsylvania State Director for American Atheists, notorious for a lawsuit resulting from his depiction of “zombie Muhammad” (the judge, who called Perce “a doofus” and ruled against him, was forced to relocate shortly after the ruling due to safety concerns over threats made against him). Perce has also made several statements that have inflamed anti-Muslim attitudes in Pennsylvania—his latest being that he plans to publicly flog a Koran on the Pennsylvania state capitol steps next month in protest of a state resolution to name 2012 the “Year of Religious Diversity.”

  There is No Such Thing as Islamophobia

  While these issues have been the subject of debate in segments of the atheist movement for some time, events this month have got me thinking about a new aspect of this issue: the problem of silence. As the Sikh community reeled from the tragedy in Oak Creek and prominent figures from a plethora of religious communities reached out to express their solidarity and sympathy, I was surprised that I didn’t see more notable atheists speak up. Browsing some of the most trafficked atheist blogs I saw that they posted little or nothing about the shooting—until Pat Robertson blamed atheists for the tragedy, an accusation that a sizable majority of atheist websites then addressed.

  RationalWiki, an atheist wiki featuring a newsfeed and articles like “Atheism FAQ for the Newly Deconverted,” contained no mention of the Sikh shooting, but it did list an instance where a Florida door-to-door salesman was shot, and noted the recent mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. PZ Myers, who is among the most visible atheist bloggers in the world, did write about the shooting twice, though one of his posts simply referenced the shooting as a way to condemn America’s “gun culture,” while the other focused on Pat Robertson’s comments. (Most of the more than 35 other dedicated bloggers on Freethought Blogs—a massive atheist blog network he co-founded—didn’t address it at all.)

  But while this silence is deeply troubling, I don’t want to suggest that, like some of those mentioned earlier, the atheist community at large necessarily has an Islamophobia problem—or that legitimate criticisms of Islam (or any other religions) constitutes Islamophobia. The problem, I think, lies in a lack of sensitivity to or awareness of the rampant Islamophobia sweeping our society. A key offender in this respect is bestselling atheist author Sam Harris.

  The day after the shooting in Wisconsin, Harris published a lengthy blog post decrying Internet trolls; bizarrely, though, he included yet another defense of his position that Muslims should face extra scrutiny at airports. He and I engaged in a back-and-forth about this issue earlier this year after he wrote a post where he first argued that “we should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.” In my response, I challenged his claims that talk of Islamophobia is “deluded” and that “there is no such thing as Islamophobia.” He responded, but largely neglected my concerns about Islamophobia.

  It was surely nothing more than poor timing on his part to publish his latest defense of profiling one day after a man opened fire on a community of Sikhs, who have frequently been on the receiving end of bigoted anti-Muslim profiling in the years since 9/11. (In fact, the first 9/11-related hate crime was the murder of a Sikh man named Balbir Singh Sodhi by a man shouting, “I’m a patriot!”) But while Harris may be convinced that he can parse arguments for profiling people who “look Muslim” from Islamophobia, the thing about words—especially words put forth by highly visible public intellectuals—is that they have consequences. Unintentional though they may be, such sentiments reinforce and perpetuate the broader cultural climate of Islamophobia. Terry Jones, who garnered worldwide attention for “International Burn a Koran Day,” indicated that he was directly inspired by “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” an event that was chiefly backed by atheists. And even when the corollaries aren’t so obvious, anti-Muslim attitudes seep into the culture, no matter where they originate.

  …With Liberty and Justice For All (Not Just Atheists)

  When incidents like these occur, I think of the ways in which principled religious criticism can easily devolve into unthinking prejudice. I can think of any number of examples from atheist conferences I’ve attended, such as the time I watched with dismay as attendees shouted “show us some ankle” at women wearing burkas for a satirical musical performance, or when a group of fundamentalist Muslim protesters was encircled by a crowd of hundreds of atheist conference attendees shouting things like “go back to the Middle East, you pedophiles.” We should be free to criticize all religions, Islam included, but that doesn’t mean we should feel free to deride and scorn its adherents.

  It should go without saying that this isn’t a problem with atheism, but it is a problem among atheists and it’s one that is being largely ignored. 9/11 is frequently lifted up as the genesis of “New Atheism,” and it’s not uncommon to see people at atheist conferences wearing shirts declaring that “9/11 was a faith-based initiative.” Popular atheist blogger Greta Christina has stated that she considers 9/11 the atheist Stonewall—a symbolic equivalent to a moment many regard as the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement. Statements such as this make me wonder if it’s perhaps more difficult for some segments of the atheist community to empathize with members of the Muslim community.

  Again, silence about the recent spike in bias and violence directed at Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs, and others isn’t a problem exclusive to the atheist community, but by neglecting to tackle it, the atheist movement is opting out of an important conversation about the mistreatment of certain minority groups in the United States. Figures in the atheist movement talk frequently about how our society should recognize the contributions and worth of atheists, and how everyone should decry rhetorical attacks against the nonreligious, but this argument falls flat when many atheists fail to extend that claim to other communities—especially ones facing frequent rhetorical and physical attacks.

  As a minority community in America’s religious milieu, it makes strategic sense for atheists to ally with Muslims, Sikhs, and others. But as a Humanist atheist, I feel a sense of moral obligation to stand up against identity-based hatred, no matter whom it’s directed at. Not only is it absurd to hope that people should care about the lack of acceptance for atheists in the United States without also hoping that society will similarly embrace other communities, it’s also selfish. Atheists who remain silent about Islamophobia aren’t just missing out on a strategic opportunity to highlight the parallels between their own experiences and those of other disenfranchised religious minorities—they’re opting out of an opportunity to do what is right, to take the moral high road, and to demonstrate what we keep telling the rest of the world: that atheists can be “good without God.”

  There’s been a great deal of discussion in the atheist movement recently about social justice focused on anti-atheist bias, sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, and more. These are, of course, crucial hurdles to overcome in the quest for human progress, but social justice should mean justice for all, including religious people. In fact, this is exactly what “social justice” means. From dictionary.com: “the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.”

  A recent study by philosopher Jeremy Stangroom may shed some light on why some atheists’ definitions of social justice don’t seem to include the religious. He found that 32% of atheist respondents felt that “they are not morally obliged to help somebody in severe need in India, even though to do so wouldn’t cost them much, compared to only 22% of Christians who respond the same way (a difference that is easily statistically significant).” He continued:

  In other words, the data shows that people who self-identify as Christians are considerably more likely to think there is a moral obligation to help somebody in severe need (in India) than people who self-identify as atheists…

  A possible (partial) explanation for this failure, supported by the data noted above, is that many (online) atheists don’t believe they have a strong moral obligation towards relatively anonymous or distant others, or don’t feel the pull of such an obligation even if they believe they have it (or think they believe they have it).

  Stangroom also noted another recent study that asked whether respondents would be willing to give a small donation to an overseas aid agency:

  The data shows that only 31% of people who self-identify as atheists respond that they are morally obliged to make such a donation, compared to 36% of people who self-identify as Christian, a difference that is statistically significant… Moreover, if we also look at people who also self-identify as Muslim and Jewish (i.e., as adherents of Judaism), then the gap between how atheists and people who self-identify as religious respond widens (31% to 38%).

  I wonder if one of the issues at work is that many atheists see Muslims, Sikhs, and other religious individuals as distant others. There are female atheists, queer atheists, and atheists of all different races and ethnicities, so social justice for women, LGBT folks, and racial and ethnic minorities is accessible—these issues impact many people in the atheist community. But what about people in other communities?

  If this is the case, then interfaith outreach and cooperation is imperative as it strives to decrease the distance between “others” and create opportunities for people to identify shared values and a sense of shared humanity—an understanding of identity that allows people to see another’s freedom and value as connected to their own.

  Beyond Tribalism

  Fortunately, there are indications of progress in this direction. A number of atheists did speak out against the shooting, and the conversation about positive engagement with the religious and the intersections of oppression is advancing. I was fortunate to witness cooperation between atheists and religious individuals in the week following the shooting when 25 atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Pagans, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others met at the Humanist Community at Harvard to attend a memorial for the shooting victims at a gurdwara in Medford, Massachusetts.

  An atheist in attendance told me that he had never experienced anything like it before, but perhaps the most moving sentiment came from a Christian minister who said during the memorial: “Personally, I am embarrassed that it’s taken a tragedy for me to come here and introduce myself to you.”

  All of us—atheist and religious—should consider it an embarrassment that there isn’t more goodwill and cooperation between religious communities and the nonreligious. There have been at least nine additional attacks on American Muslims and Sikhs in just the last couple of weeks since the gurdwara shooting, so no community can excuse their silence any longer.

  We can disagree about the veracity of religious claims, but I worry that these disagreements lead some atheists away from defending religious individuals against injustice (and, to be sure, many religious individuals and communities likewise neglect to extend their support to atheists in need). But if the atheist community doesn’t speak loudly against Islamophobia now, when will it?

  If too many are only willing to stand up against hate directed at ourselves and other members of our community, then we are not truly against hate or for social justice—we are merely for ourselves and for our community. Social justice cannot mean in-group tribalism, or it’s not justice at all.

Related articles

• Why Don’t More Atheists Speak Out Against Islamophobia? (patheos.com)
• Memo to Atheists in America: Don’t Ignore Islam (patheos.com)
• American Atheists’ Pennsylvania State Director Will Desecrate the Koran if ‘Year of the Bible’ Resolution Isn’t Dropped (patheos.com)
• Conventions leave atheists asking: What political party represents me? (wtvr.com)
• Jerry Brown signs law protecting Sikhs, Muslims, from workplace bias (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• NORTH CAROLINA: Atheist Billboards Near DNC Removed After Christian Threats (joemygod.blogspot.com)
• American Atheists Expresses Condolences for Sikh Community Following Shooting (patheos.com)
• The Banality Of Islamophobia (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Fake Satanic Muslim Apocalypse Averted | Will Catholic Fascist Geert Wilders Now Save The World From The Jewish Antichrist?!

Fake Satanic Muslim Apocalypse Averted | Will Catholic Fascist Geert Wilders Now Save The World From The Jewish Antichrist?!

Hate Peddler Geert Wilders’ Hate: No Longer Limited To Muslims

Via:- Ilisha

Catholic Fascist Geert Wilders Tickling His Brain?

Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders is notorious for his hatred of Islam.

He has compared the Qur’an to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kamf, referred to the Prophet Muhammad as “the devil,” and warned of a “tsunami of Islamization” in Europe. His Party for Freedom (PVV) rose to third-place status by capitalizing on economic crisis and social anxiety by scapegoating Muslim immigrants, who he has likened to Nazis.

The shock value has worn off, and support for his political party is waning.

So what’s a hatemonger to do?

Wilders has declared a new enemy: Central and Eastern Europeans.  His far-right Freedom Party has captured headlines by launching a website where visitors can lodge complaints about fellow Europeans working in the Netherlands:

Reporting Central and Eastern Europeans

Since May 1, 2007 there is free movement of workers between the Netherlands and eight countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries. At present the estimates to the number of people from these countries, which resides in the Netherlands, apart from 200,000 to 350,000 people. As one of the few parties, the Freedom Party from the beginning against the opening of the labor market to Poland and other CEE nationals. Given all the problems associated with the massive arrival of especially Poland, is that attitude materialized. Recently, the PVV whatsoever against further opening of the labor market for Romanians and Bulgarians voted.

This massive labor migration leads to many problems, nuisance, pollution, displacement and integration in the labor and housing problems. For many people, these things a serious problem. Complaints are often not reported, because the idea that nothing is done.

Do you have trouble of CEE nationals? Or have you lost your job on a Pole, Bulgarian, Romanian or other Central or Eastern European? We would like to hear. The Freedom Party has a platform on this website to your symptoms to report. These complaints, we will identify and offer the results to the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment.

What’s this got to do with Muslims?

The move clearly demonstrates what we’ve always known.  Wilders is an opportunist and a hardcore bigot.

In the current climate, Islamophobia has been normalized to some degree, but the more hatemongers expose their ties to racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism, the more likely they are to  be relegated to the fringe by mainstream society.

Wilders’ antics have already sparked a firestorm of protest, and ambassadors from ten central and east European countries have complained. In response, the European Parliament has scheduled a debate on the topic next month.

Wilders boasted the site already had 40,000 responses and  dismissed the controversy telling reporters:

My reaction to the ambassadors is: Mind your own business. This has nothing to do with your country. We are a sovereign country, we are a democratic political party and we voice the concerns of many Dutchmen.

Opening a new front will undoubtedly dilute Wilders’ campaign to vilify Islam as a “unique threat” to Europe, and may further tarnish the country’s international reputation.  Whether the stunt will ultimately boost his popularity or exhaust Dutch tolerance for his peculiar brand far-right fear mongering remains to be seen.

Related articles

• Netherlands: New Front for a Politician Known for Anti-Muslim Statements – New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Dutch politician’s attack on the Slavs reminiscent of Europe’s darker days (theglobeandmail.com)
• Eastern EU Nations Condemn Far-Right Dutch Website (abcnews.go.com)
• Catholic Butthurt | Pop Star Possessed by Satan Say Catholic Fascists (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Eastern EU nations condemn far-right Dutch website (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Dutch newspaper report a reminder of American Jewish links with Geert Wilders (altahrir.wordpress.com)
• U.S. groups helped fund Dutch anti-Islam politician Wilders (dokmz.wordpress.com)
• Anti-Islam US groups fund Dutch racist politician Wilders (worldbulletin.net)
• Report: Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz gave money to anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders (mondoweiss.net)
• Either way Geert Wilders is fucked: Pechtold prefer to see stable centre cabinet without ‘left or right-wing experiments’ Here is Some Mind-steroid-Must-Read from DutchNews.nl: (alakhtal.wordpress.com)

Newt Gingrich’s Crackpot Anti-Muslim Conspiracy Theories

Newt Gingrich’s Anti-Muslim Conspiracy Theories

Crazy bigoted fear-mongering

Via:-Charles Johnson

With all the focus on Newt Gingrich’s race-baiting and “big ideas,” one thing that hasn’t gotten much notice yet: his outrageous anti-Muslim statements.

There’s a reason why Newt was scheduled to speak at hate group leader Pamela Geller’s “Ground Zero Mosque” demonstration in New York, and there’s a reason why she endorses him for President. On this subject, Gingrich sounds exactly like Geller.

Here’s Gingrich today on The Janet Mefferd Show, explaining that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, secular judges, “religious bigots who want to drive Christianity out of public life,” and “elites” are conspiring with the “Organization of Islamic Countries” to advance the cause of radical Islam.

Newt Gingrich with hate group leader Pamela GellerGingrich: Well, I think that we have to really, from my perspective you don’t have an issue of religious tolerance you have an elite which favors radical Islam over Christianity and Judaism. You have constant pressure by secular judges and by religious bigots to drive Christianity out of public life and to establish a secular state except when it comes to radical Islam, where all of the sudden they start making excuses for Sharia, they start making excuses that we really shouldn’t use certain language. Remember, the Organization of Islamic Countries is dedicated to preventing anyone, anywhere in the world from commenting negatively about Islam, so they would literally eliminate our free speech and there were clearly conversations held that implied that the US Justice Department would begin to enforce censorship against American citizens to protect radical Islam, I think that’s just an amazing concept frankly.

Here are a couple of facts to counteract this bizarre fear-mongering conspiracy theory that Newt’s parroting directly from Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer:

First, Gingrich has the name of the organization wrong; it’s the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which shows the depth of Gingrich’s knowledge). (Update: recently changed to “Organization of Islamic Cooperation.”)

Second, the Obama administration has come out strongly against OIC-sponsored UN resolutions barring the defamation of religion. The idea that the Justice Department is going to start “enforcing censorship” against people who criticize Islam is just … stupid.

Newt is spouting a cartoon-like version of the reality, with Muslims as the boogeymen, and the right wing eats this stuff up.

Related articles

• Newt Gingrich’s Anti-Muslim Conspiracy Theories (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Pamela Geller | Professional Hatemonger Freaks Out (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• The American Muslim (TAM) (chomskywatch.wordpress.com)
• Jewish Hatemonger Pamela Geller Linked To Murder, Crime and Corruption (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Gerson: Gringrich is ‘fundamentally’ flawed (goerie.com)
• Catholic Bigot Robert Spencer Scrutinised by Homeland Security (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer Announce New Anti-Muslim Front Group (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Open thread for night owls: Space Newt … and Newt as bigot (dailykos.com)

American Religious Right Crazy Calls for Killings, Mosque Burnings and Mass Murder

American Freedom Defense Initiative Co-Founder Calls for Killings, Mosque Burnings

One of the groups founded by anti-Muslim demagogues Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer is called the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an “umbrella” group that provides cover for their other activities and funding for their anti-Muslim advertisements.

John Jay, one of the founding members of the board of AFDI and a very frequent commenter at Pamela Geller’s website, has posted a manifesto very reminiscent of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s — a deranged, violent fantasy of mass murder.

Jay’s post calls for the killing of “talking head media”, of “every self avowed socialist and communist in congress”, and of “the faculty senates at harvard, yale, columbia, nyu and university of california at santa barbara”. Also, Muslims immigrants should be deported, in “boxes or tourist, their choice”, and all mosques should be burned down.

Jay has now added a response:

apparently things are really very slow at little green footballs. charles johnson, head pukka there, has responded to the little post herein-below breathlessly announcing that i am advocating mass murder. the lizards of course, denounce me as deranged.

[…] this is, of course, fairly ridiculous. and, utterly transparent.

charles johnson doesn’t give a whit or a fig for me, doesn’t care the weight of the proverbial mustard seed about me one way or the other. no, the real purpose of his screed is to try and tar pamela geller by her association with me. pamela geller is the target of the blog post at little green footballs, not i. and, such is the measure of his worry over her prestige and influence, that he engages in this, … , i don’t know, … , empty polemic, … , nonsense, … , to try and harm her. you come up with a phrase, i am chuckling too hard to think of a good one.

Yes, Jay has astutely worked out that the story here is his association with Geller and Spencer, rather than “random crank fantasies on the internet about killing people”.

Jay’s post includes some obviously fantastical elements: “draw and quarter the media, and shoot their remains from canons… boil bill ayers, bernie dorhn and angela davis in canola oil”. The strategy here is obvious – including a few jokes gives Jay a bit of distance from what he’s writing, and he probably thinks this means he doesn’t have to take proper responsibility for his sanguinary rhetoric. It should be recalled that when Jay’s fetish for violent fantasy was first noted last year, his defence (also used by Spencer) was simply to deny the plain and obvious meaning of his posts.

Related articles

• American Freedom Defense Initiative Co-Founder Calls for Killings, Mosque Burnings (barthsnotes.wordpress.com)
• Godly Terrorist Anders Breivik Inspired by American Catholic Fascist Robert Spencer, Jewish Hatemonger Pamela Geller & Fascist Religious Right (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Muslim-hating wingnut Pamela Geller justifies mass murder in Norway (dangerousminds.net)
• Pamela Geller Backs Breivik (pinkbananaworld.com)
• Catholic Crusader Robert Spencer
• Corrupt Jewish Hatemonger Pamela Geller
• Looniest Blogger Ever: Pamela Geller
• Pamela Geller: Wealth Aquired from Fraud and Corruption
• Anders Behring Breivik Inspired by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer
• Pamela Geller slanders the Utoya victims (elitist anti-Semites, Hitler youth, oh and race-mixers)

Peter King Catholic Fascist & Terrorist Apologist is Chair of House Homeland Security Committee?!

Tuesday, Sep 13, 2011 11:59 ET

At U.K. terror inquiry, Rep. King defends I.R.A. terror

At a parliamentary hearing on Muslim radicalization, the New York Republican condones Irish radicalization

[Is Catholic commissar Peter King the new Joseph (Catholic fascist) McCarthy and fueling a new Inquisition?]

By Justin Elliott

AP

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) stood by his past support for Irish terrorism during an appearance today before a British parliamentary inquiry into the roots of Muslim terrorism.

King, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, came under fire as a hypocrite earlier this year when he launched his own hearings into “domestic radicalization” in the American Muslim community. Critics, including a civilian survivor of a 1990 Irish Republican Army bombing in London, called out King for being an unrepentant supporter of the I.R.A. King built his career in the Irish Catholic community of Nassau County as a pro-I.R.A. firebrand in the 1980s, and was even involved with a fundraising organization suspected of providing the militant group with money and weapons.

So it was a bit of surprise when the Home Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons invited King to testify in its “Roots of violent radicalisation” inquiry. Inevitably, King’s I.R.A.-supporting past came up.

It was the longtime Labour MP David Winnick, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 1966, who confronted King.

“There’s been some surprise in the United States but also in Britain that you have a job looking into and investigating into terrorism,” said Winnick. King, the MP added, “seems to be an apologist for terrorism.”

Winnick cited a King quote from 1982:

We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.

And another from 1985:

If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.

“Do you stand by that?” Winnick asked King.

“I stand by it in the context of when it was said,” King responded, without hesitation.

He later added that those quotes were designed to “put [the conflict] in a perspective” for an American audience that was too often exposed to anti-I.R.A. points of view.

He then offered this lengthy defense of the role he played during the conflict in Ireland. Conspicuously missing from it is any denunciation of, or expression of regret for, I.R.A. terrorism.

I stand by it in the context of when it was said. … I can cite you Tony Blair, as recently as March of this year, put out a long statement defending my record both in the 1980s and throughout the Irish peace process. I was just out in the hallway and Baroness Kennedy came up to me to thank me for the work I did in the Irish peace process. Paul Murphy came by last evening.

What I was saying — and I stand by it — is that the situation in northern Ireland — there were loyalist paramilitaries and obviously Republican paramilitaries — and I believe that, I had gotten to know Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. And I was very confident that if the Republican movement could get to the table, you would see a peace process. And I believe the United States had a very significant role to play as an honest mediator, as an honest broker. And I worked very closely with Bill Clinton, I was very much involved in the Good Friday agreements, I was very involved in getting Gerry Adams’ visa, but also involved in getting loyalists into the United States. I felt that when it was on the table, that Adams and McGuinness would be able to, if you will, control the republican movement. And it’s worked. Tony Blair said I made invaluable contribution to peace, Bill Clinton has cited me in his memoirs as a person who was very much involved.

It was never my position as an Irish-American, whether or not Ireland was united, to me there were injustices in the north. There were good people on both sides. I spent a lot of time meeting with the loyalist community, the unionist community, at the same time, and I came away from that convinced that there was a role for the U.S. to play. What I was saying with those quotes, I was also trying to put in perspective. All of the quotes were anti-I.R.A. in the United States, no mention [ever] made of the UVF or the UDA or the Red Hand Commandos or whatever. I was trying to put it in a perspective to show that there were people — that this is not just the terrorist mayhem it was made out to be — that there were significant leaders on the Republican side.

It’s also worth noting here that this year King defended his support for the I.R.A. to the New York Times by claiming that the group had “never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.” He did not repeat that explanation to the parliamentary committee.

Winnick followed up on the exchange by asking about British use of torture against the I.R.A. being used as a recruiting tool, and whether there is a parallel to post-9/11 U.S. torture policies. King said he did not believe there was.

Watch the exchange, beginning at the 10:18:50 mark.

http://salon.com/a/svEMfAA

• Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott

Related articles

• British Parliamentarians Have Lost Their Effing Minds (lezgetreal.com)

Right Wing Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

Fear, Inc.

The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

Anti-Muslim graffiti defaces a Shi’ite mosque at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan.

SOURCE: Getty Images/Bill Pugliano

By Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang , Scott Keyes, Faiz Shakir |August 26, 2011

Download this report (pdf)

Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)

Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):

• Introduction and summary
• Chapter 1: Donors to the Islamophobia network
• Chapter 2: The Islamophobia misinformation experts
• Chapter 3: The grassroots organizations and the religious right
• Chapter 4: The right-wing media enablers of anti-Islam propaganda
• Chapter 5: The political players
• Conclusion

Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia

On July 22, a man planted a bomb in an Oslo government building that killed eight people. A few hours after the explosion, he shot and killed 68 people, mostly teenagers, at a Labor Party youth camp on Norway’s Utoya Island.

By midday, pundits were speculating as to who had perpetrated the greatest massacre in Norwegian history since World War II. Numerous mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, speculated about an Al Qaeda connection and a “jihadist” motivation behind the attacks. But by the next morning it was clear that the attacker was a 32-year-old, white, blond-haired and blue-eyed Norwegian named Anders Breivik. He was not a Muslim, but rather a self-described Christian conservative.

According to his attorney, Breivik claimed responsibility for his self-described “gruesome but necessary” actions. On July 26, Breivik told the court that violence was “necessary” to save Europe from Marxism and “Muslimization.” In his 1,500-page manifesto, which meticulously details his attack methods and aims to inspire others to extremist violence, Breivik vows “brutal and breathtaking operations which will result in casualties” to fight the alleged “ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe.”

Breivik’s manifesto contains numerous footnotes and in-text citations to American bloggers and pundits, quoting them as experts on Islam’s “war against the West.” This small group of anti-Muslim organizations and individuals in our nation is obscure to most Americans but wields great influence in shaping the national and international political debate. Their names are heralded within communities that are actively organizing against Islam and targeting Muslims in the United States.

Breivik, for example, cited Robert Spencer, one of the anti-Muslim misinformation scholars we profile in this report, and his blog, Jihad Watch, 162 times in his manifesto. Spencer’s website, which “tracks the attempts of radical Islam to subvert Western culture,” boasts another member of this Islamophobia network in America, David Horowitz, on his Freedom Center website. Pamela Geller, Spencer’s frequent collaborator, and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times.

Geller and Spencer co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America, a group whose actions and rhetoric the Anti-Defamation League concluded “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam. The group seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy “American values.” Based on Breivik’s sheer number of citations and references to the writings of these individuals, it is clear that he read and relied on the hateful, anti-Muslim ideology of a number of men and women detailed in this report&a select handful of scholars and activists who work together to create and promote misinformation about Muslims.

While these bloggers and pundits were not responsible for Breivik’s deadly attacks, their writings on Islam and multiculturalism appear to have helped create a world view, held by this lone Norwegian gunman, that sees Islam as at war with the West and the West needing to be defended. According to former CIA officer and terrorism consultant Marc Sageman, just as religious extremism “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged,” the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts are “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.” Sageman adds that their rhetoric “is not cost-free.”

These pundits and bloggers, however, are not the only members of the Islamophobia infrastructure. Breivik’s manifesto also cites think tanks, such as the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Forum, and the Investigative Project on Terrorism—three other organizations we profile in this report. Together, this core group of deeply intertwined individuals and organizations manufacture and exaggerate threats of “creeping Sharia,” Islamic domination of the West, and purported obligatory calls to violence against all non-Muslims by the Quran.

This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians’ talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric.

And it all starts with the money flowing from a select group of foundations. A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.

Some of these foundations and wealthy donors also provide direct funding to anti-Islam grassroots groups. According to our extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in our country:

• Donors Capital Fund
• Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
• Russell Berrie Foundation
• Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
• Fairbrook Foundation

Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.

And what does this money fund? Well, here’s one of many cases in point: Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Gingrich went on to claim that “Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.”

Sharia, or Muslim religious code, includes practices such as charitable giving, prayer, and honoring one’s parents—precepts virtually identical to those of Christianity and Judaism. But Gingrich and other conservatives promote alarmist notions about a nearly 1,500-year-old religion for a variety of sinister political, financial, and ideological motives. In his remarks that day, Gingrich mimicked the language of conservative analyst Andrew McCarthy, who co-wrote a report calling Sharia “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Such similarities in language are no accident. Look no further than the organization that released McCarthy’s anti-Sharia report: the aforementioned Center for Security Policy, which is a central hub of the anti-Muslim network and an active promoter of anti- Sharia messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In fact, CSP is a key source for right-wing politicians, pundits, and grassroots organizations, providing them with a steady stream of reports mischaracterizing Islam and warnings about the dangers of Islam and American Muslims. Operating under the leadership of Frank Gaffney, the organization is funded by a small number of foundations and donors with a deep understanding of how to influence U.S. politics by promoting highly alarming threats to our national security. CSP is joined by other anti-Muslim organizations in this lucrative business, such as Stop Islamization of America and the Society of Americans for National Existence. Many of the leaders of these organizations are well-schooled in the art of getting attention in the press, particularly Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, The Washington Times, and a variety of right-wing websites and radio outlets.

Misinformation experts such as Gaffney consult and work with such right-wing grassroots organizations as ACT! for America and the Eagle Forum, as well as religious right groups such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition and American Family Association, to spread their message. Speaking at their conferences, writing on their websites, and appearing on their radio shows, these experts rail against Islam and cast suspicion on American Muslims. Much of their propaganda gets churned into fundraising appeals by grassroots and religious right groups. The money they raise then enters the political process and helps fund ads supporting politicians who echo alarmist warnings and sponsor anti-Muslim attacks.

These efforts recall some of the darkest episodes in American history, in which religious, ethnic, and racial minorities were discriminated against and persecuted. From Catholics, Mormons, Japanese Americans, European immigrants, Jews, and African Americans, the story of America is one of struggle to achieve in practice our founding ideals. Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.

Due in part to the relentless efforts of this small group of individuals and organizations, Islam is now the most negatively viewed religion in America. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 alone did not drive Americans’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam. President George W. Bush reflected the general opinion of the American public at the time when he went to great lengths to make clear that Islam and Muslims are not the enemy. Speaking to a roundtable of Arab and Muslim American leaders at the Afghanistan embassy in 2002, for example, President Bush said, “All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith—face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It’s a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It’s a faith based upon love, not hate.”

Unfortunately, President Bush’s words were soon eclipsed by an organized escalation of hateful statements about Muslims and Islam from the members of the Islamophobia network profiled in this report. This is as sad as it is dangerous. It is enormously important to understand that alienating the Muslim American community not only threatens our fundamental promise of religious freedom, it also hurts our efforts to combat terrorism. Since 9/11, the Muslim American community has helped security and law enforcement officials prevent more than 40 percent of Al Qaeda terrorist plots threatening America. The largest single source of initial information to authorities about the few Muslim American plots has come from the Muslim American community.

Around the world, there are people killing people in the name of Islam, with which most Muslims disagree. Indeed, in most cases of radicalized neighbors, family members, or friends, the Muslim American community is as baffled, disturbed, and surprised by their appearance as the general public. Treating Muslim American citizens and neighbors as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, is not only offensive to America’s core values, it is utterly ineffective in combating terrorism and violent extremism.

The White House recently released the national strategy for combating violent extremism, “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” One of the top focal points of the effort is to “counter al-Qa’ida’s propaganda that the United States is somehow at war with Islam.” Yet orchestrated efforts by the individuals and organizations detailed in this report make it easy for al-Qa’ida to assert that America hates Muslims and that Muslims around the world are persecuted for the simple crime of being Muslims and practicing their religion.

Sadly, the current isolation of American Muslims echoes past witch hunts in our history—from the divisive McCarthyite purges of the 1950s to the sometimes violent anti-immigrant campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has compared the fear-mongering of Muslims with anti-Catholic sentiment of the past. In response to the fabricated “Ground Zero mosque” controversy in New York last summer, Mayor Bloomberg said:

In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center. … We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.

This report shines a light on the Islamophobia network of so-called experts, academics, institutions, grassroots organizations, media outlets, and donors who manufacture, produce, distribute, and mainstream an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. Let us learn the proper lesson from the past, and rise above fear-mongering to public awareness, acceptance, and respect for our fellow Americans. In doing so, let us prevent hatred from infecting and endangering our country again.

In the pages that follow, we profile the small number of funders, organizations, and individuals who have contributed to the discourse on Islamophobia in this country. We begin with the money trail in Chapter 1—our analysis of the funding streams that support anti-Muslim activities. Chapter 2 identifies the intellectual nexus of the Islamophobia network. Chapter 3 highlights the key grassroots players and organizations that help spread the messages of hate. Chapter 4 aggregates the key media amplifiers of Islamophobia. And Chapter 5 brings attention to the elected officials who frequently support the causes of anti- Muslim organizing.

Before we begin, a word about the term “Islamophobia.” We don’t use this term lightly. We define it as an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.

It is our view that in order to safeguard our national security and uphold America’s core values, we must return to a fact-based civil discourse regarding the challenges we face as a nation and world. This discourse must be frank and honest, but also consistent with American values of religious liberty, equal justice under the law, and respect for pluralism. A first step toward the goal of honest, civil discourse is to expose—and marginalize—the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America by actively working to divide Americans against one another through misinformation.

Wajahat Ali is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Eli Clifton is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a national security reporter for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center’s Middle East Progress. Lee Fang is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher/blogger for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Scott Keyes is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Faiz Shakir is a Vice President at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org.

Download this report (pdf)

Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)

Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):

• Introduction and summary
• Chapter 1: Donors to the Islamophobia network
• Chapter 2: The Islamophobia misinformation experts
• Chapter 3: The grassroots organizations and the religious right
• Chapter 4: The right-wing media enablers of anti-Islam propaganda
• Chapter 5: The political players
• Conclusion

Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia

Related articles

• CFAP Report: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America (crooksandliars.com)
• Godly Terrorist Anders Breivik Inspired by American Catholic Fascist Robert Spencer, Jewish Hatemonger Pamela Geller & Fascist Religious Right (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• New report maps the roots of Islamophobia (salon.com)

Fear, Incorporated: Who’s paying for all that Islamophobic paranoia?

Fear, Incorporated: Who’s paying for all that Islamophobic paranoia?

By Stephen M. Walt

One of the distinctive features of American democracy is the permeability of our political institutions. It’s an incredibly wide-open system, given First Amendment freedoms, the flood of money that corrupts the electoral process, and a wide array of media organizations and political journals that can be used to disseminate and amplify various views, even when they have no basis in fact.

This situation allows small groups of people to have a profound impact on public attitudes and policy discourse, provided that they are well-organized, well-funded, and stay on message. And if you don’t believe me, then take a look at the Center for American Progress‘s new report Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America. It’s a remarkable piece of investigative work, showing how small set of right-wing foundations and individuals have bankrolled the most vocal Islamophobes in contemporary U.S. politics, such as Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Daniel Horowitz, and Robert Spencer.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Following a six-month long investigative research project, the Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America…

Over the past few years, the Islamophobia network (the funders, scholars, grassroots activists, media amplifiers, and political validators) have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement.

The irony in all this that the extremists examined in this report have gone to great lengths to convince Americans that there is a vast Islamic conspiracy to subvert American democracy, impose sharia law, and destroy the American way of life. Instead, what we are really facing is a well-funded right-wing collaboration to scare the American people with a bogeyman of their own creation, largely to justify more ill-advised policies in the Middle East.

Related articles

• Godly Terrorist Anders Breivik Inspired by American Catholic Fascist Robert Spencer, Jewish Hatemonger Pamela Geller & Fascist Religious Right (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• CFAP Report: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America (crooksandliars.com)
• New report maps the roots of Islamophobia (salon.com)