“The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and suicide bombings worldwide have changed not only the way we live but the way we look at those around us, especially Muslims. ‘Islamophobia’ has entered the American vernacular, and the anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudice it describes remain common. But what if you witnessed ‘Islamophobia’ in action and saw someone being victimized because of someone else’s prejudices? What would you do?”
Category Archives: USA
Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam
WASHINGTON — A huge survey of the world’s Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.
The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism. It shows that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemned the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks, the authors of the study said in Washington.
“Samuel Harris said in the Washington Times (in 2004): ‘It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam’,” Dalia Mogadeh, co-author of the book “Who Speaks for Islam” which grew out of the study, told a news conference here. “The argument Mr Harris makes is that religion in the primary driver” of radicalism and violence, she said. “Religion is an important part of life for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and if it were indeed the driver for radicalisation, this would be a serious issue.”
But the study, which Gallup says surveyed a sample equivalent to 90 percent of the world’s Muslims, showed that widespread religiosity “does not translate into widespread support for terrorism,” said Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. About 93 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews.
In majority Muslim countries, overwhelming majorities said religion was a very important part of their lives – 99 percent in Indonesia, 98 percent in Egypt, 95 percent in Pakistan. But only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.
Moderate Muslims interviewed for the poll condemned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington because innocent lives were lost and civilians killed. “Some actually cited religious justifications for why they were against 9/11, going as far as to quote from the Koran – for example, the verse that says taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity,” she said. Meanwhile, radical Muslims gave political, not religious, reasons for condoning the attacks, the poll showed.
‘3 in 4 US mosques preach anti-West extremism’
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country. “So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist,” an official familiar with the project said.
Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that “the vast majority” are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks.
Muslims as the enemies of western civilisation
Alex Klaushofer takes issue with “the ubiquitous rhetoric of the ‘clash of civilisations’ between Islam and the west which, as the UN-sponsored Alliance of Civilisations group notes, is the prevailing political doctrine of our time.” He writes:
“Recently I came up against its most extreme form when an evangelical Christian presented me with a copy of the book Jerusalem Countdown by the Texas-based pastor John Hagee. Although broadly familiar with the tenets of this brand of Christian conservatism and ‘end-time’ theology, nothing prepared me for the contents – page after page of ‘evidence’ demonstrating incontrovertibly that Muslims, as members of a faith group out for the destruction of Christians and Jews, are the enemies of western civilisation.”
Britain did host US torture flights
Britain did host US torture flights
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 22 February 2008
FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband made a forced apology yesterday after admitting that an air base on the British territory of Diego Garcia was used by CIA torture flights.
Mr Miliband’s belated admission stood in stark contrast to new Labour’s previous claims that the US had not used British territory or airspace for “rendition” flights.
In the face of credible evidence gathered by human rights organisations, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and former prime minister Tony Blair both flatly denied that rendition flights had touched down on British soil.
In a Commons statement, Mr Miliband told MPs that he was “very sorry” that previous information given by ministers had been “incorrect.”
Details of the two flights, which stopped to refuel at the Indian Ocean island in 2002, were only passed to the government by US authorities last week. Mr Miliband claimed that this was due to an “administration error” on the part of the US. He hailed Washington’s “voluntary” decision to disclose the information as a sign of US commitment to ensuring that it will not happen again.
Campaigners and Labour MPs reacted furiously to the disclosure, warning that the US had “deliberately lied” to the British government and would do it again.
Muslim leader decries American ‘bigotry’ against Islam
American culture’s view of American Muslims and Islam is steadily deteriorating under an onslaught of “bigotry” on cable news shows, newspaper op-ed pages and in the blogosphere, an Arab-American activist told an audience at Tulane University here Tuesday. That’s a significant shift, said Hussein Ibish, founder of the Foundation for Arab-American Leadership in Washington, D.C.
Since 9/11, he said, commentators such as Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz have transferred old anti-Arab stereotypes to Islam, in a stream of “incredibly bigoted commentary” that would not have been tolerated before then.
In this context, Ibish said, the West sees Islam as bent on its destruction and American Muslims as suspected allies who cannot credibly deny otherwise. Thus, ethnic profiling becomes reasonable and forced internment or mandatory identification of Muslims becomes a potential remedy, he said.
While most of the anti-Islamic rhetoric comes from the right, it occasionally comes from the left as well, he said.
Finally, a student of American popular culture would find that anti-Islamic rhetoric sounds vaguely familiar, Ibish said. That’s because in tone and substance it almost exactly tracks the anti-Semitic messages that filled American culture between the world wars.
Resisting Islamic law
“Westerners opposed to the application of the Islamic law (the Shari’a) watch with dismay as it goes from strength to strength in their countries – harems increasingly accepted, a church leader endorsing Islamic law, a judge referring to the Koran, clandestine Muslim courts meting out justice. What can be done to stop the progress of this medieval legal system so deeply at odds with modern life, one that oppresses women and turns non-Muslims into second-class citizens?”
Daniel Pipes poses the question.
Hate site comments suggest violence against Missouri mosque
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today asked the St. Louis, Mo., office of the FBI to investigate apparent threats against a local mosque posted on an anti-Muslim Internet hate site.
Threatening comments on the Little Green Footballs hate site about a new minaret being built near that mosque included:
1. “I suppose dynamite would be considered an extreme response.”
2. “The tower would make a nice target for lots of things…Perhaps one could start by bombing the thing with pig s**t from a light plane.”
3. “Anyone got some RPGs to coat in pig fat?”
4. “Would be a shame if it were to be vandalized or destroyed. Just a shame I tell you….wink wink STL youth.”
“These types of violent comments should not be taken lightly and should be investigated by state and federal law enforcement authorities,” said CAIR Civil Rights Manager Khadija Athman.
The apparent threats come following a recent arson attack on a Tennessee mosque allegedly by three members of the “Christian Identity” movement and a fire-bomb attack on a Minnesota Muslim business.
CAIR press release, 19 February 2008
See also “Mosque threatened, Muslim group says”, St Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 February 2008
Feds charge 3 with firebombing mosque
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Three men have been charged in the firebombing of a small mosque over the weekend, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Authorities said Eric Ian Baker, 32, Michael Corey Golden, 23, and Jonathan Edward Stone, 19, had planned for a week to burn down the Islamic Center of Columbia, about 40 miles southwest of Nashville, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul O’Brian said.
The men are accused of using gasoline, rags and empty beer bottles to set fire to the storefront mosque on Saturday. The men, who were arrested later that day, are facing federal charges of unlawful possession of a destructive device and state charges of arson.
The federal complaint filed against the men says Stone and Baker told officers they were members of the Christian Identity movement, an extreme doctrine that claims white Europeans are God’s chosen people. The complaint also said Baker spray-painted swastikas on the walls of the building, including the phrase “White Power.”
Associated Press, 13 February 2008
See also Al Arabiya, 13 February 2008
Militant Islam reaches Britain
“Beneath the deceptively placid surface of everyday life, the British population is engaged in a momentous encounter with Islam. Three developments of the past week, each of them culminating years’ long trend – and not just some odd occurrence – exemplify changes now underway…. These developments suggest that British appeasement concerning the war on terror, the nature of the family, and the rule of law are part of a larger pattern. Even more than the security threat posed by Islamist violence, these trends are challenging and perhaps will change the very nature of Western life.”
Daniel Pipes at Front Page Magazine, 12 February 2008