Archive for November, 2010

A Muslim Inside an American Priest’s House

By Hanan Solayman | Source
Freelance Writer- Egypt

“Ahlan Wa Sahlan” was the first greeting I received from John’s family at Minneapolis St. Paul international Airport in Minnesota, the US. Lynnell, a typical American wife (white blonde with blue eyes), and Jackson, the middle son who’s learning Arabic and wants to be a language teacher, helped me carry my heavy luggage and stuff it into their car to drive me to the University of Saint Thomas’s dormitory — where I’d begin a two-month press fellowship.

Understanding the “Other”

One evening, Lynnell, my host mother, invited me over to dinner, where I met the other three members of her family; Will, the oldest son who’s 22 years old and studies politics and wants to be a history teacher, Carter, the youngest who wants to be an actor, and John. I also met the husband, father, and priest.

American families usually dine at 6 or 7, but that night, my host family was having a late dinner at around 8:30 in the evening. The reason? It was Ramadan, so I was fasting, and the sun doesn’t go down until 8:30, so they waited for me.

We started setting the table around 8 pm, and I could feel how anxious the three sons were to have dinner; they went around eating some grapes and vegetables and sipping some drinks, asking me several times if it was okay for me seeing them eat, and I always answered with a smile: “It makes me feel strong.”

I have to say I went to dinner feeling troubled, since I was looking to have a good Iftar after almost 16 hours of fasting, but I didn’t know what kind of food they’ll have for me.

Yet, to my surprise, the lovely family brought me some halal meat, white rice, and even Hummus from a famous halal-food company, while John was busy wrapping grape leaves for me, and when it was time to eat, we all shared the halal food along with green salad.

We talked politics, about the US and the Muslim World; about Palestine and Israel; about Egypt, terrorism, hate speech against Islam, and the importance of Muslim-Christian dialogue. Throughout our discussions, the family expressed a very balanced, if not sympathetic, point of view regarding the Palestinians and Muslims who sometimes encounter bad experiences in America, blaming it on the biased media that to them also included the New York Times.

John’s family appeared to be informed also about Muslim practices and traditions. After dinner, I asked Jackson, who would leave to Morocco later to study for a semester, if I can have a place to pray at, and Lynnell said to me, “Don’t you need to go to the bathroom and wash first?” meaning perform Wudu’. I told her I was already on Wudu’, and so I went to the guest room, and with my compass, I knew the Kiblah.

And when it was time to leave, they packed the leftovers for me to have some halal food in the coming days.

“You’ve got a family interested in you, Assalamu Alaykum,” John, the priest, told me before saying goodbye, which was an enough reason for me to accept their invitation to move in for almost a week after my fellowship ended, because I also was interested in them.

Up & Close

To the people, John was a priest who teaches world religions, biblical studies, ethics, and theology at Breck School, affiliated with the Episcopal Church. His online profile showed that he went to University of Detroit Jesuit High School, Haverford College, and Harvard Divinity School for education before being ordained in Breck’s Chapel of the Holy Spirit (CHS) in 1990 to serve as head of the religion department, a post he still occupies, teaching 10th and 12th grades only (ages 16 & 18), while the other four members of his department teach other grades.

But to me, John was a nice host father; funny and easygoing, especially on his recumbent bicycle. No wonder he’s so loved by his students, who take crazy photos with him on campus. He never looked like a priest to me, maybe because I always saw him in jeans and not in the priest dress code that easily identifies clergymen. Nor did he seem the “other,” since he used to practice his Arabic with me, and I found him so knowledgeable about and respectful to my faith.

After all, the importance of faith was a common factor between us.

John already speaks French and Spanish fluently, and he can read a bit of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin and understand and speak some German, Dutch, and Italian. But why Arabic? “To understand the Qur’an and Hadith,” John said, and also to order his favorite foods in Middle Eastern restaurants, he said smiling.

The Secret of Marriage

John performs many weddings to Christian couples, but he always sits with them for many sessions beforehand, to make sure they fully understand their responsibilities under the marriage bond and to divide tasks or obligations and even expenses they’re expected to fulfill toward each other to avoid as many disagreements as possible.

“Although we allow divorce, it’s not encouraged,” John said. Why would a new couple let a priest know every personal detail in their new life? I wondered, but, John told me that while in Muslim countries, families of the new couple are engaged in this kind of talks — in the West, it’s the priest who knows all these details, not the parents.

Common Prayer

Even when John does the eating prayer, he speaks in a way that I could relate to saying “Dear God,” thanking him for the food and asking for his blessings and help to people in need and even to reward Muslims who were fasting Ramadan sacrificing their meals. I realized later that this is the kind of prayer they also do at his school.

“Generally, prayers at Breck are addressed to God, though on occasion, they are addressed to God through Jesus or to Jesus himself. This is within the usual variation among Christians in the US.”

“Many of our prayers are addressed to God, by which we mean God’s triune nature as we understand it. We want all kids to feel that they can pray to God in their own hearts and try to make the form of prayers helpful for that goal,” John said.

Yet, for Muslim kids who go to Breck, John explains, they may not feel it’s a real prayer, as they’re not bowing or prostrating or even facing the Kiblah, but they appreciate that from time to time the school have a prayer written by a Muslim, or even read Al-Fatihah, which is a universal sentiment of yearning to be put on the straight path back to the One God.

Interfaith Dialogue

This understanding of faith engaged John in many interfaith dialogues. “Breck’s religion department has recently gone to the Masjid (i.e., mosque) where Keith Ellison (the US Muslim Congressman from Minnesota) prays, where we had a tour and talked with both imams, stayed for Friday sermon and prayers, and were warmly welcomed by many people there”, John said. He was also awarded by the Islamic Resource Group (IRG) in Minnesota for his role in interfaith dialogue.

In the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis–Saint Paul), John admires many local Muslim leaders, including Imam Makral El-Amin, from Masjid An-Nur; Abdisalam Adam, a Somali teacher who is President of the Islamic Civic Association of America; a woman Sufi teacher from Morocco; an American-born engineer whose parents are from Pakistan named Adeel Ahmed; and Dr. Fatma Reda, who is a psychiatrist and educator in town.

Having travelled to Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Niger, John had many Muslim friends, and now he’s thinking to visit Egypt, which he sees as “an important country with an ancient civilization.”

“I would love to go to some Coptic churches and pray there,” John noted.

Yet, he never visited a mosque, believing it was somehow “haram” for him, as he was told that non-Muslims are not supposed to go into mosques, but certain mosques do not have this restriction.

When I asked him about the challenges he sees Muslims are facing today in America, he said that while Muslims must maintain their faith in God through the Qur’an and the traditions that support their spiritual lives, they also need to be Americans, which involves equality of sexes, tolerance of other religions, and participation in democracy. “They also have to deal with prejudice among ignorant people, who are numerous in our country,” John added, feeling bad about the rising opposition to the NY Islamic Center, fueled by hate groups.

Last Sep. 11th, the South Minneapolis St. John’s Episcopal Church, which John goes to, held a gathering to commemorate 9/11 victims and Minnesota fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. In that gathering, John read passages from the Qur’an as a sign of respect for Muslims, who have come under an increasing drumbeat of attacks across the country.

He also talks to Jewish clergy, whom he frequently has lunch with, and his three sons went to a Jewish school. “A Rabbi has asked me recently to help advise a boy in his congregation who is thinking of giving up his religion because his parents just divorced, although he was raised Jewish,” John noted.

Even among Christians themselves, John and Lynnell volunteered to give history classes in a simple, sometimes entertaining, debate between the couple at their Church on Sundays for almost four months, summing up the Christian history and different beliefs of Christian denominations. However, the classes angered some attending Catholics, who found the couple “not serious enough.”

Hearing this criticism, I talked with Lynnell that day about the importance of conveying the message to the people whatever the way was — remembering how Amr Khaled, the famous Muslim preacher, and other young Islamic preachers were attacked when they first appeared because they aren’t graduated from Al-Azhar, look so Western, and are “easygoing” with the religion.

A Muslim Born Again

Still, the most amazing story I heard was about an Iranian girl who took an elective class with John at Breck on “Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.” “She went back to Iran afterward and began attending prayers, to the amusement of her Iranian friends, who had all given up religion because it seemed to them that religion was a cynical mean of mind-control,” John said.

However, the girl said that having been in America, and learning a lot about Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him) and the Qur’an from John’s class, she found that the free expression of religion, when you choose it for yourself, learn about it, and sincerely seek God, is very meaningful.

“Her father thinks it’s very funny that an American priest made his daughter a Muslim again. I am very happy she found God, which is the purpose of religion, and she found it in a way that keeps family and national traditions,” John thought.

Seeking Balance

When I got back to Egypt, John sent me an email asking if I can recommend a novel, film, or article for 8th-grade students (14 years old) on Islamic governance that would portray governance according to the principles of the Qur’an in a more positive, hopeful light.

The teacher of this class, given in a unit on Muslim countries and current issues on Muslim governance, religion, and Islamism, is looking for balance, and it’s hard to find, John wrote.

At the house, I found a book at John’s desk beside his reading chair that was about how extremist Muslims are allied with the religious right in America, working for the same cause but on opposite sides. Yet, hopefully, reasonable voices on both sides can counter this poisonous coalition.

Salam John. May God guide us all to the right path.

Will the Persecution of Political Prisoner Sami Al-Arian Finally Come to an End?

Source | By Chris Hedges

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to issue a ruling in the Eastern District of Virginia at the end of April in a case that will send a signal to the Muslim world and beyond whether the American judicial system has regained its independence after eight years of flagrant manipulation and intimidation by the Bush administration. Brinkema will decide whether the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, held for over six years in prison and under house arrest in Virginia since Sept 2, is guilty or innocent of two counts of criminal contempt.

Brinkema’s ruling will have ramifications that will extend far beyond Virginia and the United States. The trial of Al-Arian is a cause célèbre in the Muslim world. A documentary film was made about the case in Europe. He has become the poster child for judicial abuse and persecution of Muslims in the United States by the Bush administration. The facts surrounding the trial and imprisonment of the former university professor have severely tarnished the integrity of the American judicial system and made the government’s vaunted campaign against terrorism look capricious, inept and overtly racist.

Government lawyers made wild assertions that showed a profound ignorance of the Middle East and exposed a gross stereotyping of the Muslim world. It called on the FBI case agent, for example, who testified as an expert witness that Islamic terrorists were routinely smuggled over the border from Iran into Syria, apparently unaware that Syria is separated from Iran by a large land mass called Iraq. The transcripts of the case against Al-Arian — which read like a bad Gilbert and Sullivan opera — are stupefying in their idiocy. The government wiretaps picked up nothing of substance; taxpayer dollars were used to record and transcribe 21,000 hours of banal chatter, including members of the Al-Arian household ordering pizza delivery. During the trial the government called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to inane phone transcriptions and recordings, made over a 10-year period, which the jury curtly dismissed as “gossip.” It would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the defendant.

A jury, on Dec. 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight of the counts in the superseding indictment after a six-month trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. On the 94 charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian — including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad” — the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors, who voted 10 to 2 to acquit on the remaining charges, could not reach a unanimous decision calling for his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.

The trial result was a public relations disaster for the Bush White House and especially then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had personally announced the indictment and reportedly spent more than $50 million on the case. The government prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor accepted a plea bargain that would spare him a second trial, agreeing that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a very minor charge given the high profile of the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida and the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department agreed to recommend to the judge the minimum sentence of 46 months. But U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., who made a series of comments during the trial that seemed to condemn all Muslims, sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum 57 months. In referring to Al-Arian’s contention, for example, that he had only raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s charity for widows and orphans, the judge told the professor that “your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them.”

I spent an afternoon with Dr. Al-Arian in his small apartment in Arlington, Va., on Friday. His lawyers have asked that he make no public statements about his case. But we talked widely about the Middle East, the new Israeli government, the siege of Gaza, our families and the changes he hopes will come with an Obama administration. He sat on a couch wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, thankful to be with his wife and children after being shuttled between jails across the South and kept for 45 months in solitary confinement during his five-and-a-half-year ordeal. But he remains perplexed, as are many, by the gross miscarriage of justice and the ferocity of the government’s campaign to smear him with terrorism charges.

The government originally sought a standard cooperation provision as part of the final plea agreement. Al-Arian objected. He refused to plead guilty if he had to cooperate with the Justice Department. The Justice Department — including lawyers from the counterterrorism section of Main Justice — then negotiated to take out the cooperation provision in return for a longer sentence on the one count. That was the deal. He was to have been held in jail until April 2007 and then deported. But that never happened.

Right-wing ideologues, led by Assistant United States Attorney Gordon Kromberg, had no intention of letting him leave the country. Kromberg, a staunch supporter of Israel, arranged to keep Dr. Al-Arian behind bars even after he had finished serving his sentence. He blocked the deportation and subpoenaed Al-Arian to appear in Virginia to testify in an unrelated investigation of a Muslim think tank. This subpoena was a clear violation of the original plea bargain, and Al-Arian, heeding the advice of his lawyers, refused to give in to Kromberg’s demands. This led Kromberg to set in motion the newest charges of criminal contempt. Criminal contempt, bolstered by something called terrorism enhancement under Patriot Act II, is the only charge in U.S. statutes that does not carry a maximum penalty. The enhanced criminal contempt charge increases Al-Arian’s sentence from the usual 14 to 21 months for criminal contempt to a staggering 17 to 24 years for obstructing a state terrorism investigation. A handful of members of the House, including Jim Moran and Dennis Kucinich, have denounced Kromberg’s newest attempt to orchestrate a judicial lynching.

Kromberg, like many involved in the case, has also repeatedly made derogatory and insulting comments about Muslims. When Al-Arian’s lawyers asked Kromberg to delay the transfer of the professor to Virginia, for example, because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, they were told “if they can kill each other during Ramadan they can appear before the grand jury.” Kromberg, according to an affidavit signed by Al-Arian’s attorney, Jack Fernandez, also said: “I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”

Judge Brinkema, in one of the rare examples of judicial courage during this saga, defied the government to allow Al-Arian out on bail.

The case against Al-Arian, in the eyes of the grand inquisitors like Kromberg, is a battle against a culture and a religion that they openly denigrate and despise. This racism, the driving engine behind the campaign against Al-Arian, mocks the integrity of the American judicial system. Let us hope that in a few weeks we will witness a new era. Justice delayed is better than justice denied. We owe Dr. Al-Arian, and ourselves, a return to the rule of law.

TIME: What’s So Scary About Egypt’s Islamists?

By Aryn Baker and Abigail Hauslohner / Kafr Shibin
Source

Night settles over Egypt, and the women of Kafr Shibin, a small town in the Nile River Delta, are attending the election rally of a local candidate running for a women’s seat in Egypt’s parliament. As the women take their seats, candidate Dr. Hoda Ghania fumbles with a tiny microphone taken from a battered karaoke set. Finally, with the speaker’s special-effects option locked on “stadium reverb,” a setting that belies the clandestine nature of the meeting, Ghania launches into her stump speech. “The situation in the country is bad,” she warns. “Is it justice for our youth to graduate and find no job? For teachers to make 110 [Egyptian] pounds ($22) a month?” It’s a familiar diagnosis for an audience well versed in Egypt’s many problems. But for these women, each draped in the voluminous headscarf worn by those who are extremely conservative, Ghania’s prescriptions are nothing short of revolutionary. “The change,” she says, “should come through us, because God does not change anything except through us.”
A dermatologist, Ghania, 42, promises to increase military funding so the army can tackle the land mines that have robbed farmers of their fields. She wants education reform, higher teacher salaries, better health care and literacy programs. She wants maternity leave for working mothers and stresses that Christians and Muslims should work together to fix the country. The audience nods vigorously. Some of the younger girls jump up to take photos on their mobile phones.

If Ghania were campaigning for one of Egypt’s mainstream secular parties, her progressive platform would hardly merit notice. But she is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but widely popular group that Egypt’s ruling party insists is too religious and too conservative to be allowed to exist as a fully legal party in a fledgling democratic system. For that reason, Ghania, whose father is also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, must run as an independent.
When Egyptians go to the polls Nov. 28, they won’t find the country’s largest opposition group on the ballot. All of the Brotherhood’s candidates will, like Ghania, be standing as “independents,” a transparent subterfuge that allowed the group to win one-fifth of parliamentary seats five years ago. To make things harder for the Brotherhood this time around, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which is largely perceived as corrupt and nepotistic, has rolled back some of the reforms that had made the 2005 election the most unhindered of President Hosni Mubarak’s 29-year rule. The independent judiciary no longer has oversight of the election, and a recent government crackdown on several media outlets has been interpreted as an attempt to stem criticism of the ruling party.

With presidential elections slated for next year, there is a great deal at stake. Mubarak, 82, is expected to run for a sixth term in office. Challengers must be the head of an officially recognized political party or have the approval of 250 members of parliament and municipal councils. The government justifies the ban on the Brotherhood by arguing that religion has no role in Egyptian politics. Increasingly, however, Egyptians are starting to wonder if the Brotherhood’s popularity is less a threat to Egyptian society than it is to the ruling party’s grip on power. “They are good guys, not terrorists,” says travel agent Ahmed Barakat. “But the government won’t let them campaign, not even in student elections, [because] they will win.”

Convenient Scapegoats

Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has grown into a worldwide movement that promotes Islam through charity work, grass-roots activism and electoral politics. Though formally banned in Egypt in 1954 following decades of tension with the government, the group has been tolerated to varying degrees over the years by Egyptian regimes that have found it both threatening and useful. In the 1970s, the group formally renounced violence, though its Islamist teachings have inspired violent groups like Hamas. Both Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri were influenced by the movement’s embrace of political Islam. Since the 1980s, it has become the most active opposition force in Egyptian politics.
The regime has responded to the group’s rising popularity with periodic crackdowns: thousands of members have been detained over the past decade, usually on charges of belonging to a banned organization, and many Brotherhood-linked charities and businesses have been shut down. This has hardly stemmed its popularity. Rather, perseverance through imprisonment is a source of pride for its members.
The Brotherhood’s dogged survival presents the question: What would happen if it were allowed to compete in a free democracy? Its opponents have no doubt about its nature. General Fouad Allam, a former chief of Egypt’s internal security services who spent decades monitoring the Brotherhood, says it is similar in scope to the international communist movement but “more organized and more engaged.” He hints at international funding of the group and raises the specter of an Islamist takeover of a key U.S. ally. “Egypt would regress 100 years if the Brotherhood came to power,” he says, describing a scenario in which women could be forced indoors and Egypt’s current peace treaty with Israel “would change 100%.”

The Brotherhood rejects such claims as politically motivated fearmongering, while Egypt’s secular opposition argues that the government stokes fear of the Brotherhood to quash real democratic change. “This is the myth that Mubarak has been selling for 30 years,” says Ibrahim Issa, the former editor of the influential newspaper al-Dustour, who was recently dismissed because, he says, of his overt criticism of the regime. (The newspaper’s owners say the dismissal was due to an internal dispute.) “He is using the Muslim Brotherhood as a scarecrow. Mubarak says, ‘It’s either me or the jihadists.’ [It’s] his only guarantee for staying in power.”
Mubarak isn’t alone in making a bogeyman of the Brotherhood: governments across the Arab world regard it with varying degrees of suspicion. In Syria, for instance, the group has clashed with the secular Baathist regime and now operates almost entirely underground. Western governments aren’t always sure how to view it. Since the Brotherhood gave up violence 40 years ago, says Michele Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “there are no grounds for calling them a terrorist organization. But they do strongly support Hamas financially and politically.”
Just how scared should we be of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? In numerical terms, it doesn’t present much of a threat. Membership is in the low hundreds of thousands, and in a fair election, the Islamists would not be expected to win — in 2005, only 3% of the population voted for the Brotherhood. And some of those votes were in protest of an inept regime rather than wholehearted endorsements of the Islamist cause. “Many of the people who vote for the Muslim Brothers are doing it in order to vote against the National Democratic Party,” says Sayed al-Badawi, the head of the Wafd, Egypt’s oldest legal opposition party.

Since the Brotherhood’s bloc in parliament has achieved little over the past five years, it may now receive some of the popular skepticism previously reserved for the official parties. Legal recognition could diminish the Brothers’ appeal, says human-rights activist Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights: “Once you allow them into the political race, they become politicians, and they are judged as politicians.” Legal status would also undermine the Brotherhood’s claim to victimhood.
Members of the Brotherhood point out that this year, as in 2005, they are contesting less than a third of the parliamentary seats — not nearly enough to capture the majority needed to amend the constitution. Members say their immediate goals are grass-roots organization and political participation, not regime change. “We are not out to win and form a government,” says Brotherhood member and parliamentarian Mohsen Radi. “Participation, not victory, is our new slogan.”
Still, despite its limited effectiveness, the Brotherhood has appeal. Egypt has more than 20 legal opposition parties, but they’re widely viewed as regime puppets, timid political bodies that exist more on paper than on the Egyptian streets. Such a limited choice serves the regime well — the few parties that manage to upset the balance are quickly quashed. Ayman Nour, head of the liberal Ghad Party, for example, challenged Mubarak in the first multicandidate presidential race, in 2005. He clinched second place with 7% of the vote — and was then jailed on fraud charges his supporters say were trumped up. Released in 2009, he has returned to the fray. “Our role is to show that there is a third option for the Egyptian voter. It doesn’t always have to be a dictatorship or an Islamist regime,” explains Shadi Taha, his campaign manager. “We believe that the majority of Egyptians [are] looking for that other option.”

But these parties have a lot of catching up to do before they can challenge the Brotherhood. The Islamists have been building a grass-roots organization for decades, using university campuses, charities and close-knit family networks for recruitment. The Brotherhood’s charity operations have been especially effective in earning admiration. After the 1992 Cairo earthquake, the group distributed tents and aid materials to 2,000 people who lost their homes and livelihoods. Many Brotherhood members are doctors and pharmacists who help fill the health care void left by Egypt’s woefully ill-equipped government hospitals. The Islamic Medical Association, a Brotherhood-linked charity, operates 29 hospitals throughout the country, providing inexpensive but comprehensive services for poor Egyptians. In one such hospital in Cairo, visitors pay about $2 for a checkup. The facilities are sparse, but doctors say the practice is clean and the staff doesn’t solicit bribes, unlike in the government hospitals.
It’s a powerful strategy for winning loyalty, one other political groups are trying to copy. After business mogul al-Sayyid al-Badawi took over the liberal Wafd Party in May, part of his efforts to revive it revolved around a personally funded charity to provide medical services and community-development projects in the name of the Wafd. “We put a large amount of money towards human services, medical services and to share with people during disasters,” he says. “So we have come to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood using the same methods that they do.”

Who Tolerates Whom

The same ambivalence about the Brotherhood’s aims can be seen in the U.S. Egyptian intellectuals credit the Bush Administration with pushing for the democratic reforms that allowed multiparty elections. But U.S. support for regional democracy waned after the Brotherhood made significant gains and Hamas won the Palestinian elections of 2006. To the dismay of many Egyptians, that wariness seems to have continued. Instead of aggressively pushing for democratic freedoms, President Obama’s State Department has sought to strengthen ties with the Mubarak regime, with an eye toward an Egyptian role in peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. But Egypt’s opposition says U.S. tacit support for Mubarak does far more damage to the moderate, secular parties that Washington would most like to see in power. “We are not asking you to impose democracy,” says newspaper publisher Hisham Kassem. “We are asking you to stop imposing dictatorship.”

Even among those who criticize the U.S. and the Mubarak administration, however, there are doubts about the Brotherhood. Some fear that if it rose to power, it would curtail the rights of liberals, women and minorities. “If fanatics were to run Egypt, there would be no room for Copts [Egyptian Christians] or people like myself,” says novelist Alaa al-Aswany. Brotherhood members insist that such fears are baseless, pointing out that Christians receive the same care as Muslims in Brotherhood-operated clinics. When al-Qaeda threatened Egyptian Christians in early November, the Brotherhood condemned the threat.

The group has long been a vociferous critic of Israel — which in turn regards the Brotherhood as a source of inspiration for and longtime sponsor of Hamas. The Brotherhood’s prescription for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is total abandonment of peace talks, coupled with international support for Palestinian armed resistance. Not surprisingly, Israel views the Brothers warily. “It’s not like the Muslim Brotherhood has adopted a more lenient or moderate line,” says one Israeli official, when asked about the potential impact of a Brotherhood-led Egyptian government.

That said, the Brotherhood routinely dismisses fears of its ambitions beyond the country of its birth as overblown. Spokesman Mohammed Morsy insists that the Islamists’ main goals are purely domestic: “We want to have a Muslim state in Egypt — not in Ireland.” At the moment, both possibilities seem equally remote.
— with reporting by Karl Vick / Jerusalem

Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’?

By Chris Hedges | Source

The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.

“We are ruled not by two parties but one party,” Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, told me. “It is the party of money and war. Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded.”

The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die.

The unraveling of America mirrors the unraveling of Yugoslavia. The Balkan war was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia. The petty criminals and goons who took power harnessed the anger and despair of the unemployed and the desperate. They singled out convenient scapegoats from ethnic Croats to Muslims to Albanians to Gypsies. They set in motion movements that unleashed a feeding frenzy leading to war and self-immolation. There is little difference between the ludicrous would-be poet Radovan Karadzic, who was a figure of ridicule in Sarajevo before the war, and the moronic Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. There is little difference between the Oath Keepers and the Serbian militias. We can laugh at these people, but they are not the fools. We are.

The longer we appeal to the Democrats, who are servants of corporate interests, the more stupid and ineffectual we become. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, and they are right. Only 25 percent of those polled said the government can be trusted to protect the interests of the American people. If we do not embrace this outrage and distrust as our own it will be expressed through a terrifying right-wing backlash.

“It is time for us to stop talking about right and left,” McKinney told me. “The old political paradigm that serves the interests of the people who put us in this predicament will not be the paradigm that gets us out of this. I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it came from the Supreme Court. Our problem is a problem of governance. I am willing to reach across traditional barriers that have been skillfully constructed by people who benefit from the way the system is organized.”

We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy, to a demand for quality and affordable public education, to a concern for the jobs of the working class. And the hatred expressed within right-wing movements for the college-educated elite, who created or at least did nothing to halt the financial debacle, is not misplaced. Our educated elite, wallowing in self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique activism of political correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their jobs. The shouting of racist and bigoted words at black and gay members of Congress, the spitting on a black member of the House, the tossing of bricks through the windows of legislators’ offices, are part of the language of rebellion. It is as much a revolt against the educated elite as it is against the government. The blame lies with us. We created the monster.

When someone like Palin posts a map with cross hairs on the districts of Democrats, when she says “Don’t Retreat, Instead—RELOAD!” there are desperate people cleaning their weapons who listen. When Christian fascists stand in the pulpits of megachurches and denounce Barack Obama as the Antichrist, there are messianic believers who listen. When a Republican lawmaker shouts “baby killer” at Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, there are violent extremists who see the mission of saving the unborn as a sacred duty. They have little left to lose. We made sure of that. And the violence they inflict is an expression of the violence they endure.

These movements are not yet full-blown fascist movements. They do not openly call for the extermination of ethnic or religious groups. They do not openly advocate violence. But, as I was told by Fritz Stern, a scholar of fascism who has written about the origins of Nazism, “In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented.” It is the yearning that we now see, and it is dangerous. If we do not immediately reincorporate the unemployed and the poor back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American society will become a full-blown conflagration.

Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood.

The Deception of Islamophobes: The Truth about Taqiyya?

Dr. Zaher Sahloul | Source

The place and role of Muslims in the public sphere has been tested over and over again in the past few months. Campaigns waged by a secretive organization, called Stop Islamization of America, with the opportune participation of some political leaders and public figures, have been trying to make life difficult for Muslim Americans, similar to the way their sister organization, Stop Islamization of Europe, did for European Muslims.

The campaign has been waging a relentless crusade warning the public of the wickedness of Islam and the deceitfulness of Muslims in addition to the common themes of discrediting the Quran, attacking the Prophet’s personality, demonization of Shariah, and accusing Muslims of backwardness, anti-intellectualism, and oppression of women, violence and irrationalism.

The last example of that crusade is several YouTube pieces that went viral about a word unknown to most Muslims – Taqiyya. This is an Arabic word that literally means self-protection.

These YouTube videos accuse Muslims of lying and saying the opposite of what they believe. They state that if a Muslim tells you that he loves his country, he is probably lying and if a Muslim tells you that Islam means peace, don’t believe her because she is practicing Taqiyya. Similar reports accuse President Obama of being a secret Muslim based on this concept.

In such cases, the Quran is taken out of context and is interpreted by so-called experts. The purpose of such campaigns is to accuse Muslims of lying or hiding their true beliefs so that Islam is not trusted a nd hostility towards Muslims continues to rise, as many public polls are showing.

This technique of discrediting the other by accusing them of lying is as old as humanity itself. All the prophets were accused by their enemies of lying. Pharaoh accused Moses and Aaron of lying. The early Christians and early Muslims were accused of lying and falsifying the truth. Prophet Mohammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was accused by the pagans and later by Christian faith and literary figures of lying. Even in Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, the Nazis used the same technique to discredit the Jews by accusing them of falsifying the truth and using the “Big Lie” against the Germans.

In Islamic tradition Taqiyya means ‘concealing one’s religion or faith due to fear of death or other major fear.’ The scholars agree that if a person is coerced to reject his or her faith, it is permissible for him or her to conceal his real faith in the interests of self-preservation. Taqiyya is based on the principle of opting for the lesser evil. Telling a lie is not as big a sin as destroying a life. Therefore, a lie is preferable to putting oneself in danger of life.

The Holy Quran speaks of protecting one’s life and concealing one’s religion if life is threatened. In 16:106 God says, “Whoever rejects God after they had believed shall suffer the wrath of God and their punishment is great, except those who concealed their faith while their hearts are still at peace with faith.”

Some early disciples of the Prophet chose to conceal their faith in hostile Mecca, while some other disciples died under torture. The Holy Quran gave an exception to conceal one’s faith under such conditions. The exception refers to a case like that of one of the early disciples, Ammar, whose father Yasir and mother Sumayya, were killed after being subjected to unspeakable tortures for their belief in Islam, but never recanted. Ammar, suffering from torture himself and his mind acted on by the sufferings of his parents, uttered a word construed as recantation, though his heart never wavered and he came back at once to the Prophet, who consoled him for his pain and confirmed his faith.

Concealing one’s faith when life is threatened is not unique to Muslims but known to all religions. The Marranos were Spanish Jews who concealed their religion for generations during and after the Spanish inquisition fearing torture and murder. The Moriscos were Spanish Muslims who also concealed their faith to protect their lives during and after the Inquisition. Early Christians and some contemporary Christians in countries that do not respect freedom of religion practice Taqiyya and conceal their faith to protect their lives. No one in their right mind would accuse Judaism or Christianity of lying just because their followers concealed their faith at time of great distress and danger.

The concept of concealing one’s religion does not give Muslims the right to lie or hide the truth. On the contrary, truthfulness and trustworthiness are some of the most treasured qualities and core values of Islam. Prophet Mohammad was called “The Truthful” and “The Trustworthy” by his enemies before and after his Prophethood. The Prophet emphasized, in many reported sayings that a good believer should never lie, even though he or she commits other sins. He also said that whoever cheats is not considered among the good believers.

Lying under oath is considered one of the most major sins in Islam, similar to theft or murder. One of the requirements of salvation in Islam is to purify one’s heart by aligning the inner self with the outward action and speech. People who have inner motives opposite to what they declare or say are called hypocrites in the Islamic tradition. The Quran speaks of reward and salvation for those who are truthful and who have pure hearts. Islam spread in wide areas in the world, including the most populous Islamic country in the world Indonesia, because of the honesty of Muslim traders and businessmen.

What is appalling is that the “Islamophobia Industry” has to invent new lies everyday to sell its books and justify its presence; but what is more troubling is that many Americans don’t have the knowledge or the tools to find out the truth about these lies.

Terror Expert Emerson Feels His Own Heat Over Finances

By Larry Cohler-Esses and Nathan Guttman | Source

WASHINGTON — Steven Emerson has made his reputation by scrutinizing American Muslim organizations and individuals, trying to uncover their possible ties to terror groups. But lately he is being scrutinized himself, by a Nashville, Tenn., daily newspaper digging into the finances of his operation.

Now, under pressure to introduce more transparency to his tax-exempt charitable organization, Emerson is attempting to explain how and why the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation avoids revealing much of the information that charities are routinely required to disclose.
Emerson, it turns out, succeeds in veiling his foundation’s data by channeling the tax-deductible funds he raises into a for-profit company that he controls.
Emerson said security considerations have forced him to avoid disclosing a lot of information that is usually made public by tax-exempt charities. Such disclosures include the names of his group’s board members, the names and salaries of its highest-paid employees and detailed information on the group’s finances.
A key figure in the national discourse on issues relating to Islamic terrorism, Emerson first emerged as a commentator and researcher on the topic in 1994, when his documentary, “Jihad in America,” shown on the Public Broadcasting Service, exposed fundraising for terror activities by Muslims in America, following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He subsequently set up the Investigative Project, an earlier, for-profit predecessor of the IPTF that evolved into a robust operation devoted to tracking and documenting alleged connections of American Muslims to international terror groups. He is also a frequent commentator on Fox News.
The spotlight pointed at Emerson, and his foundation’s business activity comes as the IPTF has injected itself into the heated debate over the Park51 Islamic center in New York, publishing reports highly critical of the Muslim leaders behind the project. But it is his criticism of the leaders of another planned mosque, this one in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that drew the interest of The Tennessean, Nashville’s sole daily newspaper, and led to the paper’s October 24 investigative report on Emerson’s tax status.
“Emerson is a leading member of a multi-million-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances,” the report claimed.
In its wide-ranging article, The Tennessean reported that while the IPTF is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt charity, it in fact distributes almost all of its contributions to SAE Productions, a for-profit company that Emerson founded in 1994 and continues to control, as he does the IPTF.
Citing publicly available tax filings, the paper reported that Emerson’s foundation paid $3,390,000 to SAE in 2008 — the foundation’s only significant expenditure. It was the Emerson-controlled for-profit firm that then made all expenditures on the foundation’s behalf.
This is how Emerson’s foundation avoided the IRS’s detailed disclosure requirements for charities regarding their expenditures. Indeed, under this setup, even the IRS’s own tax-exempt division is in the dark on how Emerson uses his revenues.
Yet a careful look at Emerson’s correspondence with the IRS shows that the tax authority in fact approved Emerson’s IPTF for tax exemption only after Emerson assured the tax agency that “there are no, and will be no, financial/business transactions between officers, board members or relatives” of the IPTF and its subcontractor.

In an e-mail response to questions from the Forward, Emerson stated that at the time he made that commitment, “I was considering a number of options” and had not yet settled on contracting with SAE — a company he founded years earlier. Emerson noted that since gaining its tax-exempt status from the IRS, the IPTF has informed the tax agency, in annual tax reports, of his controlling role in both groups.
Emerson also said that salaries for SAE employees, who number 20 including himself, average between $65,000 and $70,000. “I can guarantee you that no one is becoming rich at IPTF,” he said. His own annual compensation amounts to $116,000, he reported.
“All of this was approved by our outside legal and accounting experts,” he wrote.
But William Josephson, a former head of the New York State Department of Law’s Charities Bureau, told the Forward, “Donors to IPTF get a tax deduction for in fact supporting a taxable entity. In effect, it’s just whitewashing the contributions.”
And Bruce Hopkins, a nationally recognized expert on charities law, said that Emerson’s later disclosure of the relationship between the ITPF and SAE in annual tax reports “does not mean that the IRS is okay with this practice.” Due to staff shortages, he explained, the IRS does not usually review these returns and does not compare them with the original request for tax exemption.
“Normally, the agency doesn’t like exempt organizations using taxable entities to carry out their programs,” Hopkins said. “As you can imagine, this is exacerbated where there is common control, as is the case here.”
Emerson’s communications with the IRS reveal a trail of contradictory and inaccurate statements.
In his original application for tax exemption, submitted May 6, 2006, long after SAE was created, Emerson replied “Yes” when asked if IPTF would have contracts or agreements with any other organization in which IPTF officers or directors also served as officers or directors. But asked to identify with whom IPTF would be contracting, he replied, “The subcontractor has yet to be decided upon.”
Emerson also answered “No” when asked specifically if anyone other than his employees or volunteers would “manage your activities or facilities.” Asked if any “officers, directors [or] highly compensated employees” would receive compensation “from any other organization related to you through common control,” Emerson again replied, “No.”
At the same time, Emerson assured the IRS that the arrangements between the IPTF and the unnamed subcontractor would be reviewed by an outside auditor to ensure that they were “at arm’s length” — a concern generally reserved for transactions in which there are common parties on both sides of an agreement. Such arm’s length arrangements are designed to guarantee that any goods or services exchanged between two related parties are transacted at market rates.
Unsatisfied, the IRS pressed Emerson in a letter dated December 8, 2006, on whether there would be “any financial/business transactions between officers, board members or relatives” of the still unnamed subcontractor and IPTF. It further requested a “signed/dated statement” attesting that the subcontractor would be “an unrelated third party” and, like the IPTF, a tax-exempt organization.
It was this question that prompted Emerson to respond that “there are no, and will be no, financial/business transactions between officers, board member or relatives” of SAE and the IPTF. But Emerson did not provide the IRS with the signed and dated statement it requested. He instead noted that the subcontractor would, in fact, not be a tax-exempt organization precisely to avoid the need for public disclosures, due to security concerns. The subcontractor would be, however, organized as a “not-for-profit organization,” Emerson wrote.
SAE is incorporated in the state of Delaware under its “general corporation” category, which is for for-profit firms.
On January 8, 2007, the IRS asked Emerson for additional explanations of this arrangement. Emerson replied that because of his work, he himself had been “the target of a death threat [that] can be confirmed by current and former U.S. government officials.” The proposed arrangement, Emerson argued, “furthers the legitimate business purpose of maximizing fundraising activities” for IPTF, while providing added security for “the staff conducting its work.”
It was the last follow-up the tax agency made. On January 26, 2007, the IRS approved Emerson’s application for tax exemption for the IPTF.
A Muslim group that has been a subject of Emerson’s investigations is now questioning that tax determination. The Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter to the IRS, claiming that the IPTF misused its tax-exempt status by paying millions to Emerson’s other company. According to Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesman, the group has not yet received any response to its letter.
In his e-mail responses to the Forward, Emerson dismissed as “bogus” questions about SAE’s registration as a for-profit company after he told the IRS that it would be a not-for-profit. “The main issue for the IRS was whether the subcontractor would be tax exempt or not,” he wrote. He further stressed that despite being for-profit, “SAE spends all the money it receives from IPTF on IPTF’s stated mission and [on its] expenses in fulfilling that mission. No money is left over at SAE, so therefore SAE makes no profit.”
Asked to identify the third party that guaranteed the relationship between the ITPF and SAE was at “arm’s length,” as he had promised the IRS, and to provide that party’s certification of this, Emerson replied, “For security reasons, the firm [that] routinely monitors our transactions prefers not to be named publicly.” But he added, “They and my lawyers routinely reviewed all of our financial transactions and legal matters to ensure that everything was in order, including the relationship established between IPTF and SAE. They have continued to do so.”
Emerson added, “This is an unusual arrangement, but one that I had to implement because of the overriding needs of security. It was also fully disclosed to the IRS.
“I realize the opposite needs for disclosure. So I am trying to figure out another way in which we can disclose much more information without jeopardizing security. I have to take into account the fears of employees and our auditing firm and lawyers, who do fear that being publicly named, they will be targeted…. When they look at the threats I have endured, as well as the threats made against [the IPTF], I am morally bound to respect their fears.”
The controversy over Emerson’s financial practices does not seem to be an issue for at least one prominent IPTF donor. Kenneth Bialkin, who contributes annually to the group, said that Emerson could have been a target for smearing by the pro-Arab lobby.
“Of all those of us who labored in the vineyard in trying to help the Jewish people, there is no one who stands higher in the pantheon of honor than Steve Emerson,” said Bialkin, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, “for all of us — those of us who are hard-liners — feel this guy is worth his weight in gold.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com
Additional reporting by Josh Nathan-Kazis

Mystery of who funded right-wing “radical Islam” campaign deepens

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT | Source

A document obtained by Salon creates new speculation about who paid for a right-wing campaign to stoke Islamophobia.

In the heat of the 2008 presidential election, an obscure nonprofit group called the Clarion Fund made national news by distributing millions of DVDs about radical Islam in newspaper inserts in swing states.

The DVDs, 28 million in all, were a boost to Republican candidates who were trying to paint Democrats as weak on terrorism — and they arguably helped fuel the anti-Muslim sentiment that boiled over in the “ground zero mosque” fight last summer. The film, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West,” was widely criticized for its cartoonish portrayal of Muslims as modern-day Nazis.

But who put up the money to send out all those millions of DVDs?

Clarion, which has strong links to the right-wing Israeli group Aish HaTorah and is listed in government records as a foreign nonprofit, would never say.

Indeed, the group does not have to release detailed donor information because of its nonprofit tax status. We knew only that there was serious money behind the effort: Clarion spent nearly $19 million in 2008, the year it sent out the DVDs.

Now, just as Clarion is gearing up to release a new film hyping the threat of Iran, the money mystery has deepened: According to a document submitted to the IRS by Clarion and obtained by Salon, a donor listed as Barry Seid gave Clarion nearly $17 million in 2008, which would have paid for virtually the entire “Obsession” DVD campaign.

Nonprofit groups must submit financial information including the identity of donors to the IRS — but ordinarily only basic revenue and spending data are made available to the public. In the case of Clarion, an extra page with donor information seems to have been inadvertently included in its public filing. See it here. (It was previously available on public websites that collect IRS forms submitted by nonprofits.)

There’s only one Barry Seid Salon could find who might fit the profile of a $17 million donor to Clarion. That would be businessman Barre Seid (note the different spelling) of Illinois, a longtime contributor to right-wing and Jewish causes. But his representative flatly denied to Salon that he has ever given money to Clarion.

The elderly and press-shy Seid is president of Tripp Lite, a large Chicago-based manufacturer of power strips that got into the personal computer market on the ground floor back in the 1980s. Seid has personally poured millions of dollars into Republican campaigns and conservative causes, and his foundation has given generously to the Cato Institute, the Americans for Limited Government Foundation, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This year, Seid received an honorary degree from Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv for his work “supporting those organizations which will fortify Israel’s position in the world.”

But Seid assistant Joan Frontczak told Salon in an e-mail: “Mr. Seid did not make any contributions to the Clarion Fund.” And she added: “Mr. Seid is a very private person and doesn’t seek publicity of any kind.”

Furthermore, Clarion Fund spokesman Alex Traiman denied that the inadvertently released document is accurate.

“The sources of anonymous donations to the Clarion Fund in 2008 have been incorrectly identified,” Traiman said in an e-mail to Salon. “As like many other not-for-profit organizations, we respect the right of private donors to remain anonymous.”

But there’s another wrinkle here. As first reported by Counterpunch, a right-leaning Alexandria, Va.-based outfit called Donors Capital Fund revealed in its 2008 IRS filing that it gave $17.7 million to Clarion that year, the same year the DVDs were sent out. Donors Capital Fund is what’s known as a donor-advised fund: It offers various tax and other advantages to people who want to make large donations to nonprofits.

Whitney Ball, president of Donors Capital Fund, told Salon that the group acts as a charitable vehicle for individuals who give Donors Capital Fund money and tell it where they would like the money to go. “One of our clients made a recommendation for Clarion and so we did it,” she said. Ball declined to identify the client or comment on Seid.

Seid’s private foundation has in the past made at least one donation to Donors Capital Fund. Seid’s assistant did not respond to a request for comment about whether he had made a donation to Donors Capital Fund and recommended that the money go to Clarion. So, for now, it’s impossible to say for sure why the name “Barry Seid” showed up on Clarion’s tax forms.

Finally, here is the trailer for Clarion’s new film, “Iranium.” It will be interesting to see if any donor steps forward to pay for wider distribution.

Ginni Thomas Stepping Down from Far-Right Think Tank

By Adele Stan | Sourced from AlterNet

Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is stepping down as president and CEO of Liberty Central, the Tea Party-affiliated think tank she founded, according to the Washington Post. Liberty Central spokesperson Caitlin Carroll (of CRC Public Relations) told the Post’s Amy Gardner that Thomas was relinquishing control of the organization to spare the organization the “distractions” caused by Thomas’s celebrity. From the Post:

“She’ll take a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue with its mission without any of the distractions,” Carroll said. “After discussing it with the board, Mrs. Thomas determined that it was best for the organization.”

Among those distractions is the one Mrs. Thomas created for herself when she dialed up Anita Hill, a professor at Brandeis University, last month to suggest that Hill apologize to Clarence Thomas for accusations Hill made during his Supreme Court nomination hearing that she had been sexually harassed by Thomas when she worked for him at a government agency. News of Ginni Thomas’s call to Hill brought forth another accuser — a former girlfriend of Clarence Thomas — who made claims similar to those articulated by Hill.

AlterNet reported links between Liberty Central and several far-right outfits: Gun Owners of America, headed by militia guru Larry Pratt (known for addressing a gathering of white supremacist groups in the 1990s, and declaring “war” on the federal government earlier this year); the Missouri Sovereignty Project, whose Web site features a video threatening armed insurrection against the government; and Tradition Family and Property, a religious cult that celebrates the Spanish Inquisition and trains teenage recruits in medieval warfare with spears and maces.

Now, reports the Post, Liberty Central will merge with the Patrick Henry Center, whose board is headed by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who served under President Ronald Reagan and presided over the Iran-Contra scandal. The Patrick Henry Center was founded by Gary Aldrich, the former FBI agent who found his way onto the best-seller list with a book that accused the Clintons of compromising national security. The Patrick Henry Center advisory board includes talk-show host Mark Levin — who has made sexist comments about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s anatomy, and tossed about incendiary rhetoric about President Barack Obama — as well as Oliver North, who was convicted of a felony in the Iran-Contra scandal — a verdict that was later tossed out on a technicality.

Also on the Patrick Henry advisory board are two anti-gay activists: Beverly LaHaye, founder of the Concerned Women for America, and Alan Sears, head of the Alliance Defense Fund. Rounding out the advisory board is Howard Phillips, founder of the Constitution Party, which seeks to replace secular law with biblical law. Phillips is one of the founders of the religious right, and a close associate of John Birch Society President John McManus.

Muslims should reach out to fellow citizens to counter rise of Islamophobia in Canada

By MOHAMMED AZHAR ALI KHAN | Source

Canada is a model country that operates under the rule of law and respect for human rights and diversity. But in these harsh times signs are mounting that it is not immune to the Islamophobia that is sweeping through Western countries.

Ottawa’s Carleton University has become the first university in North America to offer courses in defense against terrorism. Engineering students will study, among other subjects, national security, intelligence and terrorism.

The government has also decreed that passengers at Canadian airports must show their faces at boarding gates in addition to producing passports and other photo identification.

These actions follow the arrest of some Muslims on terrorism-related charges — and the conviction, in recent years, of some Canadian Muslims for planned terrorism in Canada or Europe.

A recent poll, commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, showed that 55 percent of Canadians did not think Muslims shared their values.

Suicide bombs that target innocent Muslims and non-Muslims, terrorism and niqab are among the factors fueling distrust of Muslims. Ayman Al-Yassini, executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, said the situation is getting worse and Canadian Muslims should counter it by reaching out to their fellow Canadians of other faiths. Polls show that Canadians who have Muslim friends view Islam more favorably than those Canadians who do not know Muslims.

Some Muslim organizations and Muslims have started to do that in recent years. But the Muslims of Canada are hugely diverse — ranging from highly educated professionals to traumatized refugees who found safety in Canada from persecution or death in their own countries but who have little understanding of the West. The absence of a national Muslim umbrella organization in Canada has also prevented joint action or strategic leadership.

The bickering in some Muslim organizations and their preoccupation with building mosques but neglecting vulnerable Muslims — such as refugees, disgruntled youth, women victims of domestic violence, new immigrants, those in jail, ill and mentally ill, etc — has produced an underclass of vulnerable Muslims.

A Christian friend of mine recently sent an e-mail to his friends saying he is sick of all Muslims being blamed for the actions of a few criminals. Most of his friends agreed. But one wrote back saying that Muslims hate non-Muslims and their goal is to rule the world.

Such views also stem from the Islamophobia being spread by sections of the Canadian media. Canada’s national magazine, some radio and TV stations and print journalists level baseless accusations against Muslims. For example, a columnist wrote in Ottawa’s major paper, “There is no question during Muslim rule non-Muslims were regarded under Shariah law as second-class citizens.” He added that “Islam’s holiest of holy, Kaaba, in the Saudi Arabian city of Makkah, was a pagan shrine for hundreds of years before Muhammad and his army slaughtered the residents in 630 A.D.” He later published a correction that the city had surrendered without a fight. He did not state that the Prophet (peace be upon him) forgave his tormentors. Nor did he say that the House of God was originally built by the Prophet Abraham to worship one God before it was converted to a temple of idols.

In fairness, some media give Muslims the chance to express their viewpoints. These include Muslims who lack credibility among Muslims but whose Muslim-bashing has turned them into media darlings. For example Canadian Muslim imams issued a declaration clearly condemning violence and terrorism. Their views got some coverage — along with the interviews of media darlings who chastised the imams for not banning jihad, or self-defense, outright.

Islam also gets tarnished by suicide bombings, sectarian killings, and persecution of non-Muslims, corruption and oppression in some Muslim countries.

In Canada, Muslims are mostly disorganized and the majority of Muslims, including the youth, keep away from mosques, except for Eid or Friday prayers.

Now Canadian Muslims must teach their own community about Islam’s emphasis on compassion, justice, brotherhood and human dignity. They must also reach out to fellow Canadians of other faiths, including the media, and participate in all aspects of life. They must also uplift disenfranchised Muslims and help them to become productive, respected citizens.

Canada remains a great country. But minorities in the past had to strive mightily to gain respect and equality and to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Now Canadian Muslims face that challenge.

— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a journalist, retired Canadian civil servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his work as a journalist, his leadership of Muslims and efforts to promote better understanding between Canadians of different faiths

Some conservative Christians still don’t have a clue what America is all about

examiner.com | By Mitchell S. Gilbert

Two stories in today’s news stand out as reminders that to many conservative Christians, America is their country and everyone else should apparently think about leaving or just be grateful that they are allowed to live here.

In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, a county judge ruled against a suit brought by a citizens group committed to putting the breaks on the building of an Islamic Community Center. A number of local churches and conservative Christian organizations co-sponsored the suit.

In the course of 8 days of testimony, opponents of the community center called a number of witnesses who argued among other things, Islam is not a religion but a political movement that is committed to world domination. Other expert witnesses suggested that given a chance, American Muslims will try to impose Sharia Law on the United States. In recent months, opponents of the Islamic Community Center even organized a march, complete with unfriendly signs down Murfreesboro’s main thoroughfare.

The legal thrust of the suit was based on the premise that the county planning commission had not taken enough community input in giving their approval for the project. In his ruling the presiding judge simply noted that nothing improper had taken place.

The other story comes from the State of Texas where it has now been learned, a number of conservative Christian groups and individuals have been sending out emails to members of the State’s legislature directly opposing Joe Straus (Republican, San Antonio) as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Why? Because Joe is one of them, his is a Jew. The fact that Straus happens to be a conservative Republican apparently doesn’t mitigate his religious heritage.

I light of such reoccurring expressions bigotry and ignorance by people who genuinely believe that they are “good Americans,” one can’t help but wonder if America’s most ominous enemies are not in foreign lands but right here, living among us.

One very thoughtful, eloquent American with a very different perspective on what America is all about, wrote a very warm letter to a congregation of non-Christians just to reassure them of their rightful place in this country. I thought it appropriate to conclude this column with an except from that letter:

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

The letter was composed in 1790 and addressed to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. It was signed: “G. Washington.”

Oklahoma and Islamophobia

Source | By Seth Nigrosh

I’m going to apologize in advance for not keeping a civil tone in this essay. Because, really, you’ve got to be kidding me. A ban on Sharia? In Oklahoma? What?

Ok, let’s back up a minute. On Election Day this year in Oklahoma, voters passed a ban on “Sharia law” being used in Oklahoma with about 70% for the ban and 30% against. The entire situation just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Since when has Oklahoma been in danger of falling under the sway of extreme Muslims? And the wording of the statement makes me question the intelligence of the writers of the initiative, even more so than the content: the term “Sharia” means “Islamic law”. If you say “Sharia law” you’re really saying “Islamic law law.” A simple Google search would have told them that. But that would require showing some human decency and integrity, which seems to be at an all time low.

What could have made anyone think that this was a necessary and good law? Besides blatant political pandering to Islamophobes, of course. Well, as you might expect, the answer is fairly bizarre and paranoid. As one flier put it, there is “an international movement, supported by militant Muslims and liberals” to create a worldwide Islamic theocracy. That’s preposterous. Tell me one liberal who supports militant Muslims and a global Caliphate. You can’t though, because there aren’t any. Not that facts are getting in the way of this debate, of course.

One of the state representatives in Ohio who has spearheaded this effort is a man named Rex Duncan, a Republican (of course) from Sand Springs. In 2007, he rejected a gift of a Koran, saying that he did not want to accept a book that endorsed the killing of innocent women and children. You know, that might be the first intelligent thing anyone has said so far on this issue! Hey, let’s expand that, shall we? In the name of American freedom, we should ban all books that say things like “Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed” or “Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants” or “Cursed be he who does the Lords work remissly, cursed be he who holds back his sword from blood.” But… wait… those sound familiar. I know I’ve seen those somewhere. Oh right! Those are from the Christian bible. Oops.

The local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has sued to strike the law. Their argument is that the law violates the first amendment because it singles out a specific religion. It turns out that many religious people, including Jews and Christians, draw up civil documents such as wills and marriage contracts based on their religious laws. The documents are then submitted to the courts to make sure they comply with American law. If this misguided initiative is allowed to stand, then Muslims will not be able to do that. This application of Sharia doesn’t seem so threatening, then.

There is simply no way that Sharia will ever have widespread acceptance in America, except for the very narrow and harmless case I described above. No judge would ever think of sentencing a woman to stoning for adultery, or forcing men to grow facial hair. Stuff like that simply doesn’t happen, and will never happen. People who supported this law as a preemptive strike on activist judges really need to go back and reevaluate their priorities. This country faces a whole host of issues. Luckily, Sharia is not one of them.

This reminds me of when Michelle Obama said she was finally proud to be an American after not being proud for so long, and was hotly criticized for it. I think I finally know how she felt all those years. To be quite honest, I’m a little ashamed of my country right now. We’ve reached a new level of insanity, and I don’t see it abating. I can just see Osama bin Laden doing a little jig in his godforsaken cave somewhere, happy to have more ammunition in his fight against freedom. People who push for laws like this one should be ashamed of themselves. They are embarrassing their country, and unwittingly giving aid to our enemies. I’m so disgusted right now; these words are only the tip of the iceberg. To all of America’s Muslims, I’m offering you my sincerest apologies. You don’t deserve this, and I promise you that freedom loving Americans are going to do everything we can to make this right.

Harry Reid picks on American Muslims

Source | By Stephen Zunes

The moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party could not be any more evident than in its continued support for Nevada Sen. Harry Reid as majority leader despite his decision to join the bigoted and Islamophobic campaign against the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center in New York, arguing that it “should be built somewhere else.”

This was also an apparent effort to embarrass President Barack Obama – who, in a rare example of showing some spine in the face of right-wing attacks – defended the First Amendment rights of the Muslim group. According to the president, Muslim Americans have “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan in accordance with local laws and ordinances.” Despite the efforts of New York’s Republican mayor and the large number of 9/11 families and the city’s Christian and Jewish leaders who have defended the project, the senator representing a state nearly 3,000 miles away apparently believes he knows better.

One can only imagine the reaction by his Senate colleagues if Senator Reid he had called for a Jewish or Christian community center to be moved because some right-wing extremists were offended. The failure to call for Reid’s resignation or even denounce his statement underscores that many of his Democratic colleagues likely share his lack of tolerance toward those of the Islamic faith. As will be illustrated below, this is not the first example of Reid – or the Democrats – exposing their bigotry toward Muslims.

In many respects, Reid is emblematic of the Democratic Party’s tendency to not only refuse to ignore or resist extreme right-wing wing nuts, but to actively embrace their agenda. As a number of investigative reports have observed, the Park 51 project was a nonissue until Pamela Geller, the notorious, far-right, conspiratorial Islamophobe made it an issue, supported by the right-wing tabloid The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, a major funder of right-wing Republicans. Indeed, calls for a US invasion of Iraq and other anti-Islamic efforts were once the exclusive domain of the far right until Reid and other Democrats decided to jump on board.

Reid claims he is not against Muslims building mosques or community centers elsewhere, just not so close to the former site of the World Trade Center (WTC). It doesn’t seem to matter to Reid that the organizers of the Park 51 Center, like the vast majority of Muslims elsewhere, condemned the 9/11 attacks. The al-Qaeda cultists are no more representative of Muslims than Timothy McVeigh and his associates in the “Christian Identity” movement were representative of Christians overall, yet Reid has never expressed concern about Christian churches near the site of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Nor does it appear relevant to Reid that the center would be on a side street one block up and a second block over from the northeast corner of the former WTC site, several blocks from the proposed memorial on the site of the former WTC, that it will not stand out amid the canyons of other buildings in downtown Manhattan and cannot even be seen from ground zero. To Reid and other anti-Muslim bigots, even that is too close.

It is noteworthy to examine the building that Reid finds so offensive: Comparable to a YMCA or a YMHA, the building would include a fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, bookstore, performing arts center and food court. Though there would be a place for worship in the building, it is not a “mosque” as Reid has described it. Nor is it at ground zero.

According to Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, “It will have a real community feel, to celebrate the pluralism in the United States, as well as in the Islamic religion. It will also serve as a major platform for amplifying the silent voice of the majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with extremist ideologies. It will counter the extremist momentum.” Khan went on to note that that “Three hundred of the victims [of the 9/11 attacks] were Muslim. We are Americans, too. The 9/11 tragedy hurt everybody, including the Muslim community. We are all in this together, and together we have to fight against extremism and terrorism.”

Despite some desperate efforts by some on the extreme right to falsely portray the initiator of the project as some kind of extremist by taking some quotes of his out of context and fabricating others, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has spent his career trying to promote interfaith understanding. He and other leaders of the project are from the Sufi tradition, the mystical branch of Islam that could not be more different that the Salafi extremists of al-Qaeda. Indeed, Imam Rauf has been recruited by both President Bush and President Obama to appear on behalf of the United States at international forums to challenge Islamic extremists. Yet, to Reid, this doesn’t matter. What matters, apparently, is that he is Muslim.

Reid is, no doubt, aware of all this, as he is of the recent Pew Research Centre report which determined that most Muslim Americans were “largely assimilated, happy with their lives … and decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes.”

This, however, may be what Reid objects to. As a strong supporter of US-led wars against Muslim nations in the name of fighting terrorism, perhaps he fears that allowing the moderate majority of American Muslims to have such a public face would make it difficult to support his militaristic agenda. As has been widely reported in The New York Times and elsewhere, the resistance to this decidedly moderate Islamic group establishing their cultural center is being widely circulated in predominantly Muslim countries, feeding the extremists’ argument that the United States does not just oppose terrorism, but opposes Islam as a whole. The more that Muslims believe this, the ranks of extremist groups will grow and the greater the perceived threat to American interests will become, thereby allowing Reid and other hawks to use the “Islamic threat” as an excuse to invade Muslim countries, many of which contain oil and other coveted natural resources.

Invading Muslim Countries

Indeed, Reid’s Islamophobia and bigotry toward Muslims has been evident for years. For example, he was a leader among the right-wing minority of Congressional Democrats who supported President George W. Bush’s contention that the United States somehow has the right to invade Muslim countries rich in hydrocarbon resources on the far side of the world, even if they pose no threat to us. In order to convince the public to support such an illegal war, Reid teamed up with the Bush administration, prominent neo-conservatives, Fox News, and some dubious Iraqi exiles in making a series of false allegations regarding Iraq’s military capability.

Despite evidence that Iraq no longer had “weapons of mass destruction,” (WMD) programs, or offensive delivery systems, and – as Obama and others recognized at the time – Iraq was not a threat to its neighbors, much less the United States, Reid voted in October 2002 to authorize a US invasion of Iraq because of what he claimed was “the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.” The Reid-backed resolution falsely accused Iraq of “continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability … [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States.” Absolutely none of this was true. But to the Mormon senator from Nevada, telling the truth apparently is of little concern when convincing the country of the need to go to war against Islam. (To this day, his office insists that Reid was not lying, but was misled by “faulty intelligence.” However, they have refused to provide me or any other independent strategic analysts with any of this supposed “intelligence” he supposedly saw that supposedly said Iraq had these supposed weapons and weapons systems.)

When Sen. Joseph Biden, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, tried to alter the wording of the war resolution so as not to give President Bush the blank check he was seeking and to put some limitations on his war-making authority, Reid, as assistant majority leader of the Senate, helped circumvent Biden’s efforts by signing on to the White House’s version. As the Democratic whip, Reid then persuaded a majority of Democratic senators to vote down a resolution offered by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin that would authorize force only if the UN Security Council voted to give the US that authority and to instead support the White House resolution giving Bush the right to invade even without such legal authorization. (By contrast, a sizable majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives – under the leadership of then-whip Nancy Pelosi – voted against the Republican resolution.)

It is highly unlikely that Reid would have supported such an invasion were the country in question not predominantly Muslim. For example, he has not called for an invasion of North Korea, India, Israel, China, and other non-Muslim countries which really do have such weapons and weapons systems.

Weapons were never really the issue, however. Indeed, Reid continued to support the invasion of Iraq in early 2003 even after Iraq allowed United Nations inspectors to return and it was becoming apparent, as many arms control experts had been arguing all along, that there were no WMD to be found. Reid rushed to support Bush’s claims of his right to invade that Muslim country anyway, claiming that – despite its clear violation of the United Nations Charter – the invasion was “lawful” and that he “commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President.”

Recognizing that such explicit anti-Muslim bigotry would be unacceptable, Reid felt obliged to lie to justify his support of the US invasion of Iraq by echoing the administration’s claims that “this nation would be justified in making war to enforce the terms we imposed on Iraq in 1991 since Iraq promised “the world it would not engage in further aggression and it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”

In reality, Iraq had not engaged in further acts of aggression, and it had already destroyed its WMD, demonstrating Reid’s willingness to defend the Bush administration’s lies in order to justify a US takeover of that oil-rich country.

Secondly, even if Iraq had been guilty as charged, the armistice agreement to which Reid referred – UN Security Council resolution 687 – had no military enforcement mechanisms. Furthermore, resolution 678, which originally authorized the use of force against Iraq, had become null and void once Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait. An additional resolution specifically authorizing the use of force would have been required in order for the United States to legally engage in any further military action against the Baghdad regime.

Historically, opposition leaders in the Senate have taken seriously Congress’ role under the US Constitution to place a check on presidential powers, including such illegal activities as wars of aggression. It appears, however, that since the targeted country was Muslim, Reid felt no duty to uphold his constitutional authority. Reid twice granted the fraudulently-elected Bush unprecedented war-making authority, justifying this betrayal of his constitutional responsibility by insisting that Bush was only invading Iraq out of necessity, insisting – despite evidence to the contrary – that “no President of the United States of whatever political philosophy will take this nation to war as a first resort alternative rather than as a last resort.”

The last senator from the inland west to lead the Democrats was Mike Mansfield of Montana, who served as Senate majority leader for most of the 1960s and 1970s. He courageously spoke out against the Vietnam War, not only when the Republican Richard Nixon was president, but also when Democrat Lyndon Johnson was president. Unlike Mansfield, however, who was willing to challenge the foreign policy of his own party’s administration, Reid refused to speak out even when the administration was from the opposing political party, apparently because – unlike Vietnam – the victims of the more recent US war were Muslims.

Contempt for Other Muslim Nations

Iraq is not the only area where Reid is willing to support mass violence against Muslim peoples. Reid co-sponsored a Senate resolution defending Israel’s massive onslaught on the predominantly Muslim Gaza Strip in 2008-2009 and of an earlier resolution defending the 2006 Israeli attack against predominantly Muslim southern Lebanon, wars which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 Muslim civilians. Reid directly contradicted findings by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and various UN agencies in insisting that Israel’s attacks against civilian population centers was legal. But when it comes to killing Muslim civilians, the facts don’t matter to Reid. Just as the facts about the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center don’t matter to Reid. Just as having a bigot as their leader doesn’t seem to matter to Senate Democrats.

Reid’s contempt for international legal standards was also evident in his co-sponsorship of a resolution – which fortunately never received majority support – condemning the International Court of Justice for its July 2004 decision, which held that governments engaged in belligerent occupation are required to uphold relevant provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and related standards of international humanitarian law. The case was in regard to the predominantly Muslim-populated Palestinian West Bank subjected to illegal colonization and other violations of international law by its Israeli occupiers.

Furthermore, despite a series of UN Security Council resolutions declaring Israel’s occupation, colonization and annexation of predominately Muslim East Jerusalem illegal, Reid sponsored the Jerusalem Embassy Act that insists that “Jerusalem remain an undivided city” under Israeli control. In addition, Reid has supported Israel’s colonization of the occupied West Bank in contravention of a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from these illegal settlements.

Reid also was an initiator of a letter to President Obama defending Israel’s attack this past spring on an international humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters attempting to deliver foods and medicines to the besieged Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killings of nine participants, including a 19-year-old US citizen, who was shot at close range in the back of the head. He also insisted that the International Committee of the Red Cross and other authorities on international humanitarian law were wrong in asserting that the siege went well beyond Israel’s legitimate security concerns and was, therefore, illegal. Reid presumably would have not defended attacks against similar efforts to bring food and medicines to besieged Christian populations, as in the case of West Berlin during the cold war.

That the Democratic Party would choose an anti-Islamic extremist like Reid to represent them in the US Senate is yet another indication of just how far to the right the Democratic Party has become. Indeed, it is but one example of why so many Democrats will be staying home this November rather than supporting their morally bankrupt leadership.

2012: Exploiting Islamophobia to Win Big

Source | by Kelley B. Vlahos

Why did Renee Ellmers, a Republican candidate for Congress from North Carolina, produce a campaign ad skewering her opponent for not vociferously opposing the Park 51 Islamic center planned for Manhattan near Ground Zero, over 500 miles away?

Because it was good campaign strategy, that’s why. She presumed that the Newt Gingrich-hyper-generated history of the Muslims conquering the city of Cordoba 13 centuries ago, complete with illustrations and the juxtaposition of Ground Zero, would pay off, particularly among the disgruntled southern conservatives in her district, which covers the central and eastern parts of the state. And she was right – this blatant exploitation of their fears certainly didn’t hurt and might very well have helped her beat seven-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Bob Etheridge in one of the many GOP upsets of the midterm elections.

In fact, anti-Muslim rage in today’s national discourse is populism’s low-hanging fruit, and many Republicans hungrily grabbed at it with both fists and were duly rewarded this campaign season. Sure, not every one of the Sarah Palin/Tea Party-endorsed candidates won on Nov. 2, but those who did, won in part because of their willingness to indulge in the Islamophobia coursing through the Republican base today, not despite it. The same Republican base that helped the party torpedo the Democrats last Tuesday, taking back the House, six senate seats, six governorships, and 680 slots in state legislatures (the most in the modern era, according to the National Journal).

“I think this election will weigh heavily on us for the next couple of years,” lamented James Zogby, director of the Arab American Institute, talking before an audience assembled at The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C on Thursday. Parsing out the election results in the frame of the current backlash, he said Islamophobia has “exploded” on the Arab-American community in the U.S., “to the extent I don’t think I have ever seen before.”

In Florida, for example, Republican ex-Army officer and two-time congressional candidate, Allen West, has been fond of giving speeches that highlight his perceived historical knowledge of Islam as a religion of murder and hate. Pontificating on the Quran at the Hudson Institute this year, West exclaimed, “this is not a perversion, (Terrorists) are doing exactly what this book says.”

In February, West took it up a notch, speaking before the Freedom Defense Initiative, a jihad-hunting fundraising machine headed by Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) and Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch):

“There is no such thing as ‘war on terror,’” he told his audience, “a nation does not go to war against a tactic. A nation goes to war against an ideology… we are against something that is a totalitarian, theocratic, political ideology and it is called Islam.”

Geller did her best to promote West’s candidacy – “Run West Run!” – and Ellmers was also on Geller’s list of “endorsed” candidates. In ordinary political times, respectable Republican candidates would have steered clear away from Geller and Spencer and other such toxic avengers.

Not West, not now. On Tuesday, the Tea Party-backed West beat Democratic incumbent Rep. Ron Klein with 55 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, just days before the election, right wing blogs started touting what they said was proof that Democratic Rep. Joseph Sestak, running in a tight race for Senate with Republican Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, had attended a 2006 campaign fundraiser hosted for him by the director of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), an “unindicted terrorist co-conspirator” that is supposedly a front for Hamas, but apparently not so effective to have been charged as such by the U.S. government. Nevertheless, the accusations have been dogging Sestak, a retired Vice Admiral in the U.S. Navy, and in July, blogs like Atlas Shrugs began pushing the issue and circulating this ad by the “Emergency Committee for Israel,” a right wing marriage of Washington neoconservatives and evangelical Christians with a lot of money to burn. It launched with the Sestak attack, and was key in making Park 51 a national issue a few weeks later.

Sestak lost last Tuesday to Toomey, 49 to 51 percent.

In Nevada, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid may have beat back a challenge by Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle, but most would agree she forced him to dance to her tune throughout the entire campaign. Example: when challenged in August by Angle to break his silence on the Park 51 project, Reid succumbed to the noxious Tea Party atmosphere and said Park 51 should be “built elsewhere.”

Later, in October, Angle indulged a delusional audience member by agreeing with him that Muslims were slowly taking over the American legal system.

“We’re talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe it isn’t a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it,” she told the audience.

Off the congressional grid, Republican Josh Mandel, whose campaign produced an attack ad that artfully invoked anti-mosque/Muslim feelings while pumping up Mandel’s “real American” status as a “decorated Marine,” “crushed” incumbent Ohio State Treasurer Kevin Boyce, a Democrat, by 15 points.

Notably, national jihad-watchers weighed in on this statewide race, targeting Mandel’s opponent’s deputy, accusing him of attending an “infamous mosque” and “hanging with Islamic extremists.” After the election, the Cleveland Plain Dealer referred to Mandel as “a rising star in his party.”

And of course, there was the successful state ballot initiative in super red Oklahoma, touted by Gingrich and others as the first shot across the bow at the coming Muslim invasion. The “Save our State” amendment will modify the state constitution to ban Sharia law. Comedian Stephen Colbert, while noting that there are only 15,000 Muslims in Oklahoma today, had the best take yet: “Just because something doesn’t exist doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ban it. That’s why I have long fought for ballot measures to ban cat pilots, baby curling, and man-futon marriage.” (video here).

Looking at the smoldering post-election landscape and the long presidential campaign trail ahead, it’s clear that Islamophobia as a political tool is here to stay –- wielded by Republicans who use it to excite and galvanize the right wing, embarrass their opponents and sow the seeds of fear and paranoia in everyone else. And it’s so damn effective!

Zogby says President Bush may have “kept a lid on” the worst of the backlash after 9/11, however selfishly, by promoting the meme that his military invasions were not a “war on Muslims.” But the election of Barack Obama and the accompanying economic crisis unleashed the vitriol simmering under the surface, stirred by what Zogby called the expanding “cottage industry of terrorism experts” like Geller, Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Clifford May and Frank Gaffney. They inhabit largely Republican think tanks like the Center for Security Policy, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which as a monolith of anti-Muslim rhetoric, all provide daily talking points to Republican politicians like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and up-and-comers like West and Ellmers.

They also inspire and conspire with evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham (son of the Rev. Billy Graham), who felt emboldened enough to call Islam “wicked” and “evil” during a televised town meeting-style forum last April. Why not, when he knows that nearly half the electorate, or those identifying as Republican or ‘leaning Republican,’ likely agree with him on some level.

According to poll results announced by the Arab American Institute on Nov. 1, 66 percent of Republican voters now hold an unfavorable view of Arabs; 85 percent hold an unfavorable view of Muslims. Compare that to 28 percent who hold a favorable view of Arabs, and 12 percent who hold a favorable view of Muslims.

From Zogby:

“The GOP has become captive of several groups that now dominate the party’s base and have transformed its thinking. The ‘religious right’ and its ‘end of days’ preachers like Pat Robertson, William Hagee and Gary Bauer, presently constitute almost 40% of Republican voters. This group’s emphasis on the divinely ordained battle between the forces of ‘good’ (i.e. the Christian West and Israel) and the forces of ‘evil’ (Islam and the Arabs) has logically given rise to anti-Muslim prejudice.

“Then there are the Christian right’s ideological cousins, the neo-conservatives, who share an identical Manichean and apocalyptic world view, though with a secular twist. And into the mix must be thrown Islamophobic right-wing radio and TV commentators like [Bill] O’Reilly, [Glenn] Beck, [Rush] Limbaugh, [Michael] Savage and company, who daily spew their poison across the airwaves.

“The combination produces a lethal brew that is dangerous not only for the intolerance it has created, but the sense of certitude and self-righteousness it projects.”

The incoming Republican chairs to the foreign policy/security/intelligence committees and shifts in the party leadership in the House are “really problematic,” said Zogby. He pointed out several members who are quite known for promoting interventionist, anti-Arab/Muslim policy prescriptions and are expected to rise in the ranks next year, including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Foreign Affairs), Eric Cantor (Majority Leader), Dan Burton (Foreign Affairs-Middle East), Peter King (Homeland Security), Lamar Smith (Judiciary) and Steve King (Judiciary-immigration).

“You have people who have a decidedly anti-Arab, anti-Islam mindset … it’s born out of the same ideological fervor of the last (Bush) administration,” said Zogby. As for the broader problem of Islamophobia and the Republican wave of influence in Washington politics, he said, “I think it will have an impact on the President and it will make the climate very difficult.”

You bet. Especially with the presidential campaign right around the corner. In fact, I’ve argued that it is already here. Watch the Islamophobia that poisoned the well in the midterms metastasize like a vulgar cancer for what already promises to be a Republican/Tea Party crusade to throw Obama – a man who upwards of 46 percent of Republicans believe is a secret Muslim – out of the White House for good.

Though the so-called Tea Party movement was supposedly born out of a backlash to the President’s “socialist” economic policies in times of financial crisis, it has done nothing to dissuade its adherents from scapegoating immigrants and Muslims for the country’s problems. Zogby tells Antiwar.com that “if a popular (GOP) leader criticizes this bigotry it could have an impact.” I am not so optimistic. As Zogby said himself, “once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to get it back in.” And this is one hell of a vengeful Jinn.

Islamophobia Inc.

Source
Nicole Colson documents the big business of spreading anti-Muslim hate and lies.

“STEVEN EMERSON has 3,390,000 reasons to fear Muslims.”

So begins a stunning investigative report from Tennessean newspaper journalist Bob Smietana on the business of Islamophobia–a multimillion-dollar industry that profits from promoting fear of Arabs and Muslims as part of the U.S. “war on terror.”

As Smietana reports, Steve Emerson is the owner of SAE Productions–a company that took in $3,390,000 in 2008 alone “for researching alleged ties between American Muslims and overseas terrorism. The payment came from the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, a nonprofit charity Emerson also founded, which solicits money by telling donors they’re in imminent danger from Muslims.”

And Emerson isn’t alone.

In the years since September 11, an entire Islamophobia industry has sprung up, similar in many ways to the anti-Communist politicians, “experts” and foundations which warned America about the creeping “Red menace” during the Cold War.

The Islamophobes are sounding the alarm about the “Muslim menace” that they claim is threatening the Western, “civilized” world. According to them, every new mosque built in the U.S. is an invitation to jihad and the imposition of sharia law in the U.S.–because Islam is, at heart, a violent, terrorist-producing religion

And to get the message out, they’ve spawned a host of poorly researched and virulently racist–but apparently very profitable–books, Web sites and speaking tours.

Smietana cites people like Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan-era deputy assistant defense secretary and now head of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Security Policy, which paid him a $288,300 salary in 2008.

One project of Gaffney’s “charity” to warn about the supposed dangers of Islam.

Gaffney recently testified in a lawsuit brought by residents of Rutherford County, Tenn., against a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro. As Smietana describes, “On the stand…[Gaffney] accused local mosque leaders of having ties to terrorism, using ties to Middle Eastern universities and politics as evidence. His main source of information was his own report on sharia law as a threat to America, one he wrote with other self-proclaimed experts. But, under oath, he admitted he is not an expert in sharia law.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

BUSINESS IS booming for the Islamophobia industry. Some examples, according to Smietana: “IRS filings from 2008 show that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org blog, earned $132,537 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative nonprofit. Brigitte Tudor, who runs the anti-Islam groups ACT! For America and the American Congress for Truth, earned $152,810, while her colleague Guy Rogers collected $154,900.”

Smietana also cites another opponent of the proposed Murfreesboro mosque, a man named Bill French, who runs the Center for the Study of Political Islam.

The benign title, however, obscures the fact that French is a former Tennessee State University physics professor with no actual credentials in the study of religions, political science or anything else remotely related to Islam. But like many others looking to profit off of their bigotry, his personal ignorance about the subject hasn’t stopped him from writing a book about Islam–which he penned under the name “”Bill Warner” and sells at speaking events.

The book, Sharia Law for Non-Muslims, is a screed full of racist distortions and half truths about Islam that warns ominously:

When you study Islam in Europe today, you are seeing America in 20 years. Why? The actions by Muslims in Europe are based on sharia law, the same sharia law that is beginning to be implemented in America today.

— Traffic cannot move in London streets as Muslims commandeer the streets to pray–a political result based on sharia law.

— Entire areas of Europe are no-go zones for non-Muslims, this includes the police. These are Islamic enclaves where only Muslims live. The Muslim-only policy is based on sharia.

— In England, an Anglican bishop calls for the rule of Islamic law for Muslims. The bishop is obeying sharia law.

— In the schools, only Islamic approved texts can be used. This is based on sharia law.

— Christians may not speak to Muslims about Christianity, nor may they hand out literature. This is a political result based on sharia law enforced by British courts.

— Rape by Muslims is so prevalent that Sweden has forbidden the police to collect any data in the investigation that would point to Islam. Rape is part of Islamic doctrine as applied to non-Muslim women.

— In London, mass demonstrations by Muslims call for the end of British law and sharia law to rule all people. This political action is based on sharia.

— In some English hospitals, during Ramadan fast (an Islamic religious event) non-Muslims cannot eat where a Muslim can see them. The submission of non-Muslims is based on sharia law.

Of course, each of these supposed facts is an unhinged lie. But taken together French/Warner’s rhetoric is disturbingly reminiscent of that used by Ku Klux Klan or Nazi groups to demonize other races and religions.

In contrast to the bigoted descriptions of people like French/Warner, “sharia” is not a uniform concept–it varies based on the type of Islam practiced, as well as the country and culture in which it is practiced. As Akbar Muhammad, an associate professor of history and Africana studies at Binghamton University in New York, explained to NewsHour,

The word “sharia” is the term given to define the collectivity of laws that Muslims govern themselves by. And there is a presumption that these laws recognize all of the specific laws mentioned in the Koran and in the practice of the prophet, and do not conflict with that…

Islam is a very flexible system, and it has been very flexible for centuries. What I mean by that is that differences of opinion have been accepted within Islam and given legitimacy by some of the highest authorities in Islam. Thus in certain areas of the sharia, one country may differ from another country. One community may differ from another community, even in the same country…

Islamic law is not one thing. It’s not monolithic, as American law is not monolithic, as Western law is not monolithic.

But French didn’t let such facts get in the way during a speech to opponents of the proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, where he told an assembled crowd of 80 that sharia law is a threat to their way of life, including their American flags (which, he claimed “offend Allah”).

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

FRENCH CERTAINLY isn’t the only self-described “experts” on Islam who spouts nothing but distortions and lies.

There’s Pamela Geller, a leading opponent of the Park51 Islamic community center project in lower Manhattan (misnamed the “Ground Zero mosque”) and founder of “Stop Islamization of America,” who has stated her approval for fascists like the English Defense League and dead South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche. Another is anti-Muslim blogger Debbie Schlussel, who in May accused the Miss USA contestant Rima Fakih–an American Muslim of Lebanese descent–of supporting terrorism because she shares her last name with some Hezbollah officials.

As Frankie Martin, a research fellow at American University’s School of International Service, recently wrote in the Washington Post, there is now an “infrastructure” of anti-Muslim hate in the U.S.:

Much of this bigotry and misinformation can be traced directly to what I am calling the infrastructure of hate, an industry which connects venomous anti-Islamic blogs, wealthy donors, powerful think tanks, and influential media commentators, journalists and politicians. The most visible component of the infrastructure is the hate blogs, which have recently grown exponentially in number, influence and stature…

To the hate bloggers, the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims represent an insidious, inherently violent force seeking to enslave the United States by overthrowing the government and jettisoning the Constitution in favor of sharia law.

Frequently the bloggers include caveats, such as claiming that they are only talking about “Islamists,” “Islamofascists,” or those supporting “sharia,” but by tying terrorism explicitly to the Prophet Muhammad and to the Koran, they equate it with Islam. Under this simplistic, warped logic, every Muslim is a potential, if not-fully formed, terrorist and every one of America’s 7 million Muslims a potentially treasonous enemy. Such crass, demonizing generalizations constitute hate speech.

What is especially disturbing, however, is that these fringe voices have been given an increasingly wide hearing by politicians and the media, especially in connection with the Tea Party phenomenon, which has frequently embraced Islamophobia alongside its conservative “small government” mantra.

Some examples: Sarah Palin and other prominent Republicans were some of the loudest voices speaking out against the Park51 project. And in September, for example, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington about the supposed growing threat of sharia law, saying, “We should have a federal law that says under no circumstances in any jurisdiction in the United States will Sharia [law] be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law.”

Not surprisingly, media commentators–particularly those from the Fox News stable–have let loose with anti-Islam racism on the air as well, often with zero consequences. Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade, for example, recently stated on air, “It wasn’t just one person [that attacked the U.S. on 9/11], it was one religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”

That, of course, would be news to the families of the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, carried out by right-winger Timothy McVeigh, or family members of slain abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, assassinated at his church by anti-abortion maniac Scott Roeder); or the victims in bombings of abortion clinics, a gay bar and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, all carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph of the “Christian Identity” movement.

One of the most recent waves of anti-Islam bigotry came in defense of journalist Juan Williams, who was fired by National Public Radio after an appearance on Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, during which he said, “[W]hen I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried.”

Unfortunately, many people who aren’t right-wingers also defended Williams, claiming that his comments were “misconstrued” or that that he was a victim of “political correctness run amok.”

But Williams made his statements in his role as a “liberal” counterpoint to right-wing blowhard Bill O’Reilly, who earlier in the week had claimed on national television that “Muslims killed us on 9/11.” In that context, Williams’ talking about his “fear” of people dressed in Islamic garb at airports played to a slightly more “acceptable” form of racism–but it was racism nonetheless.

Imagine if Williams’ target had been different–if he had said, for example, that being around Orthodox Jews made him “uncomfortable.” He would labeled an anti-Semite, even if he admitted to his racism with a slightly apologetic tone.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

IF LEFT unchallenged, Islamophobia has real consequences.

Days after Williams’ remarks, for example, a Muslim family was removed from a plane at Memphis International Airport, in a case of what’s become known as “flying while Muslim.” “My understanding is they were dressed in attire that would indicate some Muslim-type religion,” airport vice president Scott Brockman explained to a reporter. The family was subjected to interrogation by the FBI before being placed on a later flight.

Such stories are brushed aside by those in the Islamophobia business, with conservatives claiming that “America has a right to protect itself” and that racial profiling of Muslims is warranted because “they attacked us” and “want to destroy our way of life.”

From the planned “Burn a Koran Day” by Christian conservatives in Florida earlier this year, to protests against the misnamed “Ground Zero mosque,” to the recent ballot measure to “ban” sharia law passed by Oklahoma voters, such actions pave the way for real violence against Arabs and Muslims. Recent months have seen the stabbing of a taxi driver in New York City after he was asked if he was Muslim; a drunk man walking into a New York City mosque and urinating on the prayer rugs; and the vandalizing of a mosque in California–first with signs expressing Islamophobic bigotry; and second time with a rock was thrown through a window.

Bob Smietana’s Tennessean report was sparked in part by the furor over the proposed mosque in Murfreesboro and a series of disturbing racist attacks against Muslim residents of the area.

The proposed Islamic center site in Murfreesboro has had at least one arson attack on construction equipment, and the Al-Farooq Islamic Center in nearby Nashville was vandalized with red spraypaint reading: “Muslims go home” and images of crosses. In Columbia, Tenn., an Islamic center was burned to the ground two years ago by men who also spray-painted swastikas on the site, along with the phrases “White Power” and “We run the world.”

As Smietana notes, the economic crisis has intensified anti-Islam sentiment in Tennessee. Unemployment in Rutherford County, which contains Murfreesboro, has doubled in the past four years. stands at 8.6 percent, more than twice what it was in 2006. As Smietana writes:

When revenue for state and local budgets shrinks, immigrants become a target–especially their perceived toll on education and health-care systems. And non-Christian immigrants often bear the brunt, said Katharine Donato, chairwoman of the sociology department at Vanderbilt.

Chinese immigrants were considered un-American because they were not Christians, while Catholics were ostracized for being the wrong kind of Christians. Today, Muslims are seen as part of the problem.

But most people who dislike Muslims don’t describe their reasons so eloquently, or maybe don’t even understand the reasons. Retired Murfreesboro resident Jerry Paschal does it in one sentence: “They don’t want to be us.”

Despite this, there are encouraging signs of people rallying to the defense of Muslims in the area. According to a poll conducted by Middle Tennessee State University found that 76 percent of Tennesseans said U.S. Muslims deserve the same rights as other Americans, and about the same proportion either support or would not oppose construction of an Islamic facility in Murfreesboro or near where they live.

In other words, the anti-Islam bigots represent a small but vocal and well-funded minority–a minority whose reactionary views that can be pushed back.

According to the Associated Press, “Other faiths have risen to the defense of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. The newly formed Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, which is composed of prominent Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Southern Baptists and other Protestants, has filed a brief in the [court] case.”

As Rev. Joel Hunter, an evangelical megachurch pastor and coalition member, explained, “Every minority–and Islam is very much a minority in this country right now–has had to struggle for equal rights. Islam is facing that now, and we will not rest until they have equal rights with other religions.”

The N.Y. Islamic Center Controversy: How People of the Same Faith Can Disagree

Brad Hirschfield | Source
Rabbi, Author and Expert on Religion and Public Life

TheGallup organization has released polling data on how the members of various faith communities would resolve tensions around the construction of an Islamic center planned for a site three blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Among the most interesting things about these statistics is that there is no majority of opinion in any group about what constitutes the best possible response.

Among Muslims respondents, 14 percent favor relocating the project to an alternate site, 43 percent favor construction in the currently proposed location and 30 percent favor building an interfaith institution in the current location. Among Jews, the numbers are 43 percent, 25 percent and 28 percent, respectively. Among Catholics, the group most opposed to construction on the currently proposed site (followed closely by Mormons), its 63 perecent, 15 percent and 15 percent. Protestant respondents broke down 49 percent, 18 percent and 23 percent. For atheists, it was 32 percent, 42 percent and 17 percent. In other words, as communities, there remain real questions about how best to proceed.

The lack of agreement in no way suggests that the center should not be built by those who support it. If it meets the measure of the law, it should be built. This is America, right? But, in light of the wide range of opinion surrounding this project, the way in which it should be built, the conversations which need to be part of that process, the questions which ought to be raised and the sensitivities which deserve to be addressed, are more important than ever.

The Gallup numbers suggest that there is greater diversity of opinion than is often presumed and clearly demonstrate that no one view, even with any given faith community, holds sway. Tempting as it may be to suggest otherwise, these numbers tell us that simply dividing people along the lines of Islamophobes who are opposed to the project and lovers of religious freedom who support it, is not right. Nor should be insisting, as both sides in this debate often do, that to be a good Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, etc. dictates what one believes is the appropriate decision in this case. These numbers suggest that something far more interesting is going on.

Gallup’s data suggests that instead of the center’s supporters and detractors simply wrapping themselves in competing claims about what their community wants, or what their tradition teaches is “the” right response to this controversy and making sanctimonious claims about what is right and good, each side needs to address the fact that lots of people have lots of questions and uncertainties about how to proceed.

Accomplishing this is not simply a matter of information — we have plenty, if not too much of that, already. In fact, the poll also indicated that, with exception of Mormons, between 55 and 70 percent of the members of different faith groups have read or heard “a great deal” about this issue already. The issue is not more facts and data, the issue is having enough wisdom to process it in ways that help us resolve the conflict.

While it may be hard for pollsters, we can accomplish this by asking one question of all people, a question which takes us beyond what they believe about the proposed center and asks them why they believe what they believe. Why do respondents say that they are opposed? Why are they in favor? Do they understand that people who share their faith commitments have reached very different conclusions? Why do they think that is? These are the questions which will bring this ongoing controversy to healthier and more productive conclusion.

Follow Brad Hirschfield on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/bradhirschfield