Republican candidate’s ‘Ground Zero mosque’ scaremongering succeeded in attracting right-wing funding

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rick Lazio TV ad

Republican Rick Lazio‘s underfunded campaign for governor of New York attracted big donors dedicated to anti-terrorism efforts after he called for a probe of funding for a proposed mosque near ground zero, according to state records.

State campaign finance records show Long Island real estate developer and philanthropist Lawrence Kadish and his wife, Susan, contributed $75,000 to Lazio’s campaign beginning July 26. Their donations were about a third of the total Lazio collected during the 30-day period.

Under the headline “Mr. Lazio’s Bid for Attention,” a New York Times editorial on Aug. 23 said Lazio was making “increasingly hysterical attacks” on the project and “had no shame about using images of the smoldering World Trade Center in a new political ad.” The editorial noted Lazio was far behind Cuomo in polls and fundraising and that may be the explanation for his “attempt to exploit ground zero images for political gain.”

Three of the four installments from Kadish and his wife came after the editorial. A few other contributors involved in pro-Israel groups provided thousands more after Lazio’s July 7 letter.

Associated Press, 3 August 2010

Model motion: November 6 demo against racism, fascism, Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

UAF demo Nov 2010

Unite Against Fascism, Love Music Hate Racism and the Muslim Council of Britain have called a national march to end with a carnival on Saturday 6 November.

The demo is backed by the TUC and UAF wants to ensure as many local trade union branches and community organisations as possible give their backing.

Please pass this model motion to support the demo.

‘The colonisation of Wales continues’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Thus the headline to a piece on the BNP website responding to reports that a disused Miners Institute building in Wrexham is to be converted into a mosque and community centre.

The proposed conversion has already been the subject of an EDL protest and a racist Facebook page.

Those who wish to contribute to the Wrexham Mosque appeal fund can find the details here.

Abe Foxman condemns Geller and Spencer’s 9/11 protest as ‘un-American’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Abe Foxman ADL“… this rally, on this very tragic day for Americans, but most tragic for those who lost their families, to use it and abuse it as a platform for bigotry, is not only tragic, it’s un-American”.

In an interview with Adam Serwer at The Plum Line blog, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League condemns the SIOA’s “Ground Zero mosque” demonstration on 11 September. Foxman is particularly angry that Geert Wilders will be speaking at the rally and says of Pamela Geller that “part of her agenda is to help garner support for Wilders, who is a bigot, who has a long record of anti-Muslim bigotry”.

Foxman notes that the SIOA protest is part of “a campaign which is in many places directed against building mosques” and which he says exemplifies “the anti-Muslim bigotry that exists in this country”. Foxman observes that this is nothing new:

“Part of the landscape, unfortunately, of America is that we’re not immune to bigotry, to racism, to anti-Semitism. And part of what’s out there is a bigotry to immigrants. Jews experienced it, Irish experienced it. Part of our history is there was opposition to building Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. Now there’s opposition to build mosques.”

In response, Geller denounces Foxman – director of one of the leading Jewish organisations in the US – as a “groveling, simpering lapdog panting to jihadists”.

But this is par for the course with Geller. In an interview with Jamie Glazov of FrontPage Magazine last December, after the Community Security Trust warned the Jewish community against supporting a Stop Islamisation of Europe protest against a new mosque in Harrow, she accused the CST of “aiding and abetting Islamic jihad and Islamic anti-Semitism”.

Yes, it is libellous to brand Muslims fascists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“While there demonstrably are political Islamist movements with programmes expressly advocating totalitarian theocracy – including the destruction of leftist parties and independent trade unionism – the class dynamics involved do not fit the template of European fascism.

“If Pollard wishes effectively to oppose such movements, he should stop frothing at the mouth like the deranged neocon he has sadly become, and develop a more sober analysis of these currents rather than excoriate the moderates behind Islam Expo, who are simply acting to further dialogue between their version of Islamism and the British body politic.”

Dave Osler comments on Islam Expo’s libel case against Stephen Pollard and the Spectator.

Dave’s Part, 2 August 2010

Details of the case can be found here.

Germany: two polls on public attitudes towards Sarrazin controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

German public opinion is deeply split over the fate of a central banker whose disparaging comments about Muslim immigrants have triggered a heated debate on race and integration, surveys showed on Wednesday.

Over the past week and a half, Thilo Sarrazin has dominated headlines with criticism of Germany’s large Muslim community, and contentious remarks asserting that Jews have a particular genetic makeup.

Continue reading →

Bundesbank sacks Sarrazin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Germany’s central bank today took the unprecedented step of sacking a board member after he repeatedly criticised the country’s Muslim population and said “all Jews share the same gene”.

In a brief statement, the Bundesbank president, Axel Weber, and four other board members said that they had been in unanimous agreement in dismissing Thilo Sarrazin, who caused an outcry when he said Muslims were sapping Germany’s intellectual and economic strength.

The board’s decision, taken at an extraordinary meeting, is the first such in the institution’s 50-year history. All that remains is for the German president, Christian Wulff, to sanction the dismissal of Sarrazin, according to the bank’s rules. Wulff has signalled he will do so, calling Sarrazin’s remarks damaging to Germany’s international reputation.

Guardian, 2 September 2010

FPÖ faces police probe over anti-Muslim video game

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SCREENSHOT Moschee / FP… / Wahlwerbung

Members of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), once the political home of the late right-wing populist politician Jörg Haider, sparked outrage this week in the form of an anti-Muslim video game released as part of a political campaign in the state of Styria, where parliamentary elections will take place at the end of September.

In the game, players must try to halt the erection of minarets and mosques using a “stop” sign. If a player fails to stop the construction, then bearded muezzins issue calls to prayer against an Alpine backdrop.

At the end of the “Bye Bye Mosque” game, which has been online since Monday, players are told: “Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So vote for Dr. Gerhard Kurzmann and the Freedom Party on September 26 so that this doesn’t happen.”

Continue reading →

New York Muslim groups support Park51, condemn promotion of ‘ethnic and religious hatred’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Majlis Ash-Shura press conference2

It is “unethical, insensitive and inhumane” to oppose the planned mosque near ground zero, more than 50 leading Muslim organizations said Wednesday as they cast the intense debate as a symptom of religious intolerance in America.

Leaders of the Majlis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York, an Islamic leadership council that represents a broad spectrum of Muslims in the city, gathered on the steps of City Hall to issue a statement calling for a stop to religious intolerance and affirming the right of the center’s developers to build two blocks north of the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“We support the right of our Muslim brothers who wish to build that center there,” said Imam Al Amin Abdul Latif, president of the Majlis Ash-Shura. “However, the bigger issue and the broader issue is the issue of ethnic and religious hatred being spread by groups trying to stop the building of mosques and Islamic institutions across the country.”

This is the first time that the council as a body has spoken out on the weeks-old debate over the proposed center. “When the issue became hotter and hotter, and people made more statements against the mosques, then we decided to get involved in it,” said Syed Sajid Husain, secretary general of the council. He said the process of bringing together the leaders to agree on a statement also took a handful of meetings.

Leaders of the council said they were calling attention to what they claimed was an anti-Islamic climate, and that the development of a center near ground zero is simply one example.

They also cited a suspicious fire that damaged construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Tennessee that is being investigated by the FBI, and the successful opposition to the proposed conversion of a property owned by a Catholic Church into a mosque and community center on Staten Island, a New York City borough off the southern tip of Manhattan.

Islamic leaders on Wednesday said they would support a move to another location, if that’s what the imam and his supporters choose to do. But they emphasized that Muslims also were killed in the terrorist attacks and were first responders.

“We declare unethical, insensitive and inhumane, the notion that our co-religionists are not entitled to the respect of a place of worship according to their faith, near the location where men and women of our religion worked, lived and died – just like other people,” the group’s statement said in part.

The group is not associated with the planned Islamic center but is representative of a significant number of New York Muslim leaders.

Associated Press, 1 September 2010

See also ABNA, 2 September 2010