Nathan Lean, the author of The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims, looks at eleven of the dirty lies they are spreading.
Category Archives: USA
Islamophobia, Left and Right
Jeff Sparrow responds to “the belligerent incomprehension with which so many, including self-proclaimed liberals, have responded to protests against the film The Innocence of Muslims“.
West Hartford, Connecticut: man charged with hate crimes against Muslim woman
A man who verbally insulted a 55-year-old woman because of her ethnicity and threatened to punch her while she was waiting in line for a prescription at the Walgreen’s pharmacy at 324 North Main St. was arrested Saturday evening at his home and charged with hate crimes by West Hartford Police.
Michael John Germain, 68, of 725 Mountain Rd., was observed making “rude, offensive, and obnoxious comments for no reason” to a woman who was waiting in line at the pharmacy, said Lt. Jeff Rose of the West Hartford Police. The incident was reported by a pharmacy employee as well as the victim.
Many of the comments allegedly made by Germain included obsecenities which cannot be printed, Rose said. According to Rose, Germain was also heard saying, “I don’t like Muslims … get the hell out of here,” and also threatened to punch her.
‘Tommy’ goes globetrotting
The English Defence League may have hit the skids in the UK, but that hasn’t prevented the EDL leadership from still being feted by their fellow anti-Muslim racists in the “international counter-jihad movement”.
Last week EDL leader Stephen Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) and his sidekick Kevin Carroll were in New York to attend the grandly titled International Freedom Defense Congress organised by mad Pamela Geller’s Stop Islamization of Nations to mark the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. Geller’s enthusiasm for her British guests and their heroic stand against the Muslim takeover of Britain was unrestrained, and she reproduces a report that hails Lennon and Carroll in the following breathless terms: “These brave gents refuse to leave their homes in spite of the fact that their country is now in the second stage of Islamic transformation.”
It’s time for Islamophobic evangelicals to choose
Brian D. McLaren calls on evangelical Christians to renounce anti-Muslim bigotry.
‘Love Muslim neighbors’ billboard coming to Murfreesboro
A new message encouraging local residents to “Love Your Muslim Neighbors” is slated to go up on a South Church Street billboard by the end of the month.
The message is being placed on a billboard at 1015 S. Church St. by a self-described Washington, D.C.-based Christian advocacy and education organization called Sojourners, according to the group’s communications director, Tim King.
King said the organization decided on Murfreesboro as a location after several residents living within a 100-mile radius of the city took notice of the group’s message on a billboard in Joplin, Mo., and began calling for one to be placed here.
Racists vandalise Virginia mosque
WHSV reports that the Islamic Center of the Shenandoah Valley at Harrisonburg, Virginia, was vandalised on Thursday night.
The report states: “We cannot show the vandalism in its entirety because the images were very vulgar. It appeared to be male genitalia and was spray painted as well as racial slurs against blacks, and vulgar references to Iraqis.”
Google says anti-Islam film isn’t against Muslims
Google said on Friday that it would not comply with a White House request to reconsider the anti-Islam video that has set off violent protests in the Arab world in light of its rules banning hate speechon YouTube, which it owns.
Google said it had already determined that the video did not violate its terms of service regarding hate speech. In this case, the video stays up because it is against the Islam religion but not Muslim people.
New York Times, 14 September 2012
So, according to Google, a film entitled “The Innocence of Muslims” isn’t, in fact, directed against Muslims.
California man confirms role in anti-Islam film
The search for those behind the provocative, anti-Muslim film implicated in violent protests in Egypt and Libya led Wednesday to a California Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes who acknowledged his role in managing and providing logistics for the production.
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he helped with logistics for the filming of “Innocence of Muslims,” which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad and may have caused inflamed mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a shadowy production group behind the film.
Photos from the New York SIOA protest
Richard Bartholomew provides a useful roundup of websites featuring photos of the Stop Islamization of America demonstration in New York yesterday.
As predicted, the threat by Geller and Spencer that only American flags would be permitted on the demonstration and that signs would be “confiscated” was widely ignored.
In addition to posters with the word “Sharia” in dripping blood and flyers reading “No Obama’s Mosque”, slogans included “What God Do You Kill For?”, “Cordoba=Conquer, Not Here!”, “Muhummad was the First Radical Muslim: Osama bin Laden is Following Directions” and “Transform Islam, Not America”. One man carried a placard with the word “Toilet Paper” and a Qur’an attached to it.
Update: Salon.com has a selection of leaflets distributed on Saturday’s demonstration.