Months after a debate over controversial anti-Muslim billboards in some Metro stations erupted, the woman behind those ads appeared at an event in Annapolis.
And that controversy followed Pamela Geller to the event convened by the Maryland Conservative Action Network (MDCAN).
Protesters outside held signs with messages such as “Hate is Not an American Value.”
Sheila Musaji responds to a ludicrous account of harassment by Muslims from a clearly unbalanced French supporter that Pamela Geller has posted on her Atlas Shrugs blog.
An Eastern Carolina congressman says a local community college should not accept a grant that would explain the Muslim culture.
Craven Community College in New Bern says it will accept the National Endowment for the Humanities’ grant. “Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys” would provide 25 books and a DVD to the college.
“It is appalling to me that a federal agency like NEH is wasting taxpayer money on programs like this,” said Jones. “It makes zero sense for the U.S. government to borrow money from China in order to promote the culture of Islamic civilizations,” said the Republican from the third district.
The Wall Street Journal has published a hostile “review” by Jonathan Schanzer of Nathan Lean’s The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims.
Schanzer doesn’t just trash Lean’s book but also attacks the concept of Islamophobia itself, which he describes as “simply a pejorative neologism designed to warn people away from criticizing any aspect of Islam”. Those on the receiving end of the anti-Muslim hysteria whipped up by the Islamophobes so effectively exposed by Lean would no doubt take a different view.
For a response to Schanzer’s article, see “Bush era neo-con schmuck Jonathan Schanzer shills for nasty Islamophobia movement”, Loonwatch, 10 January 2013
Seeking to make the Muslim headscarf speak to American fashion, a Muslim woman is championing a contest to encourage designers to create an American style of hijab, to the fury of Islamophobes.
The Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MD) is calling on Marylanders to contact several public officials in that state to request that they withdraw from participation in the upcoming Maryland Conservative Action Network Conference in Annapolis because the leader of a designated anti-Muslim hate group will speak at the event.
An interest-free housing project aimed at the Muslim community and boasting 100 per cent halal housing has sparked a major row, with critics labelling it a discriminatory plan that could lead to a Muslim enclave.
Illegal immigrant Stephen Lennon speaking at Geller and Spencer’s New York conference
Over at Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, Richard Bartholomew examines the responses by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer to the conviction of English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon on a charge of passport fraud.
It seems that these self-styled defenders of the western legal system against the supposed encroachments of Sharia law can’t even bring themselves to condemn the commission of this serious criminal offence by the man they have hailed as the leader of the British counterjihadist movement.
In addition, of course, Geller and Spencer still haven’t provided us with an explanation of how Lennon could have arrived in New York on a false passport them knowing. Until they do so, the suspicion will remain that they actively co-operated with him in securing his illegal entry to the US so he could attend their conference.
Which, if I understand US law correctly, is a criminal offence there too.
For the second time in two weeks, Israeli settlers stormed the historical Mosque of the Prophet Daud in Jerusalem, and they broke the ceramic and marble tiles covering three walls. The tiles date back to the 17th century.
News Hounds reports that Fox News’ latest contribution to the incitement of Islamophobia is its promotion of an Islamophobic documentary film called Jihad in America: The Grand Deception.
The film is produced by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which is headed by Steve Emerson (listed in Fear Inc. as one of the “leading lights of the Islamophobia network“). It claims to expose:
“the covert structure and growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist groups, masquerading under the false moniker of being apolitical religious groups or civil rights groups in the United States, specifically how they are infiltrating or intimidating major societal institutions from Congress to Hollywood, from the mainstream news media to federal law enforcement, from the publishing industry to museums”.
The parallels between this sort of anti-Muslim scaremongering and classic antisemitic conspiracy theories scarcely need underlining. Yet that didn’t prevent Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly (who had earlier provided a boost to the demented David Horowitz) from giving credence to the claims in Jihad in America, along with a sympathetic interview with Steve Emerson himself (the self-proclaimed expert on terrorism who, you may recall, assured everyone that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was probably carried out by “Middle Eastern terrorists”).