A former lawyer for the Muslim parents of a girl who ran away from home after converting to Christianity says in a $10 million federal lawsuit that a blogger and a former attorney for the girl defamed him by alleging he has contacts with terrorists and criminals.
Attorney Omar Tarazi is seeking $10 million in a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Columbus to compensate him for damage he alleges was done to his reputation.
Muslims and Arabs do not not act in America as they do in the increasingly Islamicized but non-practicing Christian and democratic sovereignties of Europe. Still, I wouldn’t close my eyes or our eyes to the increasing number of both naturalized and native-born citizens who enlist in the Islamic terror networks of our time, here and abroad.
Liberal political theory has virtually ignored the philosophical, legal and ethical questions posed by the threatening demographics of Europe. Is not western society, imperfect as it may be but immensely more liberal than the domains of Islam, obliged to defend its own…and their future. Immigration is key to this discussion, and it’s the one issue that no one wants to discuss.
I want to believe that Muslims are traumatized by the unrelieved murders in Islamic lands…. This intense epidemic of slaughter has been going on for nearly a decade and a half…without protest, without anything. And it has been going for decades and centuries before that.
Why do not Muslims raise their voices against these at once planned and random killings all over the Islamic world? This world went into hysteria some months ago when the Mossad took out the Hamas head of its own Murder Inc.
But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.
Martin Peretz in the New Republic, 4 September 2010
An Internet evangelist from Florida has begun holding services near ground zero to preach against Islam as debate continues over plans for a nearby Muslim community center.
Bill Keller has gained a following through his Liveprayer.comwebsite, and has promised to establish a “9/11 Christian Center” to counter what he referred to Sunday as “the lies of Islam.”
He began preaching Sunday at the New York Marriott Downtown Hotel, his temporary headquarters. His center is to open by Jan. 1.
Associated Press, 6 September 2010
See also New York Times, 5 September 2010
Richard Bartholomew has the details.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wfb9p3qSRqA
It’s hard to know where to start in expressing dismay with the Rev. Robert Jeffress – for being uninformed, un-Christian or un-American. The pastor of Dallas’ First Baptist Church managed to squeeze all three into a recent rant against Islam.
On Aug. 22, First Baptist’s Sunday evening service featured the annual “Ask The Pastor” event. One of the written questions that Jeffress took that night asked about comparisons between Muslim jihad and the Christian Crusades.
Jeffress acknowledged terrible misdeeds by Christians, although he said many have been “overblown.” He went on to say that Christian atrocities were always contrary to the teaching of the New Testament. “But Muslims, when they commit violence, they are acting in accordance with what the Quran teaches,” he said.
He was just getting started. He went on to talk about Islam’s oppression of women and how it is “a violent religion.”
“And here is the deep, dark, dirty secret of Islam: It is a religion that promotes pedophilia – sex with children. This so-called prophet Muhammad raped a 9-year-old girl – had sex with her,” he said. “Around the world today, you have Muslim men having sex with 4-year-old girls, taking them as their brides, because they believe the prophet Muhammad did.”
Finally, his finger jabbing the air, he proclaimed: “I believe, as Christians and conservatives, it’s time to take off the gloves and stand up and tell the truth about this evil, evil religion.”
Over at Politico Ken Vogel examines the controversy over the funding of the Park51 development and comes up with some interesting figures for the financial backing enjoyed by Islamophobic organisations like the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch:
Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network makes its contribution to the hysteria surrounding the Park51 development with a scaremongering report about how Muslims are taking over Paris. Following the report, Robertson helpfully explains that Islam isn’t just a religion, it’s “a political system that is meant to achieve world domination”.
Republican Rick Lazio‘s underfunded campaign for governor of New York attracted big donors dedicated to anti-terrorism efforts after he called for a probe of funding for a proposed mosque near ground zero, according to state records.
State campaign finance records show Long Island real estate developer and philanthropist Lawrence Kadish and his wife, Susan, contributed $75,000 to Lazio’s campaign beginning July 26. Their donations were about a third of the total Lazio collected during the 30-day period.
Under the headline “Mr. Lazio’s Bid for Attention,” a New York Times editorial on Aug. 23 said Lazio was making “increasingly hysterical attacks” on the project and “had no shame about using images of the smoldering World Trade Center in a new political ad.” The editorial noted Lazio was far behind Cuomo in polls and fundraising and that may be the explanation for his “attempt to exploit ground zero images for political gain.”
Three of the four installments from Kadish and his wife came after the editorial. A few other contributors involved in pro-Israel groups provided thousands more after Lazio’s July 7 letter.
“… this rally, on this very tragic day for Americans, but most tragic for those who lost their families, to use it and abuse it as a platform for bigotry, is not only tragic, it’s un-American”.
In an interview with Adam Serwer at The Plum Line blog, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League condemns the SIOA’s “Ground Zero mosque” demonstration on 11 September. Foxman is particularly angry that Geert Wilders will be speaking at the rally and says of Pamela Geller that “part of her agenda is to help garner support for Wilders, who is a bigot, who has a long record of anti-Muslim bigotry”.
Foxman notes that the SIOA protest is part of “a campaign which is in many places directed against building mosques” and which he says exemplifies “the anti-Muslim bigotry that exists in this country”. Foxman observes that this is nothing new:
“Part of the landscape, unfortunately, of America is that we’re not immune to bigotry, to racism, to anti-Semitism. And part of what’s out there is a bigotry to immigrants. Jews experienced it, Irish experienced it. Part of our history is there was opposition to building Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. Now there’s opposition to build mosques.”
In response, Geller denounces Foxman – director of one of the leading Jewish organisations in the US – as a “groveling, simpering lapdog panting to jihadists”.
But this is par for the course with Geller. In an interview with Jamie Glazov of FrontPage Magazine last December, after the Community Security Trust warned the Jewish community against supporting a Stop Islamisation of Europe protest against a new mosque in Harrow, she accused the CST of “aiding and abetting Islamic jihad and Islamic anti-Semitism”.
“While there demonstrably are political Islamist movements with programmes expressly advocating totalitarian theocracy – including the destruction of leftist parties and independent trade unionism – the class dynamics involved do not fit the template of European fascism.
“If Pollard wishes effectively to oppose such movements, he should stop frothing at the mouth like the deranged neocon he has sadly become, and develop a more sober analysis of these currents rather than excoriate the moderates behind Islam Expo, who are simply acting to further dialogue between their version of Islamism and the British body politic.”
Dave Osler comments on Islam Expo’s libel case against Stephen Pollard and the Spectator.
Details of the case can be found here.