Category Archives: Right wing

Terry Jones returns to Dearborn

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terry Jones I Will Not SubmitTerry Jones, the Quran-burning controversial Florida pastor, called this afternoon for the United States to stop allowing Muslims to immigrate into the country.

In brief remarks witnessed by only a few people at the Dearborn City Hall, Jones also advocated the government regularly monitor mosques to make sure they are not a place of “propaganda of Islam.”

“Sharia must be banned in America,” Jones said, referring to the religious law practiced by some Muslims in other countries.

Jones spoke for about 20 minutes before a crowd of about 50. Many were protesters from the group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which has dogged Jones during his repeated trips to the area. Numerous media also were attending the event, which drew the attention of about two dozen police officers. Muslims were noticeably absent from the crowd.

Jones, wearing a bulletproof vest, was returning after his attempt to protest in from of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn in April was aborted by a court fight that resulted in his jailing after he refused to pay a $1 “peace bond” to the court.

Opposing Jones were protesters from BAMN who chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Terry Jones has got to go” and carried signs, including some saying, “Honk against anti-Muslim Bigotry” and “Stop Terry Jones, Defend the Arab International Festival.”

Jones, who has said he will not burn a Quran while here, also plans to speak at the 16th annual Dearborn Arab International Festival.

Jones, the 59-year-old pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., is expected to be joined by Christian missionaries who have attended the festival in the past as part of their efforts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Detroit News, 17 June 2011

See also Jeff T. Wattrick, “Anti-Islamic pastor Terry Jones calls for ban on Islamic immigration, claims free speech violates his free speech”, MLive.com, 17 June 2011

Update:  See “6 Arrested as mob rushes Terry Jones at Arab Festival in Dearborn”, Dearborn Patch, 17 June 2011

More right-wing conspiracy-mongering over Weiner scandal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Following widespread ridicule of the suggestion that Anthony Weiner may have secretly converted to Islam as part of a socialist plot to orchestrate a Muslim takeover of the USA, the conspiracy-mongerers are now settling on the idea that Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin – who works as an aide to Hilary Clinton – may be a spy for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Richard Bartholomew has the details.

See also Sheila Musaji, “Abedin/Weiner marriage and dumb ‘Muslim plots'”, The American Muslim, 17 June 2011

Gingrich condemned for comparing Muslims to Nazis

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s comments comparing Muslims to Nazis at the GOP debate Monday night have sparked a firestorm in the blogosphere, where liberals, and even some conservatives, have pounced on the former House speaker for what they view as excessive fear mongering.

“Of course Newt is taking it too far. He is appealing to the basest instincts of a very small minority of folks,” said Matthew Dowd, ABC News consultant who served as chief strategist on George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election team. “Either he is doing this for political purposes to distract people from a campaign in disarray, which is bad, or he actually believes it, which is scary.”

ABC News Radio, 15 June 2011

Peter King is back again to exploit fear of US Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Peter King chairmanThe days and weeks leading up to Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) hearing on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans back in March was filled with heated rallies and protest. Protesters called the hearing “un-American” and said investigating one community brought them back to the days of “McCarthyism”.

Going into Wednesday’s second hearing concerning radicalization in the prison system before the Homeland Security Committee, which King chairs, the tone has died down considerably. But there is still concern in the Muslim community and other religious groups that these hearings are disenfranchising Muslim-Americans.

“The congressman’s focus on the whole community, singling out one community for this hearing is not right,” Dr. Faroque Khan, a member of the board of trustees for the Islamic Center of Long Island, told the Press. “It sends the wrong message, it’s counterproductive, it’s not going to accomplish anything, and it basically violates the first amendment; that he’s attacking the religion.”

The Muslim-American community gathered at the Islamic Center of Long Island on Tuesday for one of the few protest leading up to the congressman’s second hearing.

Dr. Shaik Ubaid, co-chairman of the New York Chapter of Muslim Peace Coalition Committee said in a phone interview that religious groups decided to hold discussions at the community level “rather than giving congressman King some free publicity”.

Ubaid, who was an active protester during King’s first hearing, said these hearings could do more harm than good. He cited other violent gangs in prison that are prevalent across the country, and questioned why the congressman is only investigating Muslims in prisons.

“What is the motivation of the hearing?” he said. “It’s not going to make the country any safer. It’s just going to stereotype and increase more polarization in the country.”

Long Island Press, 15 June 2011

See also “Law enforcement officials at King hearing claim radical Islam infiltrating US prisons”, Fox News, 15 June 2011

Jewish Democrats blast Republicans for targeting Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NJDC banner

The National Jewish Democratic Council blasted what it said was a Republican “obsession” with Muslims.

An NJDC statement termed as “utterly unnecessary” a second hearing convened Wednesday by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Commitee, on Muslim radicalization.

“Taken together with examples such as Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s and Herman Cain’s deeply disturbing comments in Monday night’s debate, these hearings are a manifestation of an upsetting GOP obsession with American Muslims,” the statement said.

In the GOP presidential debate Monday, Gingrich defended proposed loyalty tests for Muslims by likening them to past loyalty tests aimed at ferreting out communists and Nazis. Cain attempted to explain past comments in which he said he would not be comfortable with including a Muslim in his Cabinet.

“Once again, King has singled out the adherents of the Muslim faith, calling into question the loyalty of an entire community,” NJDC said. “All Americans who treasure the freedom of religion should be concerned with the growing suspicion of Muslim Americans by the Republican Party, which seems to be a requirement among its 2012 contenders.”

JTA, 15 June 2011

At debate, Republican candidates spar over Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

There weren’t too many sharp differences among the Republican presidential candidates in Monday night’s New Hampshire debate, but a crack did emerge over how Islam and Muslims ought to be treated in the United States.

The CNN debate opened with discussions on economic issues, but later veered toward faith-based matters like the role of religion in candidates’ decision making, abortion, gay marriage – and how the United States ought to treat Muslims living within its borders.

The exchange on that issue opened with a question to former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who had said previously that he wouldn’t feel comfortable appointing a Muslim to his presidential Cabinet.

“I would not be comfortable because you have peaceful Muslims and then you have militant Muslims – those that are trying to kill us,” Cain said at Monday night’s debate. “And so when I said I wouldn’t be comfortable, I was thinking about the ones who are trying to kill us.”

Cain went further, addressing the prospect of Sharia, or Muslim law, being applied in the United States, which some conservatives say constitutes a growing threat to the American legal system. “I don’t believe in Sharia law in American courts,” Cain said Monday. “I believe in American laws in American courts, period.”

“There have been instances in New Jersey, there was an instance in Oklahoma , where Muslims did try to influence court decisions with Sharia law,” he continued. “I was simply saying, very emphatically, American laws in American courts.”

Cain also said he would ask Muslims seeking jobs in his administration “certain questions … to make sure that we have people committed to the Constitution.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who spoke next, appeared to brush aside Cain’s concerns about Sharia and his suspicions of American Muslims. “Of course, we’re not going to have Sharia law applied in U.S. courts. That’s never going to happen,” Romney said. “We have a Constitution and we follow the law.”

Romney then appeared to defend American Muslims, even if he didn’t mention them specifically. “We recognize that people of all faiths are welcome in this country,” he said. “Our nation was founded on a principle of religious tolerance. That’s in fact why some of the earliest patriots came to this country and why we treat people with respect, regardless of their religious persuasion.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich quickly jumped in to push back on Romney, siding more with Cain over the issue of Islam. Gingrich invoked Faisal Shahzad, the so-called Times Square bomber of 2010, who is a U.S. citizen from Pakistan. “Now, I just want to go out on a limb here,” Gingrich said. “I’m in favor of saying to people, ‘If you’re not prepared to be loyal to the United States, you will not serve in my administration, period’.”

“We did this in dealing with the Nazis and we did this in dealing with the communists,” Gingrich continued. “And it was controversial both times, and both times we discovered after a while, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country. And we have got to have the guts to stand up and say no.”

Cain’s and Gingrich’s comments on American Muslims supplied some of the night’s biggest applause lines.

CNN belief blog, 13 June 2011

See also Adam Serwer, “GOP hopefuls trafficked in crackpot sharia panic, with one exception: Romney”, The Plum Line, 14 June 2011

Don’t worry, Islamophobia isn’t a problem – we have Andrew Gilligan’s word for it

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Close East London Mosque NowAndrew Gilligan has a piece on his Telegraph blog, titled “Islamophobic crime fell in London last year – MCB spins the opposite”, in which he responds to the Independent on Sunday report on rising anti-Muslim hatred in the UK.

Gilligan accuses the Muslim Council of Britain’s secretary-general Farooq Murad of falsely claiming that hate crime against Muslims has risen in London. Now, I realise that Gilligan is the Telegraph‘s London editor and has a bit of an obsession with events in the capital, but if he had bothered to read the Independent report properly he would see that Farooq Murad was referring to the situation nationally, and made no reference to London.

Gilligan goes on to assert that “anti-Muslim hatred in Britain … is, thankfully, diminishing”, although he offers no real evidence for this. True, as the Independent article points out, police data on Islamophobic offences are not collated centrally and many forces do not compile such statistics at all, so hard evidence regarding hate crime nationally is lacking. However, you might have thought that the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain would be in a better position than Gilligan to make an informed judgement on whether anti-Muslim hatred is on the increase across the UK.

And then there is the question of whether the figures for London are themselves reliable, given that a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police accepts that hate crime against Muslims has been significantly under-reported. Indeed, taking the Met’s figures at face value, Gilligan would be forced to conclude that between 2008 and 2009 there was a massive rise in anti-Muslim hatred in London, with Islamophobic offences increasing from 106 to 368 and incidents of religiously motivated violence against Muslims from 96 to 303.

Of course, you can understand why Gilligan might have an interest in denying that there is a problem with rising Islamophobia in the UK, and in accusing the Independent of having fallen for “the Islamists’ grievance-mongering agenda” – because his disgraceful witch-hunting of the East London Mosque has fed the very anti-Muslim hatred whose existence he denies.

Update:  See also “Andrew Gilligan on anti-Muslim hate crimes”,ENGAGE, 14 June 2011

The sharia myth sweeps America

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If you are not vitally concerned about the possibility of radical Muslims infiltrating the U.S. government and establishing a Taliban-style theocracy, then you are not a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. In addition to talking about tax policy and Afghanistan, Republican candidates have also felt the need to speak out against the menace of ‘sharia’.”

Amy Sullivan in USA Today, 12 June 2011

Update:  See also  “Muslim coalition asks GOP debaters to reject Islamophobia”, CAIR press release, 13 June 2011

And “Republicans debate Muslim loyalty tests and Sharia courts on CNN”, Mediaite, 13 June 2011