Danny Postel analyses the politics of the Iranian organisation the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) – “an Islamist-Stalinist cult that was on Saddam’s payroll and the State Department considers a terrorist organization” – and points out that it has some unlikely allies:

“Here you have virtually everything the Right claims to oppose all rolled into one: Islamism, Marxism, terrorism, and Saddam. Naturally, then, neoconservatives would utterly deplore the MEK and everything it stands for, right? The MEK would in fact make an ideal target for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and Terrorism Awareness efforts, no?

“Well, no. At least one of the carnival’s acts, it turns out, is rather fond of the Islamo-Stalinist-terrorist cult group, and has repeatedly argued for the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of terrorist groups and indeed urged the U.S. government to embrace it. Daniel Pipes, who will be speaking at Tufts on October 24th as part of the Horowitz high jinks, has made the MEK a recurring theme in his writings going back several years.”

AlterNet, 23 October 2007

Clearly, “Islamo-Fascist terror groups” are OK with Pipes so long as their Islamo-Fascist terrorist activities are aimed at the government of Iran.

Collected by Sheila Musaji at The American Muslim.

When David Horowitz returns to Columbia University next Friday to mark his organization’s much-hyped “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” (IFAW), he will find a determined and “dangerous” opposition, coming from a coalition of concerned students and up to nine of Horowitz’s “101 Most Dangerous Professors”.

“NOT ON OUR CAMPUS”, counter the flyers being circulated by the hundreds from Columbia’s Intercultural Resource Center, as students prepare for a major speakout and counter-event on Friday. Many here see Horowitz’s visit as an insult and an injury to a campus community still reeling from a slew of racial attacks this semester, most recently a noose hung on the door of a Black professor at Teachers’ College.

“What it does,” added Noah Baron of Columbia Students for a Democratic Society, “is it builds on people’s fears… And it makes it more difficult to discuss things that are already difficult to discuss … racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and things like that.”

Many students at Columbia don’t buy the “Islamo-Fascism” talk in the first place. The term only gained currency after President Bush picked it up as a mantra in 2006. Rahel Aima of Columbia SDS sees it as a fiction: “Islamo-Fascism is constructed … [They say]  ‘We don’t like Islam, we think fascism is bad, let’s put them together’… And they’re like, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re fascists’.”

With IFAW, Horowitz, an ex-Leftist-gone-Right, is taking on two of his favorite enemies: Left-wing faculty and Muslim youth. In a recent statement, he claimed that “the progressive left is the enabler and abettor of the terrorist jihad”, and in the same document, he called the Muslim Students Association (MSA) a “front for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas”.

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No to intolerance and Islamophobia!

On October 22-26 the so-called Terrorism Awareness Project will send extremist speakers to campuses across the country to spread a message of intolerance and Islamophobia, in a campaign billed as “the biggest conservative campus protest ever.”

The list of speakers includes:

• Ann Coulter, who recently made quite a splash with her unabashed Jew-hatred;
• Robert Spencer, who calls Islam “the world’s most intolerant religion”;
• Rick Santorum, who compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality;
• And of course, David Horowitz whose long history of racism has included attacks on affirmative action and the statement that “guns don’t kill black people, other blacks do”.

These and other hate-mongers will be demonizing Islam and portraying a one-sided and bigoted view of a faith held by billions of people around the world.

Join Jewish Voice for Peace in our condemnation of this campaign of racism and bigotry!

Debbie Almontaser, who resigned under fire from her position as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), New York’s Arabic-themed school, has spoken out publicly for the first time. In a statement read from the steps of City Hall she said:

“On Feb. 12, 2007, the Department of Education announced the establishment of KGIA. In the days following, right-wing blogs began spinning KGIA as an Islamist school with a radical extremist jihad principal. And local New York City papers fanned the flames with headlines like: ‘Holy war! Slope Parents Protest Arabic School Plan’, ‘A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn’, and ‘Arabic School Idea Is a Monstrosity’. From the day the school was approved to the day I was forced to resign, The New York Sun plastered my picture on its website with a link to negative articles about KGIA.

“Leading the attack was the ‘Stop the Madrassa Coalition’ run by Daniel Pipes, who has made his career fostering hatred of Arabs and Muslims. The coalition conducted a smear campaign against me and the school that was ferocious. Members of the coalition stalked me wherever I went and verbally assaulted me with vicious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments. They suggested that, as an observant Muslim, I was disqualified from leading KGIA, even though the school is rigorously secular, and its namesake, Khalil Gibran, was a Lebanese Christian. To stir up anti-Arab prejudice, they constantly referred to me by my Arabic name, a name that I do not use professionally. They even created and circulated a YouTube clip depicting me as a radical Islamist.

“Then in early August, The New York Post and the Stop the Madrassa Coalition tried to connect me to T-shirts made by a youth organization called Arab Women in the Arts and Media. The T-shirts said, ‘Intifada NYC’. Post reporters aggressively sought my comment. Because the T-shirts had nothing to do with me or KGIA, I saw no reason to discuss the issue with the media. I agreed to an interview with a reporter from The Post at the D.O.E.’s insistence. During the interview, the reporter asked about the Arabic origin of the word ‘intifada’. I told him that the root word from which the word intifada originates means ‘shake off’ and that the word intifada has different meanings for different people, but certainly for many, given its association with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it implied violence. I reiterated that I would never affiliate myself with an individual or organization that would condone violence in any shape, way, or form. In response to a further question, I expressed the belief that the teenage girls of AWAAM did not mean to promote a ‘Gaza-style uprising’ in New York City.

“Although The Post story distorted my words, it accurately reflected my view that I do not condone violence. That should have been the end of the matter. D.O.E. officials should simply have said that it was clear that neither I nor KGIA had any connection to the T-shirts. They should have pointed out that I had devoted my entire adult life to the peaceful resolution of conflict and to building bridges between ethnic and religious communities. In other words, they should have said that the attacks upon me were utterly baseless. Instead, they forced me to issue an apology for what I said. And when the storm of hate continued, they forced me to resign.”

New York Times, 16 October 2007

See also CAIR  Communities in Support of KGIA  andMuslimMatters.org

Another thorough demolition of David Horowitz’s “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”, coming to US campuses next week:

“Mr. Horowitz and his hounds claim that the event’s purpose is to advocate for moderate Muslims struggling against fundamentalism and highlight the oppression of Islamic women, while refraining from attacking Islam directly. This is hard to believe when looking at the week’s speaking lineup.

“It includes Daniel Pipes, creator of Campuswatch.com, a forum of McCarthyist attacks on Middle East Studies professors who refuse to sympathize with Israel; Ann Coulter, the savage pundit whose rants of unfathomable ignorance have included assertions that Muslims – whom she labels ‘ragheads’ – have a ‘predilection for violence’; Rick Santorum, the xenophobic, Bible-thumping ex-senator from Pennsylvania infamous for his anti-women voting record; Robert Spencer, the conservative commentator who denounces Islam and blames its teachings for producing terrorism worldwide; Dennis Prager, who condemned a Minnesota congressman for ceremoniously swearing on the Quran because it excluded the Bible and ‘failed to acknowledge America’s Judeo-Christian value system’; Mike Adams, a religious zealot who compares women who have abortions to Charles Manson; and Michael Medved, a guest-host for Rush Limbaugh who has claimed that Islam has a ‘special violence problem’.

“In addition, the week incorporates the showing of controversial films including a piece on Palestinian suicide bombers that received widespread criticism for its pro-Israel bias; a short film that demonizes Muslims by attributing terrorism to the ‘violent, expansionary ideology’ of Islam; an ABC miniseries ridiculed for portraying the Clinton administration as responsible for Sept. 11; and a documentary connected to a watchdog group that monitors the media for negative portrayals of Israel.

“One is left to wonder how Mr. Horowitz could claim that his campaign is not meant to negatively portray Islam when its content is dripping with anti-Muslim sentiment. Many of the speakers are not only completely out of touch with the mainstream; they lack the qualifications or general credibility to foster intellectual discussions on Islam, terrorism, or women’s rights. People need to see Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week for what it is: a strategic, fear-mongering maneuver meant to salvage support for the Iraq war as public discontent reaches an all-time high.”

Adam Lichtenheld in The Badger Herald, 17 October 2007

Via Esam Omeish