Category Archives: USA

Turning the War on Terror into a War on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Louay Safi“The Extreme Right has finally found a clever way to arrest America’s march towards asserting its foundational principles of equality, religious freedom, and the rule of law. Their strategy is to transform the war on terror into a war against Islam and use security needs to subvert constitutional protection.”

Louay Safi on the threat posed by the Islamophobic Right in the US. He continues:

“Robert Spencer, a prolific anti-Islam writer and a leading Islamophobe who is bent on distorting Islam and demonizing Muslims, has persistently argued that violence and terrorism employed by Muslim extremists is rooted in the Quran and its message. Spencer calls the Quran, a book sacred to Muslim, ‘the jihadists’ Mein Kampf’, in reference to Hitler’s memoir. He openly blames the Quran for giving impetus to the terrorist open war against the West.”

Media Monitors Network, 29 December 2005

A good article, but I rather doubt that the Bush administration pays much attention to the ravings of Jihad Watch. If they found Daniel Pipes a political embarrassment, what must they make of Robert Spencer? Spencer’s role is rather to whip up anti-Muslim bigotry among the general populace in order to prime public opinion to accept Bush’s imperialist warmongering abroad and suppression of civil liberties at home as a necessary defence against the Islamic hordes.

‘The Islamic grim reaper’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islam Evil“As legend has it, the Grim Reaper moves among us, unseen and unstoppable. His ugly, skeletal face is obscured by a black hood and no one knows he is near until his touch claims your life. Only in death is his face revealed.

“It is troubling that after America was attacked on her own soil not so long ago, that so many Americans still do not realize the danger of the insidious and relentless enemy that we face. Just as no living thing can escape death, Americans cannot escape the final showdown with Islam. It is unfortunate that so many will die because they are afraid to lift the black hood off and see the face of the enemy.

“Islam has declared war on America and our culture. Islam brought the battle right to our shores and still, many do not believe.”

Barbara J. Stock at ChronWatch, 26 December 2005

More nonsense from Robert Spencer

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Spencer takes issue with the Mayor of London’s attitude to Islam: “Red Ken’s friendship with Sheikh Qaradawi suggests that the peaceful subjugation and Islamization of the West, which Qaradawi has predicted, is perfectly fine with him. He just wishes these good people wouldn’t use bombs.”

Jihad Watch, 6 December 2005

Applying this logic to his own preferred religion, there is presumably no principled difference in Spencer’s eyes between a minister engaged in peaceful missionary work (in order to “subjugate” society to Christianity) and a “pro-life” militant who bombs an abortion clinic.

(Oh and by the way Robert, the “Lord Mayor” is not “Red Ken” but the head of the Corporation of London.)

US tapped main communications, mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US National Spy Agency (NSA) has “directly” tapped the country’s main communications systems without court-approved warrants, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has monitored mosques and private homes of Muslims to monitor “radiation levels”, news reports have revealed.

Citing current and former government officials, the New York Times said the volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the NSA was much larger than President George W. Bush has acknowledged.

They said the NSA sought to analyze communications patterns to gather clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, as well as the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Some officials described the program as a large data mining operation, the Times said.

Bush has defended an executive order he signed in 2002 allowing eavesdropping without warrants, saying it was limited only to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to Al-Qaeda. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires court approval of wiretaps and electronic surveillance.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday, December 23, on the Times report.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed on Tuesday, December 20, that the FBI was using counterterrorism resources to monitor and infiltrate American political organizations that criticize business interests and government policies.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advocacy group said the report, coupled with news of the domestic eavesdropping, “could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights.”

“The message they are sending through these kinds of actions is that being Muslim is sufficient evidence to warrant scrutiny,” CAIR’s spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told the Washington Post.

Islam Online 24 December 2005

Pro-Islamist words dubbed a ‘smear’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Omar AlghabraThe incendiary words came flying out of an exuberant, cheering crowd, words exalting the rise of Islamic power in Canadian politics. Now they’re being called an election smear that involves Islam and might have lasting repercussions for Muslims who have only recently become active in Canadian politics.

The fiery phrases, immediately attributed to Omar Alghabra – the rookie candidate who had just won the Liberal party nomination in Mississauga-Erindale – were soon making the rounds on the Internet, then became the subject of a news release from an outspoken group that seeks to expose radical Islam. “This is a victory for Islam … Islamic power is extending into Canadian politics,” Alghabra was reported to have said.

The problem is that Alghabra and others who were there – including outgoing Mississauga MP Carolyn Parrish – insist he didn’t say them. A Toronto Star reporter covering the event also heard no such thing.

Toronto Star, 23 December 2005

For earlier coverage, see for example here, here, here, and here.

Playing the racism card

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In these contentious times, debate about the Middle East and Islam is easily stifled. All it takes is for some disgruntled Arabs, preferably Palestinians, or a handful of western leftists to level a charge of ‘racism’. Then the alleged offender, whether he is a Jewish author, a Christian professor, or a Muslim dissident, is silenced and shunned.”

Phyllis Chesler at Front Page Magazine, 22 December 2005

This from a leading advocate of the “new anti-semitism” thesis, which basically involves labelling any critic of the Israeli government as a racist.

Schwartz vs ‘Wahhabism’ (part 395)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mosque

“… Muslims in the US and Great Britain are, today, far more dominated by Islamist extremism than their counterparts in various Muslim countries…. the Islamic communities of the US (dominated by the Saudis) and Britain (run by radical Pakistanis) suffer under a totalitarian regime of thought-control.”

Stephen Schwartz continues his campaign against “Wahhabists” – in which category he includes virtually any non-Sufi Muslim who fails to share his own neocon views.

As an example of the extremism and totalitarianism of US Muslim leaders, Schwartz offers the example of CAIR’s protest against the accompanying cartoon, which he says was merely “questioning why so many mosques are centers of extremist agitation. The cartoon included nothing offensive to moderate Muslims; it simply dramatized an obvious fact.”

TCS Daily, 22 December 2005

US media plays key role in stereotyping Arabs, Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobic cartoon“The Muslim world is a strange and formidable place to an average American, in some ways a perennial zone of magic, mystery and disorder,” said Dr Ghazi Falah, of the University of Akron, Ohio, on Monday at the American University of Beirut. It is regarded in “a framework of violence, disorder and unreason contrasted with the rationalism of the West.”

Falah was one of three presenters for “Media and Film Representations of Arabs and the Middle East,” one session held as part of a three-day “America in the Middle East-The Middle East in America” conference.

On November 27, 2002, the Los Angeles Times printed a cartoon depicting three fully veiled women walking across a stage under the banner “Radical Islam sponsors the Miss Muslim World contest.” The sashes the women wore read “Miss waiting to be stoned,” “Miss can’t vote” and “Miss illiteracy,” while two Afghani-looking men watched, one of which had a rifle.

“Perhaps some would argue this cartoon contains a kernel of truth, and targets only radical Islam and not all Muslims, but how could such an insulting and crude cartoon be considered newsworthy enough to be published in the Los Angeles Times?” Dr Falah asked. He noted the cartoon was placed on the same page with an editorial about the Bush administration’s preparations for war in Iraq, creating a juxtaposition of “the bad Islam” with the “good Bush administration” coming to the rescue.

Daily Star, 21 December 2005

Robert Spencer is not best pleased. He himself, he whinges, has been accused of “spreading hate” and “defaming Islam”. (Now, where could anyone have got that idea from?) He continues: “The press is, as any regular Jihad Watch reader knows, extraordinarily reluctant to say anything about the Islamic component of jihad violence.” You can only conclude that Jihad Watch readers must inhabit some alternate reality.

Dhimmi Watch, 21 December 2005