Category Archives: Right wing

More evidence of FBI’s anti-Islam bias revealed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FBI library books

Following months of denials, the FBI is now promising a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials” after Danger Room revealed a series of Bureau presentations that tarred average Muslims as “radical” and “violent”.

But untangling the Islamophobic thread woven into the FBI’s counterterrorism training culture won’t be easy. In addition to inflammatory seminars which likened Islam to the Death Star and Mohammed to a “cult leader”, Danger Room has obtained more material showing just how wide the anti-Islam meme has spread throughout the Bureau.

The FBI library at Quantico currently stacks books from authors who claim that “Islam and democracy are totally incompatible”. The Bureau’s private intranet recently featured presentations that claimed to demonstrate the “inherently violent nature of Islam”, according to multiple sources. Earlier this year, the Bureau’s Washington Field Office welcomed a speaker who claimed Islamic law prevents Muslims from being truly loyal Americans. And as recently as last week, the online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces included claims that Sunni Islam seeks “domination of the world”, according to a law enforcement source.

Danger Room, 23 September 2011

See also Think Progress, 23 September 2011

Michael Nazir-Ali with the English Defence League

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nazir-Ali with Blackburn EDL

Here’s a photo from Blackburn EDL’s Facebook page that a contact has drawn our attention to. It may be questionable whether Michael Nazir-Ali knew that the people he was being photographed with were EDL. But it’s hardly surprising that they wanted to discuss “the dangers of sharia law and radical Islam” with him, as the former Bishop of Rochester’s views on those issues have much in common with the EDL’s.

The discussion took place in June at a talk by Nazir-Ali at St Andrew’s Church in Leyland, which was billed by his hosts as focusing on “the rise of Secularism and Islam and how Christians in high density Muslim areas like ours might best respond”. Nazir-Ali’s talk was well received by the EDL. “I could have listened to him for at least another 2 hours!!!”, one member of Blackburn division commented. “Felt GREAT that a man of the cloth was on our wavelength – BRILLIANT!!”

It’s just one more example of how mainstream Islamophobia provides the conditions in which more thuggish forms of anti-Muslim hatred exemplified by the EDL (see for example here and here) can thrive and grow.

Pamela Geller’s new anti-Islam ad describes Palestinians as ‘savages’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pamela Geller is complaining that New York’s Metropolitan Transport Authority has shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for her latest advert, which claims that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a “war between the civilized man and the savage”, and she is threatening legal action against the MTA. Geller is particularly outraged that the MTA are prepared to accept “repulsive antisemitic, anti-Israel ads” – like this one.

The Gothamist has the details.

Continue reading →

‘Knight Templar’ gatecrashes Muslim student event at Princeton, makes threats

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A local man claiming to be part of the Knights Templar was arrested on Saturday night after allegedly interrupting a Muslim Student Association welcome back dinner and telling students that “Muslims are going to hell”, according to multiple witnesses and police reports.

While the incident reflects a nationwide spike in bias crimes in the wake of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, MSA members say they are treating it as an isolated event and do not plan to scale back any of their events in response.

The man, Adam Pyle, 26, of Princeton Township, had apparently been present for part of the actual dinner at Campus Club, said Sohaib Sultan, the University’s Muslim life coordinator. Toward the conclusion of the dinner, Pyle left the dining area and allegedly started going through the backpack of Jihad Al-Jabban ’14, the MSA public relations chair.

When Al-Jabban walked over, Pyle explained that he was a Christian but still a member of the “ummah”, the global Muslim community, according to Al-Jabban. Pyle then proceeded to bow and ask MSA members if they were members of the ummah, said MSA vice president Areej Hassan ’13. He also allegedly asked a member, “Why do you hate Jews?” Hassan is a staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.

“I immediately became a little bit nervous about what his intentions were,” Sultan said. “I realized this could be a potentially violent situation.”

Sultan then ushered the 60 to 70 students attending the dinner into a closed room away from Pyle, and an attendee called Public Safety. In the meantime, Pyle allegedly said, “Muslims are going to hell” and “Death to Muslims”, and began walking toward the students, according to Sultan.

“I stood right in front of him and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going to let [you] go inside’,” Sultan recalled. During the night, Pyle also allegedly made references to the anti-Christ, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua said in an email.

At 8:57 p.m., Public Safety officers arrested Pyle and charged him with bias intimidation, criminal attempt, disorderly conduct, harassment and defiant trespass, Mbugua said. Pyle will face the criminal charges on Monday in the Borough Municipal Court. Public Safety ordered Pyle to stay away from campus for the next 90 days, and the department intends to ban him permanently.

Daily Princetonian, 21 September 2011

Via LoonWatch

Southern California councilman boasted that he named his dog Muhammad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. — A Southern California councilman is drawing criticism for mentioning in a public meeting that he named his dog after the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on Derek Reeve to apologize for his comment at a recent San Juan Capistrano council meeting. The Islamic advocacy group says Reeve mentioned naming his dogs America and Muhammad during a discussion about a new dog park.

CAIR’s executive director in greater Los Angeles says while Reeve has a right to free speech, his “distasteful remark” is unbefitting of an elected official. The city’s mayor and another councilman also criticized Reeve.

The Orange County Register reports that Reeve said he named his dog Muhammad as a political statement.

Associated Press, 22 September 2011

See also Orange County Register, 22 September 2011

‘Intelligence analyst’ tells FBI agents to go after Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at Danger Room, which broke the story about the FBI teaching its agents that “mainstream” Muslims are linked to terrorism, Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman have a video of a lecture by FBI intelligence analyst William Gawthrop from June this year – which rather undermines the FBI’s claim that the notorious counterterrorism course was a “one time only” event that took place in April and was “quickly discontinued”. Ackerman and Shachtman write:

The best strategy for undermining militants, Gawthrop suggested, is to go after Islam itself. To undermine the validity of key Islamic scriptures and key Muslim leaders.

“If you remember Star Wars, that ventilation shaft that goes down to into the depths of the Death Star, they shot a torpedo down there. That’s a critical vulnerability,” Gawthrop told his audience. Then he waved a laser pointer at his projected PowerPoint slide, calling attention to the words “Holy Texts” and “Clerics”.

“We should be looking at, should be aiming at, these,” Gawthrop said.

There is some background information on Gawthrop in the original Danger Room report:

In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet “Muhammad’s mindset is a source for terrorism”, Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the “birther” movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama’s American citizenship.

At the time, Gawthrop’s major suggestion for waging the war on terrorism was to attack what he called “soft spots” in Islamic faith that might “induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target”. That is, to discredit Islam itself and cause Muslims to abandon their religion. “Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal,” he said. Alas, he lamented, he faced the bureaucratic obstacle of official Washington’s “political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam,” according to the website.

For more on Gawthrop see Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion.

No such thing as good Islam, Baptist theologian argues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark CoppengerIn his column for the Florida Baptist Witness newspaper, religion professor Mark Coppenger discusses the two schools of thought on Islam: one that contends that Islam is a “great religion with awesome accomplishments” and the other that it is a “false and dangerous ideology”.

Of those two schools, Coppenger argues, “I’m urging folks to matriculate in the later. In fact, I’m not convinced the former should be accredited.”

He discounts the fact that majority of Muslims are not aggressive and oppressive: “You don’t define a faith by the behavior of its slackers or its observants who lack the numbers and power to fully advance their agenda, as is currently the case with Muslims in the West.”

And then gives his own reasons why Islam is a bad religion doomed to ruin: “When you start with an adulterous warrior-profit, who is literally anti-Christ (though touting a non-biblical version of Jesus), mix in generous helpings of totalitarianism and the marginalization/persecution of women and non-Muslims, and cultivate tribalism, legalism, and victimism, you have a recipe for disaster.”

Coppenger, who is professor of Christian apologetics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, makes no apologies for his condemnation of Islam: “… let’s not be cowed by charges of ‘Islamophobia’ when we rehearse the unmatched, bloody record of Muslim terrorist attacks… Such talk may not be our calling or your cup of tea, but it has its place if I read my Bible right.”

Orlando Sentinel, 19 September 2011