The man who brought you the Muslim Brotherhood “crucifixion” hoax was also responsible for another piece of nonsense that proved a big hit in the Islamophobic blogosphere, “Graphic Video: Muslims slaughter ‘apostate’ in Tunisia“.
Loonwatch has the details.
Chris Stedman, author of the forthcoming book Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious, notes that “there are worrying indicators that public figures in the atheist movement are perpetuating and enabling a hostile stance toward Muslims – in many cases, above and beyond the criticisms they direct at other religious communities”.
He also criticises the failure of many of his fellow atheists to speak out when ethno-religious minorities are targeted, adding: “silence about the recent spike in bias and violence directed at Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs, and others isn’t a problem exclusive to the atheist community, but by neglecting to tackle it, the atheist movement is opting out of an important conversation about the mistreatment of certain minority groups in the United States”.
A Muslim man is suing a security company, claiming his religious rights were violated when its guards demanded he remove his cap before entering Nashville’s Juvenile Justice Center.
Rashid al-Qadir claims security guards violated his First Amendment right to the free exercise of his religion by telling him he could not wear the small, brimless cap called a kufi. Al-Qadir says he offered to remove the kufi for inspection but then wanted to put it back on. The guards refused and demanded he leave the building.
Lawyers representing a metro Atlanta city say they’re fighting a local mosque’s expansion plan because of its size and scale, and they deny any discrimination.
The Islamic Center of North Fulton maintains in a lawsuit that Alpharetta wrongly denied its 2010 proposal to tear down its existing facility and rebuild a larger facility. WSB-TV reports that Islamic Center officials contend that their current facility is inadequate because it doesn’t face Mecca and is in disrepair.
Attorney Doug Dillard, who represents the Islamic Center, says other churches in the Atlanta suburb have been given approval for gymnasiums and large sanctuaries.
Attorneys for the city this week responded to some of the allegations, saying the proposed expansion is simply out of scale in size, mass, and scale to the property and surrounding area.
Filmmaker Eric Allen Bell is little known in the UK (not least because he hasn’t had much success with the few films he’s made) but he has become something of a celebrity among right-wing Islamophobes in the US.
It was Bell who directed a 2011 documentary titled Not Welcome which (at least in its original version) chronicled the backlash against the construction of an Islamic centre in Murfreesboro Tennessee, from a standpoint sympathetic to the Muslim victims of that campaign. More recently, however, the clearly unstable Bell has become a convert to the views of notorious anti-Islam propagandist Frank Gaffney, whose hysterical warnings about the “enemy-threat doctrine” of Sharia figured prominently in a court case launched by opponents of the Mufreesboro centre.
Bell’s increasingly demented Facebook page now features posts like this (note the use of block caps – the internet equivalent of green ink):
If you thought that was bad enough, Loonwatch draws our attention to a more recent Facebook post (from 15 August) in which Bell urges his readers to consider the merits of a nuclear attack on Mecca:
This was followed by further comments such as these:
As Loonwatch notes, Bell allowed this stuff to pass while at the same time deleting comments that were critical of his proposal.
Some might imagine that even the likes of David Horowitz would draw the line at supporting a clearly disturbed individual who promotes this sort of sick lunacy. But they’d be wrong.
Only yesterday Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine happily posted a new piece by Bell, “The threat of Sharia and the leadership of America’s two parties”, a Gaffney-inspired rant about a conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood (who else?) to impose Sharia law on the United States.
Hundreds turned out Saturday at Landreth Park in a show of solidarity with area Muslims after their mosque was destroyed in a suspected arson fire on Aug. 6. Neighbors-Joplin Mosque Rally, as it was called, was organized by Ozark Christian College student Ashley Carter.
Forty-two religious and secular organizations united on Thursday in condemning conservative lawmakers’ allegations that Muslim-American individuals connected to the U.S. government may be trying to spread the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.
They directed their criticisms at Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), who recently wrote to various government agencies and asked them to investigate the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. In their letters, the lawmakers targeted top State Department official Huma Abedin and several advisers to the Department of Homeland Security.
Richard Bartholomew examines the case of Reza Kahlili, who claims he is being persecuted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations because he “renounced Islam and chose Christ”.
Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 24 July 2012
See also “CAIR asks Pentagon to drop another anti-Islam trainer”, CAIR press release, 23 July 2012
Adam Serwer has the details.
Controversial program risks alienating Muslims and hasn’t generated a single lead, but NYPD steadfastly defends it. Chitrangada Choudhury reports.