The new Muslim smear for Obama

I made a mistake Monday morning. I should have read that Edward Luttwak op-ed on Barack Obama the Muslim apostate that I linked to here but didn't discuss. As the day dragged on, my Google Reader filled up with a few RSS feeds attacking the bankruptcy of Luttwak's argument that Obama, as an apostate who purportedly was born a Muslim and converted out to Christianity, could not be tolerated by other Muslims and might even be killed for it.

Here is what Luttwak wrote:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

Obama, in fact, is not the son of a Muslim father. This belief comes from that rumor that he's a closet Muslim. Secondly, Luttwak's argument is not original, having first been made last summer in FrontPage magazine, courtesy of the man leading a battle against peaceful Islam, Daniel Pipes.

"This is an example of editorial lunacy," Richard Silverstein responded to Luttwak's column. "Why would you take a trashy rumor published in a David Horowitz shmate and transfer it to the N.Y. Times? I feel dirty just reading it there."

At Huffington Post, Ali Eteraz breaks down the fallacies inherent in Luttwak's piece, beginning "with his facile understanding of Sharia."

Luttwack and the other fake experts promoting this new smear do not understand Islam. Religion is not hereditary as it is in Judaism. Islam is not a race. Just because a child has a Muslim father -- which, again, Obama didn't -- doesn't mean anything unless the child is being raised as a Muslim. At the time of birth, Muslims engage in a symbolic act -- of saying the Call to Prayer in the child's ear -- that renders a child Muslim. If Obama's father was agnostic/atheist, then he wouldn't have done such a thing.

No call to prayer in the ear, not raised as a Muslim, born to an atheist father, and then abandoned to a Christian mother both by father and his family, equals not Muslim. Obama is right to say he had no religion until he became a Christian.

Also in the Obama files, Republicans politicians and the Republican Jewish Coalition respond to the Illinois senator's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which they spoke at length about Israel. Here's a compilation.

A closer look at Islamophobia

Andrea Elliott won a Pulitzer last year for her amazing series "Imam in America." In today's New York Times, she tells another powerful story about American Muslims. Her subject is Debbie Almontaser, who last year started an academy that would teach Arabic to its students, Arab American and those of other ethnicities.

Weeks before classes even began, though, Almontaser resigned as its founding principal. Here's why:

Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by training and an activist who had carefully built ties with Christians and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the mayor’s office following a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic agenda.

In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a “radical,” a “jihadist” and a “9/11 denier.” She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.

The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.

“It’s a battle that’s really just begun,” said Daniel Pipes, who directs a conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.

“It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia,” Mr. Pipes said. “It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.”

Mr. Pipes refers to this new enemy as the “lawful Islamists.”

They are carrying out a “soft jihad,” said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee of the City University of New York and a vocal opponent of the Khalil Gibran school.

This is ridiculous. Pipes has a point when Pew contains details like this or a protest at UC Irvine carries messages like this. But not when it comes to preventing American Muslims from enjoying the religious freedom most of us have in this country.

How easily Pipes and Wiesenfeld overlook that wherever Jews have lived (and, of course, this is before they were expelled or worse) they have taken their unique cultural observances, like not working or handling money on the Sabbath. And what about Christian doctors who refuse to perform abortions? How are these examples different than using a bank compliant with sharia, or having a footbath at NYU or not transporting a passenger carrying alcohol?

These politically motivated attacks fall into the category of Islamophobia. I first wrote about this fear of everything Islam last spring, and I received a ton of hate mail for it. This post should turn up some gems.

A world without Islam

Religion scholar Martin Marty -- pushing back against an article in Foreign Policy that asks "What if Islam had never existed?" -- cites a plenitude of religion-fueled conflicts that have had nothing to do with Islam. He concludes with the fact that great atrocities of the 20th century were committed by secular dictators, and offers this insight:

In truth, the conflicts of such a world would parallel those of a world with Islam. Rather than seek to "destroy" Islam and the Muslims, one infers, it might be better for all peoples of faith to look more in the mirror and less out the window, to promote peace.

Vandals attack Muslim graves in France

Vandals desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest war cemetery, hanging a pig's head from one tombstone and daubing slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, officials said Sunday.

President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed "profound outrage" at the "sordid" attack on the Muslim quarter of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, near the northern town of Arras on Saturday night. He vowed that those responsible would be punished.

The cemetery is France's biggest military graveyards and commemorates tens of thousands of victims of a series of long and bloody battles for control of northern France at the start of World War I.

The attack came almost exactly a year after a similar incident in which neo-Nazi vandals scrawled swastikas on 52 of the cemetery's Muslim graves.

"This is the most inadmissible kind of racism and the president of the republic shares the pain of France's entire Muslim community," said a statement issued by the presidency. France's Muslim community is Europe's largest at around five million.

"This hateful act is also a attack on the memory of all veterans of World War I, beyond the faith of each one," the statement added.

The state prosecutor for Arras, Jean-Pierre Valensi, said "the slogans directly target Islam and they gravely insult Rachida Dati, the justice minister," who is the daughter of north African immigrants.

He said a pig's head was hung from one of the graves.

Dati issued a statement condemning a "hateful act" that "hurts the memory of our dead, of the veterans who gave their lives for France".

"Through its racist connotations, it is an assault on the values of the republic and an insult to all French people."

Read the rest from AFP here. And I thought swastikas were only used to attack Jews.

The tale of three former terrorists

InFocus is a relatively new monthly newspaper for the Muslim community in Southern California that circulates 25,000 copies to Muslim businesses and mosques. In the same way that one would expect Jewish publications to be pro-Israel, it is clearly pro-Palestinian and uses the dateline "Occupied Jerusalem."

In the current issue, InFocus' senior writer -- like a Muslim me, though I don't think he's Christian -- has a story that questions the authenticity of three speakers on the ex-terrorist circuit. Well, it doesn't so much question their story as it does indict them for being fallacious Islamophobes.

For self-proclaimed "former terrorists" Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani, all with a history of alleged blood and murder, nothing even close to legal action has ever been taken against them. On the contrary, the trio has, for the past few years, actively been appearing on TV shows across the nation, speaking at conferences and fund-raisers in churches and synagogues and openly proclaiming their so-called bloody past to anyone who is willing to listen.

As recently as last month, the three, whose stories are riddled with lies and inconsistencies according to critics, were invited by the prestigious United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which held its annual conference on terrorism, to speak about the dangers of "Islamic terrorism." The appearance of these individuals drew the ire of Muslims and religious freedom organizations alike. The former were incensed by the fact that the speakers were notorious Islamophobes cashing in on the post-9/11 Islam-bashing industry, and the latter worried by the increasing presence of evangelicals in the armed forces.

"It’s a puzzle as to why the Air Force would invite these three Muslim bashers," said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We see a history, unfortunately, of proselytizing for particular faith groups and this seems to have been part of that whole effort."

Maj. Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for the academy, told the New York Times that the three would be paid a total of $13,000 for their appearance, some of it from private donors. Ashworth justified the invitation saying "they offered a unique perspective from inside terrorism." The findings of the conference will be compiled into a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials, he added.

A group that calls itself the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is suing the federal government for what it calls "creeping evangelism in the armed forces." The group accused the Air Force Academy of constantly inviting born-again Christians, rather than experts, to address cadets on terrorism.

"This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues," David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member, told the Times.

On his own web site, (www.shoebat.com) Shoebat claims to have belonged to the Palestinian Liberation Organization early in his life and to have committed "acts of violence and terrorism against Israel." In his bio, Anani, who now resides in Canada, claimed to have joined a militant group in Beirut, Lebanon, when he was a teenager and boasted to have killed 223 people at a tender age, most of them with a dagger. Saleem claims to have been recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood when he was just 7 years old, and then later as a teenager to have joined the PLO.

However, to most, the trio’s stories seem more fiction than fact.

"You have three people who are openly claiming to be former terrorists," said Hooper. "I don’t think that in any other case, law enforcement officials would look at the word ‘former’ and excuse people. If these three people are indeed former terrorists, why aren’t they in jail or at the very least deported?"

Not to dismiss the possibility that some opportunists are using the religious speaking circuit to make a buck -- it has happened, oh, a few times before -- but the speculative "evidence" here feels pretty weak.

A pig named Muhammad, er, Bill Keller

I'm on deadline right now and procrastinating, so I just started visiting the blogs I read daily and found this ditty from Dallas:

Contributing to the civil discourse in the world, a publicity-seeking Christian preacher responded to the Sudanese persecution of a teacher whose class named its teddy bear Muhammad by naming a pig likewise. He did that, unlike the teacher, knowing that it would be offensive to Muslims. Now that the teacher has been pardoned (which doesn't make the earlier calls for her death any more palatable, btw), I wonder how the preacher will react. But I must admit I don't wonder too much. Normally I offer facts, names, and links to this kind of thing. But in this case: I figure he's getting more pub than he deserves as it is...

I hadn't heard about this gimmick. Google News quickly solved that, providing as the top link this story from WorldNetDaily. (It should be noted that WND is not known for its subtle Conservative tone.) The preacher is Bill Keller, who lost his TV program this summer for slamming Islam.

In his latest devotional being sent to his subscribers, Keller states:

Of course there will be Muslim apologists who say that these are only the extremists, just like they try to distance themselves from their brothers in this "peaceful religion" who flew the planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the one intended for the Capitol building that was crashed in a Pennsylvania field by some real American heroes. ...

These people are not about love or peace or unity. They are about one thing. Converting the world to their false religion and those who get in their way or who refuse to follow their lies will be silenced and killed. The word "Islam" literally means "submission." Maybe you don't understand what it means when their "holy book" says "death to all infidels."

"Bill Keller's pink pig is a terrific tribute to Muhammad!" said WND reader Stephen Mayfield. "If only we could load B-52's with a week's take of Farmer John's swine intestines, and bombs-away them over Khartoum."

Another WND reader, Clay Hestilow of Houston, Texas, took the opposite view, stating, "Senseless. Ignorant. Hateful. This 'minister' is a poor representation of the love that Christ has for all of mankind."

Below is the video Keller posted on YouTube, in which Keller is the pink pig convert from Islam who invites you to know Jesus and calls Islam's great prophet a "murdering pedophile" and the Quran "a book of fairy tales." This guy is really off his rocker.

Muslim rumors hurt Obama

The Forward reported this month that presidential candidates and major Muslim American organizations were keeping each other at arms' length. Today, The Washington Post says questions about Islam keep dogging Barack Obama, who, in fact, is a member of an ultra-liberal Christian church.

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

In campaign appearances, Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia, and the fact that his paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. Obama invokes these facts as part of his case that he is prepared to handle foreign policy, despite having been in the Senate for only three years, and that he would literally bring a new face to parts of the world where the United States is not popular.

The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, and he talks more about his multicultural background than he does about the possibility of being the first African American president, in marked contrast to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who mentions in most of her stump speeches the prospect of her becoming the first woman to serve as president.

"A lot of my knowledge about foreign affairs is not what I just studied in school. It's actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these other countries live," he said earlier this month in Clarion, Iowa.

"The day I'm inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently, but the world also looks at America differently," he told another Iowa crowd. "Because I've got a grandmother who lives in a little village in Africa without running water or electricity; because I grew up for part of my formative years in Southeast Asia in the largest Muslim country on Earth."

While considerable attention during the campaign has focused on the anti-Mormon feelings aroused by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), polls have also shown rising hostility toward Muslims in politics. It is not clear whether that negative sentiment will affect someone who has lived in a Muslim country but does not practice Islam.

Coulter speaks at USC

Ann Coulter spoke at USC last night as part of "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." Luke Ford was there:

Half the crowd rose to give Ann a standing ovation when she walked in and 95% of the crowd rose to applaud her at the end.

About 30 protesters held up placards and chanted against bigotry outside. "Down with Coulter, stop the war!"

"Hey hey, ho ho, racist bitch has got to go!"

'HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!!'

Posters appeared all over the George Washington University campus yesterday morning blaring the message: "HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!!"

Campus police moved quickly to remove the fliers, university leaders began investigating how they got there and student groups met last night to deplore the posters, which had a photo of an Arab and description of "typical Muslim" features such as "suicide vest," "hidden AK-47" and "peg-leg for smuggling children and heroin."

The posters managed to upset just about everyone on campus: Muslim students, other religious groups and conservatives who are hosting "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" later this month. Some questioned whether they were mocking the conservatives, pointing to fine print at the bottom -- "Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness" -- and a postscript recommending a BBC video on the politics of fear.

Any subtleties were lost under the gigantic headline, though.

"I was just really shocked that this sort of hatred exists on our campus," said Najah El Bash, a sophomore from New York who is one of the leaders of the GWU Muslim Students Association. "You never think this would come so close to home, from people you're in classes with. . . . It's scary." It had to be well-planned, she said, for so many posters to go up so quickly.

This story from the Washington Post has been getting some good global play. The article reports that the posters were likely put up to mock the Young America's Foundation, which is hosting the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week at GWU, a national campaign getting a lot of attention. Jihad Watch is reporting that IslamOnline is using this story as proof that Americans hate Islam:

University campuses across the United States are becoming the stage for an anti-Islam campaign that includes hate posters and a series of activities to rally students against the alleged threat Islam poses to the US and the world.

Another neocon working for Giuliani

Look who Ken Silverstein found on Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidate roster: Daniel Pipes.

Pipes has been attacked by Muslim organizations as a fear-mongering Islamophobic fascist. But this comment from Pipes in a story I wrote about young American Muslims sympathetic to suicide bombings, in which the president of Long Beach's MSA told me he thinks Islam justifies the attacks on civilians, seemed pretty measured:

What you have is a low-wage jihad taking place, but people are not paying attention to it. These sentiments are seething, and at any time might erupt.

I noted last month that Giuliani, who has proven incredibly unpopular with evangelical Christians, had enlisted neoconservative Commentary editor-at-large Norman Podhoretz. Here's what Silverstein, the excellent Harper's Washington editor behind that lobbying story from July, had to say about Pipes:

I think it’s fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser. Readers unfamiliar with Pipes can check out his profile at Wikipedia. For a representative sampling of his work, consider a 2006 article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post (not available online):

Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.

From my inbox: 'Rag head go home'

Islamophobia is a favorite topic of The God Blog. Add this report from CAIR, which just arrived in my inbox, to the list:

The Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SV) reported today that racist slurs were spray-painted on a car stolen from a California Muslim.

CAIR said the Muslim woman's late-model car was stolen from the parking lot of a shopping center in Sacramento, Calif., earlier with month. When police found the car days later, the hood and truck were spray-painted with slurs such as "rag head go home."

Britons aren't Islamophobic but Semitophobic

I've written a bit about Muslim fears of growing Islamophobia, but Emanuele Ottolenghi, director of the Transatlantic Institute and a regular contributor to the Commentary blog Contentions, says there is a more disturbing trend in the United Kingdom:

A recent poll now offers us a new perspective on this issue. The good news is that, according to the Harris Interactive/Financial Times survey, the majority of Britons—59 percent—thinks that “it is possible to be both a Muslim and a Briton.” The bad news is that 29 percent disagrees. Still, given the circumstances, one can interpret these data to mean that Britain remains, overall, tolerant. Of Muslims, that is. But when asked to respond to a similar proposition about Jews in a recent Anti-Defamation League sponsored poll (”Jews are more loyal to Israel than to Britain”), 50 percent of Britons answered yes.

This is strange, to say the least. Jews have had no problem integrating in the UK. As for Israel, its sound and solid relation with Great Britain derives from a commonality of interests and values. Jewish extremists have not blown themselves up in the London tube. They do not advocate the establishment of a global Jewish theocracy to dominate the world—as Hizb-ut-Tahrir does—and when they get angry or offended at depictions of their beliefs and habits, Jews will at most write angry emails and letters to the editors, not call for the beheading of those who insult Judaism. Nevertheless, half of England doubts their loyalty.

British attitudes to Muslims could, and should, be better. But it is British attitudes towards Jews that truly expose intolerance.

It's hip to be anti-Muslim

Those aren't my views, but according to a report today by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they belong to an increasing number of Americans. The "Presumption of Guilt" study reported that anti-Muslim incidents increased 25 percent last year, with California accounting for 29 percent of cases. Click to read the entire report.

This is not a new phenomenon. Muslims feel more discriminated against now than in the months following 9/11. I've written many times about this growing concern of Islamophobia.

In related news, Investor's Business Daily published an editorial Tuesday indicting CAIR as a foreign front group -- as others have claimed, or worse.

The days of legitimizing and mainstreaming CAIR — now an official unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror case — must end before it can lobby against one more antiterror measure, boycott one more airline for protecting passengers from suspicious Muslim men, or sue one more John Doe tipster who could save hundreds of lives.

'The Terrorists Next Door?'

It's a scary time to be an American Muslim. Islamophobia is more pervasive now than it was in the wake of 9/11. Those sentiments could have only been heightened Tuesday when the government announced it was charging six foreign-born "radical Islamists" with plotting to attack Jersey's Ft. Dix and kill as many soldiers before dying as martyrs. The news was followed by these headlines Thursday:

"The Terrorists Next Door? Plot Suspects Lived Quietly in Suburb"

and

"Religion Guided 3 Held in Fort Dix Plot"

That first story was in The Washington Post. The second is from The New York Times.

War on Islam

It doesn't matter what rhetorical polishing President Bush's team has done to market the "War on Terror." Outside the United States, it's perceived as an effort to undermine -- even attack -- Islam, according to a report by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a research group affiliated with the University of Maryland.

"While US leaders may frame the conflict as a war on terrorism, people in the Islamic world clearly perceive the US as being at war with Islam,” said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Via the Bible Belt Blogger:

Muslims have raised concerns about the "War on Terrorism" since President Bush briefly dubbed it a "crusade" back in September 2001. [The word, which conjures up images of medieval battles between Christians and Muslims, was quickly scrapped.]

In Egypt, 92 percent of those polled believe one of the U.S.'s goals is to weaken and divide the Islamic world. Only four percent disagreed. Seventy-eight percent agreed with the statement in Morocco, and 73 percent shared that view in Pakistan and Indonesia.

While suspicious of U.S. foreign policy, the people polled also expressed opposition to terrorism. Attacks aimed at civilians to carry out political goals are "not at all justified" according to 57 percent of Moroccans, 77 percent of Egyptians, 81 percent of Pakistanis and 84 percent of Indonesians.

U.S. Muslims were not surveyed. Though Muslim Americans might not believe the United States is at war with Islam, they have grown increasingly concerned about home-grown Islamophobia. When I wrote about this two weeks ago, it incited some e-mails that warranted their fears.

But this statement from WorldPublicOpinion's press release helps explain why some Americans broadly paint Muslims as scary:

Most respondents have mixed feelings about al Qaeda. Large majorities agree with many of its goals, but believe that terrorist attacks on civilians are contrary to Islam.

Many people would stop reading after that first sentence.

More e-mail

I've been getting a lot of response to my article in today's Daily News about Islamophobia. Here is another gem, with added emphasis in bold:

Why do so many Jews in the U.S., continue to apologize and making excuses for radical Islam. Here's a group of people who want to marginalize and destroy Jews all over the world, yet you and many others of the Jewish faith, defend them and push their propaganda.

There is NO such thing as Islamophobia! when is the last time you heard of a Muslim being beaten, raped or murdered in the U.S.???? They are allowed to work where they want, preach when they want and say what they want. nearly the complete opposite of their home country. What there is, is a realization that there are millions of Muslims both here and around the world, who want to impose their backwards, totalitarian beliefs on the rest of us. WHY IS IT THAT LIBERALS LIKE YOU DON'T GET THIS!!!!

So as long as you're giving University teachers a pass on their hate speech against the U.S. and Israel, how about you talk about how:

Muslims burn and loot cars and homes in Paris every night!

a Muslim shot and killed Jewish women at a Synagogue in Seattle

Schools in the U.K. are now BANNING any teaching of the holocaust so they don't offend Muslims.

this list is endless but those are recent examples.

Brad, you're on the wrong side. So while you push your politically correct - multicultural drivel, I'll choose to fight to keep this country strong and safe. While you're waiting in line with your prayer rug on the way to the ovens, I'll continue to shine a light on the hate speech that Imams are spewing in Mosque's.

I should note that based on this man's last name, which is the same way he misidentified my faith -- I am culturally though not religiously Jewish -- he might be Jewish.

Islamophobia

An episode of "South Park" last month (a clip is available here and the entire episode here) offered a true pearl of religious-persecution wisdom. The premise of the entire show, in which a rally for Hillary "Hildog" Clinton is disrupted by a dirty bomb that has been slipped inside her, is that Cartman is trying to stop a new Muslim student from carrying out his terrorist plot. Why does Cartman -- who in another episode this season convinced the school that Kyle, the fourth grade's lone Jew, planned 9/11 and in a previous season emulated Hitler -- suspect young Bahir wants to nuke South Park?

Because he is Muslim -- no other reason is needed.

In the Daily News today, I touched on a theme of this "South Park" episode. (It was already in the works, and was turned in long ago. I swear.) Increasingly, Muslim Americans are talking about "Islamophobia." After 9/11, they felt misunderstood. Now they say they are being targeted for discrimination and persecution. One of the people I interviewed, Hussam Ayloush of the SoCal chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spoke at length about the "industry of hate" that fuels Islamophobia.

Here's a recent post on his blog that names some names. "Are you a professional failure?" Ayloush asks. "... No more worries. Your hardships are gone. I have the right solution for you. Just become a Muslim basher and all your financial and low self-esteem troubles will be gone."

Making Ayloush's list is Steven Emerson, whose reporting for The New Republic last summer enshrouded in controversy the selection of local Muslim Maher Hathout for a county humanitarian award. Coincidentally, on the same day the "South Park" episode aired, The New Republic posted online another Emerson piece criticizing a mainstream Muslim American organization -- Ayloush's CAIR.

CAIR has been accused repeatedly of having terrorists ties, and Emerson again makes the claim, while taking aim at a recent NY Times article, posted here at the International Herald Tribune, that he thought was a CAIR apologia.

Emerson, a self-styled terrorism expert, has, of course, been a controversial figure.