The making of the Arab menace

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Anti-Arabism and Islamophobia are so much a part of the political and cultural discourse on Arabs and Muslims in American society today that most do not even recognize it as racism. The fear mongering of the Bush administration and the right wing media pundits who make a living from demonizing Arabs and Muslims have inundated people with images of the violent Arabs bent on death and destruction. For media outlets like Fox Television, it is a way to sell their sensationalist news programs and for the current administration, a way to sell its wars.”

Excellent article by Rayan El-Amine from Left Turn, 28 April 2005

Has the additional merit of really pissing off Robert Spencer. See Dhimmi Watch, 3 May 2005

Pat Robertson: No Muslim judges

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Evangelist Pat Robertson is in trouble with U.S. Islamic organizations for saying Muslims should not serve in the president’s Cabinet or as judges. In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday, Robertson, who ran for president in 1988, said if were elected he would not appoint Muslims to his Cabinet and that he was not in favor of Muslims serving as judges. “They have said in the Quran there’s a war against all the infidels,” Robertson said. “Do you want somebody like that sitting as a judge? I wouldn’t.”

World Net Daily, 3 May 2005

See also “CAIR calls on leaders to repudiate evangelist’s remarks”, CAIR press release, 2 May 2005

Robert Spencer reaches out to the masses

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jihad Watch billboard

“A knowledgeable and generous benefactor has enabled Jihad Watch to place a billboard in Los Angeles, and has asked that it feature three words unfamiliar to most Americans: dhimmitude, Eurabia, and Bat Ye’or.”

See here.

Can’t see it having much of an impact myself. You can imagine passing motorists scratching their heads and going “dhimmi what?” and “Bat who?”

Extremists should not be allowed to distort the true image of Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“They thrive on militancy and violence. They seek to strike terror and they kill and maim, yet they claim to serve the cause of Islam. These misguided people are found everywhere and unfortunately their number continues to swell – thanks primarily to poverty, injustice and the West’s double standard…. Terrorism, in every form and manifestation, should be condemned not by words but by action and extremists should not be allowed to distort the true image of Islam.”

Naushad Shamimul Haque opposes extremist distortions of Islam.

Arab News, 29 April 2005

Most of us would regard this as a balanced and reasoned argument. Not Robert Spencer, though. The very suggestion that poverty, injustice and double standards on the part of the West might have made a contribution to the rise of extremist Islamism reduces him to apoplexy:

“Yes, it’s all our fault. I would like to get into a little discussion of history with Naushad Shamimul Haque, and find out how he explains all those jihads that were waged by Islamic empires at a time when those empires had an overwhelming military superiority over Western non-Muslim lands. Was it poverty? Injustice? Double standards that led Muslims to conquer Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Spain, India, etc. etc. etc.?”

Jihad Watch, 1 May 2005

As distinct from the peace-loving, non-imperialist history of regimes adhering to Christianity, of course.

Anyone tempted to dismiss Robert Spencer’s arguments as the ravings of an isolated right-wing nutter should refer to the outcry that greeted actor Maggie Gyllenhaal’s suggestion that the US itself bore some responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

See New York Daily News, 24 April 2005 and BBC News, 27 April 2005

For an article by one of Spencer’s co-thinkers from the US right, which actually encourages physical violence against Gyllenhaal (“massaging her scalp with a two-by-four”), see Front Page Magazine, 29 April 2005

Suspicious US persecutes Muslim reverts

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It’s not just US Muslims hailing from other origins that are taking the brunt of the now-suspicious society, but even those who were born and lived as full Americans then chose to revert to Islam are also feeling the unjust heat of persecution, for no reason other being “Muslim”, according to a report by a major US daily.

Islam Online, 30 April 2005

Posted in USA

Muslims protest over terror laws

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hundreds of Muslims have taken part in marches through London and Blackburn to protest anti-terror legislation.

Saturday’s protests were organised by more than 50 Islamic organisations including Stop Political Terror and the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

Dr Adnan Siddiqui, an organiser of the London march, said: “This demonstration sends a clear message against the climate of fear that has been created.”

The Blackburn protest was aimed at the local MP, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

BBC News, 30 April 2005

See also IHRC press release, 30 April 2005 and Islam Online, 30 April 2005

The Islamophobes that aren’t (if you believe Stephen Schwartz)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stephen Schwartz complains that US Muslim organisations direct wild accusations of Islamophobia against people who are entirely blameless. Who are these persecuted innocents? Schwartz offers us an example:

“Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum has experienced more denunciation as an ‘Islamophobe’ than any other individual in the West. Yet Pipes has never once criticized the religion of Islam per se; he has never argued that the faith of Muhammad represents any problem, but has only censured its politicization and ideologization.”

Front Page Magazine, 28 April 2005

Anyone under the illusion that this represents an accurate summary of Pipes’ position would be advised to have look through the material on Daniel Pipes collected on our site.

Robert Spencer, however, takes issue with Schwartz for even accepting that Islamophobia exists:

“Does the labeling as ‘Islamophobic’ the practice of ‘attacking the entire religion of Islam as a problem for the world’ mean that it is Islamophobic to focus attention on the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet as motivations for terrorist activity?”

Jihad Watch, 29 April 2005

Arab Americans sue Denny’s for discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Seven men of Middle Eastern descent have sued a Denny’s restaurant franchisee and one of its managers for $28 million, saying they were kicked out because of their ancestry and compared to Osama Bin Laden.

The men, who are all U.S. citizens, are seeking $4 million each from Restaurant Collection Inc., which owns the Denny’s franchise in South Florida, and shift manager Eduardo Ascano, whom they say compared them to the al Qaeda terrorist leader.

“This was a terrible act against Arab Americans,” Alan C. Kauffman, one of the attorneys for the group, said Wednesday.

The seven men are of Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian descent and include a doctor, a real estate agent, an insurance broker and a restaurant owner. They live in Broward and Palm Beach counties. They filed suit last week in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court. No trial date has been set.

Associated Press, 28 April 2005

See also Palm Beach Post, 28 April 2005

US conference on Islam sheds light on dialogue

Posted on by Bob Pitt

For two days, an international conference on Islam opens Friday, April 29, in Madison, the United States, with an objective of clearing stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam, highlighting the merciful Islamic tenets and enhancing dialogue and understanding among the different faiths.

Under the theme “Islam and Dialogue”, the International Conference on Islam, held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, brings together a cohort of senior academics, scholars and researchers from a number of leading US universities to discuss means of consolidating intercultural understanding and shedding more light on the aspects of Islam in American society.

“We need more intercultural, interfaith understanding. In our society we do lack knowledge about Islam and different aspects of it,” said Mustafa Gokcek, a UW-Madison graduate student and one of the conference’s organizers, The Capital Times reported.

Gokcek stressed that one of main goals of the two-day international conference is to show the diversity of the Muslim world and the Islamic cultures. “We tend to see a monolithic Islamic world. People mostly hear about Islam through terrorist events and suicide bombings,” he stressed.

Participants in the international event include professors and scholars from leading US universities such as UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, Harvard, Notre Dame, Marquette, Emory, Northwestern, Boston College, Syracuse, Georgetown and Columbia.

Islam Online, 29 April 2005

Europe, radical Islam and secularism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change expresses his admiration for Irshad Manji, who is quoted as saying: “I subscribe to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s point that ‘Islamic terrorism, both in the Netherlands and abroad, is able to thrive because it is embedded in a wider circle of fellow Muslims’. This is a reality that most Western security experts have yet to grasp.”

Winds of Change, 28 April 2005

For the full Aspen Institute interview, see here.

So, in circumstances where right-wingers are claiming that Islamic terrorists are not a small isolated minority but have roots in the wider Muslim community, Manji announces that this view is essentially correct. And at a time when many of her fellow Muslims are campaigning against increased state repression directed at people with no record of supporting terrorism, Manji suggests that the West’s security services have underestimated the true extent of the terrorist threat. Just brilliant.