One of the most glaring hypocrisies surrounding the so-called “war on terror” has been the way that mass killings committed by non-Muslims have been treated as functions of mental illness while those committed by Muslims have been treated as functions of ideology. This hypocrisy is made explicit by a pundit [...]]]>
One of the most glaring hypocrisies surrounding the so-called “war on terror” has been the way that mass killings committed by non-Muslims have been treated as functions of mental illness while those committed by Muslims have been treated as functions of ideology. This hypocrisy is made explicit by a pundit like Marc Thiessen — here as elsewhere emitting right-wing hackery in its purest form — in the wake of last week’s Aurora shooting; Thiessen is keen to insist that James Holmes’s massacre in Aurora is categorically different from Nidal Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood because “[t]he Aurora shooting was a senseless act of violence; Fort Hood was a terrorist attack.” (Never mind that Hasan’s undeniably horrific attack was directed at a military target and thus fit classic definitions of terrorism far less than Holmes’s.) Of course, the dichotomy between insanity and ideology is itself a misleading one: on the one hand, mass-murdering lunatics frequently come up with grand political theories to justify their actions; on the other, even committed ideologues are unlikely to undertake bloody suicide missions if they don’t have a screw or two loose.
The basic difference between how Muslim and non-Muslim mass killers are viewed is nowhere more obvious than in the reaction to Anders Behring Breivik’s killing of 77 Norwegians a year ago. Breivik was about as committed an ideologue as one could hope for, as is made clear by his 1500-page manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. Throughout the sprawling manifesto, Breivik is explicit that he sees himself as representing the militant wing of the broader “anti-jihadist” movement — represented in the U.S. by the writers he most frequently cites, such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and Daniel Pipes.
Of course, no one suggests that such writers (to which we could add others like Mark Steyn, Frank Gaffney, and Andy McCarthy) would approve of Breivik’s murderous rampage. Yet their sheer refusal to recognize any commonalities between his goals and theirs was quite brazen and frequently led them into outright self-contradiction. Thus we see Mark Steyn, who in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings mocked authorities for stubbornly refusing to take Hasan’s professions of his beliefs at face value…stubbornly refusing to take Breivik’s professions of his beliefs at face value:
It is unclear how seriously this “manifesto” should be taken….As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder.
But of course, Breivik was perfectly explicit that he was targeting the Norwegian elite in the belief that only by doing so could he shock European nationalists into responding to the supposed Islamicization of Europe. Citing Steyn by name on page 338 of the manifesto, Breivik makes clear that he largely agrees with Steyn concerning the existential nature of the Muslim threat to the West, disagreeing with him only in thinking that this Islamicization can be reversed through bold action by European nationalists. Compare Steyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2006 (the piece is no longer online but can be found here):
That’s what the war [against Islamism]‘s about : our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder”–as can be seen throughout much of “the Western world” right now. The progressive agenda–lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism–is collectively the real suicide bomb.
And here’s Breivik, invoking the same tropes in much less elegant prose on page 12 of his manifesto:
As we all know, the root of Europe’s problems is the lack of cultural self-confidence (nationalism)…. Needless to say; the growing numbers of nationalists in W. Europe are systematically being ridiculed, silenced and persecuted by the current cultural Marxist/multiculturalist political establishments. This has been a continuous ongoing process which started in 1945. This irrational fear of nationalistic doctrines is preventing us from stopping our own national/cultural suicide as the Islamic colonization is increasing annually. This book presents the only solutions to our current problems. You cannot defeat Islamisation or halt/reverse the Islamic colonization of Western Europe without first removing the political doctrines manifested through multiculturalism/cultural Marxism.
Breivik’s ramblings about the threat of “multiculturalism/cultural Marxism” are relevant given the recent and rather laughable attempt by Daniel Pipes, another frequently cited source in 2083, to exculpate himself and his allies from their implication in Breivik’s worldview. Pipes — responding to a ThinkProgress graphic detailing Breivik’s reliance on various “anti-jihadist” writers — attempts to show that Breivik could equally be viewed as a leftist given his frequent references to left-wing thinkers like the Frankfurt School and liberal politicians like Barack Obama. Pipes further argues that Breivik, far from agreeing with the likes of him, Spencer, and Geller, “intentionally sought to damage and delegitimize” them by his massacre.
The flaws in Pipes’s apologia are so obvious that it feels almost superfluous to point them out, but here goes. The ThinkProgress graphic listing Breivik’s reliance on the anti-jihadist writers served some purpose in that Breivik was largely agreeing with them (on the alleged Islamic threat to the West, if not necessarily the proposed remedies.) His frequent citations of figures like Marx or Marcuse — or, for that matter, Obama or Blair — are completely irrelevant in this regard since Breivik was listing them as perpetrators or enablers of the Islamic/cultural-Marxist/multiculturalist/environmentalist attack on the West. (The basic incoherence of listing all these currents as if they were the same thing is by no means exclusive to Breivik.)
Similarly, Breivik’s criticisms of anti-jihadist writers that Pipes cites are notable primarily for how limited they are. To take the one example Pipes gives, Breivik writes:
The reason why authors on the Eurabia related issues/Islamisation of Europe — Fjordman, [Robert] Spencer, [Bat] Ye’or, [Andrew] Bostom etc. aren’t actively discussing deportation is because the method is considered too extreme (and thus would damage their reputational shields). . . . If these authors are to [sic] scared to propagate a conservative revolution and armed resistance then other authors will have to.
So, to be clear, Breivik agrees with Pipes’s allies about the threat Muslims pose to the West, and merely disagrees with them about the desirability of mass deportation, revolution, and “armed resistance” to deal with it. This is hardly of a piece with his paranoid rantings against leftism and “cultural Marxism.”
It’s been a bit of a scandal how quickly Breivik has been forgotten, and how easily his ideological inspirations have been able to shrug off his massacre. Like the Aurora shooting, Breivik is a reminder of how pervasive the double standards surrounding “terrorism” remain.
]]>As more information emerges about Mitt Romney’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares, Romney’s campaign, no doubt, will face increasing scrutiny over their decision to hire the outspoken anti-Muslim advocate. But potentially even more concerning than Phares’ ties to the anti-Muslim far-right in the U.S. are [...]]]>
As more information emerges about Mitt Romney’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares, Romney’s campaign, no doubt, will face increasing scrutiny over their decision to hire the outspoken anti-Muslim advocate. But potentially even more concerning than Phares’ ties to the anti-Muslim far-right in the U.S. are the allegations — outlined in Adam Serwer’s profile of Phares — that the now-Romney adviser was one of the chief ideologists in the Lebanese Forces, a Lebanese Christian militia that committed atrocities during Lebanon’s civil war.
How Romney and his campaign will respond to the newly publicized facts that one of their top foreign policy advisers — indeed a former associate of Phares’ told Serwer that Romney “promised Phares a high-ranking White House job helping craft U.S. policy in the Middle East” — used Christian-sectarian ideology to justify the mass slaughter during the Lebanese civil war.
But Romney has called for the firing of public officials for far less than participating in war atrocities.
Romney said he would fire Obama adviser David Plouffe for comments saying Americans won’t vote based based on the employment rate. Romney said:
If David Plouffe were working for me, I would fire him and then he could experience firsthand the pain of unemployment,”
Romney called upon his GOP rival, Gov. Rick Perry, to “repudiate” anti-Mormon comments made by Perry supporter Dr. Robert Jeffress.
And in a September GOP debate, Romney said that if president he would fire Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for his failure to resuscitate the U.S. economy. Romney said:
I’d be looking for somebody new. I think Ben Bernanke has overinflated the amount of currency that he’s created. QE 2 did not work, it did not get Americans back to work, it did not get the economy going again … We’re growing now at 1 to 1 and a half percent.
Romney and his campaign have a precedent of considering disagreements over monetary policy and electoral policy to be fire-able offenses. And expressing intolerant sentiments about Mormonism is worthy of “repudiation.”
The Romney campaign appears to accept Phares’ public association with the Islamophobic Clarion Fund and anti-Muslim blogger Robert Spencer. But given Romney’s record of calling for the firing of individuals for far less than ties to a violent militia, will he apply the same standard to Walid Phares?
]]>Today, National Review Online‘s David French leapt to the defense of Spencer and Horowitz. His aim is to show that far from being Islamophobic, they and their allies are simply applying the same standards to Islam that we would apply to any other religion. To do so, he resorts to a familiar kind of thought experiment, asking how we would respond if Christians posed the same sort of threat to the U.S. that Muslims ostensibly pose.
But French’s “thought experiment” is perhaps more revealing that he intended. Its astonishingly hyperbolic portrayal of the extent of the “Christian” (i.e. Muslim) threat only reinforces the conclusion that he and his allies hold a hysterical and alarmist view of Islam.
French’s imaginary account of the “Christian” menace is too long to reproduce in full here — read the full post for that — but the gist is: “Christians” (i.e. Muslims) have launched 10,000 terrorist attacks against the United States in the span of a decade. They control five states “in whole or in part,” having wrested sovereignty away from the U.S. government, and are fighting a violent insurgency to take control of California. Anti-blasphemy laws are enforced “at rifle point,” members of other religions are crushed under tanks, and the last synagogue closes as Jews have been expelled from the United States.
Clearly, French expects readers of this fantasy to nod in knowing recognition. How clever, they are meant to think to themselves — he’s precisely described the Muslim threat to America! And to be sure, much of what he describes is modeled on recent events in various Middle Eastern countries.
But for the thought experiment to make sense — and for his defense of Horowitz, Spencer et al to hold water — one must believe that these events are a plausible account of the threat posed to America by radical Islam. And here the paranoia on display becomes so over-the-top as to be laughable.
After all, have Muslims launched 10,000 terrorist attacks in America? Have they launched 1,000? Have they launched 100? Do radical Muslims control five American states, “in whole or in part”? Do they control a single state? Do they control a single county? Has a Muslim anti-blasphemy law been passed by even a single jurisdiction in the United States? Has even a single Christian or Jewish religious congregation been forced out by Muslims? (This last notion is especially ironic, since French’s allies have been dedicated to preventing Muslims from opening mosques throughout the country.)
There is nothing wrong, of course, with faulting the governments of many Muslim-majority countries for their illiberal practices. But to suggest, as French seems to, that Muslims are on the verge of imposing an Islamic Republic in America is frankly insane. (Once again the Bircher parallel holds: it was perfectly justifiable to denounce the brutality of the Soviet regime, but it was lunatic to suggest that a Soviet takeover of America was imminent.)
French may have intended to clear Horowitz and Spencer from the charge of Islamophobia. Instead, he has given yet another demonstration of the depths of anti-Muslim paranoia prevailing on large segments of the right.
]]>ormer Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) blasted Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for failing to take a hard-line against Muslims or embrace the Islamophobia currently sweeping across the GOP.
Tancredo, who has suggested that bombing the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina would serve as a [...]]]>
ormer Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) blasted Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for failing to take a hard-line against Muslims or embrace the Islamophobia currently sweeping across the GOP.
Tancredo, who has suggested that bombing the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina would serve as a good “deterrent” against Islamic terrorism, opines in the Daily Caller:
- What is not yet as widely known about Perry is that he extends his taxpayer-funded compassion not only to illegal aliens but also to Muslim groups seeking to whitewash the violent history of that religion. Perry endorsed and facilitated the adoption in Texas public schools of a pro-Muslim curriculum unit developed by Muslim clerics in Pakistan.
Tancredo cites “Islam scholar” Robert Spencer — Spencer plays the role of a “misinformation expert” in the Islamophobia network examined in the Center for American Progress’ new report Fear, Inc. — who examined the program and concluded:
- The curriculum is a complete whitewash and it’s got the endorsement of Perry. It’s not going to give you any idea why people are waging jihad against the West — it’s only going to make you think that the real problem is ‘Islamophobia.’
Indeed Perry did develop a relationship with Pakistani religious leader and philanthropist Aga Khan and helped facilitate a 2009 agreement between Texas and Aga Khan organizations in the “fields of education, health sciences, natural disaster preparedness and recovery, culture and the environment.” At the signing ceremony, Perry said:
- [T]raditional Western education speaks little of the influence of Muslim scientists, scholars, throughout history, and for that matter the cultural treasures that stand today in testament to their wisdom.
Not all conservative pundits have bought into the anti-Muslim hysteria. The Center for Security Policy’s David Reaboi and conservative blogger Ace of Spades have written lengthy rebuttals and characterized the attacks on Perry and his Aga Khan connections as inaccurate. But Perry’s involvement in the development of curriculum to teach Texas high school students about Islam has served as a rallying cry for anti-Muslim advocates who see the curriculum as a threat to their portrayal of Islam as an inherently violent religion.
Tancredo concludes his anti-Muslim editorial by suggesting that Perry’s affiliation with Grover Norquist, a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) board member and president of Americans for Tax Reform, is yet another sign of “Perry’s Muslim blind spot.” Tancredo asks:
- Why does [Perry] think he can claim to be the “tea party candidate” while endorsing a whitewash of Islamic extremism in Texas schools?
Tancredo’s reliance on discredited “scholars” like Robert Spencer and his assertions that radical Islam, via Grover Norquist and Aga Khan, have coopted Perry into spreading a “pro-Muslim curriculum unit” in Texas public schools offers an insight into the hateful and paranoid mindsets of those who embrace an anti-Muslim political agenda. (HT: Little Green Footballs)
]]>Spencer Ackerman’s reports on Islamophobic training sessions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have sent the Bureau into damage control mode. On Thursday, the FBI held a conference call with Muslim civil rights groups to apologize for the offensive training materials, which Ackerman has [...]]]>
Spencer Ackerman’s reports on Islamophobic training sessions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have sent the Bureau into damage control mode. On Thursday, the FBI held a conference call with Muslim civil rights groups to apologize for the offensive training materials, which Ackerman has published over the past week.
The FBI has promised a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials,” but Ackerman, in an article published today, reveals that the work of well-known Islamophobes permeates the FBI’s training culture and the internal reference resources available to FBI agents.
Ackerman reports that the mandatory online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), included the following description of Sunni Muslims:
- Sunni Muslims have been prolific in spawning numerous and varied fundamentalist extremist terrorist organizations. Sunni core doctrine and end state have remained the same and they continue to strive for Sunni Islamic domination of the world to prove a key Quranic assertion that no system of government or religion on earth can match the Quran’s purity and effectiveness for paving the road to God.
An examination of the FBI’s library in Quantico, which is not open to the public, revealed that the Bureau stocks a wide range of resources on Islam but includes a number of books by well known anti-Islam authors Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer.
Pipes and Spencer are featured prominently in the Center for American Progress’ new report, “Fear, Inc.,” which outlines the small but influential group of individuals and institutions who help promote anti-Muslim hatred in the U.S.
Spencer, who claims that “Islam is not a religion of peace” and has suggested that President Obama may be a Muslim, gained notoriety after it was revealed that Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik’s manifesto included 162 references to Spencer and his blog Jihad Watch.
Pipes famously observed that “all immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” He also plays a key role in the Islamophobia echo chamber by repeating the falsehood that Obama is a former Muslim who “practiced Islam.”
The combination of Islamophobic presentation and the FBI’s apparent endorsement of noted anti-Muslim “experts” like Spencer and Pipes raises serious questions about the FBI’s counterterrorism training and the Bureau’s understanding of Muslim Americans.
Earlier this month, the Seattle Times reported on a disastrous presentation by an FBI agent at a community outreach workshop. The failed presentation offers insights into how federal law enforcement officers’ training has seriously hampered their ability to engage with Muslim communities.
]]>Responding to CAP’s Islamophobia report, anti-Muslim activists David Horowitz called it “fascistic” and Robert Spencer deemed it the “agenda of the Islamic jihad.” Determined to one-up her Islamophobia network colleagues, Pamela Geller took to her blog on Friday evening to unleash a fiery tirade [...]]]>
Responding to CAP’s Islamophobia report, anti-Muslim activists David Horowitz called it “fascistic” and Robert Spencer deemed it the “agenda of the Islamic jihad.” Determined to one-up her Islamophobia network colleagues, Pamela Geller took to her blog on Friday evening to unleash a fiery tirade against the new report “Fear, Inc.”
Geller piles baseless, if at times colorful, allegations on the report’s authors. Including:
- Over at the wildly funded machine of hate and lies, the “Center of American Progess,” the Soros cranks have spent hundreds of thousands producing a pile of dung masquerading as research. [...]
It reads more like a Mein Kampf treatise. The funding section of the report is outrageous. I have not seen one dime from any those donors, though they name me as a recipient. Lies. [...]
[MediaMatters and the Center for American Progress] mean to destroy this country, and they will crush anyone who gets in their way. [...]
This “report on Islamophobia” is Goebbels attacking the Jew. I wear it as a badge of honor. These quislings are the enemy. They fear my work, and that is good. They fear my book, Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. [...]
Watch them choke on their own vomit.
Geller’s only factual issue with the report is that “I have not received one cent from any of these funders they attempt to tie me to.” But the report never claims that Geller receives any money from the seven funders who contributed $42.6 million to the Islamophobia network. Indeed, Geller is probably one of the few individuals who requires little money from outside donors. Last year, The New York Times reported:
- Ms. Geller got nearly $4 million when [she and Michael H. Oshry] divorced in 2007, and when Mr. Oshry died in 2008, there was a $5 million life-insurance policy benefiting her four daughters, said Alex Potruch, Mr. Oshry’s lawyer. She also kept some proceeds from the sale of Mr. Oshry’s $1.8 million house in Hewlett Harbor.
Geller, much like her colleagues Robert Spencer and David Horowitz, uses the report as an opportunity to solicit readers for contributions while never meaningfully challenging the factual accuracy of the 130-page report on Geller and her anti-Muslim allies. While unsurprising and certainly not out of the norm for Geller, her response to the report underlines the bigotry, hatred and intolerance exhibited by many member of the Islamophobia network.
UPDATE: Last night, ThinkProgress editor-in-chief Faiz Shakir discussed the Islamophobia network with Keith Olbermann:
]]>A new, must-read report by the Center for American Progress titled “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of Islamophobia in America,” exposes the Islam-bashing network in America which has considerable reach in the U.S. news media and has an audience among some well-known politicians such as Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.
The report includes detailed information about the more than $42 million that has flowed from seven key foundations to the network over 10 years, as well as the key “misinformation experts” who generate the false facts and materials which are then regurgitated by the media and certain politicians and grass-root groups.
Islamophobic misinformation is not only harmful for Muslims inside the U.S. and abroad who continue to be persecuted and isolated for crimes committed in the name of Islam even as the vast majority of Muslims denounce them. If accepted unchallenged, these claims can also lead to misguided and harmful U.S. domestic and foreign policy decisions which can further exacerbate national security threats.
Click here to read the report in full. Jim’s IPS article on the report can be found here.
]]>With those preliminaries aside, a few thoughts:
1) It’s become clear that Breivik’s political views were drawn in large part from the writings of “anti-jihad” writers in Europe and the U.S. I’ve written about many of these writers in the past — folks like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Andy McCarthy — and it’s fair to say that I don’t have much sympathy for their views; I think they’re ignorant, bigoted, and frequently hysterical. But ignorance, bigotry, and hysteria are very different from the mass murder of innocent civilians. So while it’s perfectly legitimate to fault the Gellers and McCarthys of the world for fostering an atmosphere of apocalyptic alarmism about Islam, let’s be clear that none of them has ever legitimated or called for anything resembling Breivik’s actions.
2) But if the “anti-jihadists” are within their rights to object to being tarred with Breivik’s actions, one would nonetheless hope that the atrocity in Norway would prompt some degree of introspection on their part — some reflection on how it was that this person (however crazy or evil) took their work as justification for mass slaughter. Unfortunately, such introspection has been in short supply. Mark Steyn and Andy McCarthy have typically glib responses, in which they breezily deny that there might be any connection between Breivik’s politics and their own.
Their arguments are unconvincing and in places downright silly. Can Steyn actually believe, for instance, that just because Breivik’s victims were white Christians the entire Islamophobia angle on the killings is therefore simply a distraction? As even a cursory skimming of Breivik’s writings will show, Breivik’s main criticism of the European ruling elite is that they are too decadent, relativist, and multiculturalist to stop the threat from Muslim immigrants. (They’re “supporters of European multiculturalism and therefore supporters of the ongoing Islamic colonisation of Europe,” he writes at the beginning of his manifesto.) Perhaps this might ring a bell for Steyn, since he’s written a book arguing precisely the same thesis. (It’s also striking how many of the keywords — “lack of cultural self-confidence,” “national suicide” — are the same.) Insofar as we can perceive a motive for Breivik’s attack, it appears to be that the mass slaughter of the future Norwegian political elite would be a shock that would force Europe to awake to the Muslim threat.
3) As always, the double standards involved in the treatment of Muslim and non-Muslim terrorists are highly revealing. Molly Ziegler Hemingway, for instance, attacks the media for labeling Breivik a “Christian extremist.” He may be both a Christian and an extremist, Hemingway suggests, but there’s little evidence that his Christianity was a central cause of his rampage — he’s more of an extremist-who-happens-to-be-Christian. This is a fair point, but it’s striking that such logic virtually never gets applied to Muslim militants — “radical Islam” is trotted out as an all-purpose explanation regardless of the militant’s specific beliefs and grievances. (Witness the Fort Hood shooting, where the right was eager to downplay all of Nidal Hasan’s concrete political grievances and to focus on his religion as the sole and sufficient cause of his rampage.)
Similarly, it’s been revealing to see so many of the “anti-jihadists” draw a strict differentiation between violent and non-violent forms of politics, and suggest that even if Breivik shares many of their political goals, his use of violence utterly differentiates him from them. Again, this may be a fair point — but it’s precisely the distinction that they frequently deny when it comes to Muslims. Andy McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad, for instance, argues at great length that the threat from Muslim violence is largely a red herring, that the more insidious threat is from religious Muslims pursuing their goals peacefully through the political process, and that these peaceful Muslims (or “peaceful” Muslims, to adopt his gratuitous use of scare quotes) should essentially be viewed as no different from the terrorists. Of course, applying the same logic to the anti-jihadists would suggest that there’s little distinction between a McCarthy on the one hand and a Breivik on the other. If McCarthy and his compatriots don’t like this conclusion (which I myself don’t share) then perhaps they should reevaluate the premises that led them to their Islamophobic alarmism.
]]>The CPAC agenda has [...]]]>
The CPAC agenda has not yet been formally released but a file posted by Citizens United to Scribd, a document sharing service, lists the “CPAC Theater Schedule – Sponsored by Citizens United Productions.” Three of the sixteen films scheduled for screenings are right up Frank Gaffney’s—and CPAC-approved Clifford May’s—alley.
They are:
“Iranium”- Ali and I just posted our review of the film on Tehran Bureau. The film is the latest production from the Clarion Fund. Clarion–which appears to be an offshoot of the evangelist, ultra-orthodox, Jerusalem-based Aish-HaTorah– gained notoriety for mailing 28 million copies of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” to swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election. “Iranium” contains similar themes to the Fund’s previous films, suggesting that a clash of civilizations is imminent and that anti-Semitism and irrational hatred toward Israel are key to understanding the anger and frustration voiced by Muslim countries in opposition to the United States.
“America At Risk: The War With No Name” – A Citizens United Production starring Newt and Callista Gingrich. Talking Points Memo’s Rachel Slajda observed that “America at Risk” bears striking similarities to Clarion Fund films. “This is the end of times. This is the final struggle,” intones a narrator in the film’s trailer.
“The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave Of The 911 Attack”— The documentary, executive produced by notorious anti-Jihad blogger Pamela Geller along with associate producer Robert Spencer, will document the anti-Park 51 Islamic community center campaign from last summer. The screening will be followed by “a question and action and strategy session on stopping the mosque.”
With films like these being promoted during the three day conference, it seems safe to say that Islamophobia and anti-Muslim propaganda will continue to find a safe haven at CPAC.
]]>Emerson’s investigations into Muslim radicalism in the U.S. have made him a darling of hardline critics of Islam like Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and Andy McCarthy, despite critics’ charges that he peddles an overly alarmist line that verges on Islamophobia. (Emerson achieved some notoriety in 1995 for suggesting, in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, that the attack was the work of Muslim radicals.) It will be interesting to see whether these apparent improprieties cause Emerson’s admirers to back away from him.
]]>