News Hounds reports that Fox News host Neil Cavuto provided a platform for rabid Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel of ACT! for America to whip up fear and hatred over the Boston bombings.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
After Boston, we should put Muslims under surveillance, says Rep. King
President Obama cautioned the nation not to rush to judgment about the Boston Marathon bombers. But that’s not stopping Republican Rep. Peter King.
King, who chairs the House subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, is urging authorities to beef up their surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. following Friday night’s arrest of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Police must “realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there,” the New York lawmaker told National Review.
King – who spearheaded controversial hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans in 2011 – also told CNN that “we can’t be politically correct. I think we have to see, has radicalization extended into the Chechen community?”
UN condemns Germany for failing to take action against Sarrazin’s racism
A UN anti-racism committee is accusing Germany of breaking an international agreement by allowing the controversial ex-politician Thilo Sarrazin to spread inflammatory ideas about Muslims in 2010 with impunity.
Four years after the former central banker sparked public outrage with his book Deutschland schafft sich ab – Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen (“Germany does away with itself – How we’re putting our country at jeopardy”) Sarrazin’s views have been officially recognised as racist by the United Nations.
The UN says Germany broke an international anti-racism accord by shrugging off Sarrazin’s anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim statements, wrote the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Thursday. At the time, many had defended Sarrazin’s right to express his views.
Injured Saudi student still the focus of conspiracy theories
Richard Bartholomew examines the conspiracy theories over the Boston Marathon bombing that are being promoted by Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson, Michael Savage and Walid Shoebat.
Erik Rush wasn’t joking when he said kill Muslims
Fox News contributor Erik Rush complains in his latest column at World Net Daily that he was only joking when he said that Muslims are evil and should be killed.
But he manages to prove otherwise by closing the column with a justification for killing Muslims:
For the record, I still maintain that Islam is, by its nature, wholly incompatible with Western society. I analogize liberalism, which is promoting this dhimmitude, to Stage 3 cancer in America’s body politic. For the record: While killing people is definitely undesirable, that is what war tends to be about.
And we are at war – just study the history of Islam, or ask any Islamist.
Right Wing Watch, 18 April 2013
You can sign the petition “Tell Fox News: Keep Erik Rush Off the Air” here.
Hate crimes follow Boston bombing
CAIR reports that a mother of Middle Eastern heritage wearing an Islamic headscarf, or hijab, was assaulted yesterday morning in Malden, Mass., by a white male shouting anti-Muslim slurs.
The victim told CAIR the attack occurred when she was walking with another Muslim woman also wearing hijab, while both were pushing baby strollers. She said the alleged attacker shouted, “F*** You, F*** Muslims, You are terrorists,” and struck her forcefully on the shoulder. The man, who appeared to be in his 30s, also reportedly made statements blaming Muslims for the Boston Marathon bombings.
‘Terrorist scumbags’ graffiti on Cambridge mosque site
Anti-Islamic vandals have targeted the site of Cambridge’s planned new mosque. The graffiti artists daubed offensive messages on the hoardings of the Mill Road building site including “terrorist scumbags”. Police have launched an appeal for witnesses to the attack on the city’s Muslim community.
Planning permission was granted in August last year for Cambridge’s £17.5 million new mosque. The three-storey domed building will be built on the site of the former Robert Sayle warehouse. It will include a prayer hall with capacity for 1,000 people, a café and teaching rooms, plus a library, a mortuary, and a large public garden fronting the street.
US Muslims ‘holding their breath’ as Boston investigators hunt for bomber
US Muslims are “holding their breath” as the investigation into the Boston Marathon attacks develops, amid fears of increased racial profiling and attacks if an Islamic link is confirmed, according to advocate groups.
Investigators say they still do not know who carried out the attacks or why, and Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said on Wednesday there was no evidence the attacks were part of a larger plot.
But amid official statements that no suspect has yet been identified as being behind the bombs that killed three and maimed and wounded more than a hundred people, at least two news outlets falsely reported a Saudi national was being held as a suspect, with some lawmakers and pundits pitching in on the falsehood.
Muneer Awad, the executive director of New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (Cair), said: “Americans have been conditioned to assume that any act of terror on our land has been perpetrated by a Muslim. That’s why it was so easy for people to jump on to reports that a Saudi national had been a person of interest. There is no reason for why he was a suspect, other than he was a Saudi Arabian.
“Whether they are being questioned, interrogated, having their apartments being searched – we are looking at a community where it’s normal for the NYPD or the FBI to simply knock on your door and ask you questions without a warrant.”
Awad said that the anxiety that the Muslim community is feeling over a possible backlash is not new, but has been present since 9/11. It is waiting to see what will happen now, he said. “A lot of people are holding their breath.”
Sweden: Protests mount in support of Omar Mustafa
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Social Democrat headquarters in central Stockholm on Monday night, while others took to the opinion pages of a Swedish daily to protest the ouster of Omar Mustafa over questions about his values.
Nearly 100 people marched outside party headquarters on Sveavägen behind a banner with the text, “Social democracy, yes. No to Islamophobia.”
“It’s Social Democrats protesting against the witch hunt and against all the lies that are being spread about Omar,” Anna Ardin, vice chair of Social Democrat religious group Hjärta – troende socialdemokrater (‘Heart – Social Democrats of faith’), told the TT news agency.
Top ten ways Islamic law forbids terrorism
For the education of the right-wing bigots whose knee-jerk response was to blame the Boston Marathon bombing on “Islamic terrorists”, Juan Cole lists the top ten ways that Islamic law and tradition forbid terrorism.