The road to a police state: how ‘anti-terrorism’ is destroying democracy

The road to a police state: how ‘anti-terrorism’ is destroying democracy

Theory & History

PAYPAL

via Vashti Kenway

In 1956, science fiction author Philip K. Dick wrote the short story “Minority Report”. In it, a shadowy government agency known as “pre-crime” arrests people in anticipation of crimes they suspect individuals will commit in the future. What appears as a dystopian fictional nightmare in 1956 has become a reality in Australia 60 years later.

One of the major legal transformations associated with the introduction of the various anti-terror acts in the 15 years since 9/11 has been the normalisation of the idea that you can be charged with a crime that you have yet to commit.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has the right to seek warrants that allow the detention of someone suspected or someone related to someone suspected of considering a terror offence. This person can be detained in custody with no right to confidential legal counsel and no right to see the evidence brought against them.

Furthermore, the Terrorism Act 2002 makes it a crime to “provide or receive training, to possess a ‘thing’, or to collect or make a document, if (in each case) that conduct was connected with preparation for, the engagement of a person in, or assistance in a terrorist act”.

In 2010, these laws resulted in the conviction of three men for “preparing to prepare” an attack on the Holsworthy Army Base. One of the men visited the barracks and another had a phone conversation with a sheikh, seeking religious counsel about the moral virtues of possibly committing an act.

It would be unthinkable, if not constitutionally impossible, in nations such as the US and Canada to restrict freedom of speech in the manner achieved by Australia’s 2005 sedition laws.

The sheikh eventually answered in the negative and advised the men against any action. Even the Victorian Supreme Court judge responsible for sentencing the men, justice King, admitted that “the conspiracy was not that much further along than just sitting and thinking about it”. She nevertheless sentenced them to 18 years’ jail. For thought crime.

What’s more shocking is that, legally, these “preparatory” offences are committed if the person either “knows or is reckless as to the fact that they relate to a terrorist act”. Being “reckless” can mean a whole range of things. It can mean that you say or write something that may inadvertently encourage someone else to engage in terrorist activity.

For instance, Division 102 of the Criminal Code imposes a maximum penalty of life imprisonment “where a person provides or collects funds and is reckless as to whether those funds will be used to facilitate or engage in a terrorist act”. This means that someone who donates money to a charity that turns out to have some putative involvement in terrorism could be imprisoned for life.

Anti-government activity

The definition of terrorism is suitably broad for a ruling class looking to criminalise a wide range of anti-government activity. Section 101.1 of the Criminal Code defines terrorism as “conduct engaged in or threats made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause”. The conduct or threat must be designed to coerce a government or population by intimidation. It must involve “harm” – broadly defined.

Added to this is “urging violence”. For example, it is an offence punishable by seven years’ imprisonment to “urge the overthrow of the constitution or government by force or violence, or to urge interference in parliamentary elections”.

Such definitions are disturbing. Again, “interfering in parliamentary elections” could involve encouraging voters to cast donkey votes or rip up ballot papers. Left wing newspapers regularly run pieces on the necessity of overthrowing many and various governments. The fact that such laws have been penned indicates how far we have come.

Under such legislation the United States Declaration of Independence, with its claim that “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [the Government], and to institute new one”, could be deemed a terrorist document.

Crime by association

A law introduced in 2014 that prohibits the advocacy of terrorism extends this issue of incitement into even more alarming territory. An organisation can be listed as terrorist if it “directly praises the doing of a terrorist act in circumstances where there is a substantial risk that such praise might have the effect of leading a person … to engage in a terrorist act”.

If these laws had been enacted in the past they would have meant that the author of an article supporting the actions of Nelson Mandela in his struggle against apartheid in South Africa would become liable if someone might have read that article and acted upon it in a manner deemed terrorist by the state.

Today, the organisation of any author who is accused of “praising terror” can be listed. Being a member or even associated with a member of a listed terrorist organisation can incur up to 10 years in prison.

The mutability of what constitutes a “terrorist organisation” was revealed in the trial of 13 Muslim men in Melbourne in 2005-09. These young men were arrested after more than a year of intense surveillance of conversations between them and a radical Islamic preacher, Abdul Nacer Benbrika.

An extraordinary 27,000 hours of police surveillance revealed nothing more criminal than discussions about the morality or immorality of revenge actions against Australians for the government’s crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. No specific or concrete terror actions were planned, and they were never charged with planning a terrorist attack.

Nevertheless, the state charged them with membership of an unspecified, unlisted, unnamed terrorist organisation. The attorney-general declared it so – and a few more men who had had some association with Benbrika were charged with “supporting or providing funds” to a terrorist organisation.

Greg Barns, one of the defence lawyers in the Barwon 13 trial, pointed out the absurdity of the situation: “An organisation can be a terrorist organisation even if it has no terrorist act in mind”. Such realities call to mind Alice in Wonderland. “‘When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’.”

Punished for being Muslim

The Barwon 13 trial also brought to light a number of other disturbing aspects of the anti-terror legislation. One of the most shocking revealed the prejudice against giving terror suspects bail.

This meant that from 2005 until 2008, when the judge handed down a decision, the defendants were held in the maximum security Barwon prison. Here, some as young as 19 were kept shackled in isolation for up to 18 hours a day. During their trial, they were strip searched every day and transported back and forth on the hour-long journey with their arms shackled to their waist and their ankles tied together.

Four of the 13 were found not guilty of any charges but were held in Guantanamo Bay-like conditions for, one can only suspect, being Muslim and associating with other Muslims. Four of the 13 were convicted on such spurious grounds that Michael Pearce from Liberty Victoria told reporters that they were victims of one of the “most sustained assaults on civil liberties in 50 years”. “Their treatment is an affront to the most basic principle of the rule of law”, he said.

The current targets of the anti-terror laws are Muslim. Nineteen of the 20 proscribed organisations are Muslim, and of the 46 people charged under the laws, all, with the exception of a couple, identify as Muslim. Not one of these people has been charged with actually committing a terrorist offence. All are offences of association, of planning or planning to plan.

State representatives claim that nipping terrorist actions before they happen is more important than civil liberties. But such claims are bogus when most of the terrorist atrocities they claim to be thwarting were never even in the planning stages.

One young man, Faheem Lodhi, was sentenced to 20 years in prison despite the fact that, according to a lawyer in his trial, he “had not yet reached the stage where the identity of the bomber, the precise area to be bombed or the manner in which the bombing would take place had been worked out”.

As civil liberties lawyer Rob Stary told Katherine Wilson in an interview for Overland: “They talk the talk, and it’s dangerous talk. But I can say whatever I like about who the real Iraq or Palestinian war criminals are, and how they should be brought to justice, and I won’t be imprisoned for it. Not unless I convert to Islam”.

When Muslim kids mouth off, they can be locked up for decades. If anything is likely to prompt feelings of hatred, anger and frustration that lead to the desire to commit terrorist acts, it is this kind of systematic legal persecution.

Islamophobia is the ideological mechanism through which the state has managed to get through such draconian legislation. Concerted public media campaigns vilifying Muslims – representing them as medieval barbarians intent on bringing down Western civilisation – has had its effect. Opposition to the anti-terror laws is minimal – the conflation of Islam with terror has been achieved.

Fifteen years in the making

Prior to 9/11, politically motivated violence was dealt with under criminal law. This all changed after 2001. In March 2002, federal attorney-general Darryl Williams introduced the first package of anti-terrorism legislation to parliament. He said the laws were “exceptional” but that “so too is the evil at which they are directed”.

Hyperbole abounded. Australians were told to be alert to shadowy internal threats and to report any “suspicious” activities they might witness.

From 11 September 2001 to the fall of the Howard government, the federal parliament enacted 48 anti-terror laws. In other words, on average a new anti-terror statue was passed every seven or so weeks under the Liberal government. The Labor Party supported the overwhelming bulk of these laws.

When Labor came to power, the pace of lawmaking slowed but the fundamental approach remained the same: use the terror threat to usher through increasingly draconian laws. Indeed, the Rudd government actively opposed independent reviews into the passing of its own anti-terror legislation.

Abbott came to office with an open and aggressive agenda. He was unabashed in 2014: “Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we are used to and more inconvenience than we would like … the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift”. The scales now well and truly have tipped.

Under Abbott and Turnbull, the existing anti-terror legislation has been strengthened and expanded, most dramatically with the introduction of astonishingly extensive data retention laws.

All of this frantic legislative activity has been accompanied by regularly staged anti-terror raids.

The Australian state has far exceeded the UK, the USA and Canada in the number of laws enacted. UNSW professor George Williams argues: “It would be unthinkable, if not constitutionally impossible, in nations such as the US and Canada to restrict freedom of speech in the manner achieved by Australia’s 2005 sedition laws”. US author Ken Roach describes Australia as engaging in “hyper-legislation”.

Normalisation

While initially introduced as “emergency legislation” to deal with imminent terror threats, anti-terror legislation has not only stuck, but has crept into other legislative areas. Laws recognised as exceptional, even by their proponents, are now used against groups and individuals who have nothing to do with the “war on terror”.

Bikie gangs and their members are subject to laws virtually identical to anti-terror legislation. The Rann Labor government in South Australia began the trend, drawing dramatic comparisons between bikies and terrorists. In 2008, Rann said, “Organised crime groups are terrorists within our communities” and described bikies as “an evil within our nation”. The laws passed almost without a whimper of opposition.

In Queensland, bikie gangs have been “declared” in the same way that so-called terrorist organisations have – which means anyone associated with a gang can be arrested and charged. If you are a member of a gang you cannot be seen with one or more “criminal associates”.

Bikies are also subject to something very similar to control orders – one of the most controversial aspects of the anti-terror legislation. They can be placed under house arrest, and have their movement and their oral and electronic communications limited. These restrictions can be decided in a secret court hearing, and the person will discover if they are subject to an order only after their arrest. All states have introduced similar laws.

The depth and breadth of the anti-terror legislation provided the perfect precursor to the use of equally (if not more draconian) laws against construction workers in the Howard government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).

Turnbull is now preparing to fight an election over the reintroduction of the body. The ABCC’s coercive powers mirror ASIO’s. It has the right to hold secret interviews and jail those who don’t cooperate. Habeus corpus is out the window. Construction workers will again have no right to silence and no right to be represented by the lawyer of their choice. The terror bogey was simply the thin end of the wedge.

It is clear over the 15 years of the “war on terror” that many legal rights have disappeared. Basic legal assumptions like innocent until proven guilty, the right to silence, the right to a fair trial and the right to legal counsel no longer exist in expanding areas of the legal system. What’s more, the state’s powers to watch, listen, detain and punish have grown dramatically, and there is no indication that the government wants to pull back.

The US whistleblower Edward Snowden said of similar actions in the USA: “These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power”.

Australia’s behemoth security state is now more powerful than even Philip K. Dick’s paranoid imagination could have dreamed.

PAYPAL

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American atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

American atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

Avijit Roy, whose Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog championed liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation, attacked along with his wife in Dhaka

Avijit Roy’s wife Rafida Ahmed Banna is carried on a stretcher after she was seriously injured by unidentified assailants. Roy, founded a blog site which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim majority nation. Photograph: Rajib Dhar/AFP/Getty Images

 

A prominent American blogger of Bangladeshi origin was hacked to death with machetes by unidentified assailants in Dhaka, police said, with the atheist writer’s family claiming he had received numerous threats from Islamists.

The body of Avijit Roy, founder of Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation, was found covered in blood after the attack which also left his wife critically wounded.

“He died as he was brought to the hospital. His wife was also seriously wounded. She has lost a finger,” local police chief Sirajul Islam said.

The couple were on a bicycle rickshaw, returning from a book fair, when two assailants stopped and dragged them onto a sidewalk before striking them with machetes, local media reported citing witnesses.

Roy, said to be around 40, is the second Bangladeshi blogger to have been murdered in two years and the fourth writer to have been attacked since 2004.

Hardline Islamist groups have long demanded the public execution of atheist bloggers and sought new laws to combat writing critical of Islam.

“Roy suffered fatal wounds in the head and died from bleeding… after being brought to the hospital,” doctor Sohel Ahmed told reporters.

Police have launched a probe and recovered the machetes used in the attack but could not confirm whether Islamists were behind the incident.

But Roy’s father said the writer, a US citizen, had received a number of “threatening” emails and messages on social media from hardliners unhappy with his writing.

“He was a secular humanist and has written about ten books” including his most famous “Biswasher Virus” (Virus of Faith), his father Ajoy Roy told AFP.

The Center for Inquiry, a US-based charity promoting free thought, said it was “shocked and heartbroken” by the brutal murder of Roy.

“Dr Roy was a true ally, a courageous and eloquent defender of reason, science, and free expression, in a country where those values have been under heavy attack,” it said in a statement.

Roy’s killing also triggered strong condemnation from his fellow writers and publishers, who lamented the growing religious conservatism and intolerance in Bangladesh.

“The attack on Roy and his wife Rafida Ahmed is outrageous. We strongly protest this attack and are deeply concerned about the safety of writers,” Imran H. Sarker, head of an association for bloggers in Bangladesh, told AFP.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, a fellow blogger and friend of Roy, claimed one of the country’s largest online book retailers was being openly threatened for selling Roy’s books.

“In Bangladesh the easiest target is an atheist. An atheist can be attacked and murdered,” he wrote on Facebook.

Atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was hacked to death in 2013 by members of a little known Islamist militant group, triggering nationwide protests by tens of thousands of secular activists.

After Haider’s death, Bangladesh’s hardline Islamist groups started to protest against other campaigning bloggers, calling a series of nationwide strikes to demand their execution, accusing them of blasphemy.

The secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reacted by arresting some atheist bloggers.

The government also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furore over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers.

Bangladesh is the world’s fourth-largest Muslim majority nation with Muslims making up some 90 per cent of the country’s 160 million people.

A tribunal has recently handed down a series of verdicts against leading Islamists and others for crimes committed during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Everything We Know So Far About The Alleged Chapel Hill Shooter

Everything We Know So Far About The Alleged Chapel Hill Shooter

• Craig Hicks was charged with first-degree murder Wednesday.
• He has shared many atheist and anti-religious posts on Facebook.
• He appears to have defended Muslims and freedom of religion in past online comments.
• He does not appear to have a serious criminal record.

 

David Mack

BuzzFeed News Reporter

1. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was charged Tuesday with the murders of three of his Muslim neighbors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Chapel Hill Police/Durham County Sheriff’s Department via Associated Press

2. On Wednesday, police said their initial investigation suggested the murders were linked to an ongoing dispute over parking between the neighbors, but they haven’t yet ruled out the possibility of a hate crime.

“Our investigators are exploring what could have motivated Mr. Hicks to commit such a senseless and tragic act,” police said in a statement. “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if this is the case.”

3. Hicks’ Facebook page contains a long list of atheist and anti-religious posts.

4. One post he shared on Feb. 8 compared radical Christians to radical Muslims.

5. Another shared post mocked the notion of God saving people from death.

6. Last month, Hicks described himself as a “grumpy old man” after spotting a couple have sex in a vehicle in his parking lot.

“It is official, I am a grumpy old man,” the post read. “I now am sure of this, as when I saw a couple having sex in their vehicle in my parking lot a little bit ago instead of just ignoring it I called Chapel Hills [sic] finest on them.”

7. Hicks does not appear to have serious criminal record.

The records department of Winchester Police, Virginia, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that a man with the same name was charged and fined with the misdemeanor offense of “dog running at large” on Jan. 2, 1995. Their records showed his date of birth as Aug. 3, 1969, while Chapel Hill police say Hicks was born on Aug. 3, 1968.

8. On his Facebook page Hicks lists himself as married, says he owns a cat and dog, describes himself as a “patriotic American,” and states that he studied as a paralegal at Durham Technical Community College.

9. He is registered to vote, but is not registered with any party.

10. He lists himself as a fan of the cable access television show The Atheist Experience, as well as the religious horror film Stigmata.

11. An Amazon “wish list” that appeared to belong to Hicks had requested a gun concealment belt…

12. …a battlezone scope and 9-inch knife…

13. …and a camouflage suit and drone.

14. In a post on Aug. 19, 2010, debating the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” on XDtalk.com, an account that appeared to belong to Hicks posted that he had known “several dozen Muslims” and believed “that they aren’t what most think of them.”

When a user took a poll of the forum, the account that appeared to belong to Hicks voted in favor of a response reading, “I am indifferent about the project itself — I can see the arguments both for it and against it. But this is a free country, and the developers certainly have a right to express themselves.”

The full post reads as follows:

I voted #2 for several reasons.

The first amendment to our constitution guarantees freedom of religion, which takes precedence over any other “feeling” that any of us as Americans may have.
Beyond that though after being in D.C. for a decade and knowing several dozen Muslims for most of that time I can say that they aren’t what most think of them. In fact, I’d prefer them to most Christians as I was never coerced in any way by the Muslims to follow their religion, which I cannot say about many Christians.
While the terrorists who did the 9/11 attacks were Muslims, they were extremists in that faith which isn’t common. I know of many Christian extremists personally, much less the ones we have heard about on the news. People of this country don’t seem to hold that against Christianity though(probably because they’re a majority in this country).
While it may cause problems with those that don’t want it there with vandalizing and such, what if that excuse stopped our forefathers from starting a new nation. Civil rights, suffrage, heck even our own gun rights have been “fought” for at times. On that matter, the vast majority of our own ancestors in this country had to fight for their rights as Americans as most of the ethnic groups in this country were looked down on at some point(some still are).
This country was founded on freedoms, and many forget that one of the biggest freedoms that was fought for was freedom of religion. Then after all was said and done, Americans pushed west and took the lands of the Native Americans, put them on reservations(land that has no use), and stuffed religion down their throat. Their children were often taken from them to be taught Christianity(brainwashed might be a better word). They were not allowed to have their ancestral hair or garments, not allowed to use their given names but had to use the Christian ones assigned to them, and not allowed to speak their native tongue among other things. Funny how during World War 2, the same government that violated the Native Americans 1st amendment rights in the previous century were called upon because of their ancestral language.
With all that being said, I don’t see how anyone who calls themselves American can claim that a Mosque shouldn’t be TWO BLOCKS AWAY from what is known as ground zero.

16. Hicks also appeared to hold accounts on a number of gun websites.

17. In a profile that appeared to belong to him on RimfireCentral.com, he said he was a NRA member and listed his occupation as “Professional Bum.”

18. On Jan. 20, Hicks shared a photo of a handgun on scale with a caption reading, “Yes, that is 1 pound 5.1 ounces for my loaded revolver, its holster, and five extra rounds in a speedloader.”

19. On Wednesday, Hick’s wife Karen, a nurse with the Durham County Department of Health, told reporters the incident was not a hate crime.

WNCN / Via wncn.com

“I can say with absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion of the victims’ faith, but it was related to a longstanding parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbors,” Karen Hicks said.

She said her husband of seven years treated people with respect. “He often champions on his Facebook page for the rights of individuals. … He believes everyone is equal – doesn’t matter what you look like or who you are or what you believe.”

21.

Here Are The Three Victims Of The Chapel Hill Shooting

22.

Three Muslim Students In North Carolina Shot Dead, Police Investigating If Attack Was Hate-Motivated

Check out more articles on BuzzFeed.com!

David Mack is a reporter and weekend editor for BuzzFeed News in New York.

Contact David Mack at david.mack@buzzfeed.com

Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close

iStockphoto

Dean Obeidallah

Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close

What percentage of terror attacks in the United States and Europe are committed by Muslims? Guess. Nope. Guess again.

And again…

“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” How many times have you heard that one? Sure, we heard Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade say it, but to me, that was simply part of the Fox News plan to make their viewers dumber, as we saw again this past weekend when its terrorism “expert” Steve Emerson was caught fabricating the story that Birmingham, England, is closed to non-Muslims. But more alarmingly, even some reasonable people have uttered this statement.And that comment is often followed up by the question: Why don’t we see Christian, Buddhist, or Jewish terrorists?

Obviously, there are people who sincerely view themselves as Muslims who have committed horrible acts in the name of Islam. We Muslims can make the case that their actions are not based on any part of the faith but on their own political agenda. But they are Muslims, no denying that.

However, and this will probably shock many, so you might want to take a breath: Overwhelmingly, those who have committed terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe aren’t Muslims. Let’s give that a moment to sink in.

Now, it’s not your fault if you aren’t aware of that fact. You can blame the media. (Yes, Sarah Palin and I actually agree on one thing: The mainstream media sucks.)

So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent.

As Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, noted in its report released last year, the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe were perpetrated by separatist groups. For example, in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe. Only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs.

Or what about the (dare I mention them) Jewish terrorists? Per the 2013 State Department’s report on terrorism, there were 399 acts of terror committed by Israeli settlers.

We are talking about groups like France’s FLNC, which advocates an independent nation for the island of Corsica. In December 2013, FLNC terrorists carried out simultaneous rocket attacks against police stations in two French cities. And in Greece in late 2013, the left-wing Militant Popular Revolutionary Forces shot and killed two members of the right-wing political party Golden Dawn. While over in Italy, the anarchist group FAI engaged in numerous terror attacks including sending a bomb to a journalist. And the list goes on and on.

Have you heard of these incidents? Probably not. But if Muslims had committed them do you think you our media would’ve covered it? No need to answer, that’s a rhetorical question.

Even after one of the worst terror attacks ever in Europe in 2011, when Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 people in Norway to further his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and pro-“Christian Europe” agenda as he stated in his manifesto, how much press did we see in the United States? Yes, it was covered, but not the way we see when a Muslim terrorist is involved. Plus we didn’t see terrorism experts fill the cable news sphere asking how we can stop future Christian terrorists. In fact, even the suggestion that Breivik was a “Christian terrorist” was met with outrage by many, including Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.

Have you heard about the Buddhist terrorists? Well, extremist Buddhists have killed many Muslim civilians in Burma, and just a few months ago in Sri Lanka, some went on a violent rampage burning down Muslim homes and businesses and slaughtering four Muslims.

Or what about the (dare I mention them) Jewish terrorists? Per the 2013 State Department’s report on terrorism, there were 399 acts of terror committed by Israeli settlers in what are known as “price tag” attacks. These Jewish terrorists attacked Palestinian civilians causing physical injuries to 93 of them and also vandalized scores of mosques and Christian churches.

Back in the United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims is almost as miniscule as in Europe. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme left-wing actors.

And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks, Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF).

In fact in 2013, it was actually more likely Americans would be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. In that year, three Americans were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. How many people did toddlers kill in 2013? Five, all by accidentally shooting a gun.

But our media simply do not cover the non-Muslim terror attacks with same gusto. Why? It’s a business decision. Stories about scary “others” play better. It’s a story that can simply be framed as good versus evil with Americans being the good guy and the brown Muslim as the bad.

Honestly, when is the last time we heard the media refer to those who attack abortion clinics as “Christian terrorists,” even though these attacks occur at one of every five reproductive health-care facilities? That doesn’t sell as well. After all we are a so-called Christian nation, so that would require us to look at the enemy within our country, and that makes many uncomfortable. Or worse, it makes them change the channel.

That’s the same reason we don’t see many stories about how to reduce the 30 Americans killed each day by gun violence or the three women per day killed by domestic violence. But the media will have on expert after expert discussing how can we stop these scary brown Muslims from killing any more Americans despite the fact you actually have a better chance of being killed by a refrigerator falling on you.

Look, this article is not going to change the media’s business model. But what I hope it does is cause some to realize that not all terrorists are Muslims. In fact, they are actually a very small percent of those that are. Now, I’m not saying to ignore the dangers posed by Islamic radicals. I’m just saying look out for those refrigerators.

Christian Savages Killing and Eating Muslim Flesh

‘Mad Dog’ the cannibal pictured eating SECOND Muslim in as many weeks as Christians lynch and burn two men in Central African Republic

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Mad Dog is pictured cutting meat from a body and licking a bloodied knife
Two Muslims were lynched and burned in Bangui in a revenge attack
Mad Dog – real name Ouandja Magloire – didn’t take part in the killings
He turned up afterwards and carried out his grisly act in front of a crowd

Sectarian violence has been rife recently in the Central African Republic
Catherine Samba-Panza, former Bangui mayor, has been elected president
She used her first speech to ask Muslims and Christians to stop fighting
EU has agreed a joint mission to send up to 1,000 troops to the country

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2542662/Footage-emerged-cannibal-eating-leg-Muslim-Central-African-Republic.html

 

French Magazine Commits More “Blasphemy”

French magazine to commit more blasphemy

French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, is to publish new anti-Islam cartoons.

French weekly Charlie Hebdo, known for its publishing of cartoons insulting Islam’s most revered figure, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), says it is planning to publish more blasphemous cartoons.

The magazine made the announcement on Sunday, saying that a special edition with cartoons on the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) will be published on Wednesday.

“If people want to be shocked, they will be shocked,” said Charlie Hebdo editor, Stephane Charbonnier.

In September, the same magazine published cartoons blasphemous against the Islamic sanctities, provoking widespread outrage worldwide.

The publication led to the temporary closure of several French institutes and cultural centers in some Muslim countries.

The September 19 sacrilegious caricatures appeared in the periodical after the emergence of a US-made film that insulted Islam’s holiest figure.

The blasphemous film sparked protests in Muslim countries, as well as in non-Muslim states like Australia, Britain, the United States, France, Belgium, and some other nations.

MR/HN

Related articles

• Muhammad cartoons: magazine to publish illustrated biography of prophet (guardian.co.uk)
• French magazine sparks another controversy over Mohammed cartoons (rt.com)
• Blasphemy Law in the Context of Christian Theology (salem-news.com)
• French magazine publishes bio of Prophet Mohammed in comic book form (foxnews.com)
• Charlie Hebdo Publishes ‘Halal’ Prophet Muhammad Comic Book Biography (huffingtonpost.co.uk)

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.

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• 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)

Fox News Inspires Mosque Arsonist Claims “I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News”

Fox News Inspires Mosque Arsonist Claims “I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News”

 

Fox Hate Speech and Paranoid Memes lead directly to physical hate crimes!

Yesterday in Indiana, 52-year old truck driver Randolph Linn pleaded guilty to all charges in an arson attack against the Islamic Center of Toledo.

Linn testified that he got “riled up” by Fox News and right wing talk radio, drank 45 beers, and set fire to the mosque’s prayer room because he learned from Fox that Muslims are terrorists who don’t believe in Jesus Christ: Mosque Arsonist Tells Court: ‘I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News’.

Linn explained to the court that he had gotten “riled up” after watching Fox News.

“And I was more sad when Judge [Jack] Zouhary asked him that, ‘Do you know any Muslims or do you know what Islam is?’” one mosque member who attended the hearing recalled to WNWO. “And he said, ‘No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio.’”

“Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up,” Linn also reportedly told the judge. “Most Muslims are terrorists and don’t believe in Jesus Christ.”

Linn claimed that he had consumed 45 beers in the 6 hours before leaving his Indiana home to set fire to the mosque, which he had discovered while working as a truck driver.

After his arrest on Oct. 2, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ava Dusten said that Linn had told officers, “Fuck those Muslims… They would kill us if they got the chance.”

Related articles

• Randolph Linn: Mosque Arson Suspect Indicted On Hate Crime Charges (loonwatch.com)
• Slaughtered Pig Left Outside of Cypress Mosque a Possible Hate Crime (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)
• Houston: Dead Pig Left In Front of Mosque (loonwatch.com)
• Colbert: Fox News so desperate they’re breaking out their ’emergency Muslims’ (rawstory.com)

ISLAMIC SUNNIS AGAINST EXTREMISM | “The extremist fanatics are doomed”

SUNNIS AGAINST EXTREMISM

About the author Darulfatwa is an endeavour of a group of committed and highly educated Muslims who collaborated with diverse community officials to establish what is the final frontier to bridge the gap between the needs of Muslims and their productive co-existence in the wider Australian community. Darulfatwa is a non-partisan and independent institution, lobbying for the right of all Muslims to a better living standard without prejudice and discrimination and defending the civil liberties and privileges of those at risk. It set forth in its endeavor to produce this text to empower the reader with knowledge to discriminate between moderation and extremism and expel the latter. Preface Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said: “The extremist fanatics are doomed.” Although extremism is not a new phenomenon, the rebel exacerbations witnessed today requires prompt action and a strong resolve. The global extremist movement driving this form of anarchy is manifested in groups known by a multitude of names hiding behind Islam to roam among the Islamic communities without drawing suspicion. Extremism does exist. Admitting this and recognising it as a dangerous force we can better plan to weed it from society. Islamic practice is a true following of the rules of Islam and extremism is a perverted view that deviates from the meanings of the merciful and moderate Islamic shari`ah. This elucidation is presented along this backdrop.   Abstract This elucidation explores the type of extremism and terrorism practiced under the pretext of Islam. It draws on the Quran, the sayings of Prophet Muhammad and the sayings of Muslim scholars to expose the roots of extremism and assert the just position of Islam. It also discloses revealing statements of deviant men/groups to add to the case against them. First the historical place of Islam in society is explored, then how deviations from orthodox Islam occurred and lead to the emergence of extremist ideologies manifesting historically in groups like the khawarij (dissenters) and in modern times in groups including the named al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah, the Wahhabis and Hizbut-Tahrir. Their actions and methodology are identified. Today, extremist movements have killed many people in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Saudi, Iraq and other places. Based on misleading reasoning, they have killed innocents. Daring to masquerade as Muslims, these extremists have attempted to destroy the reputation of Islam and Muslims. To refute them we quote a series of statements from moderate Sunni scholars; clarifying the Sunni stand against terrorism and extremism. Finally, this paper delivers solutions and warnings including, a need for Islamic scholars, Sheikhs and Islamic religious workers to remain at the forefront of the line of defence against extremists and prevent access to the extremist books. It is recognised that this work requires qualified and diligent individuals trained in deflating the calls of the named terrorist groups and activists of today. The Beginnings of Extremism Historically, many people embraced Islam freeing their hearts from the odious practices of ignorance and tribalism. Those true Muslims whose hearts pacified to the call of the Prophet were a people of middle ground, fairness and justice. Others, whose hearts did not pacify with peace of mind, had ulterior motives and emerged to spread envious gossip by attempting to split the line. They constitute the fringe sects of destruction and diseased ideologies who had to conceal themselves with the cloak of Islam to spread their evil, disrupting the harmony of Islam. The khawarij (dissenters) are among those who appeared in the first century on the Islamic calendar and whom the Prophet peace be upon him warned against in his hadith: “There will be those that come after me who will read the Qur’an but it does not go past their throats. They leave Islam like a spear leaves a prey, and they never return to it. They are the worst of the creations.” Extremism in Modern Times The majority of Muslims do not subscribe to extremist ideologies and theological perversions, which is why extremists find themselves constantly challenged, striving in every era to increase their small number and expand on their fringe positioning. Consequently, extremists have always tended to overtly gather to protect and pass their distorted views to the next generation built on youth. Today the khawarij still exist despite appearing under different names. Like their elders, they pass group-blasphemy to all those outside their sects. They continue to assault, to shed blood and to extort the properties of all those who defy them, the same way their elders did with the sons of the companions of the Prophet. Except today their threat is greater especially when they are not being faced with a unified and prompt ideological counter-offensive. The khawarij of today follow the same concepts of their elders resulting in copycat acts of terror shedding the blood of the rulers; peoples of states; Imams; contractors; journalists; ambassadors; engineers; doctors; farmers; craftsman, and old and young males and females. They call upon peoples to dissent against the leaders by way of revolutionary coup d’états and armed revolts, to hit at the infrastructure of governments and to kill its soldiers and police officers. If people refuse their calls, they apostatize them and shed their blood and extort their properties; leading to the bombing of civilian buses and to planting explosives at airports, trains, public roads. Previously they have even destroyed mosque minarets with the praise of some locals. One of their speakers here in Sydney said on a local radio station about such killing that includes the likes of people in the police force: “It’s as permissible to us as drinking water”. Let us not forget the killing and slaughtering of the kids in East Jordan on the hands of these extremists. Their activist was caught saying: “Do not prevent us from its blessing”, implying he too wanted to contribute to the cowardice slaughtering. Clearly, these and the killing of the innocent are attempts to destroy the reputation of Islam and Muslims. The extremists have killed many people in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Saudi, Iraq and other places thinking that their killing of those who oppose them is a means of seeking reward from God. Amongst those they’ve killed are: • Sheikh Muhammad ash-Shami:  the Mufti of a village near Aleppo called `Ifrin, • Sheikh Dr. Hussayn adh-Dhahabi: the Minister for Islamic Endowments and an academic at an Islamic College in Egypt. • Sheikh Nizar al-Halabi: the chairman of the Islamic Charity Projects Association in Lebanon. To plainly discover their deviant ideology and unjust reasoning underpinning their acts of terror, one needs only to observe extremists’ books.   Quotes from extremists’ books: • In their book fi dhilal al-Qur’an (In the Shades of the Qur’an) [vol. 3/G8/p.1198] they say: “He who obeys a human in a secular law even if it were partial obedience then this person is a mushrik (idolater) and a blasphemer no matter how emphatically he utters the testifications of faith”. • In the same book [vol. 2/G7/p.1057]: “All humankind in the East and the West inclusive of those who repeat the testifications of faith on the minarets with no indicator or factual happening are deeper in sin and worse in punishment on the Day of Judgment because they have blasphemed for the worship of creations”. • In the same book [vol 3/p.1449] is written: “It is required upon those who are called the Jama`ah al-Islamiyya or the brotherhood group to snatch the reigns of power from the rulers and to destroy their systems and to revolt against them by way of coups throughout the states”. However, historic and contemporary Islamic literature abounds with refutations against deviant sects. Islamic scholars fought and debated them including the great Prophetic companion `Abdullah Ibn `Abbas and the fourth Khalif (successor) Master `Aliy Ibn Abi Talib, followed by the four Sunni schools of thought and their orthodox followers. The four Sunni schools of thought are the highest authority for the Sunnis in refuting this global extremist movement and its aligned groups who falsely claim to be part of the Sunni populace.   Quotes from the four Sunni schools: • The Mufti of the Hanbalis in Mecca Sheikh Muhammad bin `Abdullah bin Hamid (d. 1295 H.) said in his book as-suhub al-wabilah (The Downpouring Clouds) page 276 about the leader of the extremist Wahhabi movement: “If he was contested and refuted and could not overtly kill his contester, he sends a hit man to murder him on his bed or at night in the market place, because he believed in the blasphemy of those who opposed him and the shedding of their blood”. • The Mufti of the Shafi`is in Mecca Sheikh Ahmad Zayni Dahlan (d. 1304 H.) wrote in his book ad-durar as-sunniyyah (The Sunni Gems) about the leader of the extremist Wahhabi movement that he used to say: “And all that is under the seven skies is a mushrik (idolater) fully, and he who kills a mushrik is rewarded with Paradise”. • He (Mufti) also relayed about the Wahhabi leader his statement: “He who enters our way shares our rights and obligations, and he who doesn’t is a blasphemer whose blood is shed and wealth is squandered”. • He also mentioned in his book ‘umara’ al-balad al-haram (The Princes of the Holy Land) that when the Wahhabis entered at-Ta’if they killed the people en mass including the elderly and the children, the honourables, the princes and the layman. They even slaughtered the suckling infants by their mothers’ breasts. They also assaulted the pilgrims to Mecca through extortion and murder. • The Maliki Sheikh Ahmad as-Sawi (d. 1241 H.) mentioned in his commentary on al-Jalalayn [vol.3 p.307-308] about the khawarij who misinterpret the true meanings of the Qur’an and the Prophetic traditions shedding in that the blood of the Muslims as is witnessed today in their localities. They are a sect in the Hijaz region (East Arabia) who are called the Wahhabis, they think they have a legitimate authority but in deed they are the liars who have been deceived by the devil who has made them forget the remembrance of their Lord. Those are the evil satanic sect; in fact the sect of Satan is defeated.”. • Dr Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1996) and who was a disciple of Sheikh Hasan al-Banna may Allah have mercy on him mentioned in his book min ma`alim al-haqq (From the Characteristics of Truth) [p.264]: “Those underground youth were later on a major threat to the group, as they started turning against each other in assassinations until they became a destructive tool for terror in the hands of those who had no true knowledge of Islam and could not be relied upon for the common interest of society”. Hasan al-Banna also said about them before he died that they were not brothers and they were not Muslims. Today, the threat of extremists is escalating and reaching new fronts beyond New York, Madrid, Bali, London and Sharm El-sheikh. They kill unjustly on one hand and call themselves ‘the Salafy Group’ on the other hand. But, no two concepts can be more polarised. They hide behind the banner of Jihad and martyrdom and under the veil of Islam. The fact of the matter remains that Islam is against them and against their evil acts. Refuting them is an Islamic obligation and diffusing them should be a way of life for the true Muslim.   Remedies and Solutions The war against extremism is a systematic war which has to be accompanied with preventative measures which include: • Satisfying the need for Islamic scholars, Sheikhs and Islamic religious workers who remain at the forefront of the line of defence against them. • To continue training new religious workers and Sheikhs with the know hows and the rebuttal documents enabling them to expose extremism and its proponents. • To expose those in the public arena so that they cannot continue to find access to the general public. • To maintain a media, broadcast and print, that supports rebutting and curtailing extremist acts and undressing their disguise and motives • To encourage Islamic leaders of today to speak out against the modern version of the khawarij in order to prevent them from teaching their ideology through pulpits, mosques, radio stations, satellite channels, schools, public lectures. • To protect the Muslim youth from their danger by preventing access to the extremist books Curtailing extremism should not be limited to security measures, which sometimes defeats the aim. Security measures may sometimes bloat the motives of extremists who act upon a recursive chain of actions and reactions in order to expand their sphere of conflict from one generation to another. Alone it could also attract the attention of some oblivious youth who might grant their sympathy to these extremist groups. Some people have even put a spin on hypocrisy, disguising it as public relation and promotion; thus luring the passive. Such deviant people compete for air time and coverage, while concealing their true identity and motives behind void utterances of peace and moderation. Their private sessions contain the same rants that they distribute in their bookstores claiming to advise the youth towards the right path for salvation. It is also behind doors that they accuse those calling against extremism to be mere agents or informers. It was only recently, when one of them was extolling extremists by saying that if it weren’t for them “Allah would have sunk the Earth from underneath us” and he called those carrying out suicidal attacks “martyrs”. Consequently, continued learning about Islam and application becomes a necessity for differentiation.   The conclusion is framed in what the trustworthy Prophet peace be upon him said: “Allah rewards for gentleness what He does not reward for violence” [related by Muslim and others]. Clearly, the onus is upon all Muslims to resolve this phenomenon, each through his informed area of expertise and with as much capacity as one could bear. Muslims in Australia and abroad following the orthodox teachings of Islam condemn all forms of terrorism, extremism and social destruction. Thus, it is essential to conquer terrorism and its kin, that governments, nations and the media differentiate between Muslims and terrorists and to further promote that there is no relation between Islam, terrorism and extremism. To execute this objective Muslims throughout the world and particularly in Australia should assert their moderate stand loudly, empowered by textual and logical proofs. They must restate that they are not the ones who exchange conviction for positions, and are not those who disregard the true Islamic fatwa for any agenda or program. Counselling against extremists cannot be achieved only by statements and words, but has to be accompanied with a continuous effort in order to eradicate this social dilemma and save nations and its peoples from its danger. This work requires qualified and diligent individuals trained in deflating the calls of the named al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah, the Wahhabis and Hizbut-Tahrir.

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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)
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• Anti-Muslim bigotry is being funded by the Israel-right-or-wrong crowd (mondoweiss.net)

Why Did IRA Terrorist Enabler and Catholic Bigot Peter King Get To Chair Anything?!

King is a long-time supporter of the IRA, and in the 1980s proclaimed: “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it.”

On Muslims, King has reached his own fact-less conclusion

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, will begin holding hearings Thursday on “the extent of the radicalization of American Muslims.” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has characterized the hearings as “a witch hunt.” Are they?

King also has said he believes the “self-radicalization” of American Muslims represents “a very small minority” of the overall community. What are the potential consequences of singling out one religious group?

All one needs to know about what is behind the King hearings can be gleaned by Peter King’s own statements regarding Muslims in the US.

How does Rep. King feel about Islam in the United States?

“Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this country. There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. We should be finding out how we can infiltrate [them].

How does King know so much about radicalization in the US? From a single source more than decade ago.

“The only real testimony we have on it is from Sheikh Kabbani who was a Muslim leader during the Clinton Administration, he testified back in 1999 and 2000 before the State Department that he thought over 80 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams. Certainly from what I’ve seen and dealings I’ve had, that number seems accurate.”

King’s single source, Sheikh Kabbani, is a Sufi Muslim who has advocated for peace and tolerance in Islam but who by his own admission is not an authority on Islam in America and who has admitted to simply stating his personal opinion – an opinion that has been contradicted by both the FBI and by every scholar who has studied the matter. Oh, and by the way, Sheikh Kabbani has also claimed that any Muslim who advises the US government is also “an extremist.” But King is not interested in facts. He just feels like it must be at least 80%.

“It was 80 percent back in 2000. Based on the radicalization since then, it has to be — I have no doubt, I have problem at all in saying it’s 85 percent. If it’s not 85, it’s still 80.”

And King has reliable sources to back up his feeling.

“I can get you the documentation on that from experts in the field. Talk to a Steve Emerson… It’s a real issue … I’ll stand by that number of 85 percent. This is an enemy living amongst us.”

That’s Steve Emerson, the “expert in the field” who has turned Islamophobia into a multi-million dollar career. Emerson has been caught in so many lies and distortions that the media watchdog group Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting (FAIR) has devoted an entire page to debunking his wild and exaggerated accusations. In an in-depth report of his writings, FAIR concludes that, “Emerson’s willingness to push an extremely thin story–with potentially explosive consequences–is… consistent with the lengthy list of mistakes and distortions that mar his credentials as an expert on terrorism.”

Of course, King could try to speak to American Muslims himself. But it seems he has already reached his own, fact-less conclusions.

“I think there’s been a lack of full cooperation from too many people in the Muslim community. And it’s a real threat here in this country.” … They won’t turn in their own. They won’t tell what’s going on in the mosques. They won’t come forward and cooperate with the police.”

That comes as a surprise to the authorities King claims to be assisting with these hearings. “If he has evidence of non-cooperation, he should bring it forward,” says Los Angeles County’s Sheriff Lee Baca. “We have as much cooperation as we are capable of acquiring through public trust relationships.”

Perhaps all of this explains why even conservative outlets like the National Interest have criticized King’s hearings. The National Interest wrote, “The hearings should never take place, but if they do, the real promoter of anti-Americanism at home and abroad will be Rep. King.”

The bottom line is that King’s hearings were not about making Americans safer. They are about promoting his personal views about Islam and Muslims in the U.S. As such they lend false legitimacy to the anti-Islam hate groups that have flourished in the U.S. since 9/11. We saw a glimpse of this zealotry and hatred recently, when a large group of tea party protesters in Orange County surrounded a Muslim group’s fundraiser yelling obscenities and shouting “Go Back Home!” to the Muslims walking to and from the event. The scene looked much like a chapter of American history that most Americans reflect on with shame. The fact that a representative of Congress held hearings that could lend legitimacy to this type of bigotry is shocking.

Dr. Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a contributing editor at The Daily Beast

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• David Yerushalmi: Pamela Geller’s anti-democracy lawyer & “SION” senior member exposed: The facts (loonwatch.com)
• Key members of the Congressional ‘Islamophobia caucus’ swept from Congress (mondoweiss.net)
• An ‘industry’ built on hate: How the right-wing successfully brought anti-Muslim bigotry into the American mainstream (mondoweiss.net)
• Dena Takruri: Islamophobia and the Muslim-American Vote (huffingtonpost.com)
• Will New House Homeland Security Committee Chair Carry On Peter King’s Islamophobic Legacy? (thinkprogress.org)
• Will New House Homeland Security Committee Chair Carry On Peter King’s Islamophobic Legacy? (loonwatch.com)

Jewish Orthodox Cry Anti-Semitism Whilst Vilifying Other Religions

 “Any trial based on the assumption that Jews and goyim are equal is a total travesty of justice” — Prominent Jewish religious fanatic, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh

 

Jewish Day School Textbook Challenged by Muslim Group for Vilifying Muslims

Friday, November 23, 2012

A Canadian Islamic organization is accusing a Toronto-area Jewish day school of using a textbook that vilifies Muslims.

In a Nov. 19 letter to Jewish groups, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-CAN, charges that a textbook used at the Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet Sephardic School employs “inflammatory and hateful terms in describing Muslims.”

CAIR-CAN alleges that the book, “2000 Years of Jewish History,” describes Muslims as “rabid fanatics” with “savage beginnings.”

“The entire chapter devoted to Islam presents a pernicious and extreme portrayal of Muslims and the Islamic faith. The material further denigrates the Prophet Muhammad as a ‘rabid Jew-hater,’ and falsely portrays Islam as inherently anti-Semitic and devoted to hating Jews,” the group said in its letter to the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center For Holocaust Studies and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, or CIJA.

It said the text is used in grade 7 and 8 girls’ classes at the Orthodox Jewish day school and “leaves impressionable young Jewish readers with a sense of suspicion and even intolerance towards their fellow Canadians.”

The group wants the Centre for Jewish Education of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto to investigate.

No one from CIJA, the Wiesenthal Center or Ohr HaEmet responded to JTA’s requests for comment.

CAIR-CAN’s salvo comes on the heels of an investigation by Toronto-area police of a local Islamic school. Earlier this month, police cleared the school of hate crimes allegations following a complaint by Jewish groups. York Regional Police found that teaching materials at the East End Madrassah attacked Jews and “suggested intolerance,” but were not criminal.

Part of the madrassah’s curriculum encouraged boys to keep fit for jihad, compared Jews to Nazis, and referred to “Jewish plots and treacheries.”

The complaint “prompted change” at the madrassah, noted CAIR-CAN in its letter, adding that the group “welcomes that change.”

When police began their probe, the Toronto District School Board,  which rented space to the school, revoked its permit and the madrassah had to relocate.

JTA, 22 November 201

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• Toronto: Jewish Day School Textbook Challenged by Muslim Group for Vilifying Muslims (loonwatch.com)
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Renowned Philosopher Berates Western ‘Islamophobia’

Renowned Philosopher Berates Western ‘Islamophobia’

Posted by Amago

“Once, not very long ago, Americans and Europeans prided themselves on their enlightened attitudes of religious toleration, although everyone knew that the history of the West has actually been characterized by intense religious animosity and violence,” she said.

Why is it that priding yourself with enlightened attitudes of religious toleration only an ideal?  One reason why it has and still is an ideal is that religious toleration seems to be trumped by ”intense religious animosity and violence,” according to the renowned philosopher Martha Nussbaum,

Renowned philosopher berates Western ‘Islamophobia’

By Olivia Patton

Renowned philosopher Martha Nussbaum addressed a packed auditorium Friday afternoon, berating Western Islamophobia, a problem Nussbaum said continues to plague the country today.

“Once, not very long ago, Americans and Europeans prided themselves on their enlightened attitudes of religious toleration, although everyone knew that the history of the West has actually been characterized by intense religious animosity and violence,” she said.

Nussbaum, a service professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, said blatant legislative discrimination against Muslims in the United States, France, Belgium, Germany, and Spain, among other countries, requires examination.

“Our situation calls urgently for critical self examination as we try to uncover the roots of ugly fears and suspicions that currently disfigure all Western societies,” Nussbaum said.

Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters in 2010 opted to pass an amendment to the state’s constitution that singled out Shariah Law — the moral code of Islam — as something Oklahoma courts would not be influenced by.

Shariah law regulates Muslim personal conduct and provides rules on alcohol consumption, dietary practices, prayer and codes of honesty in business dealings.

The amendment, approved by voters, was ultimately struck down as unconstitutional, and never went into effect.

The measure mirrors other recent U.S. attempts at religious intolerance.

Nussbaum shed light on a proposed Tennessee law that would have criminalized the practice of Shariah law with a felony punishable up to 15 years in jail. A rewritten version of the bill that did not expressly reference Islam or Islamic law, but did still carry criminal penalties, eventually passed.

In addition, U.S. Muslim women have experienced harassment because of their personal choice to wear the hijab and burka, Nussbaum said.

A female Moroccan hostess who worked at Disney Land’s Grand California Hotel is suing Disney for the right to wear her head scarf during work. Her supervisors allegedly told her the head scarf went against the “Disney look” and that she would have to take a job outside of the view of customers if she wished to continue wearing it.

“What I favor in the undergraduate curriculum is that everyone should have some knowledge of the major world religions,” Nussbaum said. “So I think we’re lucky in a sense that we have more opportunities for this kind of intervention to learning and conversation.”

The University’s 15-month-old Institute of Humanities and Global Cultures sponsored the talk to enrich its program aimed at providing the structure for graduate students and faculty to further their work in the humanities.

Related articles

• Imams’ trial tests Bulgaria’s religious tolerance (washingtontimes.com)
• Martha Nussbaum, the US philosopher who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, has been cited in “Antjie Krog: Should power listen to poetry?” (The Guardian, 26.09.12): “That is why a cabinet should read literature. Neither the state which it controls, nor (interlitq.wordpress.com)
• Shari’ah’s Uphill Climb (christianitytoday.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)

Rabbis Against Jewish Fascist Harpy and Hatemoger Pamela Geller

Rabbi Jill Jacobs explains message behind New York subway ads

Rabbi Jill Jacobs explains message behind New York subway ads

Inae Oh of the Huffington Post interviews Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, which took out an advertisementurging New York subway users to “help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors”, in an effort to counter Pamela Geller’s notorious “savages” ad. Rabbi Jacobs explains:

“I was very concerned that people might think that these ads speak for the Jewish community, as Geller couches her anti-Muslim message in the language of supporting Israel. The suggestion that she is speaking only about terrorists, and not about Muslims in general, falls apart as soon as you read her writings, which are fear mongering about Muslims in the U.S. and in the world, and about Islam as a religion.”

She adds: “I want to spread the message that 1800 rabbis – along with the majority of the American Jewish community – believes in partnership with our Muslim neighbors. We, of course, oppose all acts of terrorism. We will not, however, allow the actions of a small minority to be an excuse for dehumanizing an entire people.”

Related articles

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/pamela-geller-professional-hatemonger-freaks-out/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/hate-zealot-pamela-gellers-fixation-with-sandra-flukes-vagina/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/pamela-geller-americas-most-deranged-blogger/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/loons-pamela-geller-and-terry-jones-make-hate-list/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/fear-incorporated-whos-paying-for-all-that-islamophobic-paranoia/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/catholic-and-jewish-right-wing-extemists-behind-anti-muslim-schlock/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/godly-terrorist-anders-breivik-inspired-by-american-catholic-fascist-robert-spencer-jewish-hatemonger-pamela-geller-fascist-religious-right/

https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/right-wing-jewish-bigot-pamela-gellers-ghoulish-obsession/

• Pro-Muslim Ads In NYC Subway Counter Message Of Ads Against Jihad (rferl.org)
• Pro-tolerance subway ads to hang near anti-Islam posters (salon.com)
• ‘Choose love’: Pro-Muslim ads to appear in NYC subways (rt.com)
• Battle of the Subway Ads (thedailybeast.com)
• Priests And Rabbis Are Fed Up With Those Anti-Jihad Ads On The New York Subway (businessinsider.com)
• Jews and Christians Partner to Buy Anti-Anti-Muslim NYC Subway Ads [Pamela Geller] (gawker.com)
• BREAKING: Pamela Geller’s NYC Subway Anti-Islam Ads Covered with Racist and Hate Speech Stickers, LOL. (pibillwarner.wordpress.com)
• Has the Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated the Romney Campaign!? (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Caught on Camera | Mitt Romney Coddles Islamophobic Bigots and Neo-Fascist Extremists (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Majority of Americans Reject Hatemonger Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Incitement to Hate (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)

Right Wing Religious Nuts Profiteering From Islamophobia

Al Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahri Urges Holy War Over Prophet Film Produced And Promoted By Right Wing Extremists Joseph Nassralla, Morris Sadek and Nakoula B. Nakoula.

FOX NEWS CAIRO – The leader of Al Qaeda is encouraging Muslims to wage holy war against the United States and Israel in response to a film that insulted Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Ayman al-Zawahri, in an audio message released by Al Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab early Saturday, claimed Washington allowed the film’s production under the pretext of freedom of expression, but added that “this freedom did not prevent them from torturing Muslim prisoners.”

The crudely-produced amateur film, “Innocence of Muslims,” which was posted to YouTube and other online forums (some in Arabic), was made by Egyptian-born American citizens (Joseph Nassralla, Morris Sadek and Nakoula B. Nakoula). The video sparked violence in the Middle East, including in Egypt and Libya, where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others were killed on Sept. 11 during an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Dozens more have also been killed in violence related to the film. In Saturday’s audio recording, Al-Zawahri praised “honest and zealous” demonstrators who breached the U.S Embassy in Cairo and attackers who stormed the U.S. “embassy” in Benghazi.

World War III: That’s exactly what Right Wing Extremists  Joseph Nassralla, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Morris Sadek intended to do when they produced and promoted the stupid ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film.

Right Wing Extremists  Joseph Nassralla, Nakoula B. Nakoula and Morris Sadek, who are Coptic Christians from Egypt, have been on the  Islamophobia ”money train” for the past 3 years. Nakoula has federal convictions for manufacturing and distribution of Meth and ID fraud, he is an ex-convict whose probation conditions exclude him from ever using the internet or a computer without the written approval of his probation officer.

Gas station operator Nakoula B. Nakoula’s ”production company” is “Pharaoh Voice, Inc.” The registered address was 11804 Carson St. Hawaiian Gardens, Ca 90716. This is a converted gas station, now a “smog test” depot under a new owner not linked to Nakoula B. Nakoula.

Joseph Nassralla and Media for Christ (M4C) applied for the filming permit for Desert Warrior aka ‘Innocence of Muslims’ (per San Gabriel Valley Newspaper) and provided a certificate of insurance.  M4C has IRS non-profit status and files 990 returns. The 2011 return shows a budget of over $1 million dollars, and assets that were used to produce the film, ie the studio and the equipment such as sound editing for overdubs. The Media for Christ ( www.ATVSat.com ) website is a video blog production. 

Islamophobia Industry is Big Bucks as ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Filmmaker Joseph Nassralla’s Media For Christ Went From $8 Grand in Cash Donations in 2005 to over $1 Million in 2011. Joseph Nassralla has a very deep media trail, mostly on account of his featured roles in the various Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer promoted anti-Mosque events in New York City. SEE: http://rainoutreachtv.com/… “Nassralla founded the charity [i.e., Media for Christ] in 2005 with $30,000 of his own money. In its 2011 tax filing, which covers the period of the filming, the charity reported having eight employees and contributions of over $1 million.”

“There’s an interesting chronological parallel in the development of Joseph Nassralla’s alliance with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and the funding fortunes of Media For Christ nonprofit 501(c)(3), that in its first four years of existence, starting in 2005, it had an operating budget of less than $50,000 a year. Then, in 2009, according to Media For Christ’s 2009 990 tax form filed with the IRS, the non profit’s yearly budget jumped to $195,396.

“In 2010, the year Joseph Nassralla spoke at Pamela Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s two anti-mosque rallies, and was photographed together with the two, Media For Christ’s budget tripled, to $633,516. Then, in 2011, Media For Christ’s budget zoomed to over one million dollars ($1,016,366), an astounding rate of growth for a new nonprofit.

Media For Christ 1040 Hamilton Dd Durate CA 91010
Media for Christ Federal EIN 203012642 Public Charity 501(c)(3)
Most recently completed fiscal year (TAXPER) 12/2011
Total Revenue $1,016,785 12/2011
Total Assets: $67,167
President Joseph Nassralla
Filed by Kamal Rizk CPA/Vice President
Total Revnue $635,198… 12/2010 Way TV launched on 1/1/2010
Total Revnue $195,396… 12/2009..Linked to Geller and Spencer
Total Revnue $46,248….. 12/2008
Total Revnue $65,861….. 12/2007
Total Revnue $64,164….. 12/2006
Total Revnue $8,719…… .12/2005

Related articles

• ‘I Am Nakoula’: Anti-Islam Moviemaker Now Cult Hero (wired.com)
• TIMELINE of Anti Islam Film ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Produced and Promoted by Joseph Nassralla, Nakoula B. Nakoula and Morris Sadek Fox News Has It Wrong. (pibillwarner.wordpress.com)
• Al Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahri Urges Holy War Over Prophet Film Produced And Promoted By Right Wing Extremists Joseph Nassralla, Morris Sadek and Nakoula B. Nakoula. (pibillwarner.wordpress.com)

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

• Pamela Geller’s Blog Solicited Funds For anti-Muhammad Film (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• If anti-Muslim ads are protected, so must be my free speech right to protest | Mona Eltahawy (guardian.co.uk)
• BREAKING: Pamela Geller’s NYC Subway Anti-Islam Ads Covered with Racist and Hate Speech Stickers, LOL. (pibillwarner.wordpress.com)
• A Treasury of Defacings of Pamela Geller’s Racist Subway Ads (theawl.com)
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Majority of Americans Reject Hatemonger Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s Incitement to Hate

America’s anti-Muslim ads backfire

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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)

Humanists and Islam | Where We Stand?

A sensible Humanist approach to Islam

Islam and the Politics of Violence

Over a long period culminating in recent years, Muslim fundamentalists dedicated to establishing Islamic theocracies have ascended to power and solidified their authority in several countries. They have also established enclaves in many other nations, and some of them have formed terrorist organizations. Though belonging to various Muslim sects, these theocrats share a willingness to implement Islamist Sharia laws with punishments that disregard basic human rights, particularly women’s rights, and some conduct assassinations and brutal reprisals in the name of “true” Islam.

Though adherents of this type are gaining in numbers and power, they do not represent all Muslims. Generalizing Islam as entirely violent undermines the efforts of millions of Muslims and others who are struggling to challenge the rise of extremism.

Since September 11, 2001, prejudice and discrimination have been on the rise in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere against Muslims. Such individuals are suffering from increased security screenings, hostile media attention, and oppressive new laws, as well as localized acts of violence and widespread disrespect. Moreover, disinformation campaigns and negative imagery have led to popular confusion wherein al-Qaeda is inaccurately connected to the former regime of Saddam Hussein, Iranians and South Asians are misidentified as Arabs, Sikhs are mistaken for Muslims, and the world faith of Islam, with its 1.3 billion followers, is viewed as a doctrinaire monolith.

The American Humanist Association is opposed to both the activities of Islamic extremists and to the “crusade” mentality rising in Western circles that condemns all Muslims indiscriminately. This statement aims at defining a rational and informed humanist position.

Common Standards

Humanists should assess Islam using the same standards applied to all belief systems. This means, in practice, that humanists support the concept of a democratic secular state, with complete separation of religion and government. Consistent with this, humanists oppose theocracy in all of its forms and support:

• The freedom to think and believe or not believe, and to profess or critique, resisting efforts to impose one’s religious beliefs on others through coercive and punitive measures
• The choice to observe or not to observe religious practices, to the degree that such practices do not harm others or interfere with their rights
• Democratic principles, to the degree that such choices do not permit the state to engage in religious indoctrination or similar tyrannies of the majority
• Modern human rights, not tolerating violations of those basic rights whether or not they are bolstered by religious law or custom

A Balanced Humanist Policy

There is a great deal of violence in the world today, a disturbing portion of which is perpetrated in the name of Islam. Humanists recognize that the world of Islam is vast and heterogeneous, and problems that exist in one area may not exist in others. For this reason, one-size-fits-all responses to issues that outsiders perceive within Islam are not only unworkable but are likely to be detrimental to humanistic solutions.

While small numbers of Muslim revivalists may reside in the United States, and while there is a continuing threat of terrorist attack from Islamic terrorist groups, extremist Islam as a political force has not taken hold in this country. Problems are mostly limited to instances when Islamic requirements, such as those relating to dress or prayer, conflict with preexisting law and custom. These are often resolved in a spirit of mutual understanding. When that fails and the courts intervene, their decisions should reflect both practical requirements and a respect for religious freedom. In general, humanists do not support either extending religious accommodation in ways that would create an unequal playing field between the religious and nonreligious or rigidly enforcing legal provisions that unnecessarily encumber individual religious liberty.

Some countries, notably in Western Europe, have been less successful than the United States in integrating Muslim immigrants into mainstream society. Humanists respect the desire of the majorities in these countries to preserve their human rights traditions; they also support the efforts of humanist groups to resolve emerging problems in a humane and practical manner. But this is not a blanket endorsement of cultural preservation. Some approaches have been strikingly racist and ethnocentric in nature. While freedom of speech must not be compromised, humanists oppose nativism, jingoism, and open hostility toward Muslim citizens and immigrants within any nation.

Humanists strive for a world where violence and fear are not the drivers of ideals and actions. In every case and in all its forms, extremism must be condemned. But neither should fear and ignorance be permitted to sanction prejudice and discrimination. Humanists recognize that challenging Islamists, Christian fundamentalists, and all others who hold to religious or ideological extremes is not a process with an easy or short-term conclusion, but it is the way toward progress.

Humanists see no contradiction, on the one hand, between their longstanding adherence to principles that run contrary to religious beliefs and, on the other, their strong distaste for efforts to propagate a crusade mentality against Islam or any other religion. Religious liberty means freedom for all: freedom to peacefully affirm and practice a faith, freedom from religious coercion, and freedom to peacefully leave or reject a faith. Such religious liberty is and always has been a central tenet of humanism and is herewith reaffirmed.

Related articles

• International Humanist Group Denounces Blasphemy Laws to UN’s Human Rights Council (patheos.com)
• American Humanists’ Approach to Islam (atheistrev.com)
• Should Atheists Ignore Islamophobia? (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Action Alert: Tell US State Department to help Egyptian atheist Alber Saber (secularnewsdaily.com)
• American Humanist Association Files Amicus Brief Against Teacher Who Taught Creationism (americanhumanist.org)
• Take Action: Tell The State Department to Help Egyptian Atheist Alber Saber (americanhumanist.org)
• A sensible Humanist approach to Islam (secularnewsdaily.com)
• A Sensible Approach to Islam (americanhumanist.org)

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)

American Conservatism | Ushering In The Age of Absurdity

Quote of the Day: Modern Conservatism

Via:- Mario Piperni

No More Mister Nice Blog:

…the unreported story of our times is that birtherism isn’t an isolated example of paranoid lunacy taking hold of a disturbingly large segment of the population — in fact, modern conservatism is driven by multiple lunatic theories that are precisely as delusional as birtherism.

True…but the mulitple lunacies have been reported time and time again. The problem is that the people who should be paying attention aren’t listening to anyone whose first name isn’t Rush, Glenn or Sean.

The theories:

• Birtherism
• Obama is a Muslim
• Obama is a Communist
• Obama is the anti-Christ
• Obama eats little white babies on Tuesdays (made that one up…but not by much)
• Tax cuts for the rich creates jobs
• Homosexuality is a perversion and can be cured with prayer
• The Tea Party is a grassroots movement
• Corporations are people
• Bush, Palin and Bachmann have functioning brains
• Abstinence education prevents teenage pregnancies
• Climate change is a hoax
• The GOP in its current state is a serious political party
• FOX News is fair and balanced
• The Affordable Care Act creates death panels
• Creationism is science
• Evolution is a flawed theory

And on it goes…the delusional theories of a self-destructing political party.

Related articles

• Mario Piperni on Ms. Mittens (seniorsforademocraticsociety.wordpress.com)
• Birther Posse Brings Down Obama (or soon will) (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Mario Piperni on Ricky Righteous (seniorsforademocraticsociety.wordpress.com)
• Tabloid Birtherism (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Birthers return: Republican Rep. ‘doubts’ Obama’s birth certificate (examiner.com)
• Conservatism Linked To “Low Effort Thinking” (lezgetreal.com)

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• Mario Piperni on the Conservatives (seniorsforademocraticsociety.wordpress.com)
• Quote of the Day: Modern Conservatism (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Tabloid Birtherism (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• U.S. Politics – Right-Wing Insanity Illustrated (No. 31) (goodolewoody.wordpress.com)
• Crazy Birther Kook Jerome Corsi Exposed As Plagiarist Fraud (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Birthers return: Republican Rep. ‘doubts’ Obama’s birth certificate (examiner.com)
• “A Responsibility To The Truth”: Why Is There A Resurgence Of Congressional Birtherism? (mykeystrokes.com)
• Cantor Defends Rep. Stearns Despite Birtherism: ‘He Has My Full Confidence’ (thinkprogress.org)
• Mario Piperni on Ricky Righteous (seniorsforademocraticsociety.wordpress.com)

Like The American Religious Reich | Religious right in Egypt hoping for Islamic law

Religious right in Egypt hoping for Islamic law

Hazem Salah abu Ismail’s blend of populism and ultraconservative Salafi Islamhas turned him into a leading presidential candidate.

By Jeffrey Fleishman

CAIRO — The men gathering outside the yellow mosque agreed: Adulterers should be stoned to death, the hands of thieves cut off.

“But not now,” said Kareem Atta, waiting in a cool breeze for the sheik’s car to roll up next to the Quran sellers. “Shariah law must be gradually put into place so it doesn’t shock the system. You can’t cut people’s hands off if you first don’t give them financial justice.”

The young students, engineers and laborers are followers of Hazem Salah abu Ismail, a lawyer and holy man whose poetic blend of populism and ultraconservative Salafi Islam has turned him into a leading presidential candidate. Posters with Ismail’s gray beard and boyish face seem to hang on every street and alley across this ancient city.

Ismail is at once provocative and soothing, in a breath switching from genial to fiery. He has suggested revoking Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and holds up Iran as an exemplar of defiance against the U.S. His hard-line rhetoric has nudged American officials closer to the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, a sign of Washington’s scrambling to keep pace with the tremors of the “Arab Spring.”

“I will never become a puppet for the U.S. or Israel or any Western power,” Ismail said in a recent speech. He added that the U.S. was funneling money to certain Egyptian candidates to “suit their interests,” and he urged young Muslims to “spoil such a plot.”

Ismail’s candidacy, however, may be in jeopardy over an embarrassing link to America. His mother, Nawal Abdel Aziz Nour, who lived with his sister in the Los Angeles area, became a U.S. citizen before she died, according to California public records. That would make him ineligible to run. Ismail claims his mother held only a green card, not a U.S. passport. The election commission, which confirmed that Ismail’s mother held an American passport, is expected to decide on whether to disqualify him in coming days.

Ismail’s is a robust voice in the fractious political Islam that is spreading across an Egypt freed from three decades of Hosni Mubarak‘s secular rule. The movement’s passions and designs on power are shaking leftists and non-Muslims, but also altering the dynamics for Islamists and challenging the dominance of the Brotherhood.

That was evident when the Brotherhood, which controls parliament and had promised not to put forward a presidential candidate, broke its pledge and nominated Khairat el-Shater, a multimillionaire and longtime political prisoner who instantly became a front-runner. El-Shater represents the middle ground for Islamists, book-ended by Ismail’s sharper conservatism and the liberal Islam of Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former Brotherhood member.

Ismail and his competitors embody a new Egypt searching for a religiously resonant yet pragmatic brand of politics that can fix the nation’s deep economic and social problems. Similar scenarios are enveloping rising Islamists in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and will certainly be a factor in Syria if President Bashar Assad falls.

The son of a late prominent religious scholar, Ismail represented Egyptians, including his opponent el-Shater, in civil-rights cases against the Mubarak government. He embraced last year’s revolution before many other Islamists and has been a forceful critic of the ruling military council.

He’s a favorite on talk shows and Internet videos, a charismatic speaker who can charm a university crowd as easily as he can raise cheers from millworkers in the provinces. He skims the edge of fundamentalism — he once suggested that he and Osama bin Laden shared the same ends, if not the means, to create an Islamic state — but connects with Egyptians’ everyday worries.

“We live in dignity,” is his slogan, which highlighted his recent call for Egyptians to each donate 72 pounds ($12) so the country could free itself of American influence by rejecting $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid.

Such prescriptions may not be widely popular in a country where more than 40 percent of the population is poor, but they encapsulate Egyptians’ rising sense of pride. They also show a defiance toward the West that Ismail believes should encompass everyone from politicians to militants. He has said of bin Laden: May God “be pleased with him and be merciful on him. I hope that God will accept him among believers, martyrs and righteous.”

Ismail believes women should be veiled and segregated from men in the workplace. Egypt’s lone female presidential candidate, Bothaina Kamel, recently referred to him as a “phenomenon similar to a sci-fi movie.” But she added she would support Ismail ahead of secular presidential front-runner Amr Moussa, whom many regard as a throwback to the old regime.

Ismail’s recurring message of the power of Islam to transform society was evident outside the Assad bin Forat mosque in Cairo, where he has preached for years. It is his wellspring and sanctuary and, now, an unofficial campaign office of pious men rushing with posters, T-shirts and signature sheets.

“I’m doing this for the sake of God so that we can have Shariah law in Egypt,” said Yasser Adel, a campaign volunteer. “We need someone with clean hands who knows his religion well and is not corrupt. We should gradually have an Islamic state like in Saudi Arabia, but this must come with respect for all minorities.”

Such sentiment alarms women, liberals and non-Muslims anxious over Islamists’ control of the legislature and a panel drafting a new constitution. But devotion guides many Egyptians who for years steeled themselves with religion against the state’s injustices.

The young at the mosque were excited, even surprised, that they could gather without fear of arrest. Theirs was a focused energy not only on their candidate but also the prospect of what his election could mean to an Arab world in disarray.

“Egypt is the heart of the Islamic world, and if Egypt rises religiously, the whole Muslim world will rise,” said Ahmed Fathy, dressed in a pinstriped suit and holding the hand of his daughter. “Shariah means an end to poverty and the corruption that have left this country struggling.”

As he spoke, trucks and minivans bearing Ismail’s image were loaded with placards and campaign literature and driven off into the night.

Related articles

• Over US Mother, Islamist Likely out of Egypt Race (abcnews.go.com)
• Egypt: Islamist group names cleric for president (sacbee.com)
• Egypt’s Radical Salafis Approach Secular Rivals (abcnews.go.com)
• Egypt’s radical Salafis approach secular rivals (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Tunisians demand Islamic law (moroccotomorrow.org)
• Thousands rally in Tunisia to demand Islamic law (vancouversun.com)
• The Assault on Secularism Poses a Real Threat to Religious Freedom (atheistrev.com)
• Egyptian parliament selects constitution panel (cbsnews.com)
• Egypt’s former spy chief joins presidential race (news.yahoo.com)
• Egyptian ex-regime strongman to run for president (ctv.ca)

Free Speech Crushed by Islamic Power

Religion and freedom of speech are poles apart. In Egypt, a 17 year has been sentenced to three years in prison for a Facebook post that made fun of Muhammad.

An Egyptian court on Wednesday sentenced a 17-year-old Christian boy to three years in jail for publishing cartoons on his Facebook page that mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohammad, actions that sparked sectarian violence.

Gamal Abdou Massoud was also accused of distributing some of his cartoons to his school friends in a village in the southern city of Assiut, home to a large Christian population and the hometown of the late Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda.

“Assiut child’s court ordered the jailing of Gamal Abdou Massoud … for three years after he insulted Islam and published and distributed pictures that insulted Islam and its Prophet,” the court said in a statement seen by Reuters.

The cartoons, published by Massoud in December, prompted some Muslims to attack Christians. Several Christian houses were burned and several Christians were injured in the violence.

Fanatics that burn down houses and enact violence against humans who dare to insult religion, are the ones the government should be putting behind bars!

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2012/04/04/egypt-jails-christian-student-to-three-years-in-jail-for-insulting-islam/

 

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Is The Bible More Violent Than The Koran?

Dark passages

Does the harsh language in the Koran explain Islamic violence? Don’t answer till you’ve taken a look inside the Bible

By Philip Jenkins

WE HAVE A good idea what was passing through the minds of the Sept. 11 hijackers as they made their way to the airports.

Related Kindness in the Koran

Their Al Qaeda handlers had instructed them to meditate on al-Tawba and Anfal, two lengthy suras from the Koran, the holy scripture of Islam. The passages make for harrowing reading. God promises to “cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks!” (Koran 8.12). God instructs his Muslim followers to kill unbelievers, to capture them, to ambush them (Koran 9.5). Everything contributes to advancing the holy goal: “Strike terror into God’s enemies, and your enemies” (Koran 8.60). Perhaps in their final moments, the hijackers took refuge in these words, in which God lauds acts of terror and massacre.

On a much lesser scale, others have used the words of the Koran to sanction violence. Even in cases of domestic violence and honor killing, perpetrators can find passages that seem to justify brutal acts (Koran 4.34).

Citing examples such as these, some Westerners argue that the Muslim scriptures themselves inspire terrorism, and drive violent jihad. Evangelist Franklin Graham has described his horror on finding so many Koranic passages that command the killing of infidels: the Koran, he thinks, “preaches violence.” Prominent conservatives Paul Weyrich and William Lind argued that “Islam is, quite simply, a religion of war,” and urged that Muslims be encouraged to leave US soil. Today, Dutch politician Geert Wilders faces trial for his film “Fitna,” in which he demands that the Koran be suppressed as the modern-day equivalent to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Even Westerners who have never opened the book  – especially such people, perhaps  – assume that the Koran is filled with calls for militarism and murder, and that those texts shape Islam.

Unconsciously, perhaps, many Christians consider Islam to be a kind of dark shadow of their own faith, with the ugly words of the Koran standing in absolute contrast to the scriptures they themselves cherish. In the minds of ordinary Christians  – and Jews  – the Koran teaches savagery and warfare, while the Bible offers a message of love, forgiveness, and charity. For the prophet Micah, God’s commands to his people are summarized in the words “act justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Christians recall the words of the dying Jesus: “Father, forgive them: they know not what they do.”

But in terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong. In fact, the Bible overflows with “texts of terror,” to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. The Koran often urges believers to fight, yet it also commands that enemies be shown mercy when they surrender. Some frightful portions of the Bible, by contrast, go much further in ordering the total extermination of enemies, of whole families and races  – of men, women, and children, and even their livestock, with no quarter granted. One cherished psalm (137) begins with the lovely line, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept”; it ends by blessing anyone who would seize Babylon’s infants and smash their skulls against the rocks.

To say that terrorists can find religious texts to justify their acts does not mean that their violence actually grows from those scriptural roots. Indeed, such an assumption itself is based on the crude fundamentalist formulation that everything in a given religion must somehow be authorized in scripture. The difference between the Bible and the Koran is not that one book teaches love while the other proclaims warfare and terrorism, rather it is a matter of how the works are read. Yes, the Koran has been ransacked to supply texts authorizing murder, but so has the Bible

If Christians or Jews want to point to violent parts of the Koran and suggest that those elements taint the whole religion, they open themselves to the obvious question: what about their own faiths? If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery. Of course, they are no such thing; nor is Islam.

But the implications run still deeper. All faiths contain within them some elements that are considered disturbing or unacceptable to modern eyes; all must confront the problem of absorbing and reconciling those troubling texts or doctrines. In some cases, religions evolve to the point where the ugly texts so fade into obscurity that ordinary believers scarcely acknowledge their existence, or at least deny them the slightest authority in the modern world. In other cases, the troubling words remain dormant, but can return to life in conditions of extreme stress and conflict. Texts, like people, can live or die. This whole process of forgetting and remembering, of growing beyond the harsh words found in a text, is one of the critical questions that all religions must learn to address.

Faithful Muslims believe that the Koran is the inspired word of God, delivered verbatim through the prophet Mohammed. Non-Muslims, of course, see the text as the work of human hands, whether of Mohammed himself or of schools of his early followers. But whichever view we take, the Koran as it stands claims to speak in God’s voice. That is one of the great differences between the Bible and the Koran. Even for dedicated fundamentalists, inspired Bible passages come through the pen of a venerated historical individual, whether it’s the Prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul, and that leaves open some chance of blaming embarrassing views on that person’s own prejudices. The Koran gives no such option: For believers, every word in the text  – however horrendous a passage may sound to modern ears  – came directly from God.

We don’t have to range too far to find passages that horrify. The Koran warns, “Those who make war against God and his apostle . . . shall be put to death or crucified” (Koran 5.33). Other passages are equally threatening, though they usually have to be wrenched out of context to achieve this effect. One text from Sura (Chapter) 47 begins “O true believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads.”

But in such matters, the Bible too has plenty of passages that read painfully today. Tales of war and assassination pervade the four books of Samuel and Kings, where it is hard to avoid verses justifying the destruction of God’s enemies. In a standard English translation of the Old Testament, the words “war” and “battle” each occur more than 300 times, not to mention all the bindings, beheadings, and rapes.

The richest harvest of gore comes from the books that tell the story of the Children of Israel after their escape from Egypt, as they take over their new land in Canaan. These events are foreshadowed in the book of Deuteronomy, in which God proclaims “I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh” (Deut. 32:42). We then turn to the full orgy of militarism, enslavement, and race war in the Books of Joshua and Judges. Moses himself reputedly authorized this campaign when he told his followers that, once they reached Canaan, they must annihilate all the peoples they find in the cities specially reserved for them (Deut. 20: 16-18).

Joshua, Moses’s successor, proves an apt pupil. When he conquers the city of Ai, God commands that he take away the livestock and the loot, while altogether exterminating the inhabitants, and he duly does this (Joshua 8). When he defeats and captures five kings, he murders his prisoners of war, either by hanging or crucifixion. (Joshua 10). Nor is there any suggestion that the Canaanites and their kin were targeted for destruction because they were uniquely evil or treacherous: They happened to be on the wrong land at the wrong time. And Joshua himself was by no means alone. In Judges again, other stories tell of the complete extermination of tribes with the deliberate goal of ending their genetic lines.

In modern times, we would call this genocide. If the forces of Joshua and his successor judges committed their acts in the modern world, then observers would not hesitate to speak of war crimes. They would draw comparisons with the notorious guerrilla armies of Uganda and the Congo, groups like the appalling Lord’s Resistance Army. By comparison, the Koranic rules of war were, by the standards of their time, quite civilized. Mohammed wanted to win over his enemies, not slaughter them.

Not only do the Israelites in the Bible commit repeated acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but they do so under direct divine command. According to the first book of Samuel, God orders King Saul to strike at the Amalekite people, killing every man, woman, and child, and even wiping out their livestock (1 Samuel 15:2-3). And it is this final detail that proves Saul’s undoing, as he keeps some of the animals, and thereby earns a scolding from the prophet Samuel. Fortunately, Saul repents, and symbolizes his regrets by dismembering the captured enemy king. Morality triumphs.

The Bible also alleges divine approval of racism and segregation. If you had to choose the single biblical story that most conspicuously outrages modern sentiment, it might well be the tale of Phinehas, a story that remains unknown to most Christian readers today (Numbers 25: 1-15). The story begins when the children of Israel are threatened by a plague. Phinehas, however, shrewdly identifies the cause of God’s anger: God is outraged at the fact that a Hebrew man has found a wife among the people of Midian, and through her has imported an alien religion. Phinehas slaughters the offending couple  – and, mollified, God ends the plague and blesses Phinehas and his descendants. Modern American racists love this passage. In 1990, Richard Kelly Hoskins used the story as the basis for his manifesto “Vigilantes of Christendom.” Hoskins advocated the creation of a new order of militant white supremacists, the Phineas Priesthood, and since then a number of groups have assumed this title, claiming Phinehas as the justification for terrorist attacks on mixed-race couples and abortion clinics.

Modern Christians who believe the Bible offers only a message of love and forgiveness are usually thinking only of the New Testament. Certainly, the New Testament contains far fewer injunctions to kill or segregate. Yet it has its own troublesome passages, especially when the Gospel of John expresses such hostility to the Ioudaioi, a Greek word that usually translates as “Jews.” Ioudaioi plan to stone Jesus, they plot to kill him; in turn, Jesus calls them liars, children of the Devil.

Various authorities approach the word differently: I might prefer, for instance, to interpret it as “followers of the oppressive Judean religious elite,” Or perhaps “Judeans.” But in practice, any reputable translation has to use the simple and familiar word, “Jew,” so that we read about the disciples hiding out after the Crucifixion, huddled in a room that is locked “for fear of the Jews.” So harsh do these words sound to post-Holocaust ears that some churches exclude them from public reading.

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions . . . all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Koran. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.

Whether they are used or not depends on wider social attitudes. When America entered the First World War, for instance, firebrand preachers drew heavily on Jesus’ warning that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. As it stands, that is not much of a text of terror, but if one is searching desperately for a weapon-related verse, it will serve to justify what people are going to do anyway

Interpretation is all, and that changes over time. Religions have their core values, their non-negotiable truths, but they also surround themselves with many stories not essential to the message. Any religion that exists over long eras absorbs many of the ideas and beliefs of the community in which it finds itself, and reflects those in its writings. Over time, thinkers and theologians reject or underplay those doctrines and texts that contradict the underlying principles of the faith as it develops. However strong the textual traditions justifying war and conflict, believers come instead to stress love and justice. Of course Muslim societies throughout history have engaged in jihad, in holy war, and have found textual warrant so to do. But over time, other potent strains in the religion moved away from literal warfare. However strong the calls to jihad, struggle, in Islamic thought, the hugely influential Sufi orders taught that the real struggle was the inner battle to control one’s sinful human instincts, and this mattered vastly more than any pathetic clash of swords and spears. The Greater Jihad is one fought in the soul.

Often, such reforming thinkers are so successful that the troublesome words fade utterly from popular consciousness, even among believers who think of themselves as true fundamentalists. Most Christian and Jewish believers, even those who are moderately literate in scriptural terms, read their own texts extraordinarily selectively. How many Christian preachers would today find spiritual sustenance in Joshua’s massacres? How many American Christians know that the New Testament demands that women cover their hair, at least in church settings, and that Paul’s Epistles include more detailed rules on the subject than anything written in the Koran? This kind of holy amnesia is a basic component of religious development. It does not imply rejecting scriptures, but rather reading them in the total context of the religion as it progresses through history.

Alternatively, one can choose to deny that historical experience, and seize on any available word or verse that authorizes the violence that is already taking place  – but once someone has decided to do that, it scarcely matters what the text actually says.

Philip Jenkins teaches at Penn State University. He is the author of “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died.”

 

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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.

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The Madness Of Islam | Teenager Faces Jail Over Kissing

More On The Madness Of Muslim–Teenage Shenanigans VERBOTEN!

by KA

It would be laughable, if it weren’t so true.

Emirati teen gets 3-year sentence for kissing two sisters

A teenage boy in the United Arab Emirates has been sentenced to up to three years in juvenile detention for kissing two girls, The National newspaper reports.

The 15-year-old boy, identified only as “M.A.,” was initially charged with breaking into a house and sexually assaulting two 13-year-old sisters after their father found him there and called the police.

But, says the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, an investigation found that the two sisters — who were dating him at the time — had let him into the house.

In an earlier hearing, the boy told the court that it was not the first time the girls had invited him inside and willingly kissed him.

That, in turn, prompted authorities to level similar charges at the two girls.

At Sunday’s hearing, the sisters refused to answer the judge’s questions, neither denying nor confessing to the charges.

The court ruled that the boy could be detained until he is 18, but said the sentence could be eased based upon the boy’s “readiness” and whether he is disciplined enough.

The newspaper says the girls “were to be delivered to their parents for discipline.”

I applaud the kids for their spunk, but it’s a dangerous game. It’s a culture where sexuality is covered three deep in blankets, women are routinely executed or mutilated over the slightest misperception of lewdity, and childish hijinks are rewarded with prison sentences.

It’s not just pathetic, it’s fucking barbaric.

Islam. It’s gotta go.

Till the next post, then.

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Muslim Ignoramus Attacks Unrepentant Blasphemer Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie brushes off call for festival ‘blasphemy’ ban

• by: Amanda Hodge

AN Indian Muslim leader has demanded Salman Rushdie be banned from the country’s biggest literary festival, warning that an invitation to the novelist who endured a fatwa will add “salt to injury”.

The vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband, one of India’s most influential Islamic seminaries, has called on the government to deny the Indian-born writer a visa to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival over the insult caused to Muslims by his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

“I call upon the Muslim organisations of the country to mount pressure on the centre to withdraw the visa and prevent him visiting India, where community members still feel hurt owing to the anti-Islamic remarks in his writings,” Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani said this week.

“The Muslims cannot pardon him at any cost. If he visits India, it would be adding salt to the injuries of Muslims.”

More here:-

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/salman-rushdie-brushes-off-call-for-festival-blasphemy-ban/story-e6frg6so-1226242085384

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