Members of the Muslim American community have come under concerted and intense attacks by neo-conservative organizations because they have expressed concerns about the dire conditions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, says Louay Safi.
Category Archives: USA
Islamophobia and racism in US presidential election
Lawrence Swaim examines the Islamophobic email campaign against Barack Obama.
See also Ali Moossavi’s piece at Arab American News, 5 February 2008
Islam expert not forced out, congresswoman says
A Pentagon anti-terrorism specialist was not ousted because his superiors thought he was too critical of Islam, a congresswoman who investigated the matter said Tuesday. Stephen Coughlin, an expert on Islamic law for the Department of Defense, was not pushed out of his job because he offended Muslim employees of the Pentagon, as many had suspected, said Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), co-chair of the bipartisan House Anti-Terrorism Caucus.
Much of the controversy surrounding Coughlin – an attorney, former Army intelligence officer, and major in the Army Reserves – emerged from his 333-page thesis, “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad.” The report was accepted last year by the National Defense Intelligence College. The report describes an Islamic culture that teaches violence from an early age.
Though Myrick doesn’t believe there was political chicanery involved, she does think the Pentagon should have paid more attention to Coughlin’s thesis. “He states we have not listened to our enemies – Osama Bin Laden and his ilk – that they are acting in accordance with Islam,” she said.
She added that the government must be aware of radical jihadists trying to infiltrate American organizations. “I know that some people will refuse to admit there is a subversive movement going on here, but let me remind you that we have underestimated the will and capability of our enemy for more than 30 years,” Myrick said. “They are patient and determined to achieve their radical agenda.”
Sudden Jihad Syndrome comes to Scotland
Muslim fanatics in Scotland could be radicalised within weeks, the country’s terror czar has warned. And John Corrigan stressed that the exact potential of the threat is constantly changing and can never be quantified. He spoke to Scotland on Sunday just six weeks before retiring as Scotland’s counter-terrorism chief, having spent four years in the post overseeing such operations as the arrest of Mohammed Atif Siddique and the inquiry into the would-be car bombing of Glasgow Airport.
Recent research has shown the time it takes for an individual to show an initial interest in fundamentalism to actively taking part in an attack is reducing all the time. Several years ago, experts figured that period may be up to 18 months but now with perceived threats to Muslims being featured virtually daily on our television screens, that timescale is down to just a few weeks.
Scotland on Sunday, 3 February 2008
Corrigan would appear to be inspired by Daniel Pipes’ invention, the “Sudden Jihad Syndrome“.
Islamist ‘Trojan horse’ in Pentagon, say experts
Federal authorities say a high-level Muslim Pentagon aide, who led a campaign to silence a Pentagon intelligence analyst for taking a hard line against Islam, is running an “influence operation” on behalf of U.S. Muslim groups fronting for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Hesham H. Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, recently criticized Maj. Stephen Coughlin, one of the military’s leading authorities on Islamic war doctrine, for making the connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism. After Islam lodged complaints, Coughlin’s contract with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon was not renewed.
Islam also was upset with briefings Coughlin recently prepared for the U.S. military warning that major U.S. Muslim groups were fronting for the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.
Mosque group ‘in a line to jihad’
“The Islamic group accused of trying to seize control of Sydney’s Sefton mosque is part of a movement described as a recruiting ground for al-Qa’ida in a new terrorism intelligence report. The group attempting the takeover has members who follow the Tablighi Jamaat stream of Islam, described this week bythe private US intelligence group Stratfor as an ‘indirect line to terrorism‘. Members of the Tablighi movement have recently been linked to a terrorist cell in Spain that was planning a bomb attack in Barcelona.”
The Australian, 31 January 2008
Yes, it’s yet another dishonest attempt to associate the entirely peaceful proselytising movement Tablighi Jamaat with violent extremism. Predictably, this meets with the enthusiastic approval of Jihad Watch.
Muslims ‘lay siege to Australian hospital’?
At his Holy Smoke blog, Telegraph leader writer and Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson recycles a story from Robert Spencer’s Dhimmi Watch site:
“After the death of a young Muslim man in a car crash in Sydney last month,” Thompson writes, “an Islamic crowd invaded a hospital in order to stop medical tests being carried out on the body in contravention of Sharia law, according to the Dhimmi Watch website. If the report is true, then this is another example of a global campaign by fundamentalist Muslims to replace civil law by Sharia – a process that has already taken root in British cities.”
Thompson goes on to quote the report from Spencer’s site: “The antecedent to the Muslim incursion on the Hospital came about on Monday the 17 December last, when a young Muslim male was airlifted to the Liverpool Hospital’s emergency ward by helicopter. The 19-year-old had been in a serious car accident, his car left the road and crashed into a tree … he died of his injuries, and it seems he and his hijab-wearing girl friend had been celebrating the end of Ramadan.”
The Australian blog Austrolabe comments: “If the victim and his ‘hijab-wearing girl friend’ were, as the anonymous author claims, celebrating the end of Ramadan when they had a serious car accident, why did this obviously critically injured young man wait two months before he was admitted into a hospital? In 2007, Eid ul-Fitr (the celebration marking the end of Ramadan) was on the 11th of October. This man was supposedly admitted into Liverpool Hospital on 17th December, 2007. We know that waiting lists at Liverpool Hospital are long, but that long?”
Update: Thompson has recanted. See Austrolabe, 31 January 2008
Another outburst of anti-Muslim bigotry from Bruce Bawer
“The reason for the rise in gay bashings in Europe is clear – and it’s the same reason for the rise in rape. As the number of Muslims in Europe grows, and as the proportion of those Muslims who were born and bred in Europe also grows, many Muslim men are more inclined to see Europe as a part of the umma (or Muslim world), to believe that they have the right and duty to enforce sharia law in the cities where they live, and to recognize that any aggression on their part will likely go unpunished…. Multiculturalists can’t face all this. So it is that even when there are brutal gay-bashings, few journalists write about them; of those who do, few mention that the perpetrators are Muslims….
“It’s very clear what’s going on here – and where it’s all headed. Europe is on its way down the road of Islamization, and it’s reached a point along that road at which gay people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is being directly challenged, both by knife-wielding bullies on the street and by taxpayer-funded thugs whose organizations already enjoy quasi-governmental authority. Sharia law may still be an alien concept to some Westerners, but it’s staring gay Europeans right in the face – and pointing toward a chilling future for all free people. Pim Fortuyn saw all this coming years ago; most of today’s European leaders still refuse to see it even though it’s right before their eyes.”
Bruce Bawer at Pajamas Media, 29 January 2008
Zoning panel’s rejection of proposed mosque raises questions – Is it religious intolerance?
SUGARCREEK TWP., Greene County — When the First Baptist Church here advertised a speaker last fall who would tell “the truth about Islam,” Dina Ezzeddine of Kettering assumed it would be an interfaith gathering aimed at dispelling negative publicity about her religion.
Instead, former Muslim and Christian convert Shahram Parvani told a gathering of 500 people that “Islam is not a religion of peace,” that Muslims “want to control, they want to dominate” and that they spread their religion “by the power of the sword.”
Pastor Barry Jude said the church invited Parvani to speak because he has attended discussion groups there. The church later made CDs of his talk available.
Sugarcreek Twp. officials say church opposition had no impact on the Board of Zoning Appeals’ 5-0 vote against a variance that would have allowed the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton to build a new mosque on South Alpha-Bellbrook Road. Township officials say the denial was based solely on the expected sewage and traffic impact on the neighborhood. “If (a Christian church) had the same issues, the vote would have been the same,” Administrator Barry Tiffany said.
But even if the township board had sound reasons for its decision, the issue has touched on larger questions: Does the presence of a mosque locally evoke feelings of fear or even hatred? Are church officials saying out loud what a lot of people are thinking privately?
Jude admits his opposition had little to do with traffic patterns or sewage. “We just feel that Christianity is right and that Islam is wrong. Therefore, we take a stand to see (a mosque) not in our community,” he said. “The wonderful thing about our American culture is that you have the right to speak out against something you don’t support.”
Dayton Daily News, 27 January 2008
Update: See also “Christians launch crusade against new US mosque”, World Net Daily, 30 January 2008
US neocon defends Geert Wilders
Christopher Caldwell of the Weekly Standard defends Dutch far-right racist Geert Wilders and his forthcoming film on Islam (though, to be fair, Caldwell does take exception to Wilders’ “brusqueness”):
“Mr Wilders is something of a bogeyman in polite Dutch society now. He should not be. His perfectly legal effort resembles the kind of mischievous testing of boundaries that civil libertarians have engaged in whenever they have sought to hasten social change in the face of an indifferent or hostile electorate. In seeking to reopen such questions as, first, whether Islam is a religion, and, second, whether ancient scripture is sheltered from our laws regulating hate speech, Mr Wilders is the comrade-in-arms of those western legal activists who have agitated successfully for gay marriage, euthanasia and bans on religious display.”