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“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.
Educating or fear-mongering? The controversy over ACT!
By Deirdre Conner | Source
When ACT! for America’s Jacksonville chapter began attacking a local Muslim scholar this year, it might have appeared to be the isolated action of a fringe group.
Far from it.
Over the past year, ACT has engaged in similar skirmishes across the country that have raised the group’s profile, its membership and its revenue.
It describes itself as educating concerned citizens and exposing the threat of radical Islamic terrorists they believe are multiplying on American soil. When the local chapter protested the appointment of University of North Florida professor Parvez Ahmed to the city’s Human Rights Commission, they claimed he had ties to terrorist organizations, despite his written record of condemning violence and terrorism.
But the episode is also one of many reasons ACT has come under increasing scrutiny from critics. They say that at best, the group is promoting misinformation among an American public still largely uninformed about Islam, and at worst, it is exploiting people’s worst fears to propagate bigotry and hate speech against Muslims.
Related: Anti-Muslim activist who led fight against Jacksonville commissioner owes state more than $500K
Its detractors include Muslim civil rights groups as well as scholars and even the Southern Poverty Law Center, all of which say the group denigrates all Muslims, not just extremists.
Despite controversy over ACT’s message, the group has found more and more willing ears from the public, and, in some cases, elected officials.
ACT! for America has a full-time lobbyist in Washington and says it ended 2010 with 155,000 members nationally. In Florida, the group’s membership has more than doubled since 2009, to 19,233 members, said Guy Rodgers, the group’s national executive director. Those members, he said, have been key in the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” strategy.
Busy agenda
It counts among its successes:
– The passage of a ballot initiative in Oklahoma banning courts from considering “international law or Sharia Law” in making decisions.
Related: What sharia is – and isn’t
– The investigation and suspension of the Muslim Student Union at University of California-Irvine for disrupting a speech by Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.
– Protesting the cancellation of a course called “What is Islam?” at an Oregon community college, which was to be taught by one of the group’s chapter leaders.
Together, the Pensacola-based ACT! for America and its affiliated research group, American Congress for Truth, raised more than $1.6 million in 2009, according to the latest tax returns available. Rodgers attributes growing interest in the group to the rise in domestic terrorism threats from Islamic militants over the past two years.
“More and more Americans are beginning to in their consciousness wonder, what is causing this?” Rodgers said.
‘Political correctness’
ACT also is concerned that the government is not thoroughly investigating places in America they feel could be breeding ground for Islamic militants, such as jihadist websites or camps they believe are paramilitary training grounds for terrorists.
So why does ACT believe the government isn’t as vigilant as it should be?
“Political correctness, I think that’s why,” Rodgers said. “We believe that is shackling many in the government … from tackling that issue head-on.”
It was political correctness, the group believes, that led to Ahmed being appointed to the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, a volunteer board.
Ahmed is the former chairman of the national board for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. ACT claims CAIR is a front for Hamas, a militant Palestinian organization designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. government. And ACT points to CAIR being named in 2007 as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a terrorism-funding trial.
But CAIR was one of hundreds of unindicted co-conspirators. And it was never accused of wrongdoing by the government. For his part, Ahmed has personally condemned violence against both Palestinian and Israeli civilians.
In numerous blog posts and op-eds for The Times-Union and national media, Ahmed has rejected extremist views and violence and writes frequently about how religions can coexist peacefully.
Related: Parvez Ahmed speech transcript: ‘Is Islam compatible with American values?’
And although nearly a third of the City Council voted against his appointment, he found many more supporters among politicians, business leaders and citizens concerned that the episode could paint Jacksonville as a place of intolerance.
Difficult to dismiss
ACT! for America has, both locally and nationwide, found common ground with tea party members and extreme conservatives who helped Republicans retake the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections.
One of its key allies, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., announced plans this month for hearings on Muslim-Americans and terrorism when he assumes the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee.
That’s why even its opponents say the group shouldn’t be dismissed.
“If they were just yahoos … then why did you have people running for Congress or government officials who are otherwise well educated playing that [Muslim] card?” said John L. Esposito, a Georgetown University professor who studies discrimination against Muslims.
“They played that card because a significant number of voters believe that.”
Esposito said ACT! for America is Islamophobic, and he compares it to anti-Semitic and racist groups.
He said that ACT – along with politicians and pundits who agree with it – is capitalizing on people’s fear, which is heightened because of the trauma of terrorism and a painful economy.
“People don’t look at the numbers,” Esposito said. Islamic terrorists “are an infinitely small but dangerous part of the population, and that’s a group that most people reject.”
He compared it to stereotyping all anti-abortion advocates as violent extremists just because there have been incidents of violence against abortion providers.
“It’s a dangerous thing,” he said, “but nobody blows the numbers out of proportion on this.”
Despite its crusade against political correctness, ACT officials deny they are anti-Muslim.
Yet its national leaders – including its founder, the Lebanese-born Christian Brigitte Gabriel – repeatedly say that Islam itself creates terrorists.
In her book “They Must Be Stopped,” Gabriel writes that “The freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedoms that Muslims enjoy in this country have not tempted them to renounce their dreams of destroying the United States.”
In 2008, she told the New York Times Magazine that she disapproves of Islam because it “calls for the killing of other people.” In a speech to U.S. Navy SEALS that same year, she said that the West is doomed to failure until it identifies Islam as the “real enemy.”
A slideshow presented as educational material on ACT! for America’s website refers to Muslims’ birth rates as a “demographic timebomb” and says that moderate Muslims are the true radicals.
But Rodgers, the group’s executive director, said the group is not prejudiced, and that it works with Muslims who want to reform Islam. Islam has “issues” that need to be addressed, he said.
“Embedded within Islamic doctrine is a supremacist political ideology,” Rodgers said. “Does every Muslim agree with that ideology? No. Does every Muslim practice it? No. But it’s that particular political ideology that is at the root of militancy, whether it’s violent militancy or what we call ‘cultural jihad.’ “
When it comes to the information about Islam and terrorism that ACT espouses, the group is less than transparent. In its tax return, American Congress for Truth notes that it conducted 700 hours of research on the issues, but Rodgers declined to name any of those researchers.
‘This filthy doctrine’
If the difference between being anti-Islam and anti-radical Islam is nuanced, some of ACT’s supporters don’t appear to get the message.
Facebook “fans” of the group repeatedly post anti-Islamic sentiments on the page. In the past week, one posted that “this filthy doctrine needs to be wiped off the face of the earth,” and another declared hatred of Muslims. The week before, one post praised ACT for “fighting the good fight” against Islam, and another called on “God-lovin” Americans to disrupt a Muslim prayer service in New York City.
But Rodgers said the group tries to keep tabs on members who cross the line. He pointed to a video posted this year by CAIR, in which an ACT member is shown saying that the Quran should be used as toilet paper.
Rodgers said ACT condemned those actions when it found out about them. The group can’t know about the beliefs of every one of its members, he said.
What isn’t in dispute is how little most Americans know about Islam and the roots of terrorism.
An August poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 55 percent of Americans say they do not know very much or know nothing at all about the Muslim religion and its practices.
Yet just 62 percent of respondents said Muslims should have the same rights as other groups to build houses of worship.
And 38 percent believe Islam encourages violence more than other religions, a figure that has increased substantially in the nine years since President George W. Bush visited a mosque and reminded Americans that Islam is a religion of peace.
Republicans and people with less education are far more likely to express an unfavorable view of Islam, Pew found, and people with more knowledge of the religion are more likely to view it favorably.
Concern over rising volume
Groups that exploit that lack of information to spread fear about Muslims seem to have become louder over the past few years, said Brannon Wheeler, professor of history and director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. He does not speak on behalf of the academy.
More insidious, he said, is when groups “take a 10th century legal text [regarding sharia] … and find stuff in that text and say, this is what Muslims all around the world believe.”
Just as Christians around the world have diverging beliefs on certain issues, Muslims around the world are also quite diverse – if not more so, Wheeler said.
“It was my hope … that after the tragedy of Sept. 11, many people would learn more about Islam,” Wheeler said. “But I fear that what has happened in general is that most people’s stereotypes have become more entrenched and more widespread.”
On the whole, Muslims in America are far more integrated into society than in Europe, where there have been more violent conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Still, American Muslims – who make up less than 2 percent of the overall population – say they are more often experiencing discrimination. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has seen a surge in discrimination complaints by Muslims in the past two years, the New York Times reported in September.
Although there are many different and complex ways that people become radicalized, discrimination can be a factor, said Gary LaFree, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. Known as the START Center, it is a partner with the Department of Homeland Security, known as a Center of Excellence.
“The more you marginalize any minority in your population, the more grievances they have, and the more their grievances will be supported,” he said. “[It’s] a way of provoking people who had peacefully coexisted.”
That, LaFree said, is something that Osama bin Laden expressed hope would happen.
“If one of the main purposes of this type of terrorism is to drive a wedge between the Muslim and non-Muslim population,” he said, “it seems this is playing right into that.”
deirdre.conner@jacksonville.com
2012: Exploiting Islamophobia to Win Big
Source | by Kelley B. Vlahos
Why did Renee Ellmers, a Republican candidate for Congress from North Carolina, produce a campaign ad skewering her opponent for not vociferously opposing the Park 51 Islamic center planned for Manhattan near Ground Zero, over 500 miles away?
Because it was good campaign strategy, that’s why. She presumed that the Newt Gingrich-hyper-generated history of the Muslims conquering the city of Cordoba 13 centuries ago, complete with illustrations and the juxtaposition of Ground Zero, would pay off, particularly among the disgruntled southern conservatives in her district, which covers the central and eastern parts of the state. And she was right – this blatant exploitation of their fears certainly didn’t hurt and might very well have helped her beat seven-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Bob Etheridge in one of the many GOP upsets of the midterm elections.
In fact, anti-Muslim rage in today’s national discourse is populism’s low-hanging fruit, and many Republicans hungrily grabbed at it with both fists and were duly rewarded this campaign season. Sure, not every one of the Sarah Palin/Tea Party-endorsed candidates won on Nov. 2, but those who did, won in part because of their willingness to indulge in the Islamophobia coursing through the Republican base today, not despite it. The same Republican base that helped the party torpedo the Democrats last Tuesday, taking back the House, six senate seats, six governorships, and 680 slots in state legislatures (the most in the modern era, according to the National Journal).
“I think this election will weigh heavily on us for the next couple of years,” lamented James Zogby, director of the Arab American Institute, talking before an audience assembled at The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C on Thursday. Parsing out the election results in the frame of the current backlash, he said Islamophobia has “exploded” on the Arab-American community in the U.S., “to the extent I don’t think I have ever seen before.”
In Florida, for example, Republican ex-Army officer and two-time congressional candidate, Allen West, has been fond of giving speeches that highlight his perceived historical knowledge of Islam as a religion of murder and hate. Pontificating on the Quran at the Hudson Institute this year, West exclaimed, “this is not a perversion, (Terrorists) are doing exactly what this book says.”
In February, West took it up a notch, speaking before the Freedom Defense Initiative, a jihad-hunting fundraising machine headed by Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) and Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch):
“There is no such thing as ‘war on terror,’” he told his audience, “a nation does not go to war against a tactic. A nation goes to war against an ideology… we are against something that is a totalitarian, theocratic, political ideology and it is called Islam.”
Geller did her best to promote West’s candidacy – “Run West Run!” – and Ellmers was also on Geller’s list of “endorsed” candidates. In ordinary political times, respectable Republican candidates would have steered clear away from Geller and Spencer and other such toxic avengers.
Not West, not now. On Tuesday, the Tea Party-backed West beat Democratic incumbent Rep. Ron Klein with 55 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, just days before the election, right wing blogs started touting what they said was proof that Democratic Rep. Joseph Sestak, running in a tight race for Senate with Republican Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, had attended a 2006 campaign fundraiser hosted for him by the director of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), an “unindicted terrorist co-conspirator” that is supposedly a front for Hamas, but apparently not so effective to have been charged as such by the U.S. government. Nevertheless, the accusations have been dogging Sestak, a retired Vice Admiral in the U.S. Navy, and in July, blogs like Atlas Shrugs began pushing the issue and circulating this ad by the “Emergency Committee for Israel,” a right wing marriage of Washington neoconservatives and evangelical Christians with a lot of money to burn. It launched with the Sestak attack, and was key in making Park 51 a national issue a few weeks later.
Sestak lost last Tuesday to Toomey, 49 to 51 percent.
In Nevada, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid may have beat back a challenge by Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle, but most would agree she forced him to dance to her tune throughout the entire campaign. Example: when challenged in August by Angle to break his silence on the Park 51 project, Reid succumbed to the noxious Tea Party atmosphere and said Park 51 should be “built elsewhere.”
Later, in October, Angle indulged a delusional audience member by agreeing with him that Muslims were slowly taking over the American legal system.
“We’re talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe it isn’t a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it,” she told the audience.
Off the congressional grid, Republican Josh Mandel, whose campaign produced an attack ad that artfully invoked anti-mosque/Muslim feelings while pumping up Mandel’s “real American” status as a “decorated Marine,” “crushed” incumbent Ohio State Treasurer Kevin Boyce, a Democrat, by 15 points.
Notably, national jihad-watchers weighed in on this statewide race, targeting Mandel’s opponent’s deputy, accusing him of attending an “infamous mosque” and “hanging with Islamic extremists.” After the election, the Cleveland Plain Dealer referred to Mandel as “a rising star in his party.”
And of course, there was the successful state ballot initiative in super red Oklahoma, touted by Gingrich and others as the first shot across the bow at the coming Muslim invasion. The “Save our State” amendment will modify the state constitution to ban Sharia law. Comedian Stephen Colbert, while noting that there are only 15,000 Muslims in Oklahoma today, had the best take yet: “Just because something doesn’t exist doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ban it. That’s why I have long fought for ballot measures to ban cat pilots, baby curling, and man-futon marriage.” (video here).
Looking at the smoldering post-election landscape and the long presidential campaign trail ahead, it’s clear that Islamophobia as a political tool is here to stay –- wielded by Republicans who use it to excite and galvanize the right wing, embarrass their opponents and sow the seeds of fear and paranoia in everyone else. And it’s so damn effective!
Zogby says President Bush may have “kept a lid on” the worst of the backlash after 9/11, however selfishly, by promoting the meme that his military invasions were not a “war on Muslims.” But the election of Barack Obama and the accompanying economic crisis unleashed the vitriol simmering under the surface, stirred by what Zogby called the expanding “cottage industry of terrorism experts” like Geller, Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Clifford May and Frank Gaffney. They inhabit largely Republican think tanks like the Center for Security Policy, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which as a monolith of anti-Muslim rhetoric, all provide daily talking points to Republican politicians like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and up-and-comers like West and Ellmers.
They also inspire and conspire with evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham (son of the Rev. Billy Graham), who felt emboldened enough to call Islam “wicked” and “evil” during a televised town meeting-style forum last April. Why not, when he knows that nearly half the electorate, or those identifying as Republican or ‘leaning Republican,’ likely agree with him on some level.
According to poll results announced by the Arab American Institute on Nov. 1, 66 percent of Republican voters now hold an unfavorable view of Arabs; 85 percent hold an unfavorable view of Muslims. Compare that to 28 percent who hold a favorable view of Arabs, and 12 percent who hold a favorable view of Muslims.
From Zogby:
“The GOP has become captive of several groups that now dominate the party’s base and have transformed its thinking. The ‘religious right’ and its ‘end of days’ preachers like Pat Robertson, William Hagee and Gary Bauer, presently constitute almost 40% of Republican voters. This group’s emphasis on the divinely ordained battle between the forces of ‘good’ (i.e. the Christian West and Israel) and the forces of ‘evil’ (Islam and the Arabs) has logically given rise to anti-Muslim prejudice.
“Then there are the Christian right’s ideological cousins, the neo-conservatives, who share an identical Manichean and apocalyptic world view, though with a secular twist. And into the mix must be thrown Islamophobic right-wing radio and TV commentators like [Bill] O’Reilly, [Glenn] Beck, [Rush] Limbaugh, [Michael] Savage and company, who daily spew their poison across the airwaves.
“The combination produces a lethal brew that is dangerous not only for the intolerance it has created, but the sense of certitude and self-righteousness it projects.”
The incoming Republican chairs to the foreign policy/security/intelligence committees and shifts in the party leadership in the House are “really problematic,” said Zogby. He pointed out several members who are quite known for promoting interventionist, anti-Arab/Muslim policy prescriptions and are expected to rise in the ranks next year, including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Foreign Affairs), Eric Cantor (Majority Leader), Dan Burton (Foreign Affairs-Middle East), Peter King (Homeland Security), Lamar Smith (Judiciary) and Steve King (Judiciary-immigration).
“You have people who have a decidedly anti-Arab, anti-Islam mindset … it’s born out of the same ideological fervor of the last (Bush) administration,” said Zogby. As for the broader problem of Islamophobia and the Republican wave of influence in Washington politics, he said, “I think it will have an impact on the President and it will make the climate very difficult.”
You bet. Especially with the presidential campaign right around the corner. In fact, I’ve argued that it is already here. Watch the Islamophobia that poisoned the well in the midterms metastasize like a vulgar cancer for what already promises to be a Republican/Tea Party crusade to throw Obama – a man who upwards of 46 percent of Republicans believe is a secret Muslim – out of the White House for good.
Though the so-called Tea Party movement was supposedly born out of a backlash to the President’s “socialist” economic policies in times of financial crisis, it has done nothing to dissuade its adherents from scapegoating immigrants and Muslims for the country’s problems. Zogby tells Antiwar.com that “if a popular (GOP) leader criticizes this bigotry it could have an impact.” I am not so optimistic. As Zogby said himself, “once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to get it back in.” And this is one hell of a vengeful Jinn.
Still Hating: Our Summer Of Islamophobia
Susan Campbell | Source
This summer, we rolled over and showed our ugly underbelly.
While hounds bayed over a not-mosque planned for not-Ground Zero, a nutty pastor in Florida threatened to mark 9/11’s ninth anniversary by burning the Qu’ran. People who in times of floods might volunteer to fill sandbags contributed to a different kind of deluge by staging loud opposition to the construction of mosques in their neighborhoods in Tennessee, in California.
We can still hate in America. We have this summer to prove it.
Imam Abdullah Antepli is a former Hartford Seminary student, former Muslim chaplain at Welseyan University, and now Duke University’s first Muslim chaplain. Right after college, Antepli left his native Turkey to avoid pressure to homogenize in a land once proud of its colorful tapestry of cultures.
We are not the same, we won’t ever be, and it suits us better to embrace our differences. As Antepli earned his education around the world, he discovered the golden truth about multi-faith efforts.
“Some of my most transcendental personal moments have not come in a mosque, not when I am dealing with a uniquely Muslim community, but when I am dealing in a cross-religious, cross-lingual society,” Antepli said. “That’s when I say, ‘Oh, my God. There you are.'”
The terrorist attack of 9/11 was a horrible way to be introduced to Islam because that act was not Islam. That was evil, and for nine long – and, up until the summer, fruitful – years, Muslims in this country made important inroads educating neighbors and co-workers about what Islam is not.
There should have been time to talk about what Islam is, but ignorance is an ugly beast and sometimes, the terrorists win. They may not kill our physical selves, but they kill the American tradition of standing together.
And then this cancer of a summer happened, and the beast arose again.
Antepli chose Duke over Princeton or Yale. He was drawn to the opportunity to serve the school’s 6,600 undergraduates, including its 500 Muslim Blue Devils. He became the face and voice of Islam for a land not overly familiar with his religion.
That has been challenging, to say the least. Duke Country is dotted with church signs that say things like “Hell is Full of Fags and Muslims.” Antepli has visited churches where, before he settles into a pew, someone asks him about the virgins he can expect in the afterlife.
In answer, he hands them his Qu’ran and asks them to find the verse that promises virgins. In fact, it’s not there. My response? People generally don’t read their own sacred text, much less the holy verses of someone else. They prefer someone to spoon-feed them their religious beliefs because learning for themselves takes blood, sweat and tears. Ignorance is and ever will be easier. But that’s me talking, not Antepli.
Dawn pierces even the darkest night. As a Duke chaplain, Antepli befriended U.S. Rep. David Price, who invited him to deliver the opening prayer for a House session in March. That, in turn, has led to more contacts in Washington.
“The civic culture we have in this society is one of the best, shariah-compliant, in my understanding of Islamic theology,” Antepli said. “We’ve made huge progress. We’ve inspired the global community with our successes. And we have worked together, but the work is not done.”
Of course there’s hope. Summer’s in the rearview. We just may come through these times as we’ve come through others: A little battered, a lot sadder, but a whole lot smarter.
Abdullah Antepli is the keynote speaker at the Hartford Prayer Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Thursday at The Artists Collective, 1200 Albany Ave., Hartford. For more information, go to http://www.hartfordprayerbreakfast.org.
On Fox CT Monday: Reporter Laurie Perez takes a look at 10 p.m. at Islamophobia in Connecticut — how more than ever it’s influencing development, leading to debate, and creating controversy. There will be a panel discussion on the issue on the Fox CT morning show at 8 a.m.
Mother Jones: Muslimophobia: Election Roundup
Source | By Jen Phillips
— YouTube still from Josh Mandel campaign / fair use
First, the good news: Many anti-Muslim candidates did not get elected Tuesday. Now the bad news: Alas, several anti-Muslim candidates won—mostly in the South. Oh, and Oklahoma became the first state to ban sharia law, even though only 0.8% of the population is Muslim. Below, a (fairly) complete list of vocally anti-Islam politicos in 2010. I’ve tried to include only candidates who won primaries, but if you have additions, please post them in the comments.
Oklahoma
Question 755: Banning of Sharia and international law. This measure, aka “Save Our State,” amends the state’s constitution to forbid Oklahoma judges from “considering or using” international or sharia law when deciding cases. The bill’s sponsor, Oklahoma State Senator Rex Duncan, admits that no judge in the state has ever tried to use sharia law. As he told Fox News, “we want to make sure they never will.” He’s called the bill a “preemptive strike” against sharia.
PASSED 70% / 30%
Delaware
Christine O’Donnell for Senate: O’Donnell worked with an aide who, as we reported, pushed the idea that Obama was secretly Muslim and would always be one, despite attending Christian churches for decades. On another note, O’Donnell said it was “refreshing” to go on a Bible-themed tour of Jordan because she found the culture more modest. She’s a bit of a mixed bag (declined to endorse or condemn the mosque near Ground Zero) but with her wacky statements and fuzzy hold on separation of church and state, still probably a good thing she didn’t get elected.
FAILED 40% / 56.6%
New York
Carl Paladino for Governor: Paladino said the proposed Islamic center near ground zero “makes a mockery of those who died there” and promised to stop it if elected in this campaign ad. He called it “a monument to those who attacked our country,” simultaneously espousing that Muslims are not Americans and they’re all terrorists. Paladino went further to propose no mosque be built where the 9/11 “dust cloud” had been.
FAILED 34% / 61.5%
Minnesota
Keith Ellison for House: Rep. Ellison, a Muslim and a Democrat, has been attacked by conservatives like Glenn Beck and more recently, by tea party leaders like Judson Phillips. Back in 2006, Beck asked Ellison to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” This year, Phillips wrote that “I’m bothered by a religion that says kill the infidel,” encouraged Minnesotans to vote for Ellison’s rival, and said that “I, personally have a real problem with Islam.” Voters disagreed with Phillips, and re-elected Ellison by a landslide.
WON 68% / 24%
North Carolina
Renee Ellmers for House: Republican Ellmers ran on an anti-mosque platform, running ads like this one that equates the Muslims of ancient Constantinople (failing to mention the equally rapacious Christians of that era) with the Muslim Park 51 organizers and calls the proposed Islamic center a “victory mosque.”
WON 49.6% / 48.5%
Ilario Pantano for House: Pantano is perhaps better known for shooting 45 rounds of ammunition into two unarmed Iraqi civilians, killing them, during his 2004 tour of duty. “I had made a decision that when I was firing I was going to send a message to these Iraqis,” Pantano said. He was charged with murder, but the charges were later dropped. Since then, Pantano’s been busy protesting the Park51 project and welcoming an endorsement from radical anti-Islamist Pam Geller. He even wrote in an op-ed that the Islamic prayer space was a “martyr marker” and “If this was truly about bridging cultures, we should be erecting a church.”
FAILED 46.2% / 53.8%
Ohio
Josh Mandel for State Treasurer: Mandel said in an ad that Boyce gave out jobs as favors, including one “he only made available at their mosque” and another “sensitive” job at the Treasury Department. The ad looks like it was trying to paint Boyce as a Muslim, even though he is Christian and had never been to the mosque in question. Boyce’s deputy, Amer Ahmad, is Muslim but both he and Mandel disputed the claims in the ad, including that the secretarial job at the Treasury was sensitive in nature. The ad stopped running after a week, but Mandel won anyway.
WON 54.9% / 40.2%
Florida
Allen West for House: Tea party candidate West is one of the most anti-Islamic this election season. West said that “Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology, it is not a religion. It has not been a religion since 622 AD, and we need to have individuals that stand up and say that.” To continue the blatant fear-mongering, in speeches West equates today’s Muslims with those of medieval Europe, alleging that if Muslims in the US are not stopped, we too will have to change our name like Constantinople.
WON 54.4% / 45.7%
Indiana
Marvin Scott for House: Scott ran against Muslim Andre Carson for a House seat and used Carson’s faith as a campaign tool. Scott stated on his website that “Radical elements of Islam are funding and building mosques across America.” While professing a love for freedom of religion, he said that “I passionately defend his [Carson’s] right to become a Muslim… What they do not have the right to do is to replace American law with extremist Muslim Sharia law.” To Scott, apparently, there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim or one who doesn’t advocate Sharia law.
FAILED 37.8% / 58.9%
Nevada
Sharron Angle for Senate: Angle thinks the Park51 organizers should move their mosque, and told an audience that “I keep hearing about Muslims wanting to take over the United States … on a TV program just last night, I saw that they are taking over a city in Michigan.” She also voiced concern about sharia law, which she seemed to think was being used widely in American courts in Dearborn, Michigan and Frankford, Texas (it’s not, and Frankford was incorporated into Dallas long ago).
Jen Phillips is the editorial coordinator at Mother Jones. For more of her stories, click here or follow her on Twitter, @the_hip_hapa
John Sugg on why won’t the Tampa Trib tell you what people in Nashville know about Steve Emerson?
Steven Emerson, a self-styled terrorism expert, is a guy who had a profound and caustic impact on Tampa for more than a decade. Emerson has had much less of an impact on another city, Nashville, although his corrosive brand of often-inaccurate smear jobs recently slithered into Tennessee.
Still, Nashville’s citizens know a whole lot more about Emerson than folks in Tampa, despite his relatively recent arrival on the Tennessee hate-Muslim soapbox, where he jostles for the limelight with loopy religious fanatics and just plain old-fashioned Southern bigots.
Why that imbalance of knowledge about Emerson? The answer lies in a horrible miscarriage of journalism committed over many years by The Tampa Tribune, a series of atrocities the Trib could easily correct by just providing a dash of fair and accurate reporting, something history indicates the newspaper won’t do. Nashville should be grateful that it has a newspaper, The Tennessean, which unlike the Trib will fearlessly dig out the truth.
In tandem with his vassal reporter at the Tampa Trib, Michael Fechter, Emerson waged a decade-long jihad against a professor at the University of South Florida, Sami Al-Arian, accused by Emerson and Fechter of being a terrorist mastermind. Emerson and Fechter were backed by a shadowy network of former federal agents and foreign spooks, notably a disinformation specialist for Israel’s ultra-right Likud party named Yigal Carmon and a controversial ex-FBI official named Oliver “Buck” Revell – and a lot of money whose origins have never been revealed.
However, where their information came from was clear. As the great Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz explained before Al-Arian’s 2005 federal trial: “Israel owns much of the copyright for the case; a well-informed source termed the prosecution an ‘American-Israeli co-production.’ The Americans are running the show, but behind the scenes it was the Israelis who for years collected material (and) transmitted information…” How did they transmit information? In part, via “secret evidence” slipped to our federales, evidence and accusers Al-Arian wasn’t allowed to confront (who needs that nasty old Sixth Amendment?). But reporters were also conduits for scurrilous “intelligence” claims. Fechter himself wrote that “former and current senior Israeli intelligence officials” loaded his stories with information. Those allegations, many ludicrous on their face, were rejected by a federal jury, despite a highly prejudiced judge and rulings that, if they had been issued against Martin Luther King Jr. would have prevented him from mentioning Jim Crow in his defense.
Over the years, while a Weekly Planet and Creative Loafing editor, I had a great deal of fun exposing Emerson, and the prevarications by Fechter and the federal government. I tried to put into context what the anti-Muslim crusaders were up to. I joined a rather elite cadre of journalists that had tangled with Emerson – including famed investigative reporters Seymour Hersh, Robert I. Friedman and Robert Parry, who provided me with insight into Emerson’s real agenda.
Emerson filed two bogus lawsuits against me, the Weekly Planet (AKA Creative Loafing) and an AP reporter who had told me about questions he had had over the provenance of a document Emerson gave the news service. We obtained a court order that would have forced Emerson to produce real proof of his allegations – and he knew we were digging into who he really was and who paid his bills – so he ran away from the fight he started; the good guys (me, for example) prevailed.
It’s noteworthy that a number of dispassionate analysts had observations similar to mine. New York University scholar Zachary Lockman, for example, (as quoted on “Right Web”) wrote in 2005: “[Emerson’s] main focus during the 1990s was to sound the alarm about the threat Muslim terrorists posed to the United States. By the end of that decade Emerson was describing himself as a ‘terrorist expert and investigator’ and ‘Executive Director, Terrorism Newswire, Inc.’ Along the way, critics charged, Emerson had sounded many false alarms, made numerous errors of fact, bandied accusations about rather freely, and ceased to be regarded as credible by much of the mainstream media . The September 11 attacks seemed to bear out Emerson’s warnings, but his critics might respond that even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day.”
Again, it’s sadly significant that the Trib never even provided such mild doses of context about its primary source, Emerson, in its inflammatory, intentionally erroneous and misleading, and often racist diatribes against Al-Arian. The Trib still gives Emerson ink – never questioning his claims and guilt-by-association-and-innuendo tactics, and never vetting his background, associations, financing and motives.
Some insight on Emerson’s millions has now been provided by The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, citing the Tennessean’s reports, on Oct. 26 awarded Emerson his nightly “Worst Person in the World” citation. Olbermann expressed regret that the network had previously used Emerson as a chattering head on terrorism topics. (Similarly, CBS did not renew its contract with Emerson after he claimed that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing had “a Middle Eastern trait” because it was carried out “with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible.” That was a big “Oops.”)
The Tennessean reported that Emerson collects money through a non-profit, the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, and then funnels that money to his for-profit SAE (as in Steven A. Emerson) Productions. Quoting Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, the Nashville paper reported: “Basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, and all that money going to a for-profit. It’s wrong. This is off the charts.”
That little bit of information on Emerson, contained in one report, is far more than the Trib told you about Emerson over a decade – despite Emerson using the Trib to provoke a legal firestorm that is still ongoing.
You do recall the firestorm, right? Emerson and Fechter launched a series of series of attacks on Muslims. No amount of hyperbole and vitriol-spewing was considered excessive by the Trib or Emerson. Fechter, for example, darkly hinted that the FBI found documents about MacDill Air Force Base among Al-Arian’s papers, insinuating some dastardly design. Nope. Al-Arian had twice been invited to speak to large groups of military and intelligence officers, and the sinister documents were, well, just the hand-out materials. Fechter, following the lead of his guru, Emerson, also tried to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Arabs, an egregiously false story the Trib has never seen fit to correct. Emerson, meanwhile, said in February 1996 that Palestinian advocates at USF were involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Emerson promised proof “in the near term.” The proof never came, and the Justice Department said it had no records supporting the allegation.
You think the Trib might have called Emerson on that one? Hahaha.
The former head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa, Robert O’Neill, twice concluded during the 1990s there was no evidence to prosecute Al-Arian, according to my multiple sources in the Justice Department. I don’t like quoting anonymous sources so I’ll be clear: O’Neill, now the U.S. Attorney for Florida’s Middle District, himself told me he had looked at the evidence and found no reason to prosecute. In 1998, the then FBI counterterrorism chief Bob Blitzer also told me “no federal laws were broken” by the Tampa Muslims.
Yet, after 9/11, propelled by hate-Muslim diatribes from Bill O’Reilly (who had been funneled highly slanted information by Fechter) and the fear by Jeb Bush that the University of South Florida would conclude a settlement with Al-Arian that would prove embarrassing to the Bushite regimes in Washington and Tallahassee, the federal government indicted Al-Arian. The trial concluded with the government failing to win a single guilty verdict against Al-Arian or his co-defendants, an immense disaster for the Bush Justice Department.
Al-Arian later plea bargained in order to preclude another trial on counts on which the jury didn’t reach a verdict – although notably no more than two jurors felt he was guilty on even those “hung” counts. Al-Arian’s plea bargain stipulated that he had had no involvement in terrorist activities. Rather, he had provided some minor support to people who might have become terrorists, although it’s clear from the trial that any such activities by Al-Arian occurred when they were legal. The plea agreement supposedly ended all business between Al-Arian and the federal government. However, due to legal chicanery by a rogue federal prosecutor in Virginia, Gordon Kromberg – who has been called a doppelganger of Emerson – Al-Arian remains entangled in federal courts and on house arrest.
According to my federal sources, the Al-Arian case cost our government at least $50 million, and, no, the Trib and Emerson didn’t offer to pay part of the bill (you and I had that honor). And, with so many FBI agents chasing a guy whose “guilt” was mostly in exercising his First Amendment rights, the FBI missed another fellow flitting around Florida, a real terrorist with blood on his mind, Mohammed Atta.
The final chapters in the Trib’s pogroms against Muslims had a sadly humorous angle. Fechter, who had long been a tool of Emerson’s, finally got slightly honest and went to work for his mentor. And Fechter dumped his wife and children and shacked up with one of the federal prosecutors who tried Al-Arian. I don’t recall where Fechter got his journalism training, but he must have skipped the classes on journalistic objectivity and not sleeping with your sources.
So, The Tennessean’s articles might have provided an excellent opportunity for the Trib to revisit and maybe heal a terrible wound it was complicit in inflicting in Tampa. On Friday, I asked Trib Managing Editor Richard “Duke” Maas if he had such an inclination – heck, I inquired, aren’t you interested in what The Tennessean wrote about a guy who had so much impact on Tampa and your newspaper? Well, not really, Maas responded, sounding more irritated than journalistically curious. He added that Fechter had left the newspaper, which I gather meant he felt the Trib was thereby absolved of responsibility.
If you happen to have a spare backbone, you might send it to the pathetic folks at The Tampa Tribune.
John F. Sugg was editor of the Weekly Planet in the 1990s, and group senior editor of Creative Loafing Newspapers until he retired in 2008.
Media: Jon Stewart Vs Bigot Pastor
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Weekend at Burnies | ||||
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Three Sides of the Qu’ran Burning Triangle
By ESAM AL-AMIN | Source
Ever since the 1989 “Satanic Verses” by Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie, the Muslim public, inflamed by some of their religious leaders, has been easily incited if not directly manipulated. The oversensitivity card has been drearily overplayed and is, frankly, vexing. Every now and then this episode is repeated: from the Danish cartoons of the Prophet, and Theo van Gogh’s slanted portrayal of Muslim women, to the ill-advised ban of the veil in French schools and the recent threat by a wacky Floridian pastor to burn Qur’ans on the anniversary of 9/11.
In each instance someone, by and large in the West and antagonistic to Islam and Muslims, goes out of his way to insult Islam’s venerated figures, holy book or sacred beliefs, often with the explicit purpose of offending Muslims or setting them off. Typically, Muslim leaders take the bait and act irrationally, and consequently provide more fodder to their malevolent foes.
When an obscure political cartoonist in Denmark published his highly infuriating drawings depicting the prophet of Islam as a “terrorist,” hoping to offend and insult the followers of Islam, Danish Muslim leaders toured the Islamic world raising the profile of this despicable act while calling on prominent religious figures and institutions to “defend the honor of their Prophet.” Predictably, the reaction from such institutions and leaders was not just swift condemnation, but they also led massive demonstrations, some of which turned violent, in most Islamic countries.
Civilized behavior dictates that peoples and cultures extend their respect to others regardless of their differences. But if some insist on acting boorishly, such behavior should only reflect on the uncivilized. Islam is not so fragile that Muslims must feel agitated and react to every lunatic behavior. Part of the problem seems to be that most Muslim leaders have forgotten or disregarded their own tradition.
Certainly one cannot control foolish utterances and does not have to accept insults. But one cannot also deal with despicable conduct by displaying reactionary behavior. The Qur’an repeatedly describes some of the outrageous name-calling directed at the Prophet Muhammad during his days. It deals with it in a calm, rational manner: refute the falsehoods, state the facts, argue the points if challenged with legitimate criticism, ignore the insults and walk away from the intolerant when facing the irrational and the lunatics.
The Qur’an even lists some of the taunts directed the Prophet. Among some of the names he was called were: crazy, mad poet, sorcerer, magician, and forger. Authentic reports demonstrate that when some men or women insulted him, his response was to pray for their guidance or walk away. The Qur’an also instructs the believers not to insult other (false) gods so as not to instigate others to insult their God. But when such abusive behavior is exhibited, the Qur’an calls on its followers to “show forgiveness, enjoin what’s good, and turn away from the foolish,” not to punish them.
The latest farce came about when one obscure megalomaniac pastor in Florida called for “International Burn a Koran Day.” Many Islamic leaders and groups in several Muslim capitals immediately went into overdrive not to condemn, or better yet ignore the act, but to burn American flags or paint Americans as “intolerant Islamophobes.”
Mohammad Morsy, a Western-educated Engineer, is the media spokesperson for the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most popular Islamic movement in the Middle East. He called on President Barack Obama, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and every other Western politician and government to stop the madness of one individual’s conduct. The degree to which this topic was discussed on the Brotherhood’s popular website was astonishing. Not only was it the number one story on the site for several days, but five of the eight headlines on the front page on the day commemorating the end of Ramadan, one of the most celebrated days in the Islamic calendar, dealt directly with the subject.
One cannot attribute this obsession with an extremist pastor with no more than fifty followers merely to ignorance. Having lived in California for several years while pursuing his PhD, Morsy knows fully well that neither Obama nor any other official can stop this act, regardless of how despicable or outrageous it might be, because it’s constitutionally protected. While the Muslim masses could be excused for thinking that Western governments, much like their own, have unrestricted power to ban or stop such acts, the elites in the Muslim world know better. The only possible explanation is that they use this issue because of its emotional appeal to stir the public against the West and by extension the Western-backed regimes that persecute them, without having to directly confront these corrupt governments.
Freedom of religion and speech is the anchor of any free society. But it goes both ways. While it allows American Muslims to enjoy the freedom to worship and propagate their minority faith within society, it also permits fringe elements in the same social structure to insult them without fear of government sanctions or intervention. If the government had the power to pick and choose which religion or speech to allow or ban, the first casualty, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, would undoubtedly be the Muslim faith and its adherents. Exhibit A: just follow the debate of the so-called Ground Zero mosque.
Western officials, from Gen. David Petraeus, NATO and UN Secretary Generals, to Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and Obama, all rushed to condemn the Qur’an burning threat, further raising the profile of the fanatic pastor. While it’s commendable that such high government officials would issue strong denunciations, their involvement sets a dangerous precedent in dealing with a non-substantive issue.
Muslim leaders need to realize that Obama cannot stop the burning of the Qur’an on constitutional grounds, but surely he can reverse many policies that have been in place since 9/11 that trample on the civil rights of American Muslims. Preemptive prosecutions, government-concocted conspiracies, shutting down legitimate charities, the use of agent provocateurs, infiltration of mosques, and the establishment of fusion centers and communication management units are but few examples of the real war on American Muslims.
As for America’s policy abroad in regards to the Middle East, putting aside the fiasco in Iraq, and the failures in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the U.S. has enabled Israel to oppress the Palestinians for decades. It has been providing the rogue state with the most lethal weapons in its arsenal, with billions of dollars of economic aid that subsidize, directly or indirectly, the presence of hundreds of thousands of settlers on Palestinian territories, while shielding the apartheid-like state politically and diplomatically. Such policies are at the heart of the Muslim world’s grievances, not the superficiality of desecrating sacred books or holy figures.
Although U.S. and European mainstream media outlets have been able to find the delicate balance between free and bigoted speech when it comes to the issue of anti-Semitism, these same organizations have so far failed to manage the phenomenon of Islamophobia. As with anti-Semitism in the case of Jews, Islamophobia can be defined as speech or conduct exhibiting prejudice or hostility towards Muslims or towards their culture and religion. The media usually ignores and marginalizes anti-Semites, if they are not first confronted and ridiculed. Society at large has been conditioned and sensitized to this fact, so any Holocaust denier, for instance, would be immediately shunned or disregarded.
The media should treat Islamophobes in a similar fashion. They need to be isolated and denied access to airwaves and opinion pages. Conservative media outlets or personalities such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Bill O’Reilly would not dare to exhibit or utter anti-Semitic slurs. But they have been given a free pass when it comes to Islam or Muslims. They must be put to shame in the same way that Don Imus was when he made racist comments about African-American athletes three years ago.
Rightwing and conservative politicians in America and Europe have been using 9/11 as a club to beat up on most Muslims as if they were the real culprits of the tragic terror attacks. Newt Gingrich equates Islam, not Al-Qaeda, with Nazism, while Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and John Boehner assign collective guilt to Muslims and to their entire faith. Such behavior is no different from the extremists in the Muslim world who want to condemn and target Christianity and Christians, or Judaism and Jews, for the misguided policies of the U.S. or Israel that cause Muslim suffering.
The U.S. was neither attacked by Islam nor by a global Muslim conspiracy on 9/11. It was attacked by Al-Qaeda, a fringe group condemned by the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world shortly after the attacks. At least 64 American Muslims died on that day. Their families and friends felt as much pain as every other victim’s relatives. American Muslims have thus been victimized twice, once by Al-Qaeda, but more so every week by the Islamophobes and their political hacks. These political opportunists must be exposed and rejected.
The threat to burn Qur’ans exposed everyone. Muslim leaders must change their approach and not confront every foolish insult coming their way. These are tactical distractions that waste energy and resources. If they have to demonstrate they should protest against policies that target their communities and violate their civil and political rights.
Similarly, the media need to change the way they cover Islamophobes and their enablers, as well as the nutty politicians that opportunistically follow them.
Esam Al-Amin can be reached at alamin1919@gmail.com
Obama tells Rev. Terry Jones to call off ‘International Burn-a-Koran Day’
BY MICHAEL SHERIDAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
President Obama is appealing to a Florida pastor to listen to the “better angels” of his nature, and call off his incendiary plan to burn Korans on 9/11.
The commander-in-chief fears, as many others have said, that Rev. Terry Jones’ “destructive” book burning would spark outrage and fuel the fires of hatred that could target American troops.
“If he’s listening, I just hope he understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values [as] Americans,” Obama told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
Jones, a preacher from Gainesville, Fla., has said for months that he plans to burn several hundred Korans on September 11 for an event he’s dubbed, “International Burn-a-Koran Day.”
It went largely dismissed, until violent protests in Afghanistan and Indonesia over the weekend sparked concerns the event could incite more violence.
“I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan,” Obama told Stephanopoulos.
The President argued the stunt could be used as a “recruitment bonanza” for Al Qaeda.
“You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan,” he said. “This could increase the recruitment of individuals who’d be willing to blow themselves up in American cities, or European cities.”
Obama also hinted that should Jones, 58, go through with his book burning, he could be scorched with legal consequences.
“My understanding is that he can be cited for public burning,” the President said. “But that’s the extent of the laws that we have available to us.”
Jones, who heads the Dove World Outreach Church, has gotten heat from government officials, military leaders and others in the last few days over his “Koran” event.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan,” Gen. David Petraeus said on Monday.
“This feeds right into what they want,” Gen. Ray Odierno said on NBC‘s “Today” show on Wednesday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called the plan “disgraceful,” Attorney General Eric Holder labeled it “idiotic,” while Mayor Bloomberg felt it was “disgraceful,” although he defended Rev. Jones’ right to do it.
“I happen to think that it is distasteful,” he said. But “the First Amendment protects everybody, and you can’t say that we’re going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement.”
Even the White House‘s usual political opponents agree with Obama. Sarah Palin has called the Koran burning “antithetical to American ideals,” while Fox News pundit Glenn Beck said it was “insensitive and an unnecessary provocation.”
The FBI has warned that Jones, who carries a gun in response to death threats, is putting himself in danger for “International Burn-a-Koran Day.”
“The FBI assesses with high confidence that, as with past incidents perceived as acts of desecration against Islam, extremist actors will continue to threaten or attempt to harm the leaders, organizers, or attendees [of] the event,” an FBI intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News said.
Jones vows to go through with his book burning, despite the warnings.
“We have firmly made up our mind,” he said Tuesday. The preacher also had something to say to those who think he should call it off.
“We are simply burning a book,” he told CNN‘s Anderson Cooper. “General [Petraeus] needs to point his finger to radical Islam and tell them to shut up, tell them to stop, tell them that we will not bow our knees to them.”
Who is Rev. Terry Jones? Read more about controversial Florida preacher
msheridan@nydailynews.com; or follow him at Twitter.com/NYDNSheridan
Quran burning does not solve your problems
Source
By Kourosh Ziabari
You might be unfamiliar with the concept of “Wudu”. It’s an Islamic practice including the washing of some parts of body such as the hands, arms and face in order to get prepared for saying prayers or reciting the Quran. It’s is of high value in the Islamic tradition, because it’s a preface to inner purity and satisfies the Almighty Creator who wants its creatures to be pure and clean once they want to talk to Him. Wudu is translated into English as “ablution”. One who is in the state of Wudu, that is has washed his face, hands, arms and feet, is obliged to adhere to some certain codes of morality, including devotion to honesty, justice and sincerity. One who is in the state of Wudu is supposed not to tell lie, not to judge with prejudice and partiality and not to state or claim what is unrighteous and unfair.
Prior to setting off for writing this article, I conducted “Wudu” and promised myself not to get out of the borders of honesty and objectivity. I promised myself to propose what is my concern in a manner that is justifiable and virtuous, and pose a few questions as someone who has been entitled to ask freely, without being disrupted by projection or disturbance.
It was on the news headlines that the Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center church pastor Terry Jones has decided to burn a set of Qurans on the advent of September 11 in an action which is deemed to be a remonstration against what is introduced as “Islamic extremism”.
Regrettably, Wayne Sapp who is an associate pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center has proclaimed that burning the Holy Quran is a direction God wants them to go. “We are convinced this is the direction God wants us to go. That’s the only reason we’re doing it in the first place,” he told the reporters.
First and foremost, it should be noted that the announcement of such a plan, regardless of its being done or not, is an immoral, condemnable and blameworthy action. The immorality and unacceptability of such an action would be underscored by the fact that an evangelical church which considers itself a propagator of Christian religious values has decided to burn a holy book which some 1.5 billion people around the world revere and venerate.
In this point, one may unavoidably come across to a vital question which puts one into an inevitable and inescapable stalemate: what happens if the Muslims announce a plan to burn the Torah? Won’t they be accused of extremism, anti-Semitism, fanaticism, fundamentalism and radicalism? Won’t they become the subject of unending attacks by the mainstream, corporate media of the United States, United Kingdom, Israel and their European allies? Won’t the international organizations collectively condemn the Muslim society and won’t an all-out wave of Islamophobic actions set out to emerge around the world? Won’t the high-ranking politicians and statesmen of countries, who don’t have anything to do with Judaism, condemn this action simply because of their connection and affinity with Israel? Won’t any conscious, cognizant and decent citizen rebuff such an outrageous and disgraceful action? Won’t the international community categorically react to the Muslims community?
The answer to all of the questions posed above is clear. The extent of international punishments for insulting the holy book of Jews will be so wide-ranging and across-the-board that the Muslims will profoundly regret their action and instantaneously apologize; however, the question which I posed contains a possibility that never takes place. Muslims have always paid tribute to other Abrahamic religions and treated their pillars, prophets and holy books with great reverence and respect. Essentially, Islam has put a crucial responsibility on the shoulders of Muslims to respect the other religions, treat with the followers of Abrahamic religions in a brotherly manner and never make a distinction between them.
To be just and fair, Islam has comprehensively advised its followers to pay homage and respect to the beliefs of those who follow other religions and avoid behaving in a way which degrades and subdues them. In the Verse 285 of the Chapter Baqara (Heifer) of the Holy Quran, we read: “The Apostle believeth in what hath been revealed to him from his Lord, as do the men of faith.
Each one (of them) believeth In God, His angels, His books, and His apostles. We make no distinction (they say) between one and another of His apostles. And they say: we hear, and we obey: (we seek) Thy forgiveness, our Lord, and to Thee Is the end of all journeys.”
This is a clear evidence for the fact that Quran orders the Muslims to treat all of the prophets equally without making any distinction between them.
In the Verse 44 of the Chapter Maida, (The Table Spread), the Almighty God stresses the necessity and essentiality of respecting and esteeming the holy book of Torah: “It was We who revealed The Torah (to Moses): therein was guidance and light. By its standard have been judged The Jews, by the Prophets Who bowed (as in Islam) to God’s Will, by the Rabbis and the Doctors of Law: For to them was entrusted the protection of God’s Book, and they were witnesses thereto: Therefore fear not men, but fear Me, and sell not My Signs for a miserable price. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what God hath revealed, they are (no better than) unbelievers”
The more substantial evidence which demonstrates that Islam is strictly committed to the veneration of other prophets and their holy books can be found in the Verse 136 of the Chapter Baqara. “Say ye: we believe In God, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ismā’īl, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord: we make no difference between one and another of them: And we bow to God (in Islam).”
The Holy Quran highlights that its teachings and values verify and complement the teachings of previous holy books, including Torah and Bible, and this clear statement can be found in the Verse 92 of the Chapter An’am (Cattle): “And this is a Book which We have sent down, bringing blessings, and confirming the revelations which came before it: that thou Mayest warn the Mother of Cities and all around her. Those who believe In the Hereafter believe in this Book, and they are constant In guarding their Prayers.”
Islam has never hesitated to verify the authenticity and legitimacy of its predecessors and the nations which adhered to the holy books. In the Verse 62 of the Chapter Baqara, it’s expressively stated that those who believe in the Almighty God and do decent acts, regardless of their religion, will be blessed and exalted rightfully: “Those who believe in the Quran, and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians, – any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”
There are thousands of such instances which indicate the benevolence, peacefulness and serenity of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood. Those who crashed into the twin towers of New York and accomplished the mission of 9/11 were not Muslims. They belonged to the gangs which the very White House, that is now purportedly launching a global war on terror, founded, nurtured, supported and amplified to the extent of an international terrorist organization: Al-Qaida.
Burning the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will simply draw an end to the spiritual life of those who have planned such a dirty trick. I’m sure that no conscious Muslim will do any harm to the evangelical pastor who is going to burn the Holy Quran on September 11, but I’m sure that his spiritual life as a minister will come to a tragic end, because the very Almighty God who has revealed the Holy Quran upon Prophet Muhammad will save His book as well. “We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).”
Winston Nagan: What Paster Jones can learn from the Islamic tradition
The pastor of Dove World Outreach, Terry Jones, seeks to justify his Koran-burning threat on the basis that Islam is the religion of Satan. He also justifies his threat on the basis that there is some completely interminable conflict between Islam and Christianity. It is unlikely that the pastor has read the Koran to determine that it and the entire religion of Islam represents the forces of darkness.
He is also, apparently, unlearned in history, because he knows nothing of the periods of shared experience in learning, science, and philosophy between Islam and the West. Permit me, therefore, to enlighten the Sun’s readers with some representative quotes from the Koran.
Since the Pastor’s threat seems to be the epitome of intolerance, it is worth quoting from the holy Koran on this subject: “Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clearly from error.”
In another passage, the Koran reads, “Lo! Those who believe in that which is revealed unto thee, Mohamed, and those who are Jews and Christians…whoever believes in God and the last day and does rights, surely their reward is with Allah and there shall be no fear come upon them, neither shall they grieve.”
A further illustration of the idea of religious tolerance: “Say: I worship not that which you worship. Nor will you worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion and unto me my religion.”
Moreover, the Prophet himself (referring to the Christians in a Muslim village) commanded: “The security of God are extended for their lives, their religion, and their property….There shall be no interference with the practice of their faith or their observances; or any change in their rights and privileges; no bishop shall be removed from his bishopry; nor any monk from his monastery; nor any priest from his priesthood. They shall continue to enjoy everything great and small….No image or cross shall be destroyed; they shall not oppress or be oppressed.”
It is possible that the pastor might learn something from the tradition he seeks to disparage. With regard to the brotherhood of man, the Prophet’s farewell sermon states in part: “The fair-skinned is not superior to the dark-skinned, nor the dark-skinned superior to the fair-skinned. The Arab is not superior to the non-Arab, nor is the non-Arab superior to the Arab. They are all brothers and descendents of Adam.” According to the Prophet, Pastor Terry Jones enjoys the status of a brother of the Islamic faithful.
Finally, I mention the idea of human dignity from the Koran. The Koran places infinite value on human life. “If anyone slew a person, unless it be for murder to sparing mischief in the land, it would be as if he slew the whole people; and if anyone saved a life it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.” Thus, when Pastor Jones sets in motion a process that threatens the lives of our soldiers abroad, he must consider what the value of life really is. Perhaps this passage from the Koran would enlighten him.
I mention only a few words about which much has been written historically. When the West was mired in the dark ages of cultural stagnation and brutality, the center of civilization was located in the Islamic world. When Saladin, the great Islamic general, entered Baghdad, in 1171, the public library was said to contain 150,000 volumes. The University of Oxford at this time had virtually no books. The flourishing of the sciences, philosophy, and the arts in the Islamic world covered almost 500 years. It was the Islamic scholars that preserved important tracks of Greek philosophy, which were translated later into European languages.
Historians also note that Islamic philosophers, scientists, and intellectuals pushed back the frontiers of knowledge. The Arabs were leaders in mathematics. During the Crusades, we tend to remember the battles and the conflicts; what we forget is that, between the battles and the conflicts, there was a vast exchange of knowledge and learning. This contributed to the advancement of Western Civilization.
The records indicate how much of the Arabic texts were translated into European languages and then studied in the European universities, is well known. For example, translators in Spain translated 71 scientific treatises from Arabic into Latin. Indeed, the entire Aristotelian corpus was translated, as was the work of great Islamic philosophers of the period.
In short, we forget how much constructive interstimulation and exchange there was in science, philosophy, and learning between the Islamic and Western worlds. The Pastor would do himself and his followers a service, were he to spend September 11 reading, rather than destroying, the Koran, and visiting the Smathers libraries to temper his extreme beliefs with historical fact.
Winston P. Nagan,
Sam T. Dell Research Scholar Professor of Law
Affiliate Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies
Director, Institute for Human Rights, Peace and Development
University of Florida