Jonathan Kay debunks the absurd story – promoted by Daniel Pipes’ and David Horowitz’s colleague Raymond Ibrahim on the Algemeiner website, and subsequently taken up by WorldNetDailyand others – that the Muslim Brotherhood nailed Christians to crosses and left them to die in front of the Egyptian presidential place. He asks:

Why do so many people believe this made up story? For the same reason that people believe all urban legends – because they play to some deeply held narrative that resides in our deepest fears. In this case, the narrative is that the Arab Spring is part of an orchestrated Islamist plot to destroy Western civilization (beginning with Israel). Believers in this narrative (who are especially numerous in America’s right-wing Evangelical circles) are so hungry for news items that purport to offer confirmation that they ignore the credibility of the messengers. If they had checked out the credibility of WorldNetDaily, for instance, they would have found that the site’s past “scoops” have included the claim that drinking soy milk makes you gay, and that Barack Obama himself is gay (presumably from aforesaid soy milk).

National Post, 22 August 2012

Anyone wondering why Rep. Michele Bachmann would launch a witch hunt against Muslims or why the Republican Party would add a plank to its platform opposing Shariah law need look no further than a new poll conducted by the Arab American Institute.

The poll, released today, asked Americans for their views on various religious groups, as well as on Arabs and Arab-Americans. It also asked respondents how confident they would be that a Muslim or Arab-American holding a position of influence in government could do their job without letting “ethnic loyalty … influence their decision-making.”

The results are split sharply along partisan lines. Overall, Republican voters hold strongly negative views of Muslims, with 57 percent saying they view them unfavorably and just 26 saying they view them favorably – more than double. The numbers are similar for Arabs, whom Republican respondents view negatively by a slightly smaller margin of 26 percent, 53 to 27 percent. When asked about “Muslim Americans” and “Arab Americans,” the numbers improved slightly, with a 12 and 15 percent net unfavorable rating, respectively.

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The Republican Party platform will likely include a plank this year opposing the imagined threat of Islamic law, Alex Seitz-Wald reports.

Salon, 21 August 2012

Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration is responding to what it calls “confusion” about the role of a Muslim staffer and a council that has advised two state departments on Islamic affairs.

The Republican governor was criticized this summer by several GOP groups over what they perceived as the growing influence of a version of the Islamic code called Shariah in state government.

Claude Ramsey, the deputy to the governor, sent a letter distributed to the state GOP’s executive committee last week seeking to quell those concerns.

“I want to start by clearly expressing there is no effort by the Haslam administration, the State of Tennessee, or any agency or department of the State to promote or advance Shariah law or Shariah complaint finance,” he said in the letter.

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“The above ads are appearing at Metro-North stations in New York. A continuation of Islamophobic activists Robert Spencer andPamela Geller‘s AFDI/SIOA racist and anti-Muslim/Islam advertisement campaign. In light of recent hate attacks, 8 over a period of 11 days, and another possible attack yesterday, theattempted firebombing of a Muslim family’s home in Panama City, Florida, can we not consider such advertisements to be an incitement to violence?”

Loonwatch poses the question.

Update:  See “Islamophobic billboard at Metro-North station causes outrage one month after pro-Palestinian billboard”,Huffington Post, 17 August 2012