Faced with a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment and a well-funded campaign to promote Islamophobia, a coalition of faith and religious freedom groups Thursday said it will circulate a new pamphlet on frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Islam and U.S. Muslims to elected officials across the United States.
The initiative, which coincides [...]]]>
Faced with a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment and a well-funded campaign to promote Islamophobia, a coalition of faith and religious freedom groups Thursday said it will circulate a new pamphlet on frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Islam and U.S. Muslims to elected officials across the United States.
The initiative, which coincides with the appearance in subway stations in New York City and Washington of pro-Israel ads equating the Jewish state with “civilised man” and “Jihad” with “savages”, is designed to rebut the notion that Muslims pose a threat to U.S. values and way of life.
“Nothing gives weight to bigotry more than ignorance,” said Rev. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister who is president of the Interfaith Alliance, a grassroots organisation of leaders representing 75 faith traditions. “The FAQ enables people to be spared of an agenda-driven fear and to be done with a negative movement born of misinformation…”
Gaddy was joined by Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Project of the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center which co-sponsored the new 13-page pamphlet, entitled “What is the Truth About American Muslims?”
“In my view,” Haynes said in reference to the so-called “Stop Islamisation of America” (SIOA) movement that, among other things, has sponsored the subway ads, “this campaign to spread hate and fear is the most significant threat to religious freedom in America today.”
“Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the anti-Muslim narrative has migrated from the right-wing fringe into the mainstream political arena – and is now parroted by a growing number of political and religious leaders,” he said.
Indeed, public opinion polls have shown a gradual rise in Islamophobia here over the past 11 years, most recently in the wake of last month’s anti-U.S. demonstrations across the Islamic world that were triggered by a vulgar internet video mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. The video, supposedly a trailer for a longer movie, was reportedly produced by a California-based, Egyptian-born Copt, although the source of its funding remains unclear.
While a majority (53 percent) of U.S. respondents say they believe that it is possible to find “common ground” between Muslims and the West, that majority has shrunk since 9/11, according to a poll released earlier this week by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). Only one year ago, it stood at 59 percent, and in November 2001 – just two months after 9/11 – it was 68 percent.
Conversely, the minority that agreed with the notion that “Islamic religious and social traditions are intolerant and fundamentally incompatible with Western culture” rose from 26 percent in 2001, to 37 percent last year, and 42 percent when the latest PIPA poll was conducted two weeks ago.
In another poll conducted by the Pew Research Center last year which asked respondents “how much support for extremism is there among Muslim Americans”, 40 percent said there was either a “great deal” or a “fair amount”, while only a narrow plurality (45 percent) disagreed.
In addition to the violent images of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Islamic world that have been beamed onto U.S. television screens and home computers since 9/11, popular beliefs that Muslims are inherently more hostile and dangerous have been propagated by a small network of funders, bloggers, pundits and groups documented in a 2011 report, entitled “Fear, Inc.,” by the Center for American Progress (CAP).
It identified seven foundations – most of them associated with the far-right in the U.S., as well as several Jewish family foundations that have supported right-wing and settler groups in Israel – that provided more than 42 million dollars between 2001 and 2009 to key individuals and organisations who have spread an Islamophobic message through, among other means, videos, newspaper op-eds, radio and television talk shows, paid ads, and local demonstrations against mosques.
Among the most prominent recipients have been the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Forum, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the Society of Americans for National Existence, as well as SIOA, the group, which, along with the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), is sponsoring the current subway ad campaign.
“Together, this core group of deeply intertwined individuals and organizations manufacture and exaggerate threats of ‘creeping Sharia’, Islamic domination of the West, and purported obligatory calls to violence against all non-Muslims by the Quran,” according to the CAP report.
It noted that their message was also echoed by leaders of the Christian Right and some Republican politicians, including several who ran for president this year, such as former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.
Leaders of many mainstream Jewish and Christian denominations have denounced specific aspects of the network’s initiatives, such as its efforts to derail the construction of a Muslim community center near the so-called “Ground Zero” site where Manhattan’s Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11; distribute Islamophobic videos, such as ‘Obsession’; and to lobby state legislatures to ban the application of “Sharia”, or Islamic law, in their jurisdictions.
The new pamphlet, however, marks the first effort by faith groups and religious freedom advocates to directly rebut common misconceptions and claims made against Muslims and their theology by, among other things, explaining the meaning of “jihad”, and the sources, practice, and aims of Sharia.
“In a time when misinformation about and misunderstandings of Islam and of the American Muslim community are widespread, our goal is to provide the public with accurate answers to understandable questions,” said Gaddy, who noted that the authors consulted closely with well-recognised Muslim scholars in drafting the document.
Twenty-one religious and secular organisations, including the Disciples of Christ, the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and Rabbis for Human Rights-North America endorsed the pamphlet, as did several major Muslim and Sikh organisations.
Six people were killed at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin last summer by an individual who had mistakenly believed he was attacking Muslims.
Haynes stressed that the response to the Islamophobia campaign was late. “We have left the field to the people who demonised Muslims, and they have won the day,” he said. “We’re playing catch-up on this nonsense.”
In bold black-and-white lettering, the subway ad that first appeared in New York last month and then in Washington this week states: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
A coalition of 157 local religious groups have formally objected to the transit authority over the ad, and demanded that it issue disclaimers alongside the ads as the San Francisco transit authority did when the same groups took out ads on buses this summer.
A number of religious groups, including Sojourners, an evangelical group, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the United Methodist Church are running counter-ads in New York and Washington.
]]>The EDL’s participation in the rally is only the latest step marking the convergence of American pro-Israel hawks with segments of the European far right — a process that we have been tracing over the last couple years. (The radically Islamophobic Dutch MP Geert Wilders will also be a featured speaker at the rally.) It remains to be seen whether the more mainstream Republicans who have been involved in the campaign against Park51 will distance themselves from the neofascist elements who are attempting to cash in on the uproar.
]]>In addition to Wilders, the rally [led by Pamela Geller] will feature a videotaped address by John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the second Bush administration, and speeches by Republican political candidates and [...]]]>
In addition to Wilders, the rally [led by Pamela Geller] will feature a videotaped address by John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the second Bush administration, and speeches by Republican political candidates and by a conservative radio host. Former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich was previously listed as a speaker, but he is not attending. A spokesman for Gingrich said that he had never intended to attend, and that the listing was based on a misunderstanding.
While it’s impossible to know the actual story, it sure sounds like Gingrich decided that associating himself with the likes of Geller and Geerts Wilders was not a sound political strategy for a 2012 presidential hopeful. Similarly, it’s notable that even John Bolton — who is about as far right as any high-profile U.S. political figure, and who wrote the forward to Geller and Robert Spencer’s latest book — is declining to appear in person. Perhaps Gingrich and Bolton calculated that there is a not-insignificant chance that Geller’s Muslim hatefest will end in some kind of “incident” — see the near-miss at last week’s Ground Zero rally for an idea of what this would look like — in which case participation at the rally would become politically toxic for whoever was involved.
As I wrote a couple weeks ago, one of the most important stories about the whole controversy over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is the extent to which prominent Republican political figures, most notably Gingrich, have mainstreamed a virulently Islamophobic discourse that was once limited to the right-wing fringes. Does Gingrich’s pulling out of the Geller rally mean that he has reconsidered the wisdom of trying to carve out a niche for himself as America’s most prominent Islamophobe? It would be premature to say so for sure, but keep an eye on Gingrich and other prominent Republican opinion-makers in the months to come.
]]>Like most neoconservatives, Ledeen has no hesitation speaking on behalf of The Iranian People and proclaiming their overwhelming hatred not merely of Ahmadinejad or Khamenei but of the Islamic Republic itself. A constant trope of his writing is the virtuous, secular, freedom-loving, pro-Western Iranian People oppressed by a totalitarian government, eagerly awaiting assertive U.S. action to deliver them from their oppressors. So confident is Ledeen of the Iranian People’s hatred of their government and sympathy for the U.S. that he denies that a military strike would rally the populace around the government. (He recently attacked Jim for attributing the “rally round the flag” view to him, although ironically it seems that Jim’s only error was to attribute to Ledeen a saner, more moderate view than the one he actually holds.)
All this background is relevant because Ledeen is now attacking Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for, among other things, fundraising for the Park51 project in Iran. Or, to be precise, for not explicitly stating that he would never fundraise in Iran. This, apparently, is evidence for his treachery, Islamism, totalitarianism, terrorist sympathies, and so on.
Now, the New York Post story that Ledeen links to conflates fundraising in Iran with accepting “cash for the project from Holocaust-denying Iranian nuke nut Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” (Keep up those journalistic standards, Rupert Murdoch!) But of course, there is no evidence that any fundraising Imam Rauf might hypothetically do in Iran would be coming from the government, much less from Ahmadinejad himself. Rather, a fundraising trip to Iran would involve soliciting donations from — well, from none other than those same freedom-loving, pro-Western Iranian People.
So we have a paradox. According to Ledeen, the Iranian People are virtuous, secular, and pro-Western when the subject is fomenting regime change against their government. However, if any of these Iranian People donate to the Park 51 project, they are immediately to be regarded as crazed, violent, Islamist, and anti-American, and their support is to be taken as proof of the project’s extremist ties.
Of course, the ugly current that underlies Ledeen’s allegation — the implication that if any Iranians give money to fund the project it is ipso facto suspect — is nothing new. We saw much the same thing in the attacks on J Street, where critics tarred the group as “anti-Israel” because of the bare fact that some of its donors had Arab names. In Ledeen’s case, however, the contradictions involved are particularly glaring.
]]>Fortunately, this particular incident did not end in violence. One has to wonder what would have happened, however, if the man — rather than explaining that he was not a Muslim — had described himself as a Muslim and a proud one at that. The way that the crowd rapidly turns on a random passerby, presumably egged on by descriptions of sharia-promoting Muslims out to erect a “victory monument” at Ground Zero, is a sign of the ugly mood that those of us disturbed about the mosque controversy have been warning about. Let’s hope that it does not take an actual tragedy for those responsible for the most unhinged Islamophobic rhetoric to see where it is leading and get control of themselves.
]]>At the core of Bayefsky’s reasoning is her claim that the project’s chairman, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf was photographed with a representative of the Iranian government in 2008 at a Cordoba Initiative event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
From this single photograph Bayefsky draws the following conclusions:
The Iranian connection to the launch of Cordoba House may go beyond a relationship between Rauf and Larijani. The Cordoba Initiative lists one of its three major partners as the UN’s Alliance of Civilizations. The Alliance has its roots in the Iranian-driven “Dialogue Among Civilizations,” the brainchild of former Iranian President Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Mohammad Khatami. Khatami is now a member of the High-level Group which “guides the work of the Alliance.” His personal presidential qualifications include the pursuit of nuclear weapons, a major crackdown on Iranian media, and rounding up and imprisoning Jews on trumped-up charges of spying. Alliance reports claim Israel lies at the heart of problems associated with “cross-cultural relations,” since the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and “Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories … are primary causes of resentment and anger in the Muslim world toward Western nations.”
Never mind that recent polling confirms the fact that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a primary cause of resentment and anger in the Muslim world toward the U.S.. Bayefsky is clearly suggesting that a moderate, mainstream group of Muslims can’t possibly build a community center without subversive Iranian connections.
She writes:
In addition, a Weekly Standard article in July suggested that the idea of building an Islamic memorial in lower Manhattan may have originated back in 2003 with two Iranian brothers: M. Jafar “Amir” Mahallati, who served as ambassador of the Iranian Islamic Republic to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989, and M. Hossein Mahallati.
The anti-Muslim campaign that is coming to a head in Manhattan is the product of years of grassroots efforts (see Justin Elliot and Alex Kane‘s excellent pieces on the origins of the campaign) to delegitimize and undermine Muslim Americans. But this attempt by Bayefsky to link the Cordoba Initiative with Iranian influences is particularly disturbing.
Implied in her article — in which she concludes ominously, “The unanswered questions keep mounting,” — is that the Cordoba Initiative, acting as an Iranian agent, is seeking to bring U.S. enemies — as Bayefsky would no doubt label Iranians — on to the “hallowed ground” of the World Trade Center site.
From this the reader can conclude that:
1.) Iran is an existential threat whose operatives seek to spread Iranian influence through community centers in Manhattan, and;
2.) Mainstream, moderate organizations of Muslims simply don’t exist. They can’t help but form links with subversive elements seeking to destroy the United States and Israel.
The intolerance directed toward the Park 51 Community Center, in combination with the United States and Israel’s increasingly troubling trajectory of policies towards Iran, has the potential to leave a lasting impact upon U.S. attitudes towards Muslims both domestically and around the world.
]]>The problem for the ADL is that there simply isn’t much anti-Semitism [...]]]>
The problem for the ADL is that there simply isn’t much anti-Semitism of consequence in the United States these days. While anti-Semitism continues to thrive elsewhere in the world and to molder on the fringes of American society, Jews have by now been fully assimilated into the American ruling class and into the mainstream of American life. A mundane event like the recent wedding of Protestant Chelsea Clinton and Jewish Marc Mezvinsky drove this point home. What was notable was not the question “will she convert?” but how little importance anyone attached to the answer; the former first daughter’s choice between Judaism and Christianity seemed as inconsequential as the choice between Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism would have a few decades ago.
At the same time, many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious conspiracy breeding within Western society, pledging allegiance to an alien power, conspiring with allies at the highest levels of government to overturn the existing order. Because the propagators of these conspiracy theories are not anti-Semitic but militantly pro-Israel, and because their targets are not Jews but Muslims, the ADL and other Jewish groups have had little to say about them. But since the election of President Barack Obama, this Islamophobic discourse has rapidly intensified.
Read the whole thing here.
]]>Washington Post: Columnist David Ignatius takes a broad view of the Obama administration’s diplomatic trouble spots and prescribes “patience plus” because time is actually on the side of U.S. counterparts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, and Iran. Ignatius admires the current “diplomatic ambiguity,” but [...]]]>
Washington Post: Columnist David Ignatius takes a broad view of the Obama administration’s diplomatic trouble spots and prescribes “patience plus” because time is actually on the side of U.S. counterparts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, and Iran. Ignatius admires the current “diplomatic ambiguity,” but thinks Obama needs to “promptly seize opportunities for negotiation when they arise,” noting that this will hopefully be accomplished in September or October when Iran and the P5 + 1 sit down for talks on the nuclear issue and probably Afghanistan.
Washington Post (AP): Iran’s ambassador to the UN is angered that top Pentagon brass acknowledged a U.S. contingency plan to bomb Iran, denouncing the rhetoric as an unprovoked “threat.” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made similar statements, adding that, should the United States attack, “the field of the Iranian nation’s confrontation will not be only our region.” Khamanei also warned that belligerent talk would end negotiations.
Weekly Standard Blog: Gabriel Schoenfeld tries to sort the recent chatter about the Iranian nuclear clock writing, “Time may be on our side in dealing with Iran—but then again it may not.” Not quite endorsing the nuclear time line in Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest piece (the Israel contention that next July is the doomsday), Schoenfeld then takes on the Atlantic‘s James Fallows, who thinks the United States has some time. “For an analyst as thoughtful as James Fallows to assert categorically that we will not be taken by surprise is itself a surprise. One might even call it an intelligence failure,” writes Schoenfeld.
Pajames Media: Hudson Institute Fellow Anne Bayefsky writes that the “Ground Zero Mosque” has “an Iranian connection.” Bayefsky cites a photograph of Cordoba Initiative chairman, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, and Iranian Mohammad Javad Larijani at a 2008 event sponsored by the Initiative in Kuala Lumpur. Larijani defended Iran at the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year. Bayefsky warns that, “The Iranian connection to the launch of Cordoba House may go beyond a relationship between Rauf and Larijani. The Cordoba Initiative lists one of its three major partners as the UN’s Alliance of Civilizations. The Alliance has its roots in the Iranian-driven “Dialogue Among Civilizations,” the brainchild of former Iranian President Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Mohammad Khatami.”
]]>So here’s an easy way for them to avoid any appearance of hypocrisy: simply propose legislation that would ban any commercial or otherwise non-commemorative establishment in the three blocks surrounding the World Trade Center. No strips clubs, no bars, no delis, no brokerage houses, no Starbucks. This appears to be the only way to make the Ground Zero site “hallowed” in the way that Krauthammer and his allies claim to believe that it already is.
Do I expect any of the mosque opponents to support such a proposal? Of course not. But if they don’t, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that their opposition to the project has less to do with the idea that the blocks around Ground Zero are “sacred ground” and more to do with the fact that they simply don’t like Muslims very much.
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Mr. Abraham Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
823 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
August 4, 2010
Dear Mr. Foxman:
Enclosed please find all ADL address labels your office has ever sent to me in the hope of receiving a contribution.
After the Anti Defamation League’s opposition to the construction of the Park 51 community center complex (usually, if inaccurately, refered to as the “ground zero mosque”), I cannot imagine ever again using an address sticker with my name on it that associates the ADL with “Diversity,” “Tolerance” or “Acceptance.” I also have no desire to see my name associated with that of the ADL, even on an envelope paying my electric bill that no one will bother looking at.
Furthermore, I hereby request that I be expunged from your mailing lists and databases. I also revoke the permission you may have thought you had to give or sell these names to any person or organization.
I note that, in the wake of the approval of the Park 51 project by the relevant authorities, you have backed off somewhat. And I appreciate the fact that you apparently will not be joining Rev. Pat Robertson in the perpetuation of this exercise in histrionic bigotry. Nonetheless, you went much too far in stirring up and fueling Jewish paranoia, lending your voice to the din of intolerance generated by the right wing media and exploited by right wing politicians.
Since you like to collect and retell anecdotes about holocaust survivors and their sensitivities, let me share one with you. Some months ago I took my mother to a synagogoue in Delray Beach, FL, to say kaddish [the memorial prayer for the dead] for my father on the anniversary of his passing, in a congregation made up primarily of elderly Jews.
At one non-crucial point in the service, I needed to use the ladies’ room. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one who had this idea, and I had to wait behind a couple of elderly women. When I was first in the queue, I saw a trembling arthritic woman who had just washed her hands struggling to get a paper towel out of the dispenser so she could dry them. I took 3 or 4 steps toward her and got her a towel.
At the very moment I did so, two stalls became available. The two women waiting behind me promptly swooped into them. I resumed waiting for the next vacancy. Two more women entered and got behind me.
At this point, another woman came into the ladies’ room. She immediately came over to me, rolled up the sleeve of her sweater, revealing the concentration camp number tattooed on her wrist, held it up to me, and whined, “I hate standing in lines.”
I stared at her, shrugged, and then, ignoring her, went into the first available stall.
How could I be so lacking in “sensitivity”? First, three women waiting to use three toilets is a queue, not a “line” like one would have found at a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Second of all, had the woman simply said, “This is really an emergency!” because she had a bladder control issue, most likely I would have graciously let her in ahead of me. Had I noticed that she had any difficulty standing or walking, I would voluntarily have yielded my place to her without her even asking.
But her waving her wrist in my face had exactly the opposite reaction than what she had hoped for. Instead of feeling sorry for her, I was disgusted. How dare she cheapen and insult the holocaust by using the tattoo on her arm in this way?
Mr. Foxman, without pressing the analogy too far, I had a very similar response when I read your argument against the Cordoba Institute’s plans to build a center in lower Manhattan. Yes, you’re a holocaust survivor, and you claim to be protecting the “sensitivities” of 9/11 survivors, whom you equate with holocaust survivors.
But in doing so you put yourself, and the American Jewish community you claim to speak for, in a very similar position to the whining woman in the ladies’ room: rolling up her sleeve, as she most likely has been doing for the past sixty some-odd years, showing off the number on her arm, and using it manipulatively.
I’m really glad ADL lost this round to Mayor Bloomberg and the relevant New York city authorities. I’m also grateful that rabbis like Marc Schneier, Irwin Kula, Joshua Stanton and numerous others spoke out in favor of Park 51′s being built.
And now you can take my ADL Diversity, Tolerance and Acceptance address labels and stick them wherever you like.
Sincerely,
Dr. Marsha B. Cohen
UPDATE: Fareed Zakaria, of CNN and Newsweek, has written to Foxman, returning the Hubert Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize he was awarded by the ADL in 2005. “You are choosing to use your immense prestige to take a side that is utterly opposed to the animating purpose of your organization,” Zakaria wrote in the letter, published in Newsweek. “Your own statements subsequently, asserting that we must honor the feelings of victims even if irrational or bigoted, made matters worse.” Zakaria returned both his plaque and a $10,000 honorarium.
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