Latest Updates: anti-Muslim speech RSS

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

    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 10:48 pm on January 11, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim speech, , , New Mexico, ,

    The Muslim students at the University of New Mexico are fed up with the constant drip of racist, Islamophobic dreck in the comments on an Oct. 26 2009, letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. I posted an excerpt and a link here at TI at the time, prompting one of our regular commenters to observe:

    Comments over there are BATSHIT. Beyond Gongshow of Idiocy. They read like manifestos of the radical KILL ALL MOZLEMS AFORE THEY KILLS US nutters.

    The campus Muslim Student Association penned a more careful, politick letter in response that was published in the student newspaper, and which I’m reproducing here in full:

    On behalf of the Muslim Student Association at the University of New Mexico, we would like to express our concerns and disappointment about many of the comments posted in response to the article, “UNM’s Islam classes teach non-Muslims fear, hatred” published online on Oct. 26.

    Many comments posted in response to the article eluded discussing the issue the author of the article was presenting. Instead, the comments slowly drifted to discussing Islam as a religion, which is not a problem. We live in a free country, and our freedom of speech is one of the many qualities that define this great nation. But freedom of speech should not be abused to slander and vilify a people or religion.

    Our organization found that may of the comments posted on the Daily Lobo’s Web site can be characterized as extremely racist:

    (More …)

     

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

    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 4:36 pm on November 19, 2009 | 25 Permalink
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim speech, , , ,

    Virulent Muslim hater Rudolph Giuliani is running for US Senate in New York next year, aiming for White House in 2012: Report.

    Following earlier reports that former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani had decided not to enter the 2010 governor’s race comes word that he has decided to run for Senate instead.

    While Giuliani’s spokeswoman is denying that he has made up his mind about which race, if any, to enter, sources tell the New York Daily News that Giuliani has been telling people he “plans to run against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010 to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary Clinton’s term.”

    Giuliani is prominently featured in the ‘Third Jihad‘ movie, and was talked up by his New Hampshire campaign manager last year as the guy who could “Chase Muslims back into their caves or get rid of them.“

     

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

    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 4:37 pm on November 9, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , anti-Muslim speech, , ,

    Muslim Mafia author explicitly calls for “a professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders.”

    In assigning collective blame for the Fort Hood killings, Gaubatz said:

    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. If Muslims do not want a backlash, then I would recommend a “house cleaning.” Stack every Saudi, al Qaeda, Pakistani, Taliban, Hamas, and Muslim Brotherhood piece of material from their mosque and have a bonfire. Tell the American, Jewish, and Muslim community this hatred will no longer be allowed in their mosques.

    As TPM notes, all of this might be dismissed as the ranting of a fringe lunatic, but for the fact that Gaubatz’s work has been circulated and endorsed by prominent Republican lawmakers.

     

  • johnpi 7:20 pm on November 6, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , anti-Muslim speech, , , 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 6:50 am on November 6, 2009 | 31 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim speech, , , , , ,

    Fort Hood anti-Muslim Backlash immediate.

    Funny thing about this story is that there is no “lead,” no summary or topic sentence, just backlash examples and background information on Hasan.

    His name had barely been released, his heritage and history not immediately known, but the reaction was fast and furious.

    “Jihad at Fort Hood?” read the headline of a post on the Jihad Watch blog just moments after Nidal Malik Hasan was identified as the alleged perpetrator of a mass shooting at the Texas military base that killed 12 people and wounded 31 others.

    “The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?” Fox News’s Shep Smith said while interviewing Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas senator.

    This is also where I become very critical of the older civil rights and anti-discrimination organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. There is not one word today on the possible impending backlash from this attack on either their blog or their website. Yet, if you read the linked story above you’ll see progressive/liberal bloggers (ideologically, the SPLC’s fellow travelers) throughout the blogosphere are talking/cautioning/warning and imploring people to resist collective punishment/retaliation. The SPLC does note anti-Muslim attacks from time to time, but it seems to be wearing blinders the rest of the time when it comes to Muslims.

     

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

    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 6:14 am on October 23, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim speech,

    Sweden Democrat quits over anti-Muslim views.

    The head of the far-right Sweden Democrats’ local chapter in Falkenberg in western Sweden has quit the party in the wake of an anti-Muslim article published by party leader Jimmie Åkesson.

    Lars-Erik Persson took over as head of the local Sweden Democrat chapter in April, but now says he’s had enough, according to local media reports.

    One reason for his departure is an opinion article by Åkesson published on Monday in the Aftonbladet newspaper in which the far-right party leader describes Islam as the greatest threat to Sweden since World War II.

    “I don’t like that he went after Muslims as a group. I have several Muslim employees at my job and I think they’re really talented and well-mannered. You can’t just lump everyone together,” Persson told TV4’s local affiliate in Halland.

     

  • johnpi 5:49 am on October 1, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , anti-Muslim speech, , , Maine

    Christian Action Network sues the state of Maine after it revokes permission for the group to fundraise there, citing a letter the group sent out that was inflammatory against Muslims.

    Today the Christian Action Network (CAN) filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Maine for censoring a fundraising letter state officials claimed contained “an inflammatory anti-Muslim message.” Maine officials fined and banned CAN from mailing any future letters under the threat of criminal prosecution. Liberty Counsel represents CAN.

    CAN was in good standing with a valid license for prior years in Maine, authorizing the group to mail letters in the state. CAN filed to renew its license in March 2009, prior to sending the letter, and the check for the annual license was deposited and cashed by the state. In April, CAN mailed a letter exposing how some public schools were promoting Islam by providing instruction on the Five Pillars of Islam and the Koran. The letter pointed out that some schools have provided a “prayer room” for Muslims and one textbook that told seventh grade students they “will become Muslim.” The letter listed Governor John Baldacci as a person who is over the public schools and someone to whom the recipients of the letter should voice their opinion.

    CAN was informed in May 2009 that its application was now being denied, and a $4,000 fine was imposed for three reasons: (1) the state alleged CAN’s letter contained “an inflammatory anti-Muslim message;” (2) the letter used Gov. John Baldacci’s name without his approval; and (3) the registration was allegedly “incomplete.”

     

  • johnpi 5:50 pm on September 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , anti-Muslim speech, 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 6:48 pm on September 23, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim speech, Christine Brim, , , Vlaams Belang

    Of dogs, donkeys and women…

    D.L. Adams, president of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), has responded to accusations that bringing dogs, donkeys and women ( ! ) to the Capitol mall on Friday to interfere with the prayer event are extreme provocations:

    Because the Arutz Sheva article picked up on some of SIOA’s creative brainstorming posts to use humor and a bit of theatrics involving the things that are thought to disrupt prayer for Muslims – dogs, donkeys and women – some are already calling this loving group of people “extreme”.

    I take the opposite viewpoint and contend that drawing attention to the Muslim belief that ”dogs, donkeys, women” (and don’t forget breaking wind) are the things that interfere with their prayers being received, rather than spiritual matters like insincerity of heart, highlights the essential materialism of this so-called religion.

    Also of note, one of the SIOA speakers at their ‘counter event’ at the US Capitol will be Christine Brim, who collaborated with the Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang (VB) party to organize the 2007 CounterJihad Europa Conference in Brussels.

     

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

    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 7:11 am on August 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim speech, , , , ,

    Recent incident of teenage hijabi bullying in Florida provides disturbing view into the mind of the bully, who is about to join the US Army and go to Iraq.

    After the incident, Lawrence was asked by a school staffer why she confronted the girl. “She began to rant that she was enlisting and was going to Iraq and that basically because the girl looks Middle Eastern, that makes her an enemy because all Iraqis are Middle Eastern,” according to the referral signed by assistant principal Stephen Crognale.

    When journalists later asked her about these comments, she denied them.

    The girl’s father doesn’t seem to be helping her sort out her confusion, instead copping a ‘we are the victims here’ attitude:

    “You have someone in the States who is able to enjoy our educational and health care systems, yet it’s okay for them to be disrespectful, and it’s not okay for my daughter to speak her mind,” said Mark Lawrence, Heather’s father. “That’s her First Amendment right. That’s her freedom of speech.”

    Funny, US conservatives were once ideologically known for their incessant whining about liberal ‘victimhood mentality,’ yet they seem to be on a hair-trigger to step into the role.

     

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

    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 5:02 pm on March 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-Muslim speech, , Varam Gandhi

    Varun Gandhi: Anti-Muslim remarks faked.

    Gandhi asked why, if he had made the alleged remarks at an election rally on March 4, the video was not released for more than a week. “I am a victim of a political conspiracy … Those are not my words, that is not my voice,” Gandhi said.

     

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