Category Archives: USA

Bryan Fischer dedicates yet another program to attacking Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Last week, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer declared that the First Amendment does not apply to Islam and therefore, Muslims have no right to freely practice their religion in this country.

A few days later, Fischer was in Iowa to broadcast his radio program from the Rediscover God in America conference where he lined up an all-star list of guests, including Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Haley Barbour.

As such, People For the American Way released open letters to Gingrich, Huckabee, and Barbour, asking them not to give Fischer credibility by appearing on his program or, at the least, to denounce Fischer’s bigoted views.

Not surprisingly, our request was roundly ignored.

Yesterday, Fischer dedicated nearly the entirety of his two-hour radio program to railing against Islam and demanding an end to immigration from Muslim nations and a ban on the construction of mosques in America.

This is where George Bush was simply plain wrong: he believed that there’s a hunger in every human heart for freedom. Not true. That hunger for freedom does not exist in the Islamic heart. It’s not in their DNA. Why? Because the spirit of God is absent in Islam. There is no spirit of God in Islam. It is the spirit of Satan. It is the spirit of darkness. It is the spirit of tyranny. It is the spirit of bondage.

The Quran is based on hallucinations. These hallucinations, I think Mohammad really experienced something, but what he experienced was what Paul refers to as the Angel of Light. This was a messenger of Satan masquerading as a messenger from God. You want to see what a religion looks like when it has been revealed by the Prince of Darkness, you look at Islam and the Quran.

From now on, no more immigrants from Islamic countries. Can’t have it. It’s going to corrode western culture. No more mosques because these are places of subversion, places where Sharia law, places where jihad is inculcated, where it is taught and where there are recruits made for jihad.

Right Wing Watch, 30 March 2011

Alaska: Republican party turns to Geller as Islam expert

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pamela Geller UndeadWhen an Alabama Republican legislator introduced a bill to ban Shariah law and subsequently couldn’t define Shariah law, I thought we had seen the single most ignorant and problematic of the anti-Shariah efforts.

But now the Alaska GOP is giving Alabama a run for its money. In becoming the latest state legislator to seek to ban Islamic law, Alaska Republican Rep. Carl Gatto called a fringe anti-Muslim blogger to testify as an expert witness in the House Judiciary Committee.

That would be Pamela Geller. The New York-based blogger delivered a statement by phone and then took questions from Alaska legislators during the hearing Wednesday.

Geller is the blogger who spread many of the original falsehoods about the so-called “ground zero mosque” (sample headline from her “Atlas Shrugs” website: “Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction”). Her blog also regularly features conspiracy theories such as the classic, “Malcolm X is Obama’s father.”

That Geller was called as an expert in anything in a deliberative body is remarkable. The Anchorage Daily News reports on her testimony:

“Geller maintained ‘surveys in the Muslim world’ show most Muslims want a unified caliphate with a ‘strict al-Qaida-like Sharia’. She spoke of Muslim polygamy, jihad in support of Sharia, and said Muslims have demanded special accommodation in U.S. schools, workplaces and government.”

Salon, 31 March 2011

Durbin hearings on Muslim civil rights open

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dick DurbinIt was billed as the first-ever congressional hearing on the civil rights of American Muslims. But it played more like an Act II than a premiere.

In many ways, the hearing led by Senate Democrats on Tuesday was the dramatic antithesis of one House Republicans held earlier this month on homegrown Islamic radicalism.

Instead of gavel-banging, decorum prevailed. Sobering statistics stood in for emotional anecdotes, and laughter, not sobs, resounded in the committee room. While an audience packed the gallery, the dais was empty save for the six senators who came and went.

But the most striking change was the second hearing’s focus: Crimes committed against American Muslims, not by them. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he convened Tuesday’s hearing because of rising Islamophobia, manifested by Quran burnings, hate speech and restrictions on mosque construction.

And though he did not mention him by name, Durbin twice criticized House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., who convened the earlier hearing on the “radicalization” of American Muslims.

King told Fox News on Monday that Durbin’s hearing “is somehow trying to create the illusion that there’s a violation of civil rights of Muslims in this country. It’s absolutely untrue, and to me it makes no sense.”

Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, wasted little time in rebutting King. “Some have even questioned the premise of today’s hearing,” he said in his opening remarks, “that we should protect the civil rights of American Muslims.”

Durbin also criticized King’s controversial statement that “there are too many mosques in this country.”

“Such inflammatory speech from prominent public figures creates a fertile climate for discrimination,” Durbin said.

Durbin’s star witness was Thomas Perez, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a “steady stream of violence and discrimination” has targeted Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs and South Asians in the United States, he said.

“In each city and town where I have met with leaders of these communities, I have been struck by the sense of fear that pervades their lives – fear of violence, bigotry and hate,” Perez said. “The headwind of intolerance manifests itself in many ways.”

Perez noted that the Justice Department passed a grim milestone last month when it secured a guilty plea from a man who torched a playground at a Texas mosque: He was the 50th defendant charged in a federal criminal case of post-9/11 backlash.

Muslim complaints about workplace discrimination have increased 150% since 9/11, Perez said, but he and other witnesses seemed most upset by reports that many Muslim children are harassed at school –called “terrorists” and told to “go home.”

“We have a growing docket of cases involving Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian students,” he said. Muslim students form the largest category of religious discrimination cases handled by the Department of Justice’s education division, Perez added.

“Parents worry, ‘Will my child be next?'” said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, who also testified on Tuesday. “And they worry about the future: Will America be hospitable to other faiths? Will its better angels prevail?”

USA Today, 29 March 2011

See also “ADL: Anti-Muslim sentiment ‘significant'”, JTA, 29 March 2011

Religious leaders tell Terry Jones he’s not welcome in Detroit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Everything he’s doing here is a violation of the Gospel,” said Pastor Ed Rowe with Central United Methodist Church.

Metro Detroit religious leaders are standing in solidarity, sending letters and sending a message to the controversial pastor from Florida. They say stay home.

“We do not agree with Terry Jones. We do not agree with his philosophy, and we want to continue to keep this region as unified as we possibly can,” said the Rev. Charles Williams II with King Solomon Baptist Church.

“We need more progress than anything right now. What we don’t need is any incendiary acts that would push us back,” said the Rev. Maurice Rudds with Greater Mount Tabor Baptist Church.

“Too many barriers have already been tore down, and so we say today to all that might hear my voice, we love Muslims, we love Jews, we love all God-fearing people,” said the Rev. Charles Williams, Senior with King Solomon Baptist Church.

What they don’t love is the visit Pastor Terry Jones is planning – a protest outside the Islamic Center of America on April 22. Jones is coming at the invitation of the Order of the Dragon, some newly-formed, obscure group of about five people from up north – hardly a ringing endorsement for Jones’ services.

“Shame on that militia group here in Michigan who was trying to import Mr. Jones, who’s a very controversial figure, to try to stir up trouble in their own state,” said Dawud Walid with CAIR Michigan.

MyFoxDetroit.com, 28 March 2011

Why quoting religious texts proves nothing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OK, put your books away. We’re having a pop quiz.

Below are four quotes. Each is from one of two sources: the Bible or the Koran, although, just to make things interesting, there’s also a chance all four are from one book. Two were edited for length and one of those was also edited to remove a religion-specific reference. Your job: identify the holy book of origin. Ready? Go:

1) “. . . Wherever you encounter [non-believers], kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post . . .”

2) “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

3) “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ . . . do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death.”

4) “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”

All right, pens down. How did you do?

If you identified the first quote as being from the Koran (9:5) and the other three as originating in the Bible (Matthew 10:34, Deuteronomy 13:6-9, Numbers 31:17-18), I congratulate you on that degree in theology. If I have guessed correctly, most people will not have found it easy to place the quotes in their proper books. If I have guessed correctly, most people will have found a certain thematic similarity in them.

Leonard Pitts Jnr in the Miami Herald, 26 March 2011