Latest Updates: anti-Muslim propaganda RSS

  • johnpi 6:59 pm on February 11, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , , , , , , ,

    Tennessee mosque vandalized after local tv station airs irresponsible report on ‘homegrown jihad.’

    The local news report prominently referenced a ‘documentary’ by the Christian Action Network about Jamaat ul-Fuqra communities, including one in central Tennessee called Islamville. I blogged about both the alarmist irresponsible CAN film and the Fuqra last year (also here and here).

    Amanda Terkel writes about what happened in Tennessee:

    …the Nashville CBS affiliate (Channel 5) decided to give the film legitimacy by conducting an “EXCLUSIVE” investigation into a Muslim community in rural Tennessee called Islamville, which is featured in the movie. “Some believe it is a secret Islamic terrorist training camp,” reads the Channel 5 article. “Others have said that’s simply not true.

    The two-part ’special’ report found nothing of concern, but the two days of hype leading up to the report may have precipitated this:

    Photobucket

    There was also a note taped to a youth facility nearby with a bunch of comments about Islam being the enemy, satanic, etc, etc. A spokesman for the mostly Somali mosque said:

    “It’s unexpected,” he adds. “The only thing I can think of is the sensationalized reporting [by Channel 5] over Sunday and Monday. That’s the only thing I can think of. Even after 9/11 we have never had any vandalism.“

     

  • johnpi 10:37 pm on January 23, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , , ,

    Bulls***, calculated to inflame: Hijabis are attacking free-spirited blond girls in Berlin schools, according to this article appearing in some European media outlets.

    Speculation, mind reading and fantasy about the motives of the alleged attackers made it into print:

    The victims are blond Polish girls since they’re Catholic and yet very liberal, and therefore embody everything that the headscarf-girls reject. Steffens says the reason for the conflict is often envy. The girls are banned from many things in their own strict religious upbringing at home, but in school they see other girls who are allowed more. They get jealous and want to beat up the children from more liberal families.

    Or as George Bush said, “They hate us for our freedoms.”

    I don’t doubt that there may be tension and occasional violent incidents arising from any number of reasons, and that needs to be condemned and put to a stop. But the rest of this sounds like somebody overlaid a script to get some political mileage out of it.

     

  • johnpi 8:59 am on January 11, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , ,

    US Congressional Rep. Sue Myrick appears to be making a bid to become the next prominent anti-Muslim fearmonger in the US. She has begun a regularly weekly Youtube infomercial series that will discuss the dangers of Islamic terrorism and “the threat to Western civilization” that will also play on her congressional website.

    The usual MO of people like Myrick is to take voices from the margins of the Muslim community and represent them as being at the center. As Willow wrote in 2008, “Would it be a smear against America if someone made a documentary citing only The KKK, the Weathermen, the Freemen, and the Black Panthers?”

    TPM reports that in the coming weeks she will produce an episode that will be based on the same document that the “Third Jihad” hate film is based on – a letter supposedly written by an anonymous “North American operative” of the Muslim Brotherhood and which it is claimed reveals a ‘civilizational jihad’ and a secret master plan among Muslims to destroy the US from within and create an Islamic state in North America.

    Myrick, who represents the 9th congressional district in North Carolina, is pushing her audience to promote the fear:

    Visit our Web site on a regular basis because we’re going to be posting a lot of new information, and it will be valuable to you, and you can share it with your friends and neighbors so they can be educated as well. Because if the American people don’t know what’s going on, we might as well hang it up.

     

  • johnpi 11:23 pm on December 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim propaganda, B'nai Brith, ,

    Challenging what is becoming an increasingly common Islamophobic smear: That Islam is somehow juxtaposed with Nazism. Usually a photo is bandied about of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Adolf Hitler. Sheila Musagi writes:

    The actual Nazi party originated in Germany, a predominantly Christian country. The actual Facists came out of Italy, another predominantly Christian country. The Nazis and Fascists were predominantly Christians. Christianity had a role in the rise and fall of the Nazi’s. The Vatican signed a concordat with Hitler’s Reich. The Catholic responses to Hitler were ambiguous at least.

    There are numerous photographs of Hitler with various Christian clergy including Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin, and with a Catholic Cardinal, Spanish and German Bishops giving Nazi and Fascist salutes, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marching in a Nazi parade, the Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller, and many more that are still available. There are also numerous photographs of Christian symbols in Nazi artifacts.

    The latest example of the Nazi libel is a full-page newspaper ad taken out by the Canadian branch of B’nai Brith. BB once had a reputation as a solid defender of core liberal values: anti-racist and against persecution of peoples for their physical or cultural attributes. But an advertisement like this largely undermines that reputation and makes a plain example of how B’nai Brith – along with some other Jewish civil rights organizations such as the ADL – have been emptied out of their core values and now engage in the same kind of low conduct they were created to resist.

     

  • johnpi 9:32 am on December 17, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, Evan Kohlmann, , ,

    Much thanks to Eli Clifton for drawing attention to Thomas Friedman’s Tuesday column in the New York Times where he says the Muslim world needs to undergo a bloody, traumatic civil war on a par with the American Civil War in order to defeat extremism. Thanks Tom.

    What’s worse, the expert who is his main source of information for the column is none other than Evan Kohlmann, a “terrorism expert” every bit as stupid and ignorant and willfully misleading as Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer.

    How stupid is Kohlmann? He was finally banned from testifying in a terrorism trial in 2008, but Clifton draws attention to a Spinwatch article wherein this wonderful courtroom performance on Kohlmann’s part is recounted from earlier in his career:

    There have been numerous attempts to [ban Kohlmann from testifying in terrorism trials] in the past four years, which until now have been unsuccessful.

    In one such case Kohlmann was put forward as an expert on the Bangladeshi Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami. Under cross examination it transpired that he had never written any papers on the party, nor been interviewed about the group. He had never been to Bangladesh, could not name the country’s Prime Minister nor the name of the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami. Neither could he name a single political party in the country.

    When he was asked if he had heard of the Bangladeshi National Party – which led the political coalition joined by Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh at that time – he said it sounded “vaguely familiar”. Incredibly Kohlmann was still permitted as an expert witness.

    Wow.

    This is the source for the columnist who was ‘voted by a bipartisan group of nearly 250 Washington “insiders” as the most influential media figure in shaping their own opinions and worldviews.’

     

  • johnpi 6:34 am on November 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , anti-Muslim propaganda,

    Muslim Mafia author’s call for backlash against Muslims embarrasses even right-wing think tank.

    This just goes to prove what I’ve suspected all along, that Muslim bashers use the phrase ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ as a proxy epithet to refer to all Muslims.

    …the right-wing think tank that published conservative author Dave Gaubatz’s call for a backlash against the “Muslim community” has now scrubbed the line and replaced it with a call for a backlash against the “Muslim Brotherhood.”

    Here is the line as it was:

    Politicians, Muslims, and law enforcement are concerned about a ‘backlash’ against Muslims. Now is the time for a professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders. Muslims know what materials are being taught in their mosques and they know many of the materials instruct young Muslims to kill innocent people who do not adhere to Sharia law.

    And as it appears now:

    Politicians, Muslims, and law enforcement are concerned about a ‘backlash’ against Muslims. Now is the time for a professional and legal backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood and their leaders. Muslims know what materials are being taught in their mosques and they know many of the materials instruct young Muslims to kill innocent people who do not adhere to Sharia law.

    As TPM observes, “Even on its own terms, the new passage doesn’t make a ton of sense, shifting from Muslims to Muslim Brotherhood and back to Muslims.”

     

  • johnpi 7:15 am on November 10, 2009 | 18 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , ,

    A Hindu writer at Forbes magazine has coined a new term he hopes catches on: ‘Going Muslim’ a play on a term that has existed in American popular culture for awhile, ‘Going postal.’

    “Going postal” is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker–archetypically a postal worker–”snaps” and guns down his colleagues.

    As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

    The difference between “going postal,” in the conventional sense, and “going Muslim,” in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological “snapping” point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage–the camouflage of integration–in an act of revelatory catharsis.

    The writer, Tunku Varadarajan, goes on to complain about ‘political correctness,’ as so many other articles of this ilk have.

     

  • johnpi 7:20 pm on November 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , collective guilt, , , , ,

    Media Matters has put together a concentrated mass of garbage in the form of a roundup article of right-wing media efforts to demonize Muslims over the last 24 hours.

    It appears that ‘political correctness’, ie, the effort on the part of well-intentioned Americans to be fair and just and not ascribe collective guilt, is as much a target as Muslims.

     

  • johnpi 6:57 pm on November 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, ,

    Muslim Mafia booster Rep. Myrick: I’m on the Hasan case.

    Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), who wrote the foreword to Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America, said today she is “very concerned” about infiltration of the military by jihadists.

    “We can’t continue to be so politically correct that we’re going to say this wasn’t religiously motivated,” Myrick told the Charlotte, North Carolina, CBS affiliate. She noted the reports that Nidal Malik Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” before he allegedly opened fire in the shooting spree at Fort Hood Thursday.

    With the line about political correctness, Myrick was echoing conservative writers like Michelle Malkin, who declared today “political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.”

    Hasan’s motivation in the shootings is not yet clear. President Obama said today: “I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we get all the facts.”

    I’m sure the “Muslim Mafia” Islamophobia project is going to get a force multiplier effect from yesterday’s events.

     

  • buzz 8:56 pm on November 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim propaganda, , , ,

    It will be interesting to watch the news, see how fast Fox and other news sources develop this story and who knows what. And who benefits from it.

    While I may not be ready to get on board the Guy Fawkes conspiracy, I am always interested to see how foreign forces are interested in influencing or directing American politics. I encourage everyone to keep their eyes open and not assume too much until we have all the facts (even the ones that don’t make headlines.)

    Also:
    Here is ISNA’s statement:

    ISNA Condemns Attacks on Fort Hood Soldiers and Expresses Condolences to the Victims and Their Families

    (Washington, DC – November 05, 2009) The Islamic Society of North America condemns in the strongest terms the attack on soldiers at Fort Hood, resulting in the murder of at least a dozen soldiers and the wounding of many others. We express our deepest condolences to the victims and their families.

    Although many details of the shooting are unknown at this time, it appears that the attack was led by a career soldier, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The soldier who led this attack was either mentally unstable, or was motivated by a perverted ideology for which there can be no justification.

    ISNA is proud of the many Muslim men and women who serve loyally in the United States military. We are grateful for the sacrifices made by all US soldiers, who represent the religious, racial and ethnic diversity of America, to defend the Constitution and our national security. ISNA, a faith endorser of US Muslim military chaplains, is proud of the service they provide, offering comfort and support to people of all faiths and beliefs. Just today, ISNA’s chaplain endorser, Dr. Louay Safi, conducted a workshop at the US army base in Fort Bliss, Texas.

    ISNA will be holding a press conference with national Muslim leaders to address this incident tomorrow morning. Time and location will be announced later tonight.

    For more information, please contact

    Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali, Vice President of ISNA at 571.437.4734 or 571.437.9566
    Louay Safi, ISNA’s Director of Communications and Leadership Development and Chaplain Endorser at 317.679.6350

     

  • johnpi 10:03 am on November 4, 2009 | 9 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , , , , ,

    Key resource in fight against anti-Muslim fearmongering movies disappears.

    The website “Obsession with Hate” that was created by the Hate Hurts America Multifaith Community Coalition – of which CAIR is a “coordinating member” – to combat the anti-Muslim hate movies “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” and “The Third Jihad” is gone. Its address was http://www.obsessionwithhate.com.

    Many Muslim blogs as well as civil rights and civil liberties groups linked to the site to provide a vital corrective to the two hate documentaries that are still being shown to groups all across the US when smear merchants like Walid Shobat and Nonie Darwish speak. All of those sites now have broken links that redirect them to a “GoDaddy.com” page.

    The “Obsession with Hate” website broke a major story against the two documentaries. When Islamic studies professor Khaleel Mohammed who appears in the “Obsession” movie declared he had been tricked by the makers into participating and called it a “vile piece of propaganda” he gave his statement exclusively to the OwH website. The only place you are going to find Mohammed’s statement now is at blogs like my own that excerpted it extensively or just flat-out republished it despite the “exclusive” tag.

    I also used the site earlier this year to identify Glen Jenvey as one of the Obsession documentary’s pundits when Jenvey’s ‘fake Islamist’ story was developing.

    For the organizations that were involved in creating the website and promoting it within the Muslim community as a reliable resource to now close it down is deeply irresponsible, and lends itself to creating a reputation that CAIR and the other groups involved are flakey and unreliable partners in the fight against Islamophobia and anti-Muslim propaganda.

     

  • johnpi 7:18 pm on October 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , ,

    Fox News piles on Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Very sleazy.

     

  • johnpi 6:34 pm on October 15, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , ,

    Glenn Greenwald drills in on the ‘Muslim spies’ fiasco in Congress, using a chart to draw attention to the idiocy of the fearmonger that America is at risk of “Islamization” as promoted by four Republican Congressional reps, Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.).

    Photobucket

    Says Glenn:

    89.3 percent of the members of Congress are Christian, 8.4% are Jewish, and a grand total of 2 members (.4%) are Muslim. Their representation on the chart (the green section) is so small they’re practically invisible. Muslims comprise .6% of the American population. Yet these people are running around screaming about the imminent “Islamization of America” and imposition of Sharia law and calling for criminal investigations because a few interns on Congressional Committees — American citizens — might be Muslim and are therefore “spies.”

    In an update he adds:

    The U.S. Congress and the country belong to CAIR members every bit as much as they belong to Myrick and her constituents.

    Thank you Glenn.

     

  • johnpi 5:59 pm on October 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , ,

    TPM has more on the author of the book that unleashed the Republican hysteria about “Muslim spies:”

    That would be David Gaubatz, a former Air Force investigator and Arabic speaker, who dispatched his son Chris to grow a beard and go undercover as a Muslim to obtain an internship at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Gaubatz, who has long warned about the threat of Islamism in the United States, has claimed that he found Saddam’s long-lost WMDs while in Iraq and has labeled Obama “Muslim” and a “self-admitted ‘crack head.’”

    Here’s a neat check list of teh Crazy of Gaubatz compiled by TPM:

    • He referred to “our Muslim leader” Barack Obama on his blog last year.

    • He has claimed that he personally found sites with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction when he was an agent with the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations in 2003. But the Syrians beat us to the punch on excavating the sites, Gaubatz claims, and the U.S. government suppressed the information to avoid the “explosive revelation of their own lethal incompetence.”

    • Just yesterday he wondered about Congress’ two Muslim representatives, “How much information do we have on Carson and Congressman Keith Ellison?”

    • According to Glenn Greenwald, Gaubatz in 2007 was focusing his time on creating “a comprehensive map of every mosque and Islamic school in the U.S” in order to determine which ones were preaching “Islamic law.” The Web site that explained that project has since been made private.

    • He said in September 2008 on a now scrubbed blog post at http://www.jihadishere.blogspot.com that: “We are now on the verge of allowing a self admitted ‘crack-head’ to have his finger on every nuclear weapon in America.”

    • He apparently has a history of faking conversions to Islam as part of his investigations.

     

  • johnpi 5:41 pm on October 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , John Conyers, , Loretta Sanchez, , , , ,

    TPM has been doing an excellent job of covering the response to the ‘Muslim spies’ accusation that four Republican reps. made yesterday, ie, that CAIR interns on Capitol Hill are actually “spies” who are somehow working against American interests in favor of a mythical Muslim collective. The four reps are Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.).

    First there were the strong denunciations that came from congressional Democrats Loretta Sanchez, Andre Carson and John Conyers. Carson called it “”fearmongering at its worst.” Here’s Sanchez:

    As a strong advocate for diversity and religious freedom, I find these claims to be outrageous and offensive. I urge the rest of my colleagues to join me in denouncing this witch hunt, which is clearly intended to create fear and distrust in our Capitol Hill community.

    Andre Carson, it turns out, was “infiltrated” by a fake CAIR intern who was actually the son of the author of a World Net Daily publication that incited the four Republican reps. to make their “Muslim spies” charge. The author is P. David Gaubatz, and his son is Chris. Here is a picture of Chris in his Muslim persona with Rep. Carson:

    Photobucket

     

  • johnpi 7:46 am on October 10, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , Haim Saban, , , , , , , , , , , , Saban Center for Middle East Studies,

    Arch-neoconservative Haim Saban is reportedly seeking a 50 percent ownership stake in Al Jazeera, according to Richard Silverstein. He writes, “Imagine the possibility of co-opting Al Jazeera’s Israel coverage. It’s an Aipac wet dream.”

    Here’s Glenn Greenwald describing Saban in an article about one of the deeply compromised, warmongering foreign policy ‘experts’ he promotes through the “Saban Center for Middle East Studies,” a Washington thinktank.

    The above-the-political-fray [ken] Pollack is employed by the “Saban Center for Middle East Studies” at Brookings — so named because it is funded with many millions of dollars by billionaire Haim Saban, an Israeli-American neoconservative who was a 2004 supporter of George Bush, was a close associate of Ariel Sharon, and spent the 1990s persuading Bill Clinton (with millions of dollars in donations to the Democratic Party) to be more supportive of Israel.

    In a 2004 glowing profile, the NYT described Saban as “throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli,” and in that article, Saban told the NYT: “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.”

    Richard writes, “If the emir of Qatar is seriously entertaining a Saban bid either he’s in financial difficulty or else he’s smokin’ some powerful weed.”

     

  • johnpi 5:50 pm on September 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , Dove World Outreach Center,

    Church group that sent its children to school in “Islam is the devil” shirts has a poor reputation on other issues too.

    Former members of the Dove World Outreach Center have accused Jones and his wife Sylvia, also a pastor, of exploiting the volunteer labor of church members, who work long, unpaid hours for the Joneses’ for-profit eBay business, TS and Company LLC, right here in Gainesville. Moreover, the Joneses are accused of controlling and manipulative behavior that sounds eerily cult-like.

     

  • johnpi 3:35 pm on September 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda,

    Kentucky high school teacher shows Geert Wilders’ “Fitna” to leadership class – girl needs counseling.

    A Kentucky girl is seeking counseling after her class at a Kentucky high school watched a short film that showed beheadings and other violence allegedly committed by Muslims, the student’s father said Tuesday.

    Bill Cruey said his daughter Amber, 17, was horrified by images of children being injured and dead bodies interspersed with readings from the Quran while watching the film “Fitna,” made by the anti-Islam and anti-immigration Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders.
    ….

    Pulaski County Superintendent Tim Eaton said Tuesday that the teacher’s intent was to commemorate the Sept. 11 terror attacks and discuss the dangers of extremism — “not only of Muslims but other viewpoints, too.”

    “The intent of the lesson and discussion was very appropriate,” Eaton said. “However, the teacher’s choice of the clip was not appropriate, and that’s been dealt with.

     

  • johnpi 8:27 pm on September 12, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , , ,

    My new friends, the ‘proud racists’ at “Refugee Resettlement Watch” attended Fox News prima donna Glenn Beck’s tea party at the US Capitol today. This report:

    It was also the politest demonstration I’ve ever been to. Nobody was angry. I mean, they were angry at the government, but nobody seemed to have the kind of chip-on-the-shoulder anger that so many leftists have. It was good-humored.
    ….

    I’ve just heard a few reports that lead me to believe some reporters accidentally went to Mars instead of the Capitol. One said there were Confederate flags in evidence, and Ku Klux Klan type signs. We spent a lot of time walking around looking at people and their signs, and we commented that there were no confederate flags. And I don’t even know what is meant by Ku Klux Klan type signs.

    Below the ‘more’ button, some pictures taken today by people who did not go to Mars.

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 3:22 pm on August 26, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , ,

    Florida high school students sent home for anti-Islam shirts.

    A handful of Florida high school students were sent home this week for wearing t-shirts with the words “Islam is of the Devil” printed on the back in red and refusing to change out of them or cover the message.

    The controversy started after members of a local church, the Dove World Outreach Center, which printed the shirts, showed up for the first day of school wearing the controversial t-shirts, which officials said violated a ban on clothing that may offend or distract other students and “disrupt the learning process.”
    ….

    Dove’s Senior pastor, Terry Jones, said he believed spreading the church’s message was more important than education and told the paper no local company “had the guts” to print the shirts, forcing him to go online to have them made.

    Update: 15-year old Emily Sapp, one of the high school students sent home for wearing the shirt, was asked whether she knows any Muslim children. “I’ve met Muslim children, but I don’t actually have any contact with them at the moment,” she said. “I don’t know why that is — I guess we’ve just never become friends.”

    Watch the video here.

    Also listen to Sapp’s 10-year-old sister try to explain the shirts. Both come off as struggling to remember their lines and don’t quite make sense.

     

  • johnpi 3:09 pm on August 22, 2009 | 16 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, , ,

    In Aziz’s previous thread, several commenters said Fathima Rifka Bary may be “acting out” or lying to escape from her strict parents. Rifqa Bary doesn’t come off as contrived or manipulative. Much more alarming, her demeanor and her comments remind me of the poor damaged and deluded children that were at the center of the false ritual child abuse hysteria that blew out of America in the 1980s.

    Some similarities:

    1. The ritual abuse hysteria originated with children in the evangelical Christian community. Rifqa Bary has been a member of that community for some time, according to her parent’s reports that have her attending church with friends and proselytizing at school, though her brother says the accusations of violence didn’t start until she moved in with Pastor Blake Lorenz.

    2. The ritual abuse children and their supporters frequently alleged human sacrifice was taking place (the person speaking in this video link, David Icke, is discredited here). As Richard Bartholomew observed, Rifqa Bary has claimed she will be killed in an “honor killing” – with a pecular definition of the term that makes it out to essentially be a human sacrifice to Allah.

    3. The children accused specific adults – either their parents or others who were close to them – of horrible crimes, including murder. Rifqa Bary does the same.

    4. The children of the ritual abuse hysteria told stories that mutated and grew over time becoming more elaborate and alleging grand conspiracies with large groups of people involved. Rifqa Bary is now alleging some group of people (“radical Muslims,” “suspected terrorists”) in the Muslim community of Columbus, Ohio, is out to kill her.

    5. Another similarity is that the ritual child abuse allegations were examples of what London School of Economics professor Stanley Cohen called a “moral panic:”

    A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about a specific group of people who appear to be a threat to the social order at a given time. Stanley Cohen, author of the seminal Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), says moral panic occurs when “[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.” Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as “moral entrepreneurs”, while the people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as “folk devils.” Moral panics are by-products of controversies that produce arguments and social tension, or aren’t easily discussed as some of these moral panics are taboo to many people.

    Wikipedia cites several articles in concluding that “various actions in Western countries following the September 11 attacks affecting Arabs, Muslims, or those mistaken for them have been referred to as ‘moral panics.’” Rifqa Bary’s stories are the stuff of which ‘moral panics’ are made.

     

  • thabet 11:55 pm on August 17, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim propaganda, hijra, , , ,

    A new word for the jafis to throw around: hijra.

    Janet Levy has a review, “The Hijra,” in the American Thinker [sic] of a new book, Modern Day Trojan Horse: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration by colleagues of Geert Wilders, Sam Solomon and Elias Al Maqdisi.

    As Levy points out the thesis of the Solomon Al Magdisi slim volume is that Hijra-the Mecca to Medina migration of Mohammed the origin myth of Islam in the Quran – is all about the spread of Islamization and Western accommodation.

    [...]

    That ‘better life’ migration or Hijra by Muslim here in America is simply setting the stage for the enablers of the world wide Caliphate, the Muslim Brotherhood fronts, identified in the federal Holy Land Foundation trial as unindicted co-conspirators, to achieve their objective of Sharia supplanting our Constitution.

    ‘Hijra’ seems a perfect target of abuse for these morons: it ties together their hatred of Muslims, immigrants, and multiculturalism.

    (Via an emailer.)

     

  • johnpi 9:53 pm on August 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , , ,

    A full nearly seven minute video of a frightened, tearful Fathima Rifqa Bary has been posted to youtube by Pamela Gellar. Bary is the 17-year-old Sri Lankan teenager who ran away from her Muslim family in Ohio to live with a Christian preacher in Florida, claiming her family might commit an “honor killing” because they found out she converted to Christianity. Such a killing would be required for her family “to show love for Allah,” she explains to reporters.

    There is something really weird and distorted about this. She has apostasized, but there have been no assertions about issues arising from her apostate status. She and those around her have exclusively harped on the buzz word ‘honor killings,’ with her attorney declaring, “She could be killed in an honor killing. Unfortunately it happens every day in the U.S.”

    As Richard Bartholomew has pointed out, she has an odd description of ‘honor killing:’

    The girl gives a rather strange interpretation of what an “honour killing” is for; rather than being the remedy for a perceived dishonour suffered by a family, she tells the journalist that to kill her would be an especially ”great honour” because she is the first Christian in her family for “150 generations” and it would show her family’s love for Allah (Lorenz concurs with a “yes” at 5:03). This seems to me to be a garbled “Christianized” understanding of the phenomenon, making it into something like a human sacrifice. Her claim that Muslim converts to Christianity in Sri Lanka (where Muslims are a minority) are confined to a mental hospital is not one that I have seen reported anywhere else.

    Here’s a local news report that includes interviews with her family members.

    The parents attorney has issued a statement that included this:

    If this case is perceived as a clash of religions, it is because Mr. Lorenz [the preacher] recklessly and without authorization put someone else’s child in front of television cameras to publicly renounce her previous faith.

     

  • johnpi 8:45 pm on August 13, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , , ,

    The latest update at TAM of editor Sheila Musaji’s compilation of “Responses to false claims ABOUT Muslim individuals and organizations and incidents involving Muslims.”

    Described as including urban legends, hoaxes, charges that were subsequently cleared, or individuals or organizations that were exonerated.

    Everything from the credibility-challenged FBI informant who claimed Ayman al-Zawahiri was hanging out in Lodi, CA, in 1999, to the hilarious report that the US Postal Service’s commemorative Eid stamp had “a Muslim sword through the 41-cents mark…because the Muslims do not recognize the unholy money of America and the only way they would allow a stamp honoring their religion is to put a Muslim sword through the US monitory symbol the 41-cents marking.”

    Musaji responds:

    This one is simple to check, just look at one of the Eid stamps. There is no mark at all through the 41 cent marking, and no sword anywhere on the stamp.

     

  • johnpi 6:17 pm on April 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim propaganda, , Harold Koh, , , , ,

    Shariah sideshow: Chicken-Little Republican bloggers, Fox News, attack Obama appointee over phantom reports he suggested “Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts” at a public speaking event in Greenwich in 2007.

    [Harold] Koh in all his academic articles and many public statements has never said anything to suggest some dogged fealty to sharia. But the right-wing blogs have yet to take note of [event organizer Robin Reeves] Zorthian’s version of events; the sharia fable is chuffing along on its own steam now; and Fox can continue to pass along [New York lawyer Steven] Stein’s account of the story in a breathless game of sky-is-falling telephone.

    Tongue in cheek, the reporter mocks, “OMG, people! Dean Koh wants to see women executed in the middle of the town square for wearing the wrong color burkha.”

    The use of Shariah law to vilify an Obama appointee reduces Shariah to little more than a villian’s stage prop, like a black cape or long-waxed mustache – which is so common now it’s remarkable to even notice.

     

  • johnpi 11:06 pm on February 10, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Amazon, anti-Muslim propaganda

    Being something of a bibliophile, I will occasionally go to Amazon, search a topic to see what’s new and just buy a book. So I searched “Islam” this evening, but inadvertently forgot to switch from searching DVDs to books. Here’s some of the anti-Muslim propaganda that is topping out on page one of the Islam DVD search:

    “Islam: What the West Needs to Know” featuring the expertise of Smearcasting heavy weight Robert Spencer, anti-Muslim hatemonger Walid Shoebat, Dhimmitude historian Bat Ye’or and spokesman for the Republic of Serbia that committed war crimes against thousands of Muslims, Serge Trifkovic.

    “Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran, and The Revolt of Islam.” Described by Alan Hart as “Zionism’s propaganda weapon of last resort.”

    “Obsession.” Enough said.

    “Islam vs. Islamists/Muslims Against Jihad.” A documentary funded by PBS that series producers later refused to run because it was “too biased and alarmist.” It is also noted for being “long on ominous music.” This vid purports to show the brave Muslim moderates that are battling the evil extremists among us. In America, two examples are featured, somebody from Flint, MI, and Zuhdi Jasser, narrator and central figure of “Third Jihad,” the agitprop piece by the makers of “Obsession” that has been described as a “protocols of the elders of Islam.” A lion of moderation indeed.

     

  • johnpi 12:59 pm on December 31, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim propaganda, , , , ,

    Islamophobia watch: World Net Daily – listed by Alexa as the most popular website in the “Conservatism > News and Media” category with 2.2 million readers daily (Wikipedia) – has a new project called “Mapping Shari’a in America: Knowing the Enemy.” WND purports that it will be a scientific project to determine that “the more a mosque or community of Muslims adheres to Shariah, or Islamic law, the greater its threat to U.S. national security.”

    And how will Shariah be defined? Richard Bartholemew writes:

    All Shariah is to be ranked against the yardstick of how closely a Muslim wishes to be identified with al Qaeda, with only those who want no part of Islamic law being untainted. But why? And how are the various rankings to be decided? And how do you balance the significance of the various factors and interpretations within a particular school of Islamic jurisprudence? The WND article has quotes from the project leader, Dave Gaubatz, who sheds just a little light:

    “It’s so easy. You can’t agree with Shariah law and say that you are peaceful,” Gaubatz continued. “You can’t do it. Now there are Muslims in the United States who do. They say, we don’t agree with Shariah law, we don’t want Shariah law. But then, to the pure Muslim, they are not Muslim.”
    Some Muslims want to reform Islam, he said, and retain only peaceful elements.
    “That’s fine, but then you are not pure Muslim,” Gaubatz said.

    Bartholomew concludes, “So the subjects of the study will have the choice of being categorised as “pure Muslims”, which means they are violent, or as “impure Muslims” with moderate views.”

     

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