“… the anti-Muslim Right’s parading around under the free speech banner (just like their pretense of safeguarding the rights of gay people from oppressive Muslim societies) is so blatantly insincere, nothing more than a means of opportunistically elevating and justifying their anti-Islamic animus. That fact is conclusively demonstrated by how selectively self-interested is the application of their free speech ‘principles’.”
Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, 12 May 2009
Ayaan Hirsi Ali endorses Christopher Caldwell’s book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe.
At Comment is Free Sunny Hundal takes pleasure in the outbreak of in-fighting among the “anti-jihadist neocons”, exemplified by Little Green Footballs’ falling-out with Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller. He notes “the role mainstream media and thinktanks play in supporting this lunatic fringe and their paranoid fantasies”.
See also “Civil war raging in right-wing blogosphere”, Washington Independent, 23 April 2009
Mark Mazower reviews Christopher Caldwell’s new book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe:
“His argument, baldly put, is that Enoch Powell was more right than wrong. Europe is in decline from an ‘adversary culture’, and Muslim immigration, in particular, poses a mortal threat….
“Throwing off the shackles of political correctness, he plays fast and loose with the data and switches between talk of immigrants, Muslims and ‘non-natives’ as it serves his argument. Europeans, he alleges, are fleeing abroad out of fear of Islam.
“But the best case of ‘white flight’ he can find is of emigrating Jews and even this is unpersuasive since the number of those leaving for this reason is small and almost certainly exceeded by the reverse flow from Israel and elsewhere. Oddly, Caldwell unselfconsciously invokes the Jews as indigenous Europeans when just two generations ago they were regarded much as he regards Muslims….
“Caldwell’s fast-breeding, over-sexualised immigrants have already established what he calls ‘beachheads’ – the idea that the immigrants are the vanguard of a larger invading force – and engineered a reverse ‘colonisation’ of historic cities abandoned by their native inhabitants. Muslim immigration, apparently nothing less than a ‘project to seize territory’, is well on the way to bringing Europe within the House of Islam.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a group of domestic violence and religious organisations yesterday asked the Michigan supreme court to change a proposed rule that would allow judges to bar Muslim women wearing veils from testifying in court. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for 12 May.
“Judges should not deny anyone access to justice because of his or her religion,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director for the ACLU of Michigan. Steinberg said the ACLU and other groups asked the supreme court to add a sentence to the rule, saying “that no person shall be precluded from testifying on the basis of clothing worn because of a sincerely held belief”.
Steinberg said his request yesterday was signed by religious organisations including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the American Jewish Congress and Michigan Conference of the United Church of Christ. A group of domestic violence organisations also signed the request in order to allow women who have been sexually assaulted, for instance, to have their day in court without abandoning their beliefs.
See also Michigan Messenger, 30 April 2009
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today call on members of the Jewish community to condemn the anti-Islam hate of a speaker who was recently given a standing ovation at a Florida synagogue.
CAIR said the speech by Dutch anti-Islam extremist politician Geert Wilders took place at a “large synagogue in Palm Beach.” In the speech, Wilders went through his usual laundry list of hate-filled views, including his claim that “Islam is not a religion” and “the right to religious freedom should not apply to this totalitarian ideology called Islam,” all to the applause of the audience. Wilders also called for stopping immigration from Muslim countries and urged “voluntary repatriation” to those countries.
“A synagogue should be the last place that Geert Wilders’ Nazi-like propaganda would find a warm reception,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Members of the Jewish community know all too well what happens when a religious minority is demonized by demagogues. Wilders uses the same scurrilous attacks on Muslims and Islam that the Nazis used against German Jews and Judaism in the 1930s.”
CAIR press release, 28 April 2009
Update: See “ADL condemns anti-Islam remarks made by Dutch parliamentarian during appearances in S. Florida”, ADL Florida press release, 28 April 2009
Further update: See “CAIR Commends Fla. Jewish group for condemning hate speech”, CAIR press release, 30 April 2009
For an alternative view, by the inimitable Pamela Geller, see “ADL stabs Israel’s staunchest ally, Geert Wilders, and Jews along with him again“, Atlas Shrugs, 30 April 2009
Thankfully, the ADL are a lot more representative of the US Jewish community than the lunatic Geller.
A slick FBI informant roped four Muslim converts into a horrific terror plot to blow up synagogues and military jets by handing them piles of cash and gifts and even bags of weed, relatives of the suspects said today.
“Brother whatever you need, I will get it for you,” said the man who the four petty thieves knew as Maqsood, according to Kathleen Baynes, whose long-time boyfriend, James Cromitie is alleged to be the ringleader of the plot.
“He was very persistent and every time he came for James he took him away. They said they were going out to eat dinner,” she said. “Whenever we needed anything Maqsood would help – like financially – he gave us money to pay rent. He was just constantly around. It was like he was stalking him.”
Co-conspirator David Williams’s girlfriend Cassandra McKoy insists the men were duped into the plot with the lure of a cash payday and that religious hatred had nothing to do with it.
“They aren’t radicals they were just financially motivated. They aren’t terrorists. If Maqsood wasn’t in the picture they would’ve never come up with this idea,” she said. “This was not their idea. They make it sound like they sought him out and said we want to do this when he’s the one who approached them. He enticed them with money. Maqsood wasn’t even allowed inside the mosque, he waited in the parking lot for them and offered them $25,000 to join.”
Civil liberties groups are renewing calls for the Obama administration to change screening at border posts by limiting questions about Americans’ political beliefs and religious practices and establishing a process for U.S. citizens and residents who are mistakenly included on terrorist watch lists to clear their names.
In a report to be released today, the Asian Law Caucus of San Francisco cited more than 40 complaints from U.S. citizens and immigrants that it has received since 2007 as evidence of “a much wider pattern of profiling and discrimination at U.S. borders.”
“Many people in America’s Muslim, South Asian and Middle Eastern communities have come to expect harassment and discriminatory treatment at our nation’s doorstep” when returning home, the report said.
Separately, Muslim Advocates, the advocacy arm of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, issued a report saying that citizens should not be threatened with detention for not answering questions that go beyond establishing their legal status to enter the United States or whether they are carrying contraband.
The actions come as civil liberties groups press for a swifter response by the new Democratic president and Congress to long-standing complaints that security measures adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have subjected innocent travelers to unwarranted delays and scrutiny.
Washington Post, 20 April 2009
Read the Muslim Advocates report here.
Washington has confirmed it will boycott a UN forum on racism in Geneva next week because of differences over Israel and the right to free speech.
The state department said the proposed text of the conference’s guiding document remained unacceptable despite having been amended significantly. The US and Israel quit a similar forum in Durban in 2001 when its draft document likened Zionism to racism. Current language about “incitement to religious hatred” also alarms the US.
Pro-Israel groups vehemently opposed participation while human rights advocates and organisations like TransAfrica and members of the Congressional Black Caucus thought it was important to attend. Immediately after the announcement, Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who heads the black caucus in Congress, said the group was “deeply dismayed” by the boycott.
For the background, see “West fears Muslim countries will hijack UN Geneva racism conference”, Guardian, 17 April 2009
The amended draft statement for the Durban review conference can be consulted (pdf) here.
Paragraph 13, to which the Obama administration objects, says that the conference:
“Reaffirms that any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law; reaffirms further that all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts shall be declared offence punishable by law, in accordance with the international obligations of States and that these prohibitions are consistent with freedom of opinion and expression.”
From which we can only conclude that the US government defends the right to promote “religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”.
Update: BBC News reports that Australia and the Netherlands have joined the US, Israel and Canada in boycotting the conference.
And now Germany too.
Further update: The Telegraph backs Obama and demands to know why Gordon Brown doesn’t follow his example: “Durban II will be little more than a celebration of the alliance between anti-Western leftists and Islamists. Countries that take civil rights seriously are right to stay away. Why is Britain not among them?”
Populist broadsheet De Telegraaf reports that Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders is going to produce a sequel to his anti-Islam film Fitna.
Wilders said his new film, which will be finished by 2010, is intended to show the Western world how far Islamisation has progressed. “It is not going to be a copy ofFitna,” said the Freedom Party leader who warns that the film would be “no less controversial than the first film”.
The first film was mainly an indictment of the Qur’an, but “I now want to show people the consequences of mass immigration from Islamic countries, for which we have opened the door here.”
The MP also said professionals from the US will assist him in the production of the film. “I have received offers from people from New York and Hollywood, people who in the past have made films that were screened in the Netherlands.”
However, De Telegraaf writes that Wilders refused to name any names, and has yet to find sponsors to finance his latest production. He will travel to Florida next week to raise funds and talk about his film.
Meanwhile, over David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine we find an enthusiastic defence of Wilders:
“To label Wilders a racist, a xenophobe or a fascist is false. Instead, he should be seen as a democrat who seeks to protect modern democratic societies against the realistic threat of a stealth Islamic revolution, evolving from mass immigration, step by step introduction of Sharia law, and restriction of freedom of speech.”