All Entries in the "Profiles" Category
Elect Romney, Get War in Iran?
Should Mitt Romney make it to the White House, his Middle East policy and plan for Iran
Farha Khaled: Gates of Vienna Incites For a Muslim Holocaust
This is the same far right cesspool-of-bigotry website notorious for publishing
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| Virginia based Edward
May aka Baron Bodissey |
a couple in the USA, one Baron Bodissey whose real name is ‘Ned May‘ and a woman who calls herself ‘Dymphna.’
This is not first time Gates of Vienna has published screeds supposedly written by other anonymous contributors calling for the genocide of Muslims. A few years back a similar lovingly written piece inciting for the genocide of Muslims was published as Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs noted in Gates of Vienna Toys with Genocide:
‘If violence does erupt in European countries between natives and Muslims, I consider it highly likely that people who had never done anything more violent than beat eggs will prove incapable of managing the psychological transition to controlled violence and start killing anything that looks remotely Muslim. Our unspoken conviction that we, in 21st-century Europe, ‘
On 20th September 2011, Dymphna posted a three part series by one Zenster cross linked with his own website with polemics about terrorism and what Islam can expect as it’s ultimate fate. Moving on to Part 1, titled ‘When Will It End?’ the essay begins by setting the tone with:
‘Short answer ― It will end when the tipping point is reached. This tipping point can be defined as follows:
When living with Muslims becomes more trouble than living without Muslims.’
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| Peder Jensen aka Fjordmann |
A long rambling justification about the costs of terrorism, in an obvious attempt to find some sort of moral justification as to why there is no other way, ending with the ominous warning ‘The tipping point is approaching swiftly‘
Part two of the essay has the presumptuous title ‘Why it will End?’ and answers the question by stating ‘Islam has “unhappy ending” written all over it’ before going on to elaborate with hyperbole and lies including one manufactured on Gates of Vienna by Fjordman:
‘Throughout Europe, Muslims are disproportionately represented in rape, violent crime and imprisonment statistics. The expense of this criminality reaches into extra billions of Euros per year and does not cover property damage, victim rehabilitation and other ancillary expenses.’
The rapes statistics in Scandinavia, that Fjordman published at Gates of Vienna which were then repeated on the Islamophobic blogosphere were proven to be lies. Zenster continues his mental masturbation:
‘The reputation of Muslims as predatory criminals and intensely parasitic occupiers all combines into a damning indictment of Islam. Its presence on earth only promises increased conflict, more atrocities, new genocides and unwarranted diversions of wealth that could better serve far more deserving causes. Finally, Islam is assembling too many enemies too fast to where they cannot be expected to keep pursuing their own petty quarrels instead of addressing the overarching threat of jihad. The complete and total inability of Islam to coexist with any legitimate faith or other culture presages a day when its numerous victims will band together in pursuit of an ultimate victory.
That is why it will end.’
In the concluding Part three, ‘How it will End?‘ Zenster sums it up briefly: ‘The Muslim holocaust.‘ He then continues exhibiting more megalomania and what clearly appears to be a projection of his own fantasies:
‘Suffused with delusions of adequacy, Muslims think nothing of constantly antagonizing Western powers who long ago perfected industrialized warfare to an extent that Islam can only dream of, despite its supremacist fantasies.’
More ramblings, this time about Iran’s spiritual leaders, perhaps to justify his own dreams of nuclear warfare:
‘Complicating all of this is how the concept of military deterrence is essentially nonfunctional as regards Islam. A culture that glorifies and worships death is more than difficult to deter. For every bit that the West shrinks from waging Total War, the necessity of posing an existential threat to Islam only increases. When it comes to the ineffectuality of deterrence, no better example exists that of modern day Iran. The ramifications of Ahmadinejad’s tutelage under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini pose some serious issues. Recall Khomeini’s words during his 1980 speech in Qom, the Shi’ite spiritual hub:
We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land [Iran] go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.
When Ahmadinejad threatens to “wipe Israel off the map” it is with the implicit knowledge that Iran, as a country, may perish as a result. In effect, he is turning his entire nation into a gigantic suicide bomber. Neither is this the end of it. Iran’s reckless pursuit of genocide against the Jews could precipitate the Muslim holocaust all by itself. ‘
This could explain why the far right white supremacists see Israel as an ally. They see Israel as doing their dirty work for them, and as if on cue Zenster trots out the Samson option:
‘Little known to most people is Israel’s Samson Option. If true, the Jewish state has quietly informed its Arab neighbors that a single WMD strike against Israel will result in the entire MME (Muslim Middle East) being incinerated in nuclear plasma. Hundreds of fusion warheads along with newly acquired Dolphin class submarines and cruise missiles back this up.’
There is cold comfort in this for Israel but it also has quite worrisome implications for the West. At a recent pan-Arab conference Saudi Arabia’s king essentially told Ahmadinejad to “sit down and shut up” with his genocidal ravings before the entire MME is annihilated. Should he take this admonishment to heart, then the question is beggared as to who else might be targeted for an Iranian nuclear strike.’
Contradictions galore! Elsewhere in this three part essay the author talks of the plot to establish the world Caliphate, but here he says he is convinced it won’t come about. Freudian slip? :
‘Now, consider how America rolled up Iraq’s sidewalks in two weeks. This is the “reality gap” confronting Islam and its delusory vision of world domination. No such thing will ever happen.’
The essay is full of dire warnings, rants about liberals who are complicit in Islamising the planet, of the political establishment for being too weak, but more gravely, it even condemns the ‘counter jihad‘ movement for being too soft.
When you hear of so called ‘counter jihadis’ accused of being ‘soft’ and the whole of western civilisation embroiled in a plot whose aim it is to – err – destroy themselves, it is safe to assume you are reading from someone not quite right in the head, to put it politely. Someone who doesn’t deserve a second thought and should ordinarily be dismissed as a raving loon.
Except that it was at this very website, where a writer with the same Islamophobic rhetoric inspired a loner to kill tens of children on a holiday island!
Farha Khaled is a freelance writer. Her op eds are published in the Saudi based Arab News. You can follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/farhakhaled
Don’t fear us: Tunisian Islamist leader
By Tarek Amara | Source
The October 23 vote for an assembly that will draft a new constitution has pitted resurgent Islamists against secular groups who say their modern, liberal values are under threat.
Tunisia electrified the Arab world 10 months ago when a popular uprising overthrew autocratic leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, creating a model that was copied by people hungry for change in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.
Western powers and governments in other Arab states are watching Tunisia’s election closely, worried that democratically elected Islamists might impose strict Islamic law and turn their back on Western allies.
Rachid Ghannouchi, who returned to Tunisia from exile in Britain after Ben Ali’s fall, told Reuters in an interview that Western countries and Tunisian liberals had nothing to fear from a victory for his Ennahda party.
“Ben Ali did everything he could to convince the West that we are a terrorist group but he couldn’t do it,” he said.
“We are not cut off from our environment … All the values of democracy and modernity are respected by Ennahda. We are a party that can find a balance between modernity and Islam.”
LITMUS TEST
More than 100 parties will contest the election, but Ennahda has the highest public profile and biggest support network. Opinion polls suggest it will get the most votes, but not win an outright majority in the assembly drafting the constitution.
In the interview, Ghannouchi denied an allegation by his critics that he presents a moderate image in public but that once in power his party’s hardline character will emerge.
Two issues in particular, women’s equality and liberal moral attitudes, are seen by many Tunisians as a litmus test of how tolerant Ennahda will be if it gains power.
In an indication of the party’s stance on women’s rights, a woman who does not wear the head covering favored by Islamists is Ennahda’s candidate for one district in the capital, Tunis.
“The values ??of modernity and women’s freedom began with the first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba,” Ghannouchi said at his party headquarters, where many of the staff are women.
“We will not retreat from these values ??… We will support these values,” he said. “A woman’s freedom and her freedom of dress has been established and we will develop it.”
Western tourists are a major source of income for Tunisia but their habits of drinking alcohol and wearing skimpy clothing can cause tensions with devout Muslims.
Nevertheless, Ghannouchi said he did not favor any restrictions.
“We will seek to create a diversified tourism product, like Turkey,” he said, adding that hotels would not be prevented from offering alcohol and swimming pools, but that they would be encouraged to offer packages for observant Muslims without access to alcohol and with Islamic dress codes at the pool.
FOREIGN RELATIONS
European states for years tolerated Ben Ali’s autocratic rule because Tunisia was a trading partner and it helped curb the flow of drugs, illegal migrants and Islamist militants northwards across the Mediterranean.
Ghannouchi said it was in the interests of all sides for Tunisia to maintain good relations with the West.
“I lived for a long time in Europe without any problems,” he said. “I lived in tolerance with everybody.”
“During my meetings with Western officials and diplomats, I received the message that Ennahda will be welcomed if it wins the elections,” he said.
“They told me that they stand at the same distance from all competitors and their goal is the success of the democratic transition, because the failure of the transition would be catastrophic for Europe, for example, which will be flooded by hundreds of thousands of migrants.”
“We will maintain the relations with our traditional partners such as Europe, but we will seek to improve them in order to get advanced status,” Ghannouchi said, referring to a trade pact Tunisia is seeking with the European Union.
“But we will try also to diversify our partnership to open up to the United States and Latin America, Africa and Asia, and especially Arab markets,” he said.
One reason for the uprising against Ben Ali was that the economy was growing too slowly to generate jobs for youngsters.
Ghannouchi said his party’s foreign policy would be driven by the need to fix this problem. “The biggest concern is to attract foreign investment as part of foreign and local partnerships to drive growth and increase jobs.”
“The party aims to develop the knowledge economy by encouraging investment in the technology industry … There are significant growth opportunities in the telecommunications sector,” he said.
He said he had a message for potential investors.
“Tunisia has become beautiful without Ben Ali … We will put an end to corruption, we will develop legislation to stimulate investment,” said Ghannouchi. “We will confront the corruption that has spread in the structures of the state.”
(Editing by Christian Lowe and Alistair Lyon)
Radical Anti-Muslim Islamophobe Nonie Darwish Invited to Speak at George Mason Law School
Nonie Darwish, a staple of the Right-wing anti-Muslim Islamophobia network has been invited to speak by the George Mason Law School. She is scheduled to speak at the law school on October 5. [5 p.m., Room 121]. Her address, titled “The West’s Clash with Radicalism,” is sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Jewish Law Students Association. We urge all loonwatchers to contact the school and ask that she be disinvited.
Recently Nonie Darwish let loose her radical and violent rhetoric at an SIOA rally. (Bear in mind that SIOA has been designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the SPLC and was denied a trademark patent by the US government.)
Islam is a poison to a society. It’s divisive. It’s hateful. Look what Islam is doing on our college campuses. It’s full of anti-Semitism. It’s going to turn us against one another. It’s going to produce chaos in society. Because Islam should be feared, and should be fought, and should be conquered, and defeated, and annihilated, and it’s going to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, Islam is going to be brought down. . .Because Islam is based on lies and it’s not based on the truth. I have no doubt whatsoever that Islam is going to be destroyed.
We have also dealt with Nonie Darwish’s radicalism in past articles. One of the most recent articles dealt with the fact that she was called as a witness in a New York State Senate hearing on “preparedness since 9/11″:
Like most in the anti-Muslim business, Nonie has a greatly exaggerated personal sob-story backed up by book deals and speaking engagements in all the typical “hating on Muslim” venues. She sells herself as a “human rights activist,” as do so many other virulent Muslim-bashers, though she doesn’t seem to care too much about the human rights of Muslims. This time, however, she will be using the pseudonym “Nahid Hyde,” perhaps as a not-so-clever way of avoiding government inquiry into her association with other bigots and white supremacists. Yet, even a cursory view of her ridiculous book titles should cause any serious security official to question her credibility as a fair and impartial witness.
The reviewer of her latest book, “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law,” (which sells for a whopping $28.99) stated:
In her estimation, Islam is a backward and authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century Bedouin life. For Darwish, Islam is a sinister force that must be resisted and contained.
It must be difficult to pack so many stereotypes into 272 pages, but Ms. Darwish has done it, making such bold generalizations and demonstrably false claims as:
Sharia is incompatible with any state that has as a foundational principle the equality of the sexes before the law.
Perhaps she should “educate” the Grand Mufti of Egypt, who recently remarked:
Egypt’s religious tradition is anchored in a moderate, tolerant view of Islam. We believe that Islamic law guarantees freedom of conscience and expression (within the bounds of common decency) and equal rights for women. And as head of Egypt’s agency of Islamic jurisprudence, I can assure you that the religious establishment is committed to the belief that government must be based on popular sovereignty.
But disclosing some enlightening and nuanced facts about contemporary Islam or the multivalent, non-monolithic view and relationship Muslims have with Islamic Law would ruin her book sales and speaking tours, wouldn’t it?
Like other Islamophobes, she is careful to make a distinction between Islam and Muslims, so as not to appear like the plain bigot she is:
Darwish is careful to distinguish between people and ideas: “The purpose of this book is not to spread hatred of a people but to tell the truth about the wickedness of Islamic Sharia law.”
Such distinctions are disingenuous, pro-forma statements that only fool the naïve into thinking she isn’t a professional hate-monger. (Right, just like how Pam Geller loves those Moozlims so much she wants to drop nuclear bombs on them, out of love, of course.)
Contrary to her assertion, Ms. Darwish regularly engages in dehumanizing rhetoric about all Muslims, not just extremists. She even told the New York Times:
A mosque is not just a place for worship. It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.
That was one of her tamer statements dressed up before a liberal audience. Such sweeping outright lies have been instrumental in the spread of anti-Muslim, anti-Sharia, and anti-Mosque hysteria in our country, materializing in over 800 documented cases of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination. When confronted about her lies, she will likely attempt to dismiss her critics as agents of the Mad Mullah Conspiracy, rather than owning up to the falsity of her claims.
It is sad that Darwish is still getting a pass on her bigotry and lies and finding mainstream audiences willing to listen to her spout her desire to see the demise and destruction of Islam. For more on Darwish read the article, Nonie Darwish Caught in a Pool of Lies.
Farha Khaled: Bat Ye’or and The Dhimmitude of Eurabia
By Farha Khaled
Meet Bat Ye’or, the Islamophobia industry’s favourite historian who popularised such terms as ‘Eurabia’, a Euro Arab Axis and “Dhimmitude” the servile state Christians and Jews are condemned to under Islamic rule.
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| Bat Ye’or historian to Islamophobes |
Born in Cairo as Gisèle Orebi to a Jewish family she and her parents were forced to flee leaving behind everything in 1956. Settling in England, she married David Littman in 1959 and moved to Switzerland. Gisèle Littman writes under the name Bat Ye’or, Hebrew for ‘daughter of the Nile’. Now in her seventies she wrote her first book about Jews in Egypt under the name ‘Yahudiya Masriya’ which means “Egyptian Jewess” in Arabic.
Bat Ye’or wrote a series of books and articles about life under Islamic rule for Christians and Jews, drawing mainly from her own experiences. With no qualifications or academic background in history, she routinely denigrates the contributions to humanity made by successive Muslim civilisations, magnifies their intolerant periods, ignores the periods of tolerance and generally paints a selective agenda driven picture which grossly distorts the truth and ignores the wider historical context. Despite her pretensions, she was not taken seriously in academic circles and remained on the fringes until 9/11. Her star rose after 9/11 when bashing Islam became a lucrative business most ardently embraced by conservative extremists. Some right wing Zionists have since made it a career. Prior to 9/11 the only Islamophobe of note was Daniel Pipes. By comparison he seems almost a moderate now, indeed he has bemoaned his growing irrelevance by whining that he does believe in a ‘moderate Islam’, a view that puts him at odds with the radical Zionist Islamophobes. These links have been elaborated in ‘ The Islamophobia Industry: Zionism and The Middle East‘ and highlighted by Ali Abunimah in an article for Al Jazeera English ‘Islamophobia, Zionism and the Norway massacre‘ shortly after the Norwegian massacre.
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| Eurabia the myth Bat Ye’or invented |
One of the first to cite Bat Ye’or’s work was the Israeli American historian on Islamic history Bernard Lewis, who predicts that ‘Europe would be Islamic by the end of the century’. Self styled ‘counter jihad’ experts like Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Brigette Gabriel a Christian Zionist with her Act for America minions, and the shrieking Pamela Geller enthusiastically promoted Ye’or as ‘an expert on Islamic history’. She propagates that European and Arab elites along with the Muslim Brotherhood, have a secret plan to usher in a world caliphate through the OIC. This revisionist history, packaged with images from round the clock 9/11 coverage was sold as the ‘true face of Islam’. Included in this propaganda was the mantra that 9/11 was the same threat Israel faced daily. It was in this manipulated climate of fear that the Iraq war was sold, though Saddam Hussein’s regime was secular.
Since the Anders Breivik massacre, Bat Ye’or has been under the spotlight for having been a prime influence upon the murderer. Her conspiracies however, had already been discredited prior to the Anders Breivik massacre. One of the first to deconstruct the Eurabia myth was Matt Carr of ‘The Institute of Race Relations.’ In 2006 he authored a 23 page report which is downloadable as a free PDF document ‘You are now entering Eurabia’. On page 8 Carr notes:
‘The EU’s perceived tilt towards the Palestinians is crucial to Ye’or’s indictment of Eurabia, where ‘the conception and practice of Palestinianism as a hate cult against Israel has had a profound impact on European society’ and where anti-Zionism is always synonymous with anti-Semitism.’
In his report, Matt Carr mused that the Eurabia myth had the potential of evolving from a fringe conspiracy to a ‘dangerous Islamophobic fantasy’. With hindsight his words proved to have been tragically prophetic with the Norwegian massacre. Loon Watch which has indepth and intelligent responses to Islamophobic smears published ‘Bat Ye’or: Anti-Muslim Loon with a Crazy Conspiracy Theory Named “Eurabia’.
David Horowitz’s Front Page Mag interviewed Bat Ye’or in 2006. The interview began with the pretentious introduction ‘the world’s foremost authority on ‘dhimmitude’. Ye’or was then asked to explain her new term, ‘Palestinianization’. She replies:
‘I think that it is, precisely, ’Palestinianism’ which is at the root of Europe’s decadence. It is an ideology based on a replacement theology whereby Palestine replaces Israel. As it has been conceived and instigated together by European and Arab intellectuals and politicians, it combines the worst of both cultures.’
She continues:
‘The European trend has added to it traditional Christian anti-Semitism which condemns the Jews to perpetual exile till they convert. The Palestinian war against Israel, strongly encouraged by many in Europe, came as a magnificent opportunity to continue and maintain the culture of hate and denigration against the Jews — now the State of Israel — and by lending a moral and political support to a second Holocaust. Europe has been the biggest supporter and subsidizer for the Palestinians, as well as their ideological teachers.’
Which is it? Is it the OIC imposing their caliphate on the ‘dhimmified’ Europeans for the past thirty-five years or is it the Europeans imposing their Christian anti-semitism on the Palestinians since Israel’s creation so that they can carry out a second Holocaust against Israelis? Either way, both the OIC and the Europeans with their combined resources have been miserable failures, after having had decades to complete this mission! < Putting things into perspective, one could view Bat Ye’or’s pathological hatred and attempt to explain it in psychological terms as being a reaction to her earlier life and expulsion from Egypt. Or one could compare it to the route Judea Pearl embraced after the murder of his son Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Judea Pearl set up the ‘Daniel Pearl Foundation‘ which he hopes will address the root causes of the tragedy. Since 2002 the organisation has held musical concerts around the world promoting the values of tolerance, integrity, and respect.
Feigning a concern for Europe’s supposed demise into ‘dhimmitude’, Ye’or’s real agenda becomes apparent. In her sanctimonious, holier than thou diatribes addressed to the ignorant, dhimmified, Jew hating Europeans, Bat Ye’or unwittingly shows herself to be the very antithesis of those same virtues she claims Europeans have abandoned.
Farha Khaled is a freelance writer. Her op eds are published in the Saudi based Arab News. You can follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/farhakhaled
Interview: ‘West cannot understand Middle East, Turkey only through prism of Islam’
Michael Thumann, the Middle East bureau chief for the liberal-centrist German weekly Die Zeit in İstanbul, has said that since Sept. 11, 2001, but even before, a strong suspicion has existed in the West that conflict and trouble in the Middle East are primarily caused by religion or religious groups; however, that is a mistaken view.
“This is what I call the delusion over Islam. Old obsessions die hard. Seeing Islam and Islamists behind every move in the Middle East is an old obsession of many Western observers,” Thumann told us while answering our questions for Monday Talk.
In his new book “Der Islam-Irrtum: Europa und die muslimische Welt” (The Islam Fallacy: Europe’s Fear of the Muslim World), he says the West’s exaggeration of the influence of religious convictions and attempts to understand the Middle East and Turkey mainly through the prism of Islam could lead to misperceptions about the real strengths and weaknesses of the actors in the Middle East.
He elaborated on the issue for our interview.
A German publication called Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the “new caliph of the Middle East.” What do you think about the extent of support for this view in German and even in European foreign policy circles?
These catch phrases from the past are inept attempts by some of the German yellow press media not to explain but just to label Turkish foreign policy. These labels are not useful for serious reporting but for making the case that Turkey does not belong in Europe, or Turkey is teaming up with sinister forces in the Middle East. These stereotypes blur the real facts and events.
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‘Old obsessions die hard. Seeing Islam and Islamists behind every move in the Middle East is an old obsession of many Western observers. This is why I wrote my book; the delusion is wrong. Conflict, politics and social developments in most Middle Eastern countries have not differed much from Western or Eastern European ways in the last century’ |
What do you think is really happening? What are the real facts as you observe them in regard to Turkey and the Middle East?
My reading of the most recent trip of the prime minister to the Middle East is that it was not an attempt to regenerate historic roles. I see a major shift here from policies that Turkey pursued until this spring, which was to have good relations with some neighbors despite their undemocratic character. The reality has changed very much in the region. Turkey’s foreign policy has changed from supporting authoritarian leaders to supporting freedom movements and people’s aspirations. It is accompanied by an earlier trend in Turkish foreign policy: Take into account what people think inside and outside of Turkey. There is also a strongly populist aspect to Erdoğan’s Israel policy. Whenever he turns the heat up on the issue, it either suits him or he intends to address larger audiences in the region. The latest fallout with Israel was preparation for but not the eventual focus of his trip to the Arab world.
You often travel to the Middle East. Why do you think Turkey is supported by the people of the region? Is it because of what Prime Minister Erdoğan says about Israel? Is it because of the relative success of the Turkish system? Or something else?
There are several factors. Prime Minister Erdoğan is very popular because people perceive him as a pious Muslim who is a successful leader. Turkey’s economic rise is very much reported in the Arab world. What people see is that he has managed to pursue economically oriented pragmatic policies. This has started a debate in hopefully democratizing states in North Africa and beyond. I am careful about the “model” talk because Turkey’s experience in the 20th century is so different from that of the Arab world. There is also increased economic and cultural exchange between Turkey and Arab countries, as opposed to 20 years ago. There are films and television series from Turkey reaching across the Arab world, much like the Egyptian movie industry’s dominance in the 1960s and 1970s, but in a more limited way. There is also the fact that Turkey is an open country now with all these visa agreements with the countries of the region. When I moved here in 2007, I met no Arabs in İstanbul and hardly anybody that I met in Cairo and Damascus ever came here. Beginning in 2009, it shifted. Now every month, I have somebody from a Middle Eastern country sitting in my office. İstanbul has turned into a place of encounter and meeting.
So they don’t see Prime Minister Erdoğan as the new caliph?
What is important is the soft power effect of Turkey. Arabs like Turkish soft power, but if Turkish policies change, you might see all the old prejudices resurfacing. The aggressive tendencies of Turkey with regard to the Cypriot drilling case could have a negative effect concerning the Arabs’ perception of Turkey. Turkey’s arguments about the Cypriot drilling case could trigger those prejudices, for example, because the exploration site is close to the shores of Egypt, Israel and Lebanon.
You say that Arabs like Turkish soft power. Does that also mean that Arabs do not like being hard? When the Arab Spring started, most Western observers thought it would be chaotic and Islamic or Islamist.
Old obsessions die hard. The obsession of seeing Islam and Islamists behind every move in the Middle East is an old habit of many Western observers. This is why I wrote my book; the delusion is wrong. Conflict, politics and social developments in most Middle Eastern countries have not differed much from Western or Eastern European ways in the last century — nationalist movements, power struggles, the quest for money and success, etc. Many of the leaders of the Middle East have motives similar to actors in the West. The Arab Spring is a perfect illustration of that. When [Muammar] Gaddafi faced the uprising, the first thing he said was that this is the work of al-Qaeda. A similar reaction came from Hosni Mubarak, who always used Islamists as a tool to scare the West and continue his dictatorship. However, the Jan. 25 Revolution in Egypt was a revolution of young middle class people who proved to be highly disciplined and well-organized citizens. In the absence of any police, they managed to hold orderly demonstrations of a million in Tahrir Square, set up their own hospitals and security services and cleaned the square after major events. It was a revolution for a new civil order of Egypt, for transparency and freedom.
What about Syria and Tunisia?
That is also what we see in Tunisia and Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood is basically absent in Syria. There has been a law since 1980 requiring the death penalty for anybody discovered to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather than an Islamic uprising, there is a civil uprising in Syria. In the course of a revolution, there are different phases. There could be a stronger showing by Islamist movements in the future. When I wrote about Islamist movements in Egypt, I described discussions over the last decade that indicate that they cannot survive as one party under democratic conditions; they have to split up because there are so many diverging views on any question; I heard starkly different opinions by Brotherhood leaders and mainstream Islamists. Today, there are at least 10 different Islamist-related parties in Egypt.
So there is nothing to fear from Islamist or Islamic movements, whether they be Hamas or Hezbollah?
There is a distinction to be made. We have mainstream Islamist movements related to the Muslim Brotherhood that clearly renounced violence some 20 years ago as a means of political struggle. This is very different from Hamas and Hezbollah, which are also Islamist movements in a broader sense; Hamas was initially tied to the Muslim Brotherhood but is now a rather distant offspring, and Hezbollah is a Shiite movement. They call themselves resistance movements, and I call them Islamic nationalists because they were founded to fight Israeli aggression as they see it. They are anti-Israeli movements in the tradition of secularist anti-Israeli movements. They take the flag of resistance from secularist parties like Fatah and combine it with an Islamist formula which is tough for Israel because their ideology is nationalism, but they also pursue religious goals. Then there are those fundamentalist terrorist organizations — I would not call them Islamists — we saw after the invasion of Iraq, which are al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-related movements.
You also shake up Western perceptions concerning Turkey-Iran relations and say that they are competitors.
There was a stupid equation in 2010 when there was the argument between the US and Turkey about Iran. The equation was that Turkey sides with Iran because Erdoğan has an Islamist background and Iran has an Islamist government; here is the link! That was a misperception disregarding facts on the ground. Turkey and Iran have been competitors. Their size, industrial base, population and military powers show similarities. These are two large non-Arab nations of the Middle East. They are often interested in selling similar items in the same areas in the region and elsewhere. When it comes to the political aspect, you have two models in the Middle East: soft power Turkey and hard power Iran, which fights with Israel and the West, provides Hamas with weapons, wants to bring down the Israeli regime, takes an aggressive stance militarily in Iraq if necessary and supports President Bashar al-Assad by all means. And Turkey is on the other side regarding Syria, supporting the population rather than Assad. You see Turkey having an entirely different role in Egypt, where Prime Minister Erdoğan has secular suggestions — entirely different than Iran’s stance. Additionally, Turkey sided with NATO as it will host the radar component of a missile shield in the region.
‘World-wide recognition of Palestine inevitable’
We heard quite dramatic addresses by President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. What is your assessment of those addresses in regards to the hopes of achieving peace in the region?
In a concise and deeply moving speech, Mahmoud Abbas made the case for a Palestinian state impressively clear. Benjamin Netanyahu’s answer sounded cynical and unconvincing. His right-wing government has thwarted all peace efforts over the last [number of] years, although Abbas was more than ready for a deal. The Palestinian state’s recognition bid at the UN is just a logical step now. Turkey is absolutely right in supporting statehood. Unfortunately, [US] President [Barack] Obama is domestically in a difficult position one year before elections, which prevents him from doing the same thing. But worldwide recognition is inevitable sooner or later.
‘Turkey’s good image at risk over oil exploration’
Turkish warships have set out for the Mediterranean at a time when Turkey and Greek Cyprus are deadlocked over possible deposits of oil and natural gas off the coast of the island. Turkish officials have said Turkey would start drilling in the area soon. What risks are involved in this move?
Turkey has been enjoying a soft power image in the region as a broker, an interlocutor. But the rhetoric of the prime minister on some issues such as Israel, and especially the escalating crisis over drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean, has a strong potential to tarnish this image. It is highly unwise that the Greek Cypriots launch drilling activities at this critical moment, but we have to be clear here: It is their right by international law, and they have international agreements with Egypt, Lebanon and Israel to delimitate the economic zones in the southeastern Mediterranean. Egypt has strong interests there as well. This is far away from Turkey. Turkey and northern Cyprus may launch similar activities along their shores. But any military or other interference in the area between Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and Lebanon would put Turkey’s good image at risk in Arab countries.
‘Merkel’s privileged membership idea evaporated’
Turkish President Abdullah Gül was recently on a four-day visit to Germany and made clear during his stay there that joining the European Union remains Turkey’s “strategic goal.” He also told journalists there that Germany has been more open than France during Turkey’s EU accession process, pointing out that more chapters had been opened during Germany’s EU presidency. Would you talk about the difference between the approaches of Germany and France to Turkey’s EU accession?
There is a big difference in the way Germany acts regarding Turkey’s accession. In Germany it’s quite rhetorical, whereas France actively blocks chapters. And it has blocked important chapters that could lead to membership. Germany did not block any chapters; it opened chapters during its presidency. Similarities between French and German attitudes toward Turkey’s membership are rhetorical — like the CDU’s (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) “privileged membership” idea for Turkey. There is no clearly defined policy about it — no clear concept behind it or solid thought. It has simply evaporated. Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her visit to İstanbul last year that she understands Turks do not like the privileged membership idea that much. At the moment the EU has entirely different problems to worry about. The whole debate has shifted from enlargement to the survival of the EU.
‘Is Turkey’s ruling party an Islamist group?’
Thumann asks this question in his book and responds that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party or AKP) is an offshoot of the movement of political Islam in Turkey. He further explains that the party has neither a religious program nor does it implement any Islamist policies, and is basically a pragmatist conservative party.
The AKP faces competition on the religious right from two parties that garnered some 3 percent in the elections of June 12, while the AKP got almost 50 percent. It is a politically conservative and economically liberal party that makes politics for the pious middle classes and for those who were middle class and then became rich. It is a determined capitalist party. The questions over AKP rule do not arise from religion but from economic and political factors. Due to Turkey’s fast growth rate, it has won a third election in a row with an absolute majority. Today, Turkey’s Kemalist heritage of over-centralization plays into the hands of the ruling party. The Turkish Republic has a striking lack of checks and balances both in the center and the provinces. The AKP proves too successful for the old Turkish system, which is in dire need of a democratic constitutional overhaul.
Thumann also said in our interview that perceptions about the AK Party have shifted.
It is widely known now that the AKP is different than Arab Islamist parties. The negative view regarding the AK Party has changed in that it is now perceived as a party with authoritarian tendencies trying to monopolize power in Turkey. In this respect, it is interesting to observe how the views of the opposition parties have influenced Western perceptions.
PROFILE
Michael Thumann
He has been the Middle East bureau chief for the liberal-centrist German weekly Die Zeit in İstanbul since September 2007 and has been reporting on the region since 2002. Previously, he was the foreign editor for the same paper in Hamburg, and from 1996 to 2001, he reported on Russia and Central Asia as the Moscow bureau chief. During the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, he worked as Die Zeit’s correspondent for Southeastern Europe. For his new book he did additional research as a Bosch public policy fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C. His books include “Das Lied von der russischen Erde. Moskaus Ringen um Einheit und Größe” (The Song of the Russian Earth. Moscow’s Struggle for Unity and Greatness, 2002); “La puissance russe: un puzzle à reconstituer?” (The Russian Power: Can it be put together again? 2003); and “Der Islam und der Westen. Säkularisierung und Demokratie im Islam” (Islam and the West. Secularization and Democracy in the Islamic World, 2003).
100 questions on Islam
By Kara Hadge and Marc Scheuer | Source
A decade after 9/11, a new poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that 48 per cent of Americans continue to think relations between Muslims and Westerners are poor. In Muslim-majority countries, those numbers are generally higher, according to the same study. This data points to continuing fear, misperceptions and stereotypes among both Muslims and non-Muslims.
When it comes to stereotypes and myths about Muslims, data and resources that contradict these misperceptions are readily available. The problem is that they do not always reach the wider public, especially in the West.
Considering that most people are not likely to sift through scholarly research, it is absolutely important to make resources about Islam and Muslims available in a form that is easily accessible to them.
A new series of two-minute video clips called “100 Questions about Islam” aims to fill this knowledge gap using one of the most effective new media tools: online video. These videos consist of interviews with scholars and journalists who break down stereotypes about Muslims by highlighting the findings of recent public opinion research and clarifying facts about subjects ranging from sharia (Islamic legal principles) to the hijab (headscarf).
This unique video series is a joint venture of the British Council’s Our Shared Future project, which aims to improve the public conversation about Muslims and intercultural relations in the United States and Europe, and the UN Alliance of Civilizations, in collaboration with the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.
In one of the videos, for example, Jen’nan Read – a Libyan Christian and Professor of Sociology at Duke University – points to a fundamental characteristic about Arab and Muslim communities in the United States that contradicts popular perceptions. She says, “While it is true that most Arabs around the world are Muslim, most Arabs in the United States are Christian – and not Christian converts, but rather Christians from Eastern Orthodox traditions.” Given this common misunderstanding, it is not surprising that many Americans say they do not know any Muslims.
Another little-known fact when it comes to Muslim communities in the United States is how successfully they have integrated themselves into diverse fields as active participants in the American economy and political system. Says Georgetown University Professor of Religion John Esposito, “Most people don’t fully realise what we know now from hard data: that Muslims are economically, educationally and politically integrated into America,” adding that in terms of level of education attained, “Muslims are second to Jews in terms of integration.”
There are many other areas where facts and public opinion diverge. In the political realm, most people who fear the influence of sharia do not know that there is no such thing as a movement to impose sharia in the United States, Esposito points out. On a more personal level, Sarah Joseph, CEO and founding editor of Muslim lifestyle brand Emel, notes that people who question the hijab and other head and body coverings forget that the practice is not at odds with other religious traditions. For example, some traditional Christian churches still promote covering one’s head during worship services.
So, why is it so important that we combat these misconceptions? Melody Moezzi, an attorney and writer interviewed for 100 Questions, argues that any discrimination against a minority endangers the immigrant culture on which American society has been founded: “Islamophobia threatens me as an American, not as a Muslim American…because whenever any minority is discriminated against or hated for no good reason, and laws are passed against that minority, it offends me as an American.”
Sometimes the best way to combat misconceptions about any issue, not just Islam and Muslims, is by giving a voice to those who can illuminate the facts. But informed dialogue need not always be hosted on a website or in a newspaper. As Esposito remarks, “The more pluralistic we become in the public square, in our interactions and in our [neighbourhoods]…the more I think that change that we need – [the] broadening of our pluralistic worldview – will take place.”
Let this be a reminder to us that delving into data about cross-community relations is only a starting point: we also need to look around ourselves and form some relationships of our own.
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* Kara Hadge is Head of Digital Media at the British Council (USA) and works on the Our Shared Future project (www.oursharedfuture.org). Marc Scheuer is Director of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (www.unaoc.org). You can view 100 Questions About Islam at http://www.vimeo.com/groups/100questionsaboutislam. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
BM
Once Again: “Police Blotter Bob” Not Interested in Facts
Once again, “Police Blotter Bob” shows that he could care less about facts when it comes to Islam and Muslims. In his “response” to the Center for American Progress report on Islamophobia, Bob claims that he is not attacking all of Islam, but just the “radicals” and the “jihadists.”
My work…has never been against Muslims in the aggregate or any people as such, but rather against an ideology that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people.
Yet, statement after statement, and post after post on his website talks about “Muslims” and “Islam” as just that: an aggregate. Take this latest post:
The fact that Muslims do not like Jews and Israel, I know, because many of my correspondents, Islamic leaders, Emirs, the heads of armed groups and ordinary Mujahideen talked about this at every meeting and every interview with me.
The fact that Islam is a nation and that Muslims have no other nationality is what I also heard from religious leaders supporting the Jihad.
The fact that Muslims can adapt and play by the political process more than once I saw myself.
They know how to do represent themselves as the victims of inhumane aggression through the media. And the same information is transmitted to the Islamic world in a different manner — as a victory for Jihad and death for the sake of Allah.
No nuance, no teasing out the particular…no, rather ”Muslims do not like Jews and Israel.” That is a general statement. That is what Spencer and his minions do again, and again, and again.
Yet, the facts tell a completely different story:
A World Public Opinion (WPO) survey done in collaboration at that time with the University of Maryland reported that 51 percent of Americans believe “bombings and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are sometimes justified,” while only 13 percent of American Muslims hold a similar view, with a full 81 percent saying violence against civilians is never justified.
A recent Gallup survey (2011) asks the same question separately — first for a “military attacks against civilians” and then “individuals and small groups attacking civilians.” Muslim Americans came out as the staunchest opponents of both overwhelmingly as compared to their neighbors.
In response to military attacks against civilians, 78 percent of Muslim Americans said such attacks are never justified as compared to 39 percent of Christians and 43 percent of Jews. Only 21 percent Muslim Americans approve of it “sometimes” as compared to 58 percent of Christians and 52 percent of Jews.
Eighty-nine percent of Muslim Americans surveyed by Gallup rejected violent individual attacks on civilians as compared to 71 percent of Christians and 75 percent of Jews. Muslims are the least likely to justify attacks on civilians. Only 11 percent of Muslims justified that sometimes such attacks are acceptable as compared to 27 percent of Christians and 22 percent of Jews.
The same is true when it comes to opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muslim Americans are way ahead in their opposition to wars as compared to their neighbors.
However, when the Pew survey first came out in 2007, it did not provide any relief for Muslim Americans from Islamophobic media frenzy. Most reporters used it as an opportunity to fan hatred against Muslim Americans, focusing on the smaller number of Muslim Americans who justified attacks on civilians without comparing it to Christian Americans, who did the same even in a larger numbers.
Right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin proclaimed in the National Review that the poll “should be a wake-up call.” Mark Steyn said it demonstrated the existence in America of “a huge comfort zone for the jihad to operate in,” and on CNN, Anderson Cooper was horrified — just horrified — that “so many” American Muslims would support such violence.
Well, I was also horrified myself until I checked what our neighbors are saying about intentionally targeting civilians. As a peacemaker, I will only be satisfied fully when all Muslims and people of other faiths oppose killing civilians fully, whether that is by a military or a terrorist group. But these statistics do offer me comparative relief.
FBI Evidence
The same evidence of a peaceful Muslim community was provided by Michael E. Rolince, former FBI Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, D.C. Field Office. He said the FBI conducted about 500,000 interviews without finding a single lead which could have helped the agency prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
That number means that almost 40 percent of all Muslim households in the United States were probably touched by this investigation. Here is what this presidential award recipient with 30 years of counterterrorism and counterintelligence experience said on Dec. 17, 2005, one month after his retirement, at the Muslim Public Affairs Committee’s annual convention in a panel titled, “Muslim Americans & Law Enforcement Partnership” (Here is an mp3 of his speech. His statement appears in the Q & A section):
“We conducted about a half a million interviews post 9/11 relative to the attacks of 9/11, and this is important because your community gets painted as not doing enough and you could have helped. I’m not aware — and I know 9/11 about as well as anybody in the FBI knows 9/11 and that’s not bragging that’s just the reality — I’m not aware of any single person in your community who, had they stepped forward, could have provided a clue to help us get out in front of this. The reality of that attack is that 19 people came here with what they needed. They spoke the language well enough to order meals and rent cars and hotel rooms. They had money coming in from overseas. Four people knew how to fly planes and 15 others were willing to be the muscle. They didn’t need any witting help from anyone to do what they did. And thus far, and I’m not saying this is conclusive because 10 years from now someone might find something that changes it, we’ve not found a sitting single witting individual in your community, and that’s a fact that gets overlooked because you get painted and that’s why I’m so committed and remain committed to projects like this because what we are in the business of is facts and the truth.”Anxiety about Muslim Americans is at an all-time high thanks to a well-funded campaign of Islamophobia.
Rand Corporation Findings
A 2010 Rand Corporation report rightfully states that “The volume of domestic terrorist activity was much greater in the 1970s than it is today. It is important to note that Rand is mostly a Defense Department-funded think-tank. This report has a whole section called “The 1970s Saw Greater Terrorist Violence.” The report asserts that, “Thus far, there has been no sustained jihadist terrorist campaign in the United States.” And one possible reason for this, according to this Rand report, is, “The local Muslim community rejected al Qaeda’s appeals and actively intervened to dissuade those with radical tendencies from violence.”
But, facts mean very little to “Police Blotter Bob”…
“Islamic” Honor Killings and Crocodile Tears
This month Pamella Geller published a book entitled, “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,” which she describes as a “how to” guide for fighting various Islamic menaces, including “creeping sharia” and “stealth jihad.” She also describes how Muslims, who make up less than 2% of the American population, are “Islamic Supremacists” plotting to take over every aspect of American life.
Geller has also announced plans for a future book tentatively entitled, “Sex, Murder, and Islam: Honor Killing in America. ” She says the book will be about the “ongoing proliferation” of honor killings among immigrants to the West from Muslim countries. Honor killings have recently become the centerpiece of Geller’s campaign against Islam, and feature prominently on her website, Atlas Shrugs.
Honor killings are not Islamic, and they are not condoned in the Qur’an. This is a matter of fact. Honor killing is a form of murder where the victim is denied a fair trial, which is contrary to Islamic law. Islam opposes acts of murder and vigilantism, and likens the killing of one human being to the killing of the entire human race (Qur’an 5:32, 6:151, 17:33). Honor killing is a cultural inheritance which predates Islam by centuries, and Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations have all said that honor killings cut across cultural and religious lines.
Nevertheless, “Islamic” honor killings are a public relations bonanza for Islamophobes, especially when they take place in a Western country. They are used to reinforce the notion that Islam is inherently violent and irrational, and to suggest that Muslim families view a young woman’s adoption of Western culture as a capital offense. Isolated incidents are amplified through intense media coverage, stoking fears that Muslims are importing barbaric customs into Western countries through immigration.
Anti-Muslim hate sites including Jihadwatch, Atlas Shrugs, and Frontpage Magazine have been weeping crocodile tears for Aqsa Parvez since she was killed by her father and brother in December of 2007 in an apparent honor killing. Both men received life sentences for their crime in June of 2010, but that hasn’t stopped Pamela Geller from continuing to exploit the incident to advance her agenda. She recently managed to raise $5,000 in donations she used to fund a controversial memorial plaque for Aqsa Parvez in Israel.
Parvez is the ideal poster child for their campaign to vilify Islam because she was the teenage daughter of Muslim immigrants living in Ontario, Canada. For similar reasons, Robert Spencer is exploiting the tragic death of two sisters, Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and Amina Yaser Said, 18, who were shot and killed by their father, an immigrant from Egypt, in January of 2008 in Texas.
Geller and Spencer show little interest in similar crimes when they are committed by non-Muslims. A few months before Aqsa Parvez was killed, a gruesome video surfaced of a 17-year old Du’a Khalil Aswad in Mosul, Iraq being stoned to death by a mob while she cried out for help. The video garnered immediate attention when it was presumed to be an “Islamic” crime, but quickly dropped out of the spotlight when it turned out the victim was a Kurdish girl from the Yazidi religion who was killed for having an Arab Muslim boyfriend.
In 2008, a man in Chicago killed his pregnant daughter, her 3-year old child, and her husband by burning down their home because she had married a man from a lower caste. This horrific crime was ignored by the usual hate brigade because the perpetrator was a non-Muslim immigrant from India. Robert Spencer mentioned the case on Jihadwatch only briefly, and that was to complain that media attention should be going to the murder of the Said sisters instead.
Geller’s Atlas Shrugs features a memorial page entitled, “Honor Killing: Islam’s Gruesome Gallery.” It is indeed gruesome and serves her agenda of inspiring outrage against Islam and Muslims. Unlike the Memini (“Remembrance”) memorial for victims of honor killings from all religious backgrounds, Geller’s Gruesome Gallery is devoted exclusively to highlighting honor killings associated with Muslims.
Geller and Spencer have also been relentless in trying to get police in Tampa, Florida to reopen the case of Fatima Abdullah, insisting she was the victim of an honor killing and subsequent cover up. The 48-year old woman died when she fell and hit her head on a coffee table at her brother’s home. Her brother was not home at the time of the incident.
Pamela Geller says the death is suspicious because Abdullah could not have “suicided” herself by “banging her head on a table.” Robert Spencer wrote about the Abdullah case on Jihadwatch, saying:
This is the sharia in America. The idea that a woman would die after she ‘threw herself to the floor’ or hit her head repeatedly on the coffee table is institutionalized gender apartheid, the sharia. The idea defies logic, belies reality.
As a self-proclaimed scholar on Islam, Spencer should know that Islamic law (“the sharia”) does not sanction honor killing. The coroner’s autopsy report concluded the “Manner of Death” was “Accident (Decedent fell and struck head on table).” The detailed medical report does not mention any evidence of foul play.
Jihadwatch later published a page with the headline, “Tampa Police crime scene tech now admits ‘fear of Muslim reprisal’ in honor killing classified as accidental death,” which was reposted to numerous anti-Muslim hate sites. This implies police lied when they ruled the case an accident, but a closer look at the details shows this headline is misleading.
A crime scene technician from the Tampa police department called the Florida Family Association (FFA) nearly a year after the initial investigation and asked that her name be removed from their website, which has been stirring up controversy over the case, in concert with Geller and Spencer. The technician did not want her name posted on a controversial public website, though it is unclear from the reports whether she feared reprisal from angry Muslims, or from “activists” aligned with the FFA.
Although Tampa police have stood by results of their initial investigation, Geller and an assortment of other loony Islamophobes continue to exert pressure on authorities to reopen the case. They have linked the case to their conspiracy theories about Muslims taking over the country, apparently starting with the Tampa Police Department. Geller has dubbed the city “Tampastan,” and claims Florida police are engaged in a cover up because, “…murdering Muslim women in America is preferable to offending Muslims or insulting Islam.”
It is tempting to dismiss Geller and Spencer for their outlandish statements and crude publicity stunts, but they have enjoyed surprising success, especially in using the mainstream media as a conduit for spreading their hateful ideas. If they were targeting any other minority group, they would probably be consigned to the lunatic fringe.
Islamophobia: Paranoia infects North America
By Haroon Siddiqui | Source
One legacy of the decade since 9/11 has been the growing fear of Muslims and Islam.
Many Europeans dread “Eurabia,” the ostensibly imminent Arab/Muslim takeover of the continent, even though its Muslim population is less than 3 per cent. Among those convinced of the coming apocalypse was Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. Other believers express themselves peacefully but no less fervently.
Americans have come to share this European paranoia.
Many dread “New Yorkistan” and the takeover of America by Muslims, who constitute only 0.8 per cent of the population.
Nearly half of the 50 states have taken legislative steps to stop sharia, Muslim personal law.
Nearly a fifth of Americans believe that Barack Obama is Muslim or Arab or both. He fretted so much over this that during the 2008 election his organizers ejected two hijabi women from camera range. At a Republican rally, a woman called out to John McCain that Obama was an Arab; the Republican candidate responded: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen.”
Last year, Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg tamped down the hysteria over “Ground Zero mosque” but they could not persuade aFlorida pastor from commanding national attention for weeks before burning a copy of the Qur’an.
This year Peter King, chair of the security committee of the House of Representatives, held hearings into “the homegrown radicalization” of American Muslims. He believes that “80-85 per cent” of America’s 1,900 mosques are “controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. This is an enemy living amongst us.” In fact, a study this year by Duke University found that American Muslims have been the biggest source of tips to the FBI in disrupting terror plots. Attorney General Eric Holder lauded the Muslim community for it.
In Oklahoma, Republicans are accusing Democrats of plotting an Islamic state on the Plains. Elsewhere, school texts are being challenged as being pro-Islamic, meaning, they are neutral and do not condemn Islam.
Among the 23 anti-sharia states, the Tennessee Assembly said sharia promotes “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.”
Newt Gingrich believes, or at least says he does, that “sharia is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Sarah Palin says sharia is going to be “the downfall of America.” Michele Bachman says sharia means Muslim “totalitarian control” over America.
This is “is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation in 19th-century Europe that Jewish religious law was seditious,” writes Eliyahu Stern, professor of Judaic studies at Yale.
It turns out that the sharia panic is not a grassroots movement but rather an orchestrated campaign by one man backed by anti-Islamic think tanks and private funders.
David Yerushalmi, a Brooklyn lawyer, works in collaboration with anti-Muslim groups to stoke the anti-sharia hysteria and distribute model legislation for states to adopt.
The Anti-Defamation League, a leading American Jewish agency, has lambasted Yerushalmi for his “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.”
He’s among five individuals named recently by the Washington-based Center for American Progress in its report Fear Inc.: Exposing the Islamophobic Network in America.
It names him along with Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy; Daniel Pipes of Middle East Forum; Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America; and Steve Emerson of Investigative Project on Terrorism. Their propaganda is parroted by Rep. King and other Republicans as part of their wedge politics. It is also repeated ad nauseum by such media outlets as Fox-TV.
The report also lists seven foundations that since 9/11 have dispersed $42.6 million to individuals and groups that work with the Tea Party’s state chapters: Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! for America; Pamela Geller’s (and Spencer’s) Stop Islamization of America; etc.
Some of them were behind the “Ground Zero mosque” protests, and are part of the agitation against the building of mosques and Islamic centres, 35 of which have been held up or delayed across the U.S.
The American Civil Liberties Union said:
“While mosque opponents frequently claim their objections are based on practical considerations such as traffic, parking and noise levels, those asserted concerns are often pretexts masking anti-Muslim sentiment. Government officials in some areas have yielded to this religious bigotry.”
As in most things , Canada is somewhere in between Europe and the U.S. in dealing with its 850,000 Muslims, both in the battle against terrorism and in the public discourse about Islam.
There was the bungled case of Maher Arar, tortured in Syria with Canadian complicity. There was the 2003 case of 23 Indian and Pakistani students accused of plotting terror acts, though not one was ever charged. There are the lingering cases of three Canadian Arabs who, too, got tortured in the Middle East with Canadian complicity. There’s the ongoing legal battle of five Arab-Canadians over security certificates that permit indefinite detention of non-Canadians.
On the other side of the ledger, there was the successful prosecution of 11 of the “Toronto 18” charged with terrorism, and that of an Ottawa man for his involvement in a British bomb plot.
Canada has not imported European aversion to Muslim immigration, yet. But our debate on multiculturalism has also become a smokescreen for attacking Muslims and Islam.
“Almost every reason for toleration’s apparent fall into disrepute concerns Islam,” notes Prof. Charles Taylor of McGill University, one of the inventors of our constitutional multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism was blamed during the noisy 2005-06 debate over sharia in Ontario, and also during Quebec’s 2008-09 debate on reasonable accommodation that preceded the anti-niqab legislation to deny all public services, including health services, to those wearing it.
Mind you, Quebec has long resisted the term multiculturalism and preferred inter-culturalism, with its implied primacy of not only the French language but also French culture. This year, the Parti Quebecois baldly asserted that “multiculturalism is not a Quebec value,” even though it is the law of the land (Section 27 of the Charter and the Multiculturalism Act).
Of the five high-profile Canadian cases of hijabis barred from soccer, judo and taekwondo tournaments, three were in Quebec. And in 2007, a Quebec corrections officer was fired for wearing a hijab. Opposition to the hijab is highest in Quebec, according to an Environics poll.
Across Canada, mosques in Hamilton, Montreal and the Vancouver area have been firebombed and vandalized since 2010.
European and American Islamophobes do have fans in Canada.
Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim MP from the Netherlands, was here last year on a three-city tour, to much fanfare in the right-wing media. Among those applauding him was the virulently anti-Muslim group Canadian Hindu Advocacy. It is in the forefront of the protest against Friday prayers at Valley Park Middle School.
Another pro-Wilders group is the Jewish Defence League of Canada, which has an alliance with Britain’s anti-Muslim and racist English Defence League.
Among the anti-Islamic writers quoted by Breivik in his 1,500-page anti-Muslim manifesto were two Canadians — Mark Steyn and Salim Mansur.
Steyn, author and columnist, was the subject of a 2006-07 controversy when Maclean’s magazine ran his 4,800-word rant that Muslims pose a demographic, cultural and security threat to the West. When a group of Canadian Muslims complained to the human rights commission, they were vilified by Steyn supporters as well as free speech advocates in a way not seen before against any anti-hate complainants.
Mansur, a professor at University of Western Ontario and a columnist for the Toronto Sun, is a frequent critic of fellow Muslims and Islam. He is a member of the academic council of Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, and much used by Islamophobes in the U.S. and Canada.
hsddiqui@thestar.ca
September 11th And The Legacy Of Islamophobia In America
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was 11 years old. After the first plane hit, teachers took kids in from the playground and quickly ushered them into the classrooms. Some of them turned on TVs; others did not. Mine did. At that age, I was not fully able to comprehend what I saw. Though what I did see — buildings stripped to skeletal foundations, men and women covered in ash wandering the streets like ghosts, and remnants of homes, identities, and belongings strewn about like shattered glass — left quite an indelible mark in my heart. Ten years later, I think that this was my first glimpse into how fragile a nation and its unity can truly be. Funny, then, that we have chosen to rebuild ourselves and attack others with some of the very things that caused the mass destruction to begin with.
Although the neologism that is Islamophobia dates back to the 1990’s, it was not until after September 11, 2001 that the intolerance was so rampantly widespread that Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, stated that “when the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry, that is a sad and troubling development.” While its definition, and for that matter, existence as a term, is contentious, many agree that Islamophobia is the hatred and fear of Islam and by extension, all Muslims. Though as much as I would like to say that American Islamophobia only emerged after 2001, the unfortunate truth is that it and the driving themes behind it have been around for quite some time; it is only after that cataclysmic day that it reared its ugly head that much higher.
According to Hussein Ibish, Senior Research Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, what we recognize today as Islamophobia is merely a reincarnation of 20th century anti-Semitism, a time when it was popular to create fantastical scenarios wherein Judaism and its followers were “dedicated to plotting and carrying out the violent overthrow of American and Christian Capitalist society.” Sound familiar? That’s because it is.
Ibish also uncovered some other popular anti-Semitic literature of the era, and the parallels between now and then are alarmingly similar. Just substitute “Muslim” for “Jews” in statements like “Jewish immigration to the United States is a weapon of this war and a mortal peril” or “Jews are religiously authorized to lie to, cheat, steal from and murder non-Jews whenever possible,” and you’ve got a winner.
Coming a little closer to September 11, the entire Muslim-American population was quick to be called the culprit for another horrific terrorist attack, this time at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. KFOR, the local news station, received an anonymous phone call that day from a man who claimed his membership to the “Nation of Islam” as well as the responsibility for the bombing. Although unaware if the claim was accurate, the news station chose to air this claim several times that day, which resulted in over 200 hate crimes being committed to Arab and Muslim Americans in the next 72 hours, according to a report by the Arab American Institute. Suffice it to say, the perpetrator was not, in fact, a Muslim, but rather Timothy McVeigh, a homegrown terrorist who claimed to be a devout Christian.
Despite the fact that those responsible for the unnecessary deaths on September 11 were by no means identical to the majority of Muslims in America (much like many devout Christians are nothing like Timothy McVeigh), and the fact that over 300 people who died that day were Muslim, the unwarranted hatred continued, this time with a vengeance. From 2000 to 2001, the amount of hate crimes (pdf) committed against Arab-Americans quadrupled.
- In San Gabriel, California, for instance, a woman dressed in Muslim clothing was attacked by another woman who yelled, “America is only for white people.” The woman was subsequently sent to the Emergency Room.
- At a bagel shop in Beverly Hills, a customer saw another woman wearing a Quran charm, and attacked her, screaming “Look what you people have done to my people.” The woman lunged at the Muslim woman, but thankfully was restrained. Meanwhile, it was the victim who called the police as the shop owner apologized only to the attacker and offered her help.
- Even those who weren’t Arab were targeted. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, two men attacked, robbed, and cut the penis of an Indian man, calling him an Arab and saying that “to be an American, you must be circumcised.”
These sentiments were only perpetuated and made legitimate by the remarks of many, like Ann Coulter, who earn their living by being small-minded and hateful. In 2001, Coulter stated, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” Don’t worry, Ann; some of your conservative comrades have been trying.
While by no means were any of these hate crimes condonable, their prevalence so soon after the attacks is unsurprising. But now? Still?
Recently, Terry Jones, the attention-starved Evangelical pastor who gives quite a few Muslim extremists a run for their money, created another publicity stunt with his desire to host an “International Burn a Quran Day,” only deciding against it once high-up officials like General David Petraeus took his inane ideas seriously, and thereby spread Jones’ hateful and bigoted beliefs to an entire population of people who may never have known this Floridian fool otherwise existed.
And then there was the visceral and vitriolic reaction to the proposed construction of an Islamic Community Center close to (and by close I mean two city blocks away from) the former Twin Towers. Newt Gingrich, popular today for his extra-marital affairs and paying for nearly all of his Twitter followers, compared the community center to a Hitler memorial being built next to Auschwitz. The comparison is completely unfair and unreasonable, but if the comparison must be made, a fairer one would be that it is like stationing US troops next to the many Ground Zeros we have created in the Middle East.
And today, political leaders are quivering so much in their proverbial boots about the Islamic “takeover” that it has actually generated a substantial amount of heat in the Republican primary campaign trail. Recently, Michele Bachmann, largely under the influence of Frank Gaffney, well-known conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe, signed a pledge that rejected Sharia law. This pledge also equated homosexuality with adultery, which is something that is illegal in Bachmann’s home state of Minnesota. Funny enough, homosexuality and adultery are also considered crimes in Sharia law. Maybe Bachmann and Muslim extremists can find some common ground, after all.
In addition to calling attention to radical Islam while trying to squash it, Bachmann, along with others, has caught onto the trend of calling President Barack Obama whatever it is that she is currently afraid of. When Obama suggested that NASA increase its outreach efforts into Muslim countries, Bachmann riposted, “This leaves a lot of Americans wondering, where do this President’s interests lie?” thereby implying that Obama has a bias toward Islam. Suspiciously enough, Obama also has that name that rhymes with You-Know-Who. Bachmann, along with all other Republican fear mongers, knows that all you have to do is plant the seed to watch the paranoia flourish. And she did.
My question is, as a self-proclaimed Constitutionalist and Christian, what would it matter if Obama were a Muslim, Sephardic Jew, or a Mennonite? Both the Bill of Rights and Establishment Clause state that you may practice whatever religion you wish and not be punished or discriminated against because of it. Or to be pithier, there’s even that biblical beaut that commands Christians to “love thy neighbor.” But if it’s the violence about which Michele is concerned, she needn’t worry; democracy and Christianity both have a long history of war, oppression, and intolerance to offer.
Given how angry, scared, and bitter some Americans are about the imminent threat of the “Islamization of America,” one would think that the American Muslim must resemble some sort of blood thirsty sasquatch who seeks to implement his or her violent dogma into every aspect of peaceful American life. Wrong. Or that, you know, these Muslim Americans are really angry with how they’re being treated by the general public. Wrong again.
The results to a survey given randomly to over 1,000 Muslim Americans by the Pew Research Center are more telling about our own fear, hopelessness, and anger than theirs. For example, while 24% of the general population believes that Muslim support for Islamic extremism in the US is increasing, only 4% of Muslims (those who would actually know if this is true) agree. A mere 2% have a “very favorable” view of Al-Qaeda, much like there are a few handfuls of idiots out there that actually think white supremacy still makes one iota of sense. Furthermore, only 49% of those surveyed identify themselves as Muslims first and foremost. If that number seems alarming to you, fret not; 70% of White Evangelical Christians in the United States identify themselves as Christian before they do American.
The survey also unfortunately highlights the effects of Islamophobia: the majority of those surveyed report that they have received suspicious looks, been called offensive names, or have been singled out in airports or by other law enforcement. Furthermore, an additional 25% state that their mosques and Islamic centers have been targets of controversy and downright hostility.
Despite targeting and racial profiling, Muslim-Americans still are pretty satisfied with life in the United States. In fact, a majority of them say that the quality of life in America is better than their home countries, and that they want to adopt American customs and ways of life. And amid recessions and unemployment woes, it seems that these “outsiders” believe more in the “American Dream” than many of us “insiders” do: a whopping 74% of all Muslim-Americans surveyed believe that people can get ahead if they work hard, compared to the general public’s less enthusiastic 62% consensus. And no, these aren’t people born here and therefore inherently less pathogenic; 63% of those surveyed are first generation immigrants, 45% of whom have only been here since 1990.
And so in coping with the devastating effects of hate, we decided to respond with more hate, thereby more closely resembling a Hammurabi-esque form of “justice” than the international vanguard of justice and equality that we claim to be. The truth is that we don’t strengthen our country or honor the deaths of our loved ones by prescribing the same hatred and intolerance at which we were thrust that terrible September morning. We regain our national strength and honor them by loving thy neighbor, or, as expressed in the Quran, “[doing] good to […] those in need, neighbors who are near, [or] who are strangers.” More importantly, we honor those we lost by heeding their example: engaging in meaningful international and intercultural exchanges of ideas, goods, and services, realizing that the benefits of working together far outweigh those than when we do not.
Savannah Cox is a Foreign Languages/International Studies and Political Science double major at Bellarmine University, and has recently returned from the University of Granada, where she studied Spanish and Political Science. She has interned for the World Affairs Council of Kentucky and Southern Indiana as well as Congressman John Yarmuth. In her free time, she enjoys reading, strumming a ukulele, and consuming large amounts of salty carbohydrates.
John Bolton Embraces His Pamela Geller And Robert Spencer Problem
Source | By Ben Armbruster
The manifesto of right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik, who attacked targets in Norway in July killing nearly 100 people, contained numerous citations to Islamophobic bloggers and other so-called experts on Islamic terrorism here in the United States. The references included “counterjihad” bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who received a combined 174 citations from Breivik (Geller and Spencer also feature prominently in CAP’s latest report on the Islamophobia network in the U.S., “Fear, Inc.“).
ThinkProgress’ Eli Clifton subsequently noted that former Bush administration official and prominent war hawk John Bolton — who is currently considering a run for president — has a “Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer problem.” Indeed, Bolton has deep connections to Geller. He even wrote the foreward to Geller and Spencer’s 2010 book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America. The book contains language eerily similar to Breivik’s manifesto.
Bolton kept quiet about his links to Geller and Spencer after Breivik’s attack. But now, it appears he’s fully embracing them. Geller announced today that Bolton will be speaking at her “9/11 Freedom Rally: Stand Against Ground Zero Mosque”:
Honor our war dead on September 11th at West Broadway and Park Place at our 911 Freedom Rally. Stand for freedom. Join us, Robert Spencer and me at West Broadway and Park Place and protest this cultural obscenity at our 911 Freedom Rally. Remember last year?
Speakers include U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton…
ThinkProgress asked Bolton staffer Christine Samuelian if the former U.N. ambassador is concerned about continuing to associate with Geller and Spencer given their influence on Breivik. Samuelian confirmed that Bolton is not attending the upcoming anti-mosque event in person and will instead send a recorded video, but she has yet to respond as to whether Bolton has any concerns about Geller and Spencer. (HT: Justin Elliott)
The Surge in Islamophobia
Source | By Grace Nasri
If you didn’t know the history of the United States — a country born largely in objection to religious discrimination — the extent of religious persecution being carried out against Muslim-Americans today might not be so hard to understand.
A recently released report co-conducted by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization, found that vandalism, Islamophobic rhetoric and violence targeting Muslims and their places of worship has risen considerably — and in some cases more than doubled — between 2009 and 2010.
According to a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center, the public’s favorable rating of Islam actually decreased 10 percentage points to 30 percent between November 2001 and August 2010. The same study found that at the end of 2010, 45 percent of Americans shared the view that Islam is at odds with American values.
But studies show that Americans don’t hold the same sentiments toward other major religions. A Time poll carried out late last year found that the majority of Americans hold positive views of Jews, Protestants, Catholics and Mormons, yet only 44 percent held favorable views toward Muslims — despite the fact that the majority of respondents admitted they didn’t personally know any Muslims.
The fact that Americans on the whole hold unfavorable views toward Muslims yet at the same time admit to not personally knowing any, has some wondering why the negative feelings toward the reported 3 million Muslim-Americans — and approximately 1.6 billion worldwide — continue to rise a decade after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The answer, at least partially, lies in anti-sharia legislation swirling across the nation. The legislation has been described as the newest push by Islamophobes to stoke the distrust of Americans toward their fellow Muslim-Americans. Anti-sharia legislation proposed by David Yerushalmi, a Hasidic Jew who is credited with starting the national movement to ban the foreign law that has to date never overshadowed U.S. Constitutional Law, is being promoted as “preemptive” legislation. Yerushalmi, whom the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black,” himself acknowledged that Muslims aren’t advocating sharia over U.S. law. Yerushalmi himself says the issue is one of heuristics — he wants the issue of sharia to be brought to the attention of Americans. “If this thing passed in every state without any friction,” he told The New York Times, “it would not have served its purpose.” The purpose: Seemingly to raise fear about something that Yerushalmi himself agrees is not currently even an issue.
Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director and spokesperson for CAIR, explained, “Unfortunately, in the last year and half there has been a tremendous rise in the level of anti-Islamic sentiment and this Islamophobic rhetoric has moved towards the mainstream. Mr. David Yerushalmi’s bizarre anti-sharia campaign nationwide is unfortunately being used by politicians to gain cheap political support.”
Georgetown University Professor John Esposito, author of the book “The Future of Islam and Islamophobia and the Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century,” explained:
“The anti-Shariah movement is simply the latest wave of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry and prejudice. Organizations like ACT (which describes its mission as mobilizing Americans in response to “the multiple threats of radical Islam”) and Mr. Yerushalmi, who has been the major force behind the anti-Shariah movement, politicians in mainstream parties, particularly Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Christian Zionist preachers exploit what in fact is a non-issue. Shariah has never superseded US constitutional law. … Moreover, there has been no Muslim movement nor major Muslim organization who has advocated implementing Islamic law in place of American constitutional law.”
This growing Islamophobia and distrust of Muslims comes at a great cost and was evident during the recent Norway bombings; before any evidence was found, the media reported that initial thoughts were that the attacks had been carried out by Muslim terrorists, as a recent report by The New York Times highlighted. Evidence later found that the radical, self-proclaimed Christian Anders Behring Breivik confessed he had carried out the attacks on July 22 because of his growing fear — a fear heightened by right-wing, anti-Islamic rhetoric — of a Muslim takeover of his country.
But the people who stoke and perpetuate Islamophobia remain blind to the consequences of their rhetoric and actions. Before Breivik carried out the bloody terrorist attacks in Norway, he cited anti-Muslim hate speech by radicals like Pamela Geller and Robert Spenser, who co-founded the controversial Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America.
It’s important to realize that all religions, including Islam, contain a range of followers. It is generally accepted that there are four groups of Muslims: Fundamentalists, traditionalists, modernists and pragmatists.
Fundamentalists advocate a strict adherence to the fundamentals of their religion and follow a literal interpretation of both the Quran and the Sunnah (the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad). This group wants strict sharia to effectively be the law of the land.
Traditionalists, who are typically scholars of Islam, are religiously conservative and largely disapproving of the Western lifestyle. But unlike their fundamentalist counterparts, traditionalists tend to be apolitical and don’t advocate violence, as do the fundamentalists.
Modernists, as opposed to the above-mentioned groups, want to promote their version of Islam — one of tolerance and social justice. Modernists believe that science and Islam can exist together and they prefer a secular state to an Islamic one. Pragmatists, the final group of Muslims, are seen by some Muslims as pseudo believers because they don’t believe following the traditional practices of Islam is necessary for being a true Muslim.
The majority of Muslims fall into the latter two more moderate groups, despite the fact that oftentimes those on the fringe are more vocal. But by lumping all Muslims into one group, the smaller and more radical fundamentalists and traditionalists are given disproportionate recognition and legitimacy. These more radical groups then claim to represent all Muslims, while the more moderate groups lose their voice.
Many may not realize this, but the majority of Muslims are victims of these fringe believers who have all but hijacked Islam, drowned out the religion’s message of peace and fundamentally changed the way people view its believers. But it is important for their message of hate not to overshadow the true message of Islam, which is peace.
In the same way that radical Jews like Baruch Goldstein — who massacred 29 Muslims and injured 125 more in 1995 while they prayed in Hebron — are not representative of Judaism and self-proclaimed Christians like Anders Behring Breivik — responsible for the fatal bombings in Oslo in July — are in no way representative of the majority of peace-loving Christians, radical Muslims responsible for carrying out fatal bombings and other terrorist-activities in no way represent Islam.
CAP’s Islamophobia Report raises some new questions
Source | by Aydoğan Vatandaş*
A study on Islamophobia in the US, released by the Washington-based Center for American Progress (CAP) on Friday, highlights how a small group of donors fund misinformation experts who promote Islamophobic sentiments and how their misinformation spreads through the media and grassroots organizers like Eagle Forum.
The research was also reported that these misinformation experts are also manufacturing a smear campaign against the Gülen movement, inspired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, in the US.
The extensive study, titled “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” was conducted through the collaborative efforts of prominent experts like Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes and Faiz Shakir.
According to the research, five experts generated the misinformation and materials used by political leaders, grassroots groups and the media. Those experts are:
Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy
David Yerushalmi at the Society of Americans for National Existence
Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America
Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism
The research revealed that these misinformation experts have been very influential on Islamophobia groups in 23 states, exemplified by Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! For America, Pam Geller’s Stop Islamization of America, David Horowitz’s Freedom Center and existing groups, such as the American Family Association and the Eagle Forum.
According to the report, this small network of people is driving national and global debates that have real consequences on the public dialogue and American Muslims.
The research also shed light on the key foundations that endorse these misinformation experts by channeling $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 to their efforts to spread hate and misinformation.
In the research, these top seven key foundations are listed and ranked according to the amount of founding as follows:
Donors Capital Fund
Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation
Russell Berrie Foundation
Anchorage Charitable Fund and William
Fairbrook Foundation.
The Donors Capital Fund, which is listed at the top in the report, contributed $21,318,600 to groups promoting Islamophobia from 2007 to 2009. The research revealed that this money went to the Middle East Forum, Clarion Fund, Investigative Project on Terrorism and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
One of the significant parts of the research claims that these misinformation experts have served as source for Anders Breivik who shot and killed 77 people in Norway on July 22.
In the research, it was reported that Breivik cited Robert Spencer, one of the anti-Muslim misinformation scholars, and his blog, Jihad Watch, 162 times in his manifesto. Another member of this “network of Islamophobia” in America is David Horowitz and his Freedom Center website. Spencer’s frequent collaborator Pamela Geller and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, were also mentioned 12 times by Breivik.
According to former CIA officer and terrorism consultant Marc Sageman as quoted in the report, the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts make up “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
Now, it is important to make a distinction and say that even though some of these misinformation experts are of Jewish decent, like David Yerushalmi for example, not all Jewish organizations are in the same alarmist line.
For example, the Anti-Defamation League reviewed Yerushalmi’s activities and concluded that he has a “record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and black bigotry.
The research also pointed out that The Eagle Forum, which is classified within the Islamophobia network, has targeted the Gülen movement, labeling it as a threat of radical Islam, although it actually devotes itself to education, global peace and mutual understanding efforts.
Noting that the Eagle Forum partners with Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! for America and Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy to push anti-Muslim issues, particularly anti-Shariah hysteria, the study explained: “At its 2011 Eagle Forum conference in St. Louis, Missouri, for example, Gabriel, Gaffney and others in the network revealed a new supposed threat: Muslim Gülen schools, which they claim would educate children through the lens of Islam and teach them to ‘hate Americans’.”
“Worse, the speakers alleged that President [Barack] Obama’s support for charter school reforms was a back-door strategy for using taxpayer money to fund the schools,” it added. “Of course, Gülen schools are nothing of the sort. They are the product of moderate Turkish Muslim educators who want ‘a blend of religious faith and largely Western curriculum’,” the study, nevertheless, maintained.
Now we should also remember a disappointing article appeared in The New York Times on June 7, by Stephanie Saul titled “Charter Schools Tied to Turkey Grow in Texas,” which attempted to defame Harmony Public Schools in Texas.
The research raises the question of whether the article was a part of these misinformation campaigns or not.
As we remember quite well, the article contained an explicitly anti-immigrant bias and suggested that Harmony, one of the most successful charter school programs in the US, is somehow suspect because its founders were Turkish immigrants. Unfortunately, the impressive success story of Harmony students was barely mentioned in the article.
This New York Times article triggered some other biased articles in The Times Picayune of New Orleans, leading the charter of Abramson Charter School to be revoked. The school was run by the Pelican Foundation, which was established in December 2005 and primarily focuses on math, science and technology. Now, they are trying to start a similar smear campaign against Kenilworth Science and Technology School, which also operates under the Pelican Foundation.
Now, I think it is necessary to clarify here that even though these schools are often called Gülen schools, in fact they are quite different. As a reporter, I interviewed some of the founders of these schools and they claim that they have no affiliation with the Gülen movement, which has devoted itself to global peace and education in all over the world. Is it bad to be affiliated with the Gülen Movement? Most definitely not, but even though some of the founders of these schools migrated from Turkey and were inspired by the teachings of Mr. Gülen, they are American citizens and it’s their constitutional right to choose to identify themselves however they want.
Mainstream American media, interestingly, remains silent about CAP’s research.
* Aydoğan Vatandaş is an investigative reporter based in New York and holds an MA in media studies.
Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America
By Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang , Scott Keyes, Faiz Shakir | Source
Download this report (pdf)
Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)
Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):
- Introduction and summary
- Chapter 1: Donors to the Islamophobia network
- Chapter 2: The Islamophobia misinformation experts
- Chapter 3: The grassroots organizations and the religious right
- Chapter 4: The right-wing media enablers of anti-Islam propaganda
- Chapter 5: The political players
- Conclusion
Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia
On July 22, a man planted a bomb in an Oslo government building that killed eight people. A few hours after the explosion, he shot and killed 68 people, mostly teenagers, at a Labor Party youth camp on Norway’s Utoya Island.
By midday, pundits were speculating as to who had perpetrated the greatest massacre in Norwegian history since World War II. Numerous mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, speculated about an Al Qaeda connection and a “jihadist” motivation behind the attacks. But by the next morning it was clear that the attacker was a 32-year-old, white, blond-haired and blue-eyed Norwegian named Anders Breivik. He was not a Muslim, but rather a self-described Christian conservative.
According to his attorney, Breivik claimed responsibility for his self-described “gruesome but necessary” actions. On July 26, Breivik told the court that violence was “necessary” to save Europe from Marxism and “Muslimization.” In his 1,500-page manifesto, which meticulously details his attack methods and aims to inspire others to extremist violence, Breivik vows “brutal and breathtaking operations which will result in casualties” to fight the alleged “ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe.”
Breivik’s manifesto contains numerous footnotes and in-text citations to American bloggers and pundits, quoting them as experts on Islam’s “war against the West.” This small group of anti-Muslim organizations and individuals in our nation is obscure to most Americans but wields great influence in shaping the national and international political debate. Their names are heralded within communities that are actively organizing against Islam and targeting Muslims in the United States.
Breivik, for example, cited Robert Spencer, one of the anti-Muslim misinformation scholars we profile in this report, and his blog, Jihad Watch, 162 times in his manifesto. Spencer’s website, which “tracks the attempts of radical Islam to subvert Western culture,” boasts another member of this Islamophobia network in America, David Horowitz, on his Freedom Center website. Pamela Geller, Spencer’s frequent collaborator, and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times.
Geller and Spencer co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America, a group whose actions and rhetoric the Anti-Defamation League concluded “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam. The group seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy “American values.” Based on Breivik’s sheer number of citations and references to the writings of these individuals, it is clear that he read and relied on the hateful, anti-Muslim ideology of a number of men and women detailed in this report&a select handful of scholars and activists who work together to create and promote misinformation about Muslims.
While these bloggers and pundits were not responsible for Breivik’s deadly attacks, their writings on Islam and multiculturalism appear to have helped create a world view, held by this lone Norwegian gunman, that sees Islam as at war with the West and the West needing to be defended. According to former CIA officer and terrorism consultant Marc Sageman, just as religious extremism “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged,” the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts are “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.” Sageman adds that their rhetoric “is not cost-free.”
These pundits and bloggers, however, are not the only members of the Islamophobia infrastructure. Breivik’s manifesto also cites think tanks, such as the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Forum, and the Investigative Project on Terrorism—three other organizations we profile in this report. Together, this core group of deeply intertwined individuals and organizations manufacture and exaggerate threats of “creeping Sharia,” Islamic domination of the West, and purported obligatory calls to violence against all non-Muslims by the Quran.
This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians’ talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric.
And it all starts with the money flowing from a select group of foundations. A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.
Some of these foundations and wealthy donors also provide direct funding to anti-Islam grassroots groups. According to our extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in our country:
- Donors Capital Fund
- Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
- Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
- Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
- Russell Berrie Foundation
- Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
- Fairbrook Foundation
Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.
And what does this money fund? Well, here’s one of many cases in point: Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Gingrich went on to claim that “Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.”
Sharia, or Muslim religious code, includes practices such as charitable giving, prayer, and honoring one’s parents—precepts virtually identical to those of Christianity and Judaism. But Gingrich and other conservatives promote alarmist notions about a nearly 1,500-year-old religion for a variety of sinister political, financial, and ideological motives. In his remarks that day, Gingrich mimicked the language of conservative analyst Andrew McCarthy, who co-wrote a report calling Sharia “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Such similarities in language are no accident. Look no further than the organization that released McCarthy’s anti-Sharia report: the aforementioned Center for Security Policy, which is a central hub of the anti-Muslim network and an active promoter of anti- Sharia messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In fact, CSP is a key source for right-wing politicians, pundits, and grassroots organizations, providing them with a steady stream of reports mischaracterizing Islam and warnings about the dangers of Islam and American Muslims. Operating under the leadership of Frank Gaffney, the organization is funded by a small number of foundations and donors with a deep understanding of how to influence U.S. politics by promoting highly alarming threats to our national security. CSP is joined by other anti-Muslim organizations in this lucrative business, such as Stop Islamization of America and the Society of Americans for National Existence. Many of the leaders of these organizations are well-schooled in the art of getting attention in the press, particularly Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, The Washington Times, and a variety of right-wing websites and radio outlets.
Misinformation experts such as Gaffney consult and work with such right-wing grassroots organizations as ACT! for America and the Eagle Forum, as well as religious right groups such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition and American Family Association, to spread their message. Speaking at their conferences, writing on their websites, and appearing on their radio shows, these experts rail against Islam and cast suspicion on American Muslims. Much of their propaganda gets churned into fundraising appeals by grassroots and religious right groups. The money they raise then enters the political process and helps fund ads supporting politicians who echo alarmist warnings and sponsor anti-Muslim attacks.
These efforts recall some of the darkest episodes in American history, in which religious, ethnic, and racial minorities were discriminated against and persecuted. From Catholics, Mormons, Japanese Americans, European immigrants, Jews, and African Americans, the story of America is one of struggle to achieve in practice our founding ideals. Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.
Due in part to the relentless efforts of this small group of individuals and organizations, Islam is now the most negatively viewed religion in America. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president.
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 alone did not drive Americans’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam. President George W. Bush reflected the general opinion of the American public at the time when he went to great lengths to make clear that Islam and Muslims are not the enemy. Speaking to a roundtable of Arab and Muslim American leaders at the Afghanistan embassy in 2002, for example, President Bush said, “All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith—face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It’s a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It’s a faith based upon love, not hate.”
Unfortunately, President Bush’s words were soon eclipsed by an organized escalation of hateful statements about Muslims and Islam from the members of the Islamophobia network profiled in this report. This is as sad as it is dangerous. It is enormously important to understand that alienating the Muslim American community not only threatens our fundamental promise of religious freedom, it also hurts our efforts to combat terrorism. Since 9/11, the Muslim American community has helped security and law enforcement officials prevent more than 40 percent of Al Qaeda terrorist plots threatening America. The largest single source of initial information to authorities about the few Muslim American plots has come from the Muslim American community.
Around the world, there are people killing people in the name of Islam, with which most Muslims disagree. Indeed, in most cases of radicalized neighbors, family members, or friends, the Muslim American community is as baffled, disturbed, and surprised by their appearance as the general public. Treating Muslim American citizens and neighbors as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, is not only offensive to America’s core values, it is utterly ineffective in combating terrorism and violent extremism.
The White House recently released the national strategy for combating violent extremism, “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” One of the top focal points of the effort is to “counter al-Qa’ida’s propaganda that the United States is somehow at war with Islam.” Yet orchestrated efforts by the individuals and organizations detailed in this report make it easy for al-Qa’ida to assert that America hates Muslims and that Muslims around the world are persecuted for the simple crime of being Muslims and practicing their religion.
Sadly, the current isolation of American Muslims echoes past witch hunts in our history—from the divisive McCarthyite purges of the 1950s to the sometimes violent anti-immigrant campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has compared the fear-mongering of Muslims with anti-Catholic sentiment of the past. In response to the fabricated “Ground Zero mosque” controversy in New York last summer, Mayor Bloomberg said:
In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center. … We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.
This report shines a light on the Islamophobia network of so-called experts, academics, institutions, grassroots organizations, media outlets, and donors who manufacture, produce, distribute, and mainstream an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. Let us learn the proper lesson from the past, and rise above fear-mongering to public awareness, acceptance, and respect for our fellow Americans. In doing so, let us prevent hatred from infecting and endangering our country again.
In the pages that follow, we profile the small number of funders, organizations, and individuals who have contributed to the discourse on Islamophobia in this country. We begin with the money trail in Chapter 1—our analysis of the funding streams that support anti-Muslim activities. Chapter 2 identifies the intellectual nexus of the Islamophobia network. Chapter 3 highlights the key grassroots players and organizations that help spread the messages of hate. Chapter 4 aggregates the key media amplifiers of Islamophobia. And Chapter 5 brings attention to the elected officials who frequently support the causes of anti- Muslim organizing.
Before we begin, a word about the term “Islamophobia.” We don’t use this term lightly. We define it as an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.
It is our view that in order to safeguard our national security and uphold America’s core values, we must return to a fact-based civil discourse regarding the challenges we face as a nation and world. This discourse must be frank and honest, but also consistent with American values of religious liberty, equal justice under the law, and respect for pluralism. A first step toward the goal of honest, civil discourse is to expose—and marginalize—the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America by actively working to divide Americans against one another through misinformation.
Wajahat Ali is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Eli Clifton is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a national security reporter for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center’s Middle East Progress. Lee Fang is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher/blogger for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Scott Keyes is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Faiz Shakir is a Vice President at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org.
Download this report (pdf)
Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)
Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):
- Introduction and summary
- Chapter 1: Donors to the Islamophobia network
- Chapter 2: The Islamophobia misinformation experts
- Chapter 3: The grassroots organizations and the religious right
- Chapter 4: The right-wing media enablers of anti-Islam propaganda
- Chapter 5: The political players
- Conclusion
Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia
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5 Questions About Glenn Beck’s Restoring Courage Rally
By Andrew Belonsky | Source
1. Why Aren’t More Politicians Participating?
It was initially reported that at least four potential GOP presidential candidates — Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee — planned to attend Restoring Courage in Israel this week. Senator Joe Lieberman had also promised to participate in the event, which Beck describes as “an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that Israel does not stand alone.”
Well, the Senator pulled out last week, and none of the declared or potential candidates plan to fly over for Beck’s event. Well, almost none: Herman Cain, a long-shot candidate with little sustainable political power, is attending.
Does this mark the end of Beck’s pull among conservative leaders and their followers? Right wing leaders like Sarah Palin made a show of supporting Beck during his rally last August. But that was when Beck still had a widely viewed Fox New show.
Now that Beck’s departed the cable channel, it seems he’s lost some of his luster — among the mainstream, at least: Christian nationalist David Barton and controversial Pastor John Hagee, a pastor who has suggested that Jews brought on the Holocaust themselves, have endorsed Restoring Courage. Maybe that’s why people are staying away? The dearth of political leaders is especially odd because 80 Congressmen and women visited Israel this month. None were willing to show up to Restoring Courage?
Although, to be fair: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are planning a “Defending the Republic” event come October, so perhaps the old boy’s still got it…
2. Is This the End of Glenn Beck?
On a related note, last year’s religion-tinged event Restoring Honor brought in about 100,000 attendees, depending on the various numbers. Only about 3,000 people, 2,000 of them Christians, showed up to the Caesarea Amphitheater for the opening night of Beck’s Israeli adventure, according to Hot Air.
He’s either not as popular in Israel as he would like to believe, or else “Restoring Courage” is on its way to being a huge flop, another indicator that Beck’s 15-minutes are almost up. We’ll know more after the rally’s main event, which happens tomorrow.
3. Will Beck’s Event Stoke Anti-Arab Sentiment Here At Home?
Though Beck and his partners want to strengthen ties between America’s conservative Christians and Israel’s right-leaning Jewish and Christian activists, that inter-religious cooperation also comes with plenty of anti-Islam sentiment.
“Old hatreds have begun to rear their ugly head once more, yet those who swore to never let it happen again are inexcusably sitting silently by and allowing the hate to fester,” Beck wrote on his website earlier this month. “The Muslim Brotherhood, long banned in Egypt, was immediately allowed re-entry and enjoys popular support. Turkey has moved aggressively towards Sharia Law and has befriended Iran – a nation who has renewed its long standing call to wipe Israel off the map. That is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The Brotherhood is but one of the many groups whose names are casually invoked to mean “Shariah law,” something Beck and his ilk see as a threat to the United States and to Israel. While some Islamic groups do indeed want to take down Israel, the Brotherhood does not.
As journalist James Traub explained in ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t pose much of a political or terrorist threat:
…Not only because the Muslim Brotherhood is not Hamas, but because, in the wake of the thoroughly secular mass protest movement, the Brotherhood is no longer likely to attract a majority of Egyptian voters.
Still, that’s not a risk Clinton or the Muslim Brotherhood’s more vocal American detractors are in the mood for. The “specific agenda” they fear is not that the Brotherhood will impose sharia, but that it could destroy Israel. The Brothers with whom I spoke were not only anti-Israel, but pro-Hamas. Israel has every reason to fear the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood government. But would a secular democracy in Egypt be more sympathetic to Israel than an Islamist one? In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, elites have learned that accepting Israel’s existence is the price of admission to international good opinion.
Despite common opinion that the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic parties will have to take a more moderate stance to curry international favor, and because they know Israel will always exist, it’s almost guaranteed that Beck and his fellow speakers, especially infamous Islamophobe Herman Cain, will use the next few days to stoke historic hatreds that are easily exploited for political ends.
4. Will Beck’s Event Stoke Anti-Mormon Sentiment?
Meanwhile, as Beck takes aim at Islamic organizations, Christian conservatives in the States are calling for a boycott of Christian TV Network for its support of Mormon Beck’s event.
“It is absolutely ridiculous for a supposed Christian TV Network, that purports to be propagating the gospel, like TBN, with major Christian figures like John Hagee and David Barton, to be supporting and advocating for a member of a satanic cult,” said Bill Keller of the 2.4 million-strong website LivePrayer.com
As Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaigns continue, we’re hearing sporadic discussion of long-simmering tensions between Evangelical and Mormons: a majority of Americans have previously said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon president. Romney’s popularity shows that historic divides are being bridged; if Keller and other anti-Mormon Evangelicals actually gain traction, they could remind Christian voters about worries of which they had forgotten.
Plus, many LGBT activists and their allies are no fans of the Mormon Church for its role in pushing through Proposition 8, California legislation that bans marriage equality there. They’re sure to be displeased with the equally-hateful Beck’s display, and may misguide their disgust with him toward the church as a whole.
5. Do Beck and His Friends Really Support Israel?
Despite touting their love for Israel, do Beck and his fundamentalist Christian pals support it as a Jewish state or simply as the backdrop for their Christian rapture. Media Matters has a roundup of some of Restoring Courage’s comments on Judaism, and they’re not very flattering.
One endorser, Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, runs a group called Samaritan’s Purse. That group, like so many Evangelical groups, tries to convert Jews to Christianity. Their efforts include working with the Omega Project, which distributes Bibles to Russian Jews so that they will accept Jesus as their savior, an idea that flies in the face of traditional Jewish teaching.
Meanwhile, another backer, Tim LaShaye, author of the rapturous ‘Left Behind’ series, once said, “Some of the greatest evil in the history of the world was concocted in the Jewish mind,” and David Barton has been tied to neo-Nazi groups and wrote in his book that only Christians should hold public office.
While this crew may support Israel, their support for Jewish Israelis, rather than just Christian Israelis, is certainly suspect.
COVERING-UP, UNCOVERED: The Veil’s Revival
by Erin O’Donnell | Source
ONE EVENING in the late 1990s, Thomas professor of divinity Leila Ahmed saw a group of people gathered on Cambridge Common. All of the women were wearing hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women but rarely seen at that time in the United States. Just the sight of hijab provoked a negative, “visceral” response in Ahmed, who was born and raised in Cairo in the 1940s, when even devout Muslim women of the middle and upper classes did not wear veils because they considered them old-fashioned. She took the appearance of veils in Cambridge, she explained recently, to mean that “there could be some fundamentalism taking root in America.”
That incident launched her on a 10-year study of women and Islam and their choices about the veil, and led ultimately to her new book, A Quiet Revolution (Yale). It also led her “into studying the very lively, complicated politics and history that were critical to—and in fact were the driving forces behind—both the unveiling movement of the early twentieth century and, later, of the re-veiling movement in the closing decades of the century,” Ahmed says. In the process, she says, she reexamined her own prejudices and reached surprising new conclusions about hijab. (Among women who wear it today, Ahmed explains, “hijab” usually refers to a veil that covers only the hair and neck; the burqa and niqab cover the face.)
Women in Egypt initially began to unveil around the turn of the twentieth century, as British occupiers sought to rescue Muslim women from what they took to be the oppression of Islam. But local women who unveiled had different reasons for doing so. “Unveiling,” Ahmed writes, “would become ever more clearly the emblem of an era of new hopes and desires, and of aspirations for modernity: the possibility of education and the right to work for both women and men, and of equal opportunity and advancement based on effort and merit.”
In the 1970s, most women began covering their heads again. After Egypt’s defeat in the Arab-Israeli War in 1967, groups that aimed to “Islamize” society, such as the Muslim Brotherhood—quashed under President Gamal Abdel Nasser—reemerged and flourished. At the same time, Saudi Arabia wielded increasing influence as an economic superpower that sought to spread its strict Wahhabi Islam globally. Islamist leaders of the period worked to persuade women to wear Islamic dress, but scholars who interviewed women during this period found that those who adopted it typically reported doing so willingly.
“As is the case sometimes today in America, many of the women who took on hijab did so against parental wishes,” Ahmed says. “Islamic dress gave them new authority as strictly observant religious women, and in a society where men and women were expected to maintain a certain separateness, it gave them the freedom to attend school and go to work—in offices, for example, shared with men—in ways that were socially acceptable. It certainly had some positive outcomes.”
The recent movement in Europe to ban Islamic dress for women echoes the old colonial concern for Muslim women, but Ahmed says it’s layered with something new. Hijab is now identified—wrongly, she believes—with violent strains of fundamentalist Islam. These assumptions, which she shared at the start of her research, “were quite mistaken,” she says now. “Certainly there are violent elements at the extreme edges, but the broad mainstream of the Islamist movement—according to all the experts—is overwhelmingly opposed to violence and committed to nonviolence.” She also emphasizes that the Muslim Brotherhood in particular has a long-standing commitment to social justice, including provision of education and medical treatment to the poor, and she believes such social activism is part of the organization’s legacy in America.
American Islam, she reports, was dramatically altered by 9/11, with more Muslims speaking publicly about their faith, and young Muslims insisting on a new dialogue within Muslim-American organizations. Immediately after 9/11, some women shed their veils to avoid harassment, but others began covering themselves for the first time in their lives. They cited a range of reasons: a desire to affirm their Muslim identity, to educate others and counter stereotypes, and sometimes to express solidarity with the Palestinians. Ahmed was particularly surprised to meet an American Muslim woman in Boston who said she hoped her headscarf would prompt other women to think about gender bias in society, including how clothing choices and physical appearance may influence the treatment of women.
Ahmed’s book has been widely reviewed in the United States and Britain, and she has faced some criticism for suggesting that the veil might symbolize a new kind of Muslim feminism in America; critics say it cannot shake its history as an emblem of oppression. Clearly, Ahmed responds, hijab can’t stand for empowerment in a place like Iran. “In a country where you’re free to choose to wear a veil, its meanings are worlds away from what it means when you’re forced to wear it,” she says. “That’s a critical point. The veil today has no universal meaning. Its meanings are always local.”
Muslim Brotherhood: Structure & Spread
First: Membership Structure
The process of recruiting new members, within the public activity of MB, has certain phases. The first phase is represented in the direct call through direct communication with people. Actually MB group started with seven persons including Hasan al-Banna himself, the founder of MB and this is mentioned in his diaries. The number began to expand gradually due to the direct communication with people. Al-Banna undertook the task of communicating directly with people throughout Egypt, consequently he visited villages and towns calling for his Da”wa.
As for the second phase of recruitment process, it is represented in the political recruitment adopted by al-Banna to establish a well-knit membership procedure. During the MB third congress in 1935, al-Banna stipulated the membership prerequisites and its degrees. The third phase denotes the recruitment of mujahid members. Al-Banna instituted a new system known as `Usra (The smallest unit of MB structure) which represents the practical area of MB spiritual education and Tarbiah (training). When the MB membership had been divided into categories, the “`Usra “membership was limited to MB active members.
Al-Banna wrote in his diaries (Proceedings of Third Congress) a paragraph subtitled (The Practical Structure of Muslim Brotherhood) in which he mentioned the following:
1-The main offices and bodies of MB should work for cultivating members spiritually and psychically in a way consistent with MB values and strengthening them. To do so, the MB membership varies into three degrees:
General membership: given to every body accepted by district administration provided that this person shows his readiness to be righteous, agrees to sign membership form and pays a volunteering subscription.
Brothers” membership: given to every Muslim accepted by the district administration- the member of this category is called “Associate Member”.
Practical membership: given to every Muslim accepted by the district administration and agrees to maintain his duties (Al-Banna detailed these duties); such a member is called “Active Member”.
Jihad membership: limited to Active Members that the general executive bureau (GEB) realizes his observance of duties and commitments.
Three Parallel Lines
Imam Hasan al-Banna established the MB Da”wa to be a general one depending on a substructure of knowledge, Tarbiah (training) and jihad which represent basic pillars of comprehensive and all-encompassing Da”wa.
Consequently the group adopted the following methods to achieve this concept:
The system of study circles to achieve knowledge line.
The system of `Usar al-Takween (The smallest units in the preparation stage) to achieve the line of Tarbiah (training).
The system of `Usar al-`amal (Action Unit) to achieve the line of jihad.
1- Study Circles System
This system achieves “Knowledge” which is the first pillar of Da”wa along with the principle of publicity in calling for Islam and Islamism. Mosque is the natural target for establishing such circles.
2- `Usar al-Takween Achieving Tarbiah (training) Line
While the study circles system aims at strengthening general attachment to Islam, the objective of `Usar system is to achieve special attachment to Islam and stimulating all powers, consequently there are two forms of `Usar:
`Usar al-Takween entrusted with preparing and cultivating MB members,
`Usar al-`amal entrusted with stimulating one”s powers in the continuous daily work for implementing Islam entirely or partially.
Now, it is time to shed light on characteristics of the membership three degrees, namely Nas?r (Advocate), Munaffidh (a member who has the characteristics of piety, obedience and jihad) and Naq?b (a leader with specific characteristics).
Every membership category has its own stipulations and requirements. The person entrusted with education and Tarbiah (training) should take into consideration such requirements and give every person the due membership and help him attain perfection in terms of this membership.
Following is a brief summary of the characteristics of membership degrees.
The first category of membership is” Nas?r”; In this category of membership the focus is directed to faith, loyalty and Tarbiah (training). This stage is a test of confidence which shapes and defines the next stage but it is considered the least degree in terms of stipulations and requirements.
The second category of membership includes Munaffidh, A`mil (Active) or Mujahid. It stands for the member who has got the characteristics of piety, obedience and Jihad.
The third category of membership is Naq?b. It stands for the person entitled to practice education and Tarbiah (training), take pledge of allegiance, participate in taking decisions and know the MB secrets. Moreover, he has the right to lead. This necessitates high degree of Tarbiah (training), absolute confidence along with many other requirements which make eligibility limited to a few people.
Second: the wide and fast spread of the group (place and category.)
In the statement of the fifth congress of MB, ten years after its establishment, Hassan al-Banna identified some characteristics of the group, including “the wide spread in cities and villages”. He mentioned how the group was first established in Alesma”elia governorate, then its existence in Cairo “till its circulation all over Egypt, from Aswan to Alexandria.
The MB widely spread as a political organization, since the 30s and especially in the 40s, during and directly after the Second World War. The group recruited many members, established scouts groups and weapon gatherers, a militant special outfit (Attantheemul khaas.) In the 40s- twenty years after its establishment- the group had, approximately, two million members and two thousand branches all over Egypt.
Al-Banna spent ten years intensifying the group”s pillars and imprinting it with “a pedagogic” stamp. This orientation granted the group a relatively free atmosphere for work. Al-Banna was really aware of his spontaneous and objective capabilities, so he was not involved in any conflict with political parties and associations; even he utilized the differences between all of them to promote the pillars of his Da”wa.
The group prevailed in the Egyptian society from the very beginnings; it concentrated on the social, educational and service fields and had an organizational existence at many levels, including: domestic mosques which it established, small educational institutions for teaching religion and eliminating illiteracy, hospitals, and some commercial and industrial projects. After the Second World War, the group assumed a great role in distributing and printing books, and issuing magazines.
“The mosque wasn”t only a place for worship, but for Tarbiah (training) as well. It represented a place for gathering and mobilizing people, and selecting the good characters to be members of the group. When the group moved the main headquarter to Cairo, the most important development of activities was the concentration on universities, schools and Alazhar. It established a new section for students, and began forming relevant militant groups. Another important development was that the group began to face political issues, having different opinions from that of the government and parties, these two developments strengthened each other.” Judge Tareq Albeshri said, commenting on the group”s widespread activities through mosques.
The categorical spread:
The Islamic reformist movements(IRM) – especially, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – basically and may be exclusively spread in the modern social classes, especially the middle class, so it was different from religious movements which the Arab Islamic world experienced till after the end of the nineteenth century; because- then- they concentrated on the traditional social classes.
Some believes that there was a link between the spread of the Islamic trend in the Arab countries among the middle class and the modernization processes in this world; actually, this is in concord with the Islamic religion faculty of penetrating all the society classes (Aristocratic, middle and lower.) with its comprehensive teachings. But modernization processes represent the aptness for more spread. The spread of the IRM in the middle class rather than the radical ones which usually spread in the lower classes- is due to the characteristics of middle class in the Arab world, which is oriented to reciprocal reformative change, not violent change.
The most prominent phenomena of modernization were the wide range of Tarbiah (training) and industry, and development of cities, the important result of which was the wide range of the middle class. The middle class has a high political spirit- compared to other classes- and great aspirations concerning policy and a better life, which helped it enthusiastically participate in policy.
There were several elements that led a huge number of the middle class to be enlisted in religious groups:
1-The effect of modern Tarbiah (training):
The educational process includes creating new values instead of traditional ones. Tarbiah (training) represents the social activity tool of eradicating traditional society bonds. Educators of religious lessons- especially the Islamic history- are affected by religious ideological romantic impacts.
2- The political experience:
In fact, religious opposition movements” emergence is due to the exposure of ideologies and parties which represented the middle class, this exposure is due to their failure in authority, or an intensified political oppression which led to withdrawal and ineffectiveness, therefore depriving them of the legitimacy to represent middle class.
3- The modernization impact:
Rushing towards the quick modernization trial in societies in which Islamic groups had an important role, and its consequences, represented a significant element in the collapse of current social and political institutions.
4- The economic crisis:
Among the defects of current regimes is the economic organization failure to meet the increasing aspirations of middle class, and also the reason for the exposure of the middle class secular parties as failures.
The MB group does exist in all the classes, from the upper one to the lower, but it”s mostly dominant in the middle one, which is the main source for recruitment, it is represented by the small merchants in cities and the new comers to the city from the country.
University students in cities, whose origins go back to towns and villages, are very important.
The MB also prevails in the educated circles and the modern social category as well.
Spread in the educated circles may be due to the emergence of Islamic Wakefulness inside universities since the 70s. The leader students represented the organizational cadres in the regions. They may be the same figures who represented the syndicalistic movement, which raise the Islamic banner in unions and syndicates.
The MB suffered a lot of ordeals in the 50s and 60s, which helped promote and spread their Da”wa among the youth along with the written output of the MB cadres and intellectuals, such as: (Abdulqader “Uda, Said Qutub, Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi…etc)
The movement experiences a relative absence among the ranks of workers, peasants and the uneducated. These ranks represent an empty sphere in the Islamic arena.
Third: Organizational hierarchy:
1- The basic regulations: the first by-law organizing and codifying work within MB group- as mentioned by Hassan al-Banna- has been initiated between 1930 and 1931 A.D., and in September 1945, the group ratified a modified by-law presented by Hassan al-Banna who called it “The Basic Regulations of Muslim Brotherhood organization (BRMBO).” Three years later, al-Banna recommended some amendments to the Constituent Board (CB), after reading the recommendations twice, the CB agreed to amend the regulations of the group.
After the nomination of “Hassan al-Hudaibi” as a chairman of the group, the General Executive Bureau (GEB) ratified a new interior by-law, which interpreted the basic regulations using the entitled authorities of the GEB according to article 32 of this law to establish the necessary body for implementing the group”s aims, and article 62 which allows revisiting the current law and amendment. In July, 1982, the group ratified a new by-law “The Basic Rule”, justified by the widened activities of the group and the previous experience. The last amendment concerned with the limitation of chairman term of office, instead of staying in office for life.
The above-mentioned chart begins with the Constituent Board (CB) from which the primary authority of MB emanates. This board takes the place of general assembly in other organizations because it is impossible for the MB general assembly to convene due to its large number which amounts to some millions in that time. Consequently it was substituted by the constituent board.
The CB represents nowadays the MB general advisory council and the general assembly of GEB. It includes MB members who anticipated in working for Da”wa. The mission of this constituent board is to supervise the Da”wa, choose Executive Bureau members and elect a comptroller.
The CB convenes regularly in the month of Muharram (the first Islamic month) to discuss the executive bureau reports concerning the plan of Da”wa activities for the new year, elect new members if the time is due, discuss the comptroller report about the last year accounts and the expected budget for the year to come, elect a new comptroller (if the time is due provided that the new comptroller is one of the CB members and is not nominated to chairman position) and to discuss other affairs and suggestions.
There may be an extraordinary convention of the constituent board if needed or in case that Executive Bureau (EB) or twenty members called for it. If that happened, the chairman is the one who presides over the meeting or the general deputy if the chairman was absent or delegated his deputy. In case that the general deputy is absent, the eldest member presides over the meeting. The meeting will be valid if attended by the overwhelming majority (half of members plus one) unless a certain number is stipulated.
The constituent board has the right to grant its membership to any MB member during any meeting provided that the nominated member meets the following conditions:
He is an established member.
His age is no less than 25 lunar years.
He joined Muslim Brotherhood for 5 years at least.
He has the due moral, cultural and academic qualification.
As for the GEB elected by the constituent board, it consists of 12 members voted into office from among the board members except for the chairman. Nine of the elected members should be from Cairo, and three from the other governorates.
The GEB candidate has to meet these conditions:
1- He has been a member of constituent board since three years at least.
2- He has the necessary moral, practical and academic qualifications.
3- His age is no less than thirty years according to Islamic calendar.
After those members are balloted and the final results are declared, the member takes an oath to maintain and keep the MB principles and values, hold confidence in the leadership abide by their decisions even if they were not consistent with his opinion, then he takes the pledge of allegiance.
The constituent board then elects from among the nine members of Cairo a deputy, general secretary and a treasurer. The GEB membership lasts for two years then new elections are to be held.
The member can be elected for more than a term. In case of a vacancy before the term is over, the person who came next in votes occupies this position.
The Chairman:
The chairman is elected by the constituent board in the presence of no less than four-fifth of its members; three fourths of them must vote for him. In case that the legal quorum is not present, the session would be adjourned to no less than two weeks and no more than four weeks since its first convention. If the quorum is not complete again, the session would be adjourned under the same conditions but the scheduled meeting and its objectives must be declared; the chairman is to be nominated in this session by three fourths of the attendance votes regardless of their number.
The chairman has to meet the following conditions:
1- He has been a member of the constituent board since five lunar years at least.
2- He must be one of knowledge and good character in addition to being acquainted with scholarly affairs.
Having been elected, the new chairman takes an oath of loyalty then he would be given a pledge of allegiance by the CB members and by the members of the group either directly upon meeting him or through those members” leaders.
1-The General Headquarter (GH):
This is the main headquarter of the MB, the chairman and the executive bureau. This acts as a junction point for the horizontal and vertical MB hierarchy formed at the end of thirties. Actually till the beginning of the Second World War, there was nothing but some dispersed branches in certain provinces. These branches would take instructions directly from the general headquarter that was branched into administrative sub bureaus in 19 governorates. Moreover, the general headquarter was subdivided into 300 districts, in the same way as governmental division system; the districts were divided into branches which were considered the basic units in the group structure.
The general headquarter has a board of directors made up of the chairman of the administrative bureau, in most cases the same chairman of the main branch or any member the executive bureau may nominate him. He may be neither a head of a branch nor a member therein. The board of directors also includes a deputy, a secretary and a treasurer; in most cases they occupy the same positions in the main branch. The other administrative bureau members are the districts heads and members of the constituent board in the bureau constituency, administrative activity representatives in addition to a visitor of the GEB whose viewpoint is of consultative nature and who has no right to vote.
The district board of directors is made up of the main branch head and the heads of other branches in the district, the branches visitors, the GEB visitors and the main branch activity representatives.
The branch board of directors is made up of five persons, one of them is selected by the general headquarter to be the branch head, the others are elected by the branch general assembly provided that two of them are deputies, the third is a secretary and the fourth is a treasurer. The election must be run secretly.
The member of branch board of directors must be at least 21 lunar years old, and must be one-year member of the board, during which he did not violate the membership duties.
The branch member has to meet the following conditions:
1- His age is no less than 18 years.
2- He has a good character and never been sentenced for immoral practices.
3- He fully comprehends the MB principles, and fulfils his duties.
4- He pledges to pay a monthly subscription regularly to the branch administration.
5- He takes upon himself to abide by MB laws and gives the pledge of allegiance.
The branch is subordinate to its respective district and the district is subordinate to its respective administrative bureau which in turn is subordinate to the general executive bureau. Communication runs between theses units upwards or downwards in the same sequence.
The intellectual framework of the MB has really affected its regulatory formation. Actually, the comprehensiveness of thought which is a characteristic of the movement has reflected itself in the organizational structure of the movement which overwhelmed the individual from all sides and regulated his social life and family relations in a way that results in full intermingling with the group.
2-Regulations Amendment in 1982:
In 1982 the group amended the main system. They justified that saying:” Due to increasing group fields of activity and in the shadow of its experiences, and to keep up with the present conditions and requirements, the general advisory council, instituted according to the provisional by-law that was approved on 10/05/1982 by the honored chairman, discussed in its meeting convened on 29/07/1982 the by-law and decided on amendment.
The new amendment provided that the MB administrative bodies are the chairman, the general executive bureau and the general advisory council.
The chairman of the MB is the main responsible person in the group; he is the one to head the general executive bureau and the general advisory council. As for the general executive bureau, it is the supreme executive body of the MB which is to supervise the promulgation of Da`wa and to direct its policy and administration. It is made up of 13 members other than the chairman, its term of office is four lunar years, and the member may be nominated for more than a term.
The general advisory council is the legislative authority of the MB; its decisions are binding and its term of office is four lunar years.
Amendments followed forth afterwards so as to consolidate the principle of consultation through basal elections- i.e., through the bases and ranks of the MB- among all administrative and regulatory bodies, giving much attention to institutionalism instead of individualism in managing the group.
3- The regulatory Congress phenomenon:
Having moved in 1932, along with the group general executive bureau, to Cairo, and having concluded the leading and basal administrative group establishments, al-Banna sought to hold general congresses for the group. Such congresses acted as regulatory frameworks that control approving and reviewing plans and policies in addition to developing insight concerning the coming stage necessities.
Al-Banna was eagerly anxious to hold such general congresses. The first congress came in May 1933, the second came lately in the same year, the third in March 1935, the fourth in 1937 and the fifth came in January 1939. These congresses had its importance in establishing values of consultation, exchanging viewpoints and regulatory and political reviewing of decisions. They represented all the group administrative bodies including the executive bureau, the general advisory council and the central advisory councils.
Al-Banna dedicated himself, during the stage of establishment to work for organizational structure of the group, so he strived to model it in a well-knit framework that manifested itself in theses general congresses.
Thanks to his personal and psychic capacities, Hasan al-Banna managed to establish some positive administrative and regulatory principles and traditions, including the general congresses phenomenon held under his personal auspices and his active following up. He was keen that all the group administrative bodies should take part in theses congresses and in their deliberations and discussions. The number of the attendance was great, and the discussions in the special committees run in detail.
Al-Banna managed to establish regulatory and administrative senses through delegating authorities in all leading posts in the MB administrative hierarchy.
4- Limiting the Chairman Term of Office:
At the beginning of Shaban month in 1416 A.H, the MB deputy chairman stated that the group leaders made an administrative decision limiting the MB chairman office term to renewable six years instead of selecting him for lifetime as run before. The decision reflected developments in the internal system of the group that permitted circulation of the chairman post, setting an example to the Egyptian political powers that support and follow persons not ideas.
Bibliography:
1- “Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Society” by Muhammad Shawqi zaki
2- “The Political Islam in Egypt”, Al-Ahram Political and Strategic Studies Centre. 1992 AD, Cairo; by Hala Mustafa.
3- “The Qur`an and the Sword, conflict of State and Religion in Egypt” Nabil Abdul Fattah
4- “Organizational Structure of Political Islam Groups in Arab World and its impact on their Political behavior (Egypt as Case Study) by Muhammad S`ad Abu-`Amoud.
5- “The Approach to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood” by Sa`eed Hawwa.
6- “The Collection of Messages” by Hasan al-Banna.
7- “The political Islam in the Arab World” by Muhammad Darif.
8- “A Study of Arab Strategy in 1958” Al-Ahram Political and Strategic Studies Centre.
9- “Radicalism in the Arab World” by Richard Heriar and Wokmigan.
10- “The Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood” by Dr Richard Michael.
11- “Internal Democracy within the Egyptian Political Parties, Comparative Study 76-1987, faculty of Economics and Politics doctoral thesis, not published 1993; by Wahid Abdul Maj?d.
12- “(Liberty) of the Islamic Movement: Future Viewpoint, Papers in Self-criticism; by Dr Abdullah An-Naf?s.
“Islamic Movements in Egypt and the Issue of Multi-party political System” 76-1986, faculty of Economics and Politics doctoral thesis 1994; by Abdul `Ati Muhammad Ahmad Abdul Halim.
Hate Group Head Pamela Geller, Breitbart Label SPLC “Threat To Freedom”
Source | by DAVID BADASH
Pamela Geller, the head of a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) certified hate group has decided to add the SPLC to her new “Threat to Freedom Index.” Geller, who writes the anti-Islam Tea Party radical blog Atlas Shrugs, is also the head of the anti-Islam hate groups, American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).
Geller, who calls the SPLC an “über-left communist group,” most recently made national news when it was discovered that she had been in contact with Anders Behring Breivik, aka the Norway Shooter, a right-wing Christian domestic terrorist who shot to death 77 people in Oslo, Norway, and at a youth camp nineteen miles away.
Geller, by the way, stands accused of scrubbing her blog, Atlas Shrugs. Specifically, according to former conservative blogger, Little Green Footballs (LGF) founder Charles Johnson, Geller posted an “Email From Norway” in 2007 that Johnson says “sounds a lot like the Oslo terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik,” and now seems to be removing evidence that she knew of its of its violent rhetoric.
It’s important to note here that the SPLC is “an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that promote tolerance,” according to Wikipedia. In other words, they’re the good guys. “The SPLC classifies as hate groups organizations that denigrate or assault entire groups of people for attributes that are beyond their control.”
“In 1971, Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. founded the SPLC as a civil rights law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama. Civil rights leader Julian Bond soon joined Dees and Levin and served as president of the board between 1971 and 1979. The SPLC’s litigating strategy involved filing civil suits for damages on behalf of the victims of hate group harassment, threats, and violence with the goal of financially depleting the responsible groups and individuals. While it originally focused on damages done by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, throughout the years the SPLC has become involved in other civil rights causes, among them, cases concerned with institutional racial segregation and discrimination, the mistreatment of aliens, and the separation of church and state.”
Readers of The New Civil Rights Movement are very familiar with the good and important work the SPLC does, most-notably, labeling Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council and Bryn Fischer’s American Family Association, along with Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth About Homosexuality as hate groups.
“Geller has seized the role of the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and influential figurehead.” writes the SPLC. “Her strengths are panache and vivid rhetorical flourishes — not to mention stunts like posing for an anti-Muslim video in a bikini — but she also can be coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam. Geller does not pretend to be learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to SIOA partner Spencer. She is prone to publicizing preposterous claims, such as President Obama being the “love child” of Malcolm X, and once suggested that recent U.S. Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagen, who is Jewish, supports Nazi ideology. Geller has mingled with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists and defended Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. She is a self-avowed Zionist who is sharply critical of Jewish liberals.”
For her part, Geller, on media-mogul Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, states, ludicrously, but oddly reminiscent of language used by the SPLC itself,
“Freedom is more embattled in America today than ever. My group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has begun tracking the activities of numerous active groups that are threats to freedom in the United States today on our Threats to Freedom Index. We plan to augment it periodically and publish it annually.
“All Threat to Freedom groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign American Constitutional freedoms and/or lawful initiatives for American self-defense.”
“Threat to Freedom group activities can include misrepresentation of anti-terror and other law enforcement initiatives, attempts to restrict the freedom of speech regarding Islamic jihad or other threats to freedom, defamation of freedom fighters, disinformation campaigns in the mainstream media regarding attempts by the U.S. and Israel to defend themselves, and more.”
In other words, the SPLC was mean to me.
(Image: Facebook)
Racism and Islamophobia in America
Source | by Eric Walberg
Three books recently published by the American radical publisher Clarity Press reflect different aspects of racism in the US, which even under a black president is unfortunately alive and well, promoted in US policy at home and abroad — if not officially.
Devon Mihesua, American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities
Stephen Sheehi, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims
Francis Boyle, The Palestinian Right of Return Under International Law
Top on the list of course is the continued second-class status of African-Americans, who make up an outsized proportion of prisoners, the unemployed and those living in poverty. One’s colour is enough to keep the black-and-white status quo intact, despite the cosmetic boost that Barack Obama’s election gave to the nation’s blacks.
But the endemic racism that Native Americans have experienced despite more or less blending in with the increasingly Hispanic and Asian mix of today’s America (most Native Americans are of mixed race) is a sad legacy that is equally endemic.
The irony is that Native American culture is revered around the world and by many Americans, especially by the young, as it appeals to the sense of unity of man and nature, recognises and respects the mystery of life: the fact that humans are one small part of a vast and beautiful world which is full of magic. It is only as people “grow up” that they lose this sense of mystery and accommodate themselves to a heirarchical, anthropocentric reality with no use for the romantic animism that allowed the natives to live in harmony with nature for thousands of years.
Devon Mihesua, a Choctaw from Oklahoma, sets out the many distortions of the image of Native Americans perpetrated by the mainstream media and demolishes them one by one in American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities, already a classic, first published in 1996 and newly republished this year by Clarity.
One of the many images that stand out to someone who grew up in North America and which Mihesua corrects is “Cowboys and Indians”, which should be “US Army and Indians” since “cowboys and Indians rarely fought each other. Besides, the first cowboys were Mexican Indians.” The English language itself reinforces the worst stereotypes, such as “Indian givers” (read: “US government givers”) and Columbus “discovering” America. Indeed, 1492 marks not a step forward in mankind’s history, but rather the beginning of the first and most horrific genocide in mankind’s history, with the premeditating killing of at least 10 million in North America alone.
The history of Native Americans is full of ironies. War Department officials maintained that if the entire US population had enlisted in the same proportion as Native Americans in WWII, the response would have rendered Selective Service unnecessary. As soldiers, they were respected as disciplined and brave. Comanche soldiers were given the vital task of encoding secret messages in the Pacific based on their native language. The code they developed, although cryptologically very simple, was never cracked by the Japanese; but they never received any special recognition from the government after the war.
Mihesua’s book is intended for the general public but also as a school text, and though it deals with grim material, it is full of fascinating details of native life. Living in earth lodges (wigwams), longhouses, grass houses or thatched-roof homes much like Europeans, most Indians never saw a tipi, for example. Indians were “conquered” largely via biological warfare, as they lacked immunity to European diseases. The European claim that they were “heathen” was a mere tactic to condone their decimation. It was the Dutch who introduced “scalping” to North America (to save transport costs for bounty hunters paid per Indian scalp): a revered tradition dating back to ancient Greece.
More than 60 per cent of the food consumed around the world today comes from the Indians, including corn, tomatoes, potatoes, many varieties of beans, chili peppers, squash, pumpkins, avocados, cacao, raspberries and strawberries. The main staple of the plains Indians, the 60 million buffalo that grazed the open plains, were wiped out by Europeans eager to steal the Indians’ land.
The Indians were just as “civilised” as the Europeans, in terms of technology and culture, though no North Americans had a writing system before the European invasion. Their societies were egalitarian, with division of labour according to sex, where the sexes were considered equal and each had their decision-making traditions. In fact the Iroquois Confederacy was used as a prototype by the American revolutionaries in writing the American Constitution.
The book has many illustrations. It includes oral histories, discourses on religion, anthropology, politics and economics of Indian societies. The author used the term Indian in the first edition, and writes that she now uses Indigenous, since Native Americans or First Nation are equally European in derivation. There are a mere 2.1 million Indians today, and they refer to themselves by their tribal name (the Navajos are Dinees, for example) — over 700 tribes are still extant. Mihesua’s aim is to encourage teachers to demand history books that truly reflect the country’s heritage, not just “feel-good” books which “tell more about the persons writing them than about the Indians”.
In Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims, Stephen Sheehi, director of the Arabic Program at the University of South Carolina and author of Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, deals with the most recent manifestation of this social plague, which reached a crisis point following 9/11. The victimisation of Muslim Americans can only be called racism, since the overwhelming majority of American Muslims are nonwhite, and the few white Muslims are automatically considered even more suspect as potential “terrorists”.
The Muslim experience brings the black and Native American experiences together, though few Native Americans are Muslim. The structure of Islam and native religions seems radically different on the surface — the former strictly monotheistic, the latter polytheistic; however, the transcendence of spirit and the underlying unity of man and nature are very much central tenets of Islam, as they are for Native Americans. Muslims, like the Native Americans, live their spirituality and find it inseparable from their daily lives and interactions with others and nature, something that threatens the very foundation of secular capitalism.
The mouthpieces of Islamophobia — fear and hatred of Islam — in the US today include both academics like Bernard Lewis, Fareed Zakaria, Thomas Friedman, David Horowitz, and many politicians, with John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the vanguard. Their theories and opinions operate on the assumption that Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, suffer from particular cultural lacuna that prevent their cultures from progress, democracy and human rights. It is no surprise that such ex-Muslims as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali feminist-turned-Islamophobe, and revisionist Muslims such as Indian-Canadian feminist Irshad Manji are feted by Western media, as their antics reinforce the Islamophobes’ arguments.
While Islamophobia is not new, Sheehi demonstrates that it was refurbished as a viable explanation for Muslim resistance to economic and cultural globalisation during the Clinton era. Moreover, the “theory” was made the basis for an interventionist foreign policy and propaganda campaign during the Bush regime and continues to underlie Barack Obama’s new internationalism.
Following 9/11, the ceiling of acceptable hate-speech against Muslims, particularly Arabs, was blown off. “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” wrote Ann Coulter two days after 9/ 11. “We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.” Since 9/11, Muslims, Arabs, Iranians and Islam itself have been the objects of derision and hatred in public, on TV and radio, and in print.
Sheehi demonstrates how such bigotry was translated into a sustained domestic policy of racial profiling and Muslim- baiting by agencies such as Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. It condoned widespread surveillance by the government, profiling in the street, at airports, in mosques and universities. Muslims have their movements tracked, their associations, finances and charitable giving monitored. They are systematically spied on, coerced and persecuted.
And not only Muslims. Once it’s ok to do this to Muslims, it becomes ok to suspend basic civil liberties of all suspected “terrorists”. Peaceniks and ecological activists are given the same treatment more and more. Pastor Martin Niemöller’s reflection on the descent into fascism in Germany — “First they came for the communists … Then they came for the Jews … Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me” — is as true as it was in 1946.
Islamophobia has institutionalised US government violations of international law, such as freezing habeas corpus, torture, renditions, extrajudicial kidnappings and assassination, even total war against and occupation of sovereign countries. They are all justified using Islamophobic stereotypes, paradigms and analyses as well as foils such as Hirsi Ali and Manji.
Sheehi examines the collusion between non-governmental agencies and lobbies and local, state and federal agencies in suppressing political speech on US campuses critical of racial profiling, US foreign policy in the Middle East and Israel. While much of the direct violence against Muslims on American streets, shops and campuses has subsided, Islamophobia runs throughout the Obama administration, serving an ideological function in the age of economic, cultural and political globalisation.
Liberals such as Democratic leader Howard Dean argue that it would be “a real affront to people who lost their lives” on 9/11 to build an Islamic Center two blocks away from the World Trade Center. “I think it is great to have Mosques in American cities; there is a growing number of American Muslims.” But Dean says they should “become just like every other American, Americans who happen to be Muslims… I hope they will have an influence on Islam.” Translation: co-opt and assimilate Muslims into American culture, so as not to pose a threat to US hegemony, and work within Muslim communities globally to bring them into the American fold a la the Christian missionaries of old, willing handmaidens in the imperial project, what black Americans referred to derisively as “Uncle Toms”.
The rampant Islamophobia of the past decade and the liberal answer of assimilation makes clear that Islam is the remaining enemy after the defeat of Communism. It too must be conquered to ensure US world hegemony, with revisionist American Muslims in the front lines. “Fight fire with fire,” so to speak.
There are voices in the West that try to fight back. Tariq Ali counters in response to the “civilization-mongers” that there were a range of political possibilities in Muslim countries, that western civilization itself had prevented the exercise of Western-style democracy in the Muslim world, leading their citizens to find political expression through Islam: “After WWII, the US backed the most reactionary elements as a bulwark against communism or progressive/ secular nationalism. [In Iran] the secular opposition which first got rid of the shah was outfoxed by British Intelligence and the CIA. The vacuum was later occupied by the clerics who rule the country today. … The 70-year war between US imperialism and the Soviet Union affected every single ‘civilization’.” We are all victims of imperialism, all losers, our cultures distorted and perverted rather than merely anachronistic, including American culture and Islam itself.
Sheehi points to an important difference between the manifestation of Islamophobia in the US and Europe. Muslim communities in the US eagerly assimilate and have a high median income and education level compared to other American minorities, while many European Muslim communities tend to be more insular.
The European version is grounded in anxiety arising from the colonial past. The colonial centres have always been uncomfortable with interacting with brown people as equals, compounded by the transposition of feelings of resentment, and anger over the loss of imperial power while still having to bear the social, cultural and economic consequences of their colonial past.
European Islamophobia also finds its origins in anxiety about and hatred of its own European “other”, namely European Jewry. Pre-WWII Europe feared a Jewish conspiracy to subvert Christian society. In the post-Holocaust era, this is no longer politically correct, so Europe’s traditional fear of Jews has been displaced onto its newer Muslim immigrants, even by the traditionally anti-Jewish far right such as Le Pen’s National Front and the British National Party, which are now Zionist and racist at the same time.
This phenomenon has repeated itself in every European country in the past decade, with far-right parties gaining rapidly by exploiting fears of the “Islamification” of Europe, the degeneration of institutionalised secularism, the bankrupting of the welfare state, and the “demographic bomb”. Most notorious has been Holland’s Geert Wilders with his Freedom Party. He has compared the Quran to Mein Kampf and called for a “headscarf tax”.
Such bigots are working to form a Europe-wide International Freedom Alliance, even including the US and Canada; an “Atlanticist Islamophobistan”, according to analyst Pepe Escobar. Considering that US and Canadian Muslims make up less than two per cent of the population, this leads to “the surrealist American phenomenon of Islamophobia without Muslims”.
Tariq Ramadan is one of the few media personalities given a chance to counter this slide towards a Euro-Reich; he argues that forcing Muslim immigrants to abandon their traditions merely reinforces racism. “What we need is a new narrative, a new ‘we’, a mutlicoloured, multicultural European identity. Europeans need to psychologically integrate that into their world view.”
***
The racism against Native Americans and Muslim Americans comes together in US Middle East policy, with the victimisation of Palestinians. US domestic racism is projected internationally on the Middle East in the unqualified support of Israel as a Jewish state, as argued by University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle in The Palestinian Right of Return in International Law. Boyle is both a brilliant academic and a controversial political figure, as adviser to Provisional Government of the Palestinian Authority since 1988.
If Boyle has any bias, it is in favour of victims, especially Native Americans and Muslims. He has served as special prosecutor in the International Tribunal of Indigenous Peoples and Oppressed Nationalities in the United States of America, as adviser to the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria vs the Russian Federation, as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina vs Slobodan Milosevic, and as adviser to American activists intent on impeaching both US president George W Bush and US President Barack Obama. In all cases, he charged the accused with committing genocide and crimes against humanity.
But he is no Don Quixote. He also drafted the US domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was signed into law by President George H W Bush.
Boyle argues that the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine would not only create an unviable Palestinian Bantustan-type nation, but that the current state of Israel and its illegal settlements already amounts to a Jewish Bantustan- type nation, and that neither is viable. That one is Jewish and privileged and the other Arab and poor and oppressed; it merely reflects the inherent racism underlying this projection of US power in the Middle East.
The just resolution of the Palestinian right of return is at the very heart of the Middle East peace process. Nonetheless, the Obama administration intends to impose a comprehensive peace settlement upon the Palestinians that will force them to give up their well-recognised right of return, accept a Bantustan of disjointed and surrounded chunks of territory on the West Bank in Gaza, and recognise Israel as “the Jewish State”, as newly demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seconded by all US officials and mainstream media.
Boyle compares the current situation in Israel-Palestine with the collapse of Yugoslavia which he observed and participated in. “The correct historical analogue here is not apartheid South Africa, but instead the genocidal Yugoslavia that collapsed as a state, lost its UN membership, and now no longer exists as a state for that very reason.” Boyle “played a role in propelling this historical and principled process forward and ushering in the final extinction of the genocidal Yugoslavia as a state by debunking its legal, moral, and political right to survive and exist in front of the entire world for all humanity to see”.
Israeli settlements are “clearly illegal and criminal”, and “all these so-called settlers are committing war crimes, except the children, who are obviously not old enough to formulate a criminal intent.” Even before Operation Cast Lead, Boyle proposed that the UN General Assembly set up the “International Criminal Tribunal for Israel” as a “subsidiary organ” under Article 22 of the UN Charter, a suggestion endorsed by Malaysia and Iran, and supported by several dozen Arab and Muslim countries.
Boyle cannot be faulted for his legal brilliance. He devastatingly exposes the underlying racism in US-Israeli Middle East policy, portraying Israel as genocidal, and showing a way for the world to bring it to its knees. Boyle is a maximalist, rejecting any compromise with Israel. For him the endgame is “Sign Nothing, Win It All!”
But Israel-Palestine is neither South Africa in the 1980s nor Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Neither of these countries was created by and became indivisible with the US empire. Israel is a much harder nut to crack. Which is not to say that it won’t crack. Frankly, I don’t know where to place my bets on how this last racist nation state will be dismantled. I can only hope Boyle’s optimism is warranted.
What can one conclude from these very different studies about how to overcome racism, which is alive and well not only in the US but around the world? The authors present different approaches — Mihesua concerned with education, Sheehi with deconstructing the myths, Boyle with fighting in the international arena the monsters responsible for inflicting their racist policies on the world.
Reviewed by Eric Walberg
http://ericwalberg.com/
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1057/cu22.htm
Eric Walberg is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Eric Walberg
Why Aren’t There More Muslim Terrorists?
Source | By Aaron Ross
Immediately after last month’s terror attacks in Norway, Islamic extremism shot to the top of almost every list of suspected culprits. Among the soothsayers of creeping Shariah, there was never any doubt who was responsible. Others’ more rational, if hasty, assessments of Norway’s threat matrix pointed to the same (wrong) conclusion. For all their differences, both lines of reasoning shared a common assumption: that the sheer volume of Muslim terrorists out there made their involvement likely. Or as Stephen Colbert skewered the media’s rush to judgment: “If you’re pulling a news report completely out of your ass, it is safer to go with Muslim. That’s not prejudice. That’s probability.”
Charles Kurzman begs to differ. In his new book, The Missing Martyrs, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill sociology professor rejects that Muslims are especially prone to violent extremism. “If there are more than a billion Muslims in the world, many of whom supposedly hate the West and desire martyrdom,” he asks, “why don’t we see terrorist attacks everywhere, every day?”
In theory, we should. After all, there’s any number of ways a terrorist committed to murdering civilians could attack (and our gun lobby certainly isn’t making weapons harder to get a hold of). But we don’t. No Islamist terrorist attack besides 9/11 has killed more than 400 people; only a dozen have killed more than 200.
As it turns out, there just aren’t that many Muslims determined to kill us. Backed by a veritable army of fact, figures, and anecdotes, Kurzman makes a compelling case. He calculates, for example, that global Islamist terrorists have succeeded in recruiting fewer than 1 in 15,000 Muslims over the past 25 years, and fewer than 1 in 100,000 since 2001. And according to a top counterterrorism official, Al Qaeda originally planned to hit a West Coast target, too, on 9/11 but lacked the manpower to do so.
Even so, it sure seems there are a lot of Muslims committed to the West’s destruction. What else to make of the celebrations in Middle Eastern streets after 9/11? Or Pew Research Center opinion polls of multiple predominantly Muslim nations showing significant support for suicide bombings? But Kurzman warns against conflating anti-Americanism with actual willingness to engage in terrorism. In reality, he says, the young man sporting the bin Laden T-shirt in Islamabad is probably more like the American teenager in Berkeley with the Che poster on his dorm room wall than a future Al Qaeda jihadist.
Yet even if only 1 in 100,000 Muslims is a terrorist, that still leaves something like 15,000 terrorists from a global population of around 1.5 billion Muslims. Surely that’s enough to inflict serious damage? It could be—and Kurzman concedes that Islamist terrorism should be taken seriously—but in practice, several factors conspire against Al Qaeda and its allies’ aspirations of regularly striking Western targets with spectacular attacks.
For one thing, Islamist terrorists are bitterly divided between globalist groups like Al Qaeda and localists like the Taliban and Hamas. The Taliban, for instance, opposed (and still opposes) Al Qaeda’s international ambitions, so much so, Kurzman claims, that its foreign minister sent an envoy to warn American and UN officials in the summer of 2001 about a possible, albeit unspecified, attack. Meanwhile, rifts within the Muslim world about issues like democracy, liberalism, and the role of women have crippled support for global jihadists. Insistent that all streams of Islamic thought conform to their rigid doctrines (and willing to murder fellow Muslims to make the point), Al Qaeda and its affiliates have alienated millions of potential supporters, rendering themselves far easier targets for unsympathetic Middle Eastern regimes to go after.
After pressing his case with almost prosecutorial precision for the first two-thirds of the book, Kurzman’s analysis veers off the rails as he detours into an alternately banal and pedantic discussion of everything from America’s need to balance liberty with security to the lexicological origins of sociology. In a case of epically bad timing, he devotes the better part of six pages to praising recently discredited philanthropist Greg Mortenson as “a role [model] for American foreign policy.” Kurzman is unfortunate more than anything else here, but after arguing that American foreign policy doesn’t really affect Muslims’ views of the US, his sudden fawning over Mortenson’s in-vogue “hearts and minds” counterterrrorism strategy is somewhat befuddling.
Still, Kurzman’s hard-headed empirical approach to an issue so often locked in emotion-fueled back and forth makes The Missing Martyrs (or at least most of it) a must-read. Early on, he states his aim: “to reduce the panic by examining evidence about Islamist terrorism—the actual scale of it and the reasons it is not more widespread.” It’s an important goal—perhaps more so now than at any point in recent memory—and Kurzman has made a valuable contribution.
Aaron Ross is an editorial intern at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Follow him on Twitter and email tips and insights to aross [at] motherjones [dot] com.