Islamophobia is not uncommon among Hindu and Sikh immigrants, but [Rajinder] Singh’s personal history makes his all the more acute. Born in West Punjab in 1931, he witnessed the violence of Indian partition firsthand. Millions of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims were killed during partition, his father among them, murdered when Singh was only 15. He lays the blame squarely with Muslims. Why doesn’t he blame the British, the architects of partition? “Britain had a role to play,” he concedes, “but the violence sprang from the Koran. The Muslim answer to reasoned argument is knife, dagger and bomb.”

This thinking gives Singh an affinity with even the most diehard BNP ­members. He’s been to several party meetings and says he never feels awkward in their company. “They treat me normally,” he insists. “I feel at home.” I ask if he thinks many BNP members can tell the difference between Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. “They might think of me as a Paki,” he replies. “I’ve had people shout ‘Paki Go Home!’ when I walk down the street. But that speaks much about the ‘Paki’ reputation – it’s a negative reaction to Pakistan.”

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Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”
….

While the intention of the law is apparently aimed at Islamic terrorists, it’s unclear in the law’s wording whether it can be applied to right-wing militias, some of whom have reputedly called for the overthrow of the US government. The law states that “fraternal” and “patriotic” groups are exempt from the law, but only if they don’t “contemplate the overthrow of the government.”

pdf of the registration form here.

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Issa made the comment at a hearing to Kazakh foreign minister Kanat Saudabayev:

I want to share with you something here today. Washington, D.C., is exactly the same. This is a one-party town, even though there are people who are not Democrats. And this town has decided to have representation, at least one member of the council, who is chosen simply to represent minorities.

Issa has also nominated Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev for a Nobel Peace prize.

Kazakhstan has been described as an authoritarian state and one of the “least free countries in the world” by Freedom House, a human rights organization.

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Neoconservative scholar-activist Daniel Pipes has a new article on the leading conservative website National Review Online, in which he suggests that President Obama can “save” his presidency…by bombing Iran.

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This from the senator of the state that suffered the second-largest terrorist attack in US history – at the hands of Timothy McVeigh.

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Blame political correctness he says. And apparently, CAIR is so fierce and omnipotent that a silence has settled across the land. Oppressed right-wingers wallowing in their victimhood lie everywhere…

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At any given professional level, you found British people doing things that only much poorer Americans would do, like bringing lunch, hanging their clothes to dry, or going without cable (though the Americans I knew said the cable wasn’t worth it anyway).

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“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

I took this excerpt from an article titled, ‘Christian fundamentalists bring shame to America,’ which also makes this observation:

The Muslim world deals with this all the time. With 1.3 billion Muslims in the world over, even if only 3% are radical fundamentalists, their numbers are in the millions and they have come to represent the other 97%.

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Richard Bartholomew writes that Gina Khan, a Muslim activist against extremism in the UK, is listed as an officer on the Facebook page of the group that calls itself the ‘The Cheerleaders’, a bunch of self-described anti-Islamist vigilantes, who have excelled at threatening mostly moderate and progressive Muslim bloggers, and especially liberal critics of conservative politicians in the UK, like blogger Tim Ireland. (Again, I see this theme of ‘Eurocon’ extremists using an anti-Muslim platform to attack a bigger ideological target, European liberalism – which has been done before).

After I published a mocking post about them last year, the Cheerleaders – or the individual who pretends to be the group – threatened several Talk Islam contributors and published their home addresses online. They (or he) also sent mail to at least one TI contributor’s house.

The affiliation with ‘The Cheerleaders’ would certainly be damaging to Khan’s reputation. Bartholomew reports that blogger Tim Ireland queried Khan about the group, and says she “declined to respond.” He also says that Dominic Wightman, a mendacious bit player in the UK’s extreme anti-Muslim right-wing who aspires to be a counter-terrorism consultant, also alleged that Khan has a relationship with the only known public figure of the Cheerleaders, Charlie Flowers.

Bartholomew writes:

I’m sure that Khan disapproves of threats, harassment, and identity theft, whosoever is the victim. I’m also sure that she has a busy schedule which means that she cannot pay full attention to all the messages she receives, or follow closely all the activities of the groups and bodies with which she is associatied. But being linked with the “Cheerleaders” is inconsistent with the values she makes so such effort to defend in her public activism.

Khan herself may be a victim of identity theft. She should not be held to be involved with the Cheerleaders until someone can get her to absolutely confirm or deny it, since the Cheerleaders have a history of misrepresenting themselves as affiliated with self-identified moderate, reform or progressive Muslims (even as the Cheerleaders spend so much time threatening them).

I should know: On the Cheerleaders Facebook page, my personal blog (progressiveislam.info) is represented as the group’s official blog, and of course I have no affiliation with the group and have actually received repeated threats from the individual or group that represents himself as ‘The Cheerleaders,’ both in online comments and in my blog email.

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And what should they do? Blow it up?

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