The furor over plans to build a Muslim cultural center near the World Trade Center site shows nine years of efforts to separate Islam from association with terrorism have largely failed, experts say.

“I’d take it one step further. I’d say that it’s far, far worse today than it was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11,” said Reza Aslan, a writer and scholar on religion.

Aslan blames “Islamophobia” that he said was being whipped by the Republican Party establishment. “They are making religious bigotry – just as they made anti-immigrant sentiment – part of their political platform,” Aslan said. “Democrats in the most cowardly fashion have completely caved in to this challenge.”

Reuters, 20 August 2010

The Guardian reports on Pamela Geller.

Cf. “Memo to media: Pamela Geller does not belong on national television” at MediaMatters, and “Pamela Geller: the looniest blogger ever” at LoonWatch.

Rutherford County Mayor Ernest Burgess and others scoffed at comments by nationally known televangelist Pat Robertson on his 700 Club program Thursday that Muslims could bribe local officials to expand their influence.

“It’s entirely possible,” Robertson said during the broadcast following a report from his show about the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro‘s plans to build a 52,960-square-foot structure on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike southeast of the city.

The 700 Club cable TV program included an interview with Burgess, who said afterward he was not impressed with what Robertson had to say. “The comments were so ridiculous they do not deserve a response,” Burgess said.

Robertson said money from wealthy Muslims in Saudi Arabia could be used to pay for the mosque’s construction. The Middle East country, he said, practices a more extreme form of Islam. “This isn’t just religion,” Robertson said.

He went on to say that Muslims could end up taking over the city council to pass ordinances that require public prayer and foot washing. Before long, you’ll have girls in schools with head dresses on, he said.

Robertson described the conflict as a clash of civilizations between one that represents the 8th century desert world and the other that’s the modern view of the world.

Islamic Center of Murfreesboro member Saleh Sbenaty said he was offended by Roberts’ comments. “Pat Robertson is well-known for his hate messages and attitudes toward Islam and Muslims and for making false accusations,” said Sbenaty, an 18-year engineering professor at MTSU. “His comments are not worth even a response from my side.”

DNJ.com, 20 August 2010

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda‘s claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

“I know people in this debate don’t intend it, but there are consequences for these kinds of remarks,” said Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism for the New America Foundation here. He said that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric hiding in Yemen who has been linked to several terrorist plots, has been arguing for months in Web speeches and in a new Qaeda magazine that American Muslims face a dark future of ever-worsening discrimination and vilification.

Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies said the outcry over the proposed center “plays into Awlaki’s arguments and Osama bin Laden’s arguments” by suggesting that Islam has no place in the United States. She said that extreme anti-Muslim views in the United States ironically mirror a central tenet of extreme Islamists: “That the world is divided into two camps, and they’re irreconcilable, and Muslims have to choose which side they’re on.”

New York Times, 20 August 2010

Update:  See also Nicholas D. Kristof, “Taking bin Laden’s side,New York Times, 21 August 2010

An outspoken opponent of the so-called ground zero mosque in Manhattan is also taking on Islam in Chicago. Pamela Geller, leader of a movement called Stop the Islamization of America, asserts that Muslims are increasingly taking over schools, financial institutions and the workplace.

Geller’s latest campaign against “Islamization” has appeared in ads this summer on top of 25 Chicago cabs. Beside pictures of young women who were allegedly killed by their Muslim fathers for refusing an Islamic marriage, dating a non-Muslim or becoming “too Americanized” is the message: “Is your family threatening you?” and the Web address of LeaveIslamSafely.com.

But many Muslim scholars and civil rights advocates say Geller and other self-proclaimed truth-tellers are malicious activists who have capitalized on the terrorist attacks to create a cottage industry bent on bashing people of goodwill and championing religious freedom for all Americans except Muslims.

John Esposito, a professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University, said religious defamation and Islam-bashing have become more acceptable in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks. “People like Pam Geller have a horrendous record,” he said. “It’s a track record of not distinguishing between forms of religious terrorism and Islam itself.”

Esposito said religion has nothing to do with it. Honor killings are a cultural phenomenon, not religious, and they are not endorsed anywhere in the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

“This ongoing jihad watch distorts the primary drivers here,” Esposito said. “Unless you understand where it’s coming from, it will not be addressed correctly…. This should be understood the way we address violence against women…. We offer them as much protection as we can, but we don’t jump to say this simply goes on among a particular religious group.”

Chicago Tribune, 22 August 2010