EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
Islamophobia is America's Real Enemy
A report released this week has at last confirmed what we Muslim Americans have long known to be true: the threat posed to US national security by the radicalization of its Muslim community is minuscule.
Republican congressman Peter King convened a controversial series of hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims. (Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The study, by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, found that only 20 Muslim Americans were charged with violent crimes related to terrorism in 2011, and of the 14,000 homicides recorded in the United States in that year, not one was committed by a Muslim extremist.
We are thrilled that an objective, comprehensive investigation has revealed that only a tiny percentage of American Muslims support violent acts. However, we remain concerned that the greater danger to America's civic union comes from an increasingly organized campaign that portrays all Muslims as potential terrorists and traitors.
Yes, there may be some Muslims who resort to violence; but it's clear that these individuals signify nothing more than a statistical aberration, and are no more representative of the Muslim community as a whole than Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, or Anders Behring Breivik represent Christianity.
In recent years a network of politically motivated special interests has emerged that is determined to stigmatize and marginalize Muslims in all areas of American public life. After the Cordoba Initiative's proposal to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero were distorted into a manufactured controversy by one such group, we were called "stealth jihadists" and "wolves in sheep's clothing". One person even claimed: "They seem like nice people now, but they will probably turn into extremists in 10, 15, or 20 years."
What began as the work of fringe groups with racist ideologies has moved into the mainstream. The Islamophobic film The Third Jihad was played continuously between training sessions for new recruits to New York's police. The film-makers were linked to an organized movement with a budget of more than $40m and sophisticated lobbying efforts in all 50 states.
Republican congressman Peter King – even as opponents questioned his own ties to IRA and Catholic terrorism in Ireland – convened a series of congressional hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims that can only be described as a witch hunt. And on the campaign trail, Republican presidential candidates from Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have used their platform to demonize American Muslims and question our loyalty to our country.
It was not always this way. Following the 9/11 attacks President Bush, at the Islamic Center of Washington, said: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam … When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world … America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country."
Our allies in the interfaith and civil rights communities are working to counteract the fabricated opposition to Islam that is gaining strength in America today. In response to King's hearings, a coalition of 150 interfaith organizations sponsored a rally proclaiming "Today I am a Muslim too". It is the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University that took a lead in exposing the New York City Police Department's missteps with regards to the Muslim community.
We know that the bulk of the American public recognizes the truth of Islamic moderation and tolerance. The hysterical invective may be well-funded, but it does not capture the heart of the nation. By standing tall together we will overcome those who spread hate and suspicion and return respect and trust to their rightful place at the center of American political and civic life.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
23 Comments so far
Show AllWhat a strange article!
While the author makes a good argument to challenge Islam-phobia, she misses the real agenda of the US government (and most other governments, including those which claim Islam).
The reason George Bush would defend Islam is because Islam, like Christianity and every other major organized religion, is a major tool in keeping people subservient.
Bush, like the Saudi monarchs and the vast majority of power lusting politicians around the globe, is PRIMARILY seeking monetary wealth and knows that all of these major religions help the corporate elites in their agenda.
This is reflected in the the actions of Mr. King and his ilk.
They know that as long as the suckers can be kept focussing on religion, they will be doing the work of the real religion, so-called Free Market Capitalism.
THAT is the real enemy.
Well put, Birdbrain. "those who believe absurdities, will commit atrocities" Voltaire
Islam is an "organized" religion? Really? You could say that of of Muslims who are Shia (the one with the ayatollahs) but not Sunnis, who constitute more than 80% of the Muslims population.
Seeing the fuss and trouble England and France have had with Islamics the last few years I'd say they bear watching, along with anyother group who expects America to conform to their religon, or way of life!
>^^<
What trouble has England and France had with Muslims? The war mongering press and our rotten government want Americans to think that Muslims are evil and out to kill us all. Evidence abounds that we are out to kill them. Who did 9/11 and the train bombing in London? Not the Muslims. All this Muslim trashing is to get gullible Americans to sit out yet another war to steal resources of yet another Muslim nation. The real problem we have with the Muslims is that they are living over OUR OIL!! We, the biggest terrorist nation on earth, will get OUR OIL and no 'rag head' will stop our troops from their duty to the oil corporations. Remember Operation Iraqi Freedom? spelled O I L. The problem is not religion, it is greed. Rapacious greed. That ought to be against all religions but it's ok with the United States of 'merica.
What an incredibly ignorant and wilfully blind comment! I now live in Europe, for a more civilized way of life, and I can tell you there are many problems here with Muslims. We have an estimated 44-54 million Muslims here compared to your miniscule 2.6 million. Just wait.
They have established Sharia zones in many EU cities where native people can't go and even the police fear to enter. Women without headscarves risk beatings and gays take their lives in their hands, literally, to be caught in a Muslim neighborhood. Jews are being driven out of places that once gave them refuge from the previous fascism that wanted them dead, like in Malmo, Sweden, now with 25% Muslims and terrible problems now never seen before with hate and intolerance.
100% of all rapes in Oslo the past 5 years and 25% of all rapes in Copenhagen were committed by Muslim Immigrants. 67% of all anti-gay violence in once peaceful, tolerant Amsterdam, and 25% in the UK is all Muslim committed. These are just a few disturbing happenings. Sex assaults on women without headcovers are increasing (they call them 'uncovered meat'). Jihad against Islamic hated dogs is happening in many cities with Muslims demanding they made illegal, or not allowed on the streets and many are being poisoned.
Muslims in Switzerland are demanding the white cross be removed from their flag - it 'offends' them, but they couldn't care less how their flags in their home countries offend religious minorities with their Islamic sayings and swords.
Here in Spain we have 2 new Islamic TV stations, one from Iran and one that states quite frankly that its purpose is to preach 'positive hatred against Christianity'. Name a Muslim country that has true freedom of religion, speech, conscience. Islam can't allow questioning or criticism or it falls flat, that's why it is illegal in Muslim occupied countries to even tell the true history of Mohammed - his banditry, pedophilia, raping of captive women, taking them as sex slaves, beheading 900 Jewish men/boys in Medina and laughing while dividing up their property, etc etc etc.
You braindead leftists who have adopted this, the most hateful ideology on earth today as your new pet project are sickening. You completely ignore its many victims in order to pander to its every demand.
Islam commands that those who leave it or criticize it and gay people be killed. Is that OK with you? It teaces that black people were created to be slaves to Arabs/Muslims (the word in Arabic for black man and slave is the same - abd). Rape victims are considered 'adulteresses' unless they can produce 4 Muslim male witnesses to the crime! Impossible! Men can slake their lust on up to 4 'wives' and Shi'ites still practice the awful 'temporary marriage', mut'a, Mohammed OK's for his warrior thugs. Men can have 4 relatively permanent wives and unlimited 'temporary' ones just for sex, as long as they get a permit from an imam. This often involves paying for the use of a little girl for a weekend. The only requirement for 'marrying' a child is that she can support the weight of the dirty old man.
Whose side are you people on? Open your eyes. Islamism is growing around the world daily with violence and killings from Nigeria to Kenya, Somalia to Thailand, Egypt to Spain, Norway to Russia...It's coming to the US once your Muslim pop. reaches 2-3%. Why do you keep falling for these bland Taqiyya (lying to promote Islam) articles that appear constantly in the media? Muslims aren't being targeted for hate crimes. Do some research. FBI stats show 67% of all religious motivated hate crimes are against Jews, who Common Cause seems to hate too. Few crimes are against Muslims.
France has around 12% Muslims and they take over streets and close them for 'prayers', a political finger to French neighbors. Some churches must have police protection for their services which 'offend' the Muslim immigrants who have taken over their neighborhoods, synagogues are burned and defaced, but they don't mind if they offend you with their illegal blocking of streets. They demand taxpayers build them mosques! Yes.
You wouldn't put up with any of this hate, intolerance and uncivilized behavior from any other group. Why patronize Islam? CAIR and ISNA and other Muslim Brotherhood fronts have done their work well in playing the victim role. While trying to infiltrate and destroy you from within. Here's a captured document from them saying just that: http://www.investigativeproject.org/document/id/20
I've spent a lifetime fighting bigotry and hate and find so many so-called 'liberals' or 'progressives' standing with this new fascism (Hitler loved Islam and 100,000 Balkan Muslims volunteered for the Nazi army to kill Jews). Not all Muslims are actively practicing orthodox Islam that says to kill all unbelievers, don't take Jews and Christians for friends, be kind to only Muslims and harsh to non-Muslims, kill apostates, critics of Islam and gays. etc etc. But the ideology is hateful and dangerous. Not all Nazis were committed to killing and hate, nor all Communists in the Soviet Union. Wake up and stop drinking the Kool Aid.
Decide whose side you're on - the victims of this Islamofascism or the ideology of hate and intolerance that IS Islam (109 verses of hate toward non-Muslims in the Qur'an, not including the hadith and sira - read them and see, I have and they are sickening).
Read the Qur'an and hadith (which puts it in context or it doesn't make any sense):
QUR'AN: http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/
HADITH: http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/hadith/
Quit being so ignorant and defending an ideology that opposes everything this site claims to believe in. Ignorance is no excuse. Liberals appeased and defended Hitler and the Nazis too, remember. None of them will admit that now.
"along with anyother group who expects America to conform to their religon, or way of life!"
I am thinking the Catholic church bears watching, and all those radical Christian churches which seek to impose "creationism" on our schools and scientists.
I agree with you.
I meant my" I agree" to relate to the post by RichardsCatz In that we need to watch the Islamic believers who wish us to conform to their religion or way of life. The U S is a different culture and if they wish to be here then they should accept our culture not try to change it.
Ah, the trusty old red herring. Drag it out when you don't want to deal with the issues presented in an article.
While there is some truth in what birdy says, his response has nothing to do with the subject of the article.
It's been obvious to most of us who read CD regularly that there is and has been a concerted effort to de-legitimize Islam as a religion and to marginalize all elements of American Islamic society. This article does a good job of describing that effort.
Yes, we know that the leader of the US and Israel use religion cynically. That fact is hardly news.
My only complaint would be the failure of the article to point out that the people whom it names are just step-n-fetchits for the Israeli lobby.
q
I don't think Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, or Anders Behring Breivik carried out their crimes in the name of religion. I don't recall any of them claiming a "higher place in heaven" for their acts of despicable violence.
Please see the case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir who is sentenced to 22 years in prison (he has already served nine years) for sending aid through his charity, Help the Needy, to sick and starving Iraqi civilians during the brutal embargo on that country. Dhafir made the correct moral choice and undertook the obligation imposed on all American citizens by Nuremberg principle IV to reduce the genocidal consequences of sanctions. For this action the government labelled him a "terrorist." Muslim charity has been one of the U.S. government's biggest targets in its "War on Terror." In a strategy that was premeditated, the government prosecuted Dhafir as a white collar criminal and then, after conviction, claimed his case as a triumph in its "war on terror." For a step-by-step guide to how this prosecution was achieved, see "Anatomy of a 'Terrorism' Prosecution: Dr. Rafil Dhafir and the Help the Needy Muslim Charity Case:" http://www.truth-out.org/anatomy-terrorism-prosecution/1327675715
Katherine Hughes
www.dhafirtrial.net
Katherine, great post!
The sheeple fear Muslims because that is what they have been told by their Government and its stenographers in the MSM. They are the latest bogeyman for the MIC and ever since the 911 lie, the American people have been deluged with a frenzy of bellicosity and demonization of Muslims.
It is basic 101 economics folks: supply and demand. No bad guys for supplying the war business; no demand for the war business. And like I and others have stated for many years, if America had no enemies, they would have to invent them, and that is exactly what they do!
She might also have mentioned that some percentage of the 20 charged with violent crimes linked to terrorism were the victims of entrapment. Some poor schlub snookered by someone trying to get a lighter sentence for a drug crime ends up in jail.
sheepherder...goood comment. It reminds me of the 'entrapment' case in Albany NY. The Muslim cleric is still in prison as far as I know. USers always have to have some group to hate.
Hitler was a Christian, right?
I have lived with and among Muslims for much of my life. I found them to be kind, peaceful, family loving, friendly and helpful. I have never heard any Muslim advocating war.
The Holy Qur'an forbids aggressive war, though it does allow self defense. The Holy Qur'an forbids war on women, children or the elderly. Forceful conversion is forbidden as faith must come from within.
If you were invaded by an enormously powerful enemy that killed your women, children, and elderly; that destroyed towns and villages, destroyed farmland, tortured family and friends, wouldn't you fight back? Wouldn't you try to drive the enemy out of your country? I would! So do the Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and so will the Iranians if attacked.
Muslims in the US are being transformed into German Jews before our eyes. They are good citizens, law abiding, hard working. Many have served in the military, as did German Jews in WW-I. Now, they are being vilified, persecuted, vandalized as were the German Jews, for essentially the same reason. The government needs scapegoats to blame for our "time of troubles," and Muslims are it.
I hope this madness will someday cease, but in the meantime, I hope their faith will sustain them and keep them from becoming bitter.
This is typical Taqiyya - lying to promote Islam. anyone who has read the Qur'an, hadith and sira knows this is completely false. Islam commands the killing of 'disbelievers' 'wherever you find them'. Muslims are commanded to do what ever it takes, deceit, war, outbreeding us, infiltration, lying - anything to see that Islam conquers and rules the world and 'all religion is for Allah', a god of hate and punishment like the Old Testament would love to have.
'The following are from the qur'an unless otherwise shown (there are far too many to list here. Read the Qur'an and hadith yourself and see what a lie peaceful, tolerant Islam is: QUR'AN: http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/
HADITH: http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/hadith/
Sahih Muslim Book 26, Number 5389 recorded 'from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said,
(Do not initiate the Salam [peace greeting] to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.)
"...and never will Alla grant to the unbelievers a way (to triumph) over the believers." 4:141
"O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends."5:51
"He (Allah) does not love the unbelievers." 30:45
"I have been made victorious with terror." Mohammed, Bukhari 4:52:220
"Killing unbelievers (non-Muslims) is a small matter to us." Mohammed, Tabari 9:69
"O you who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you harshness." 9:123
"Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve in Allah." Mohammed, Ibn Ishaq 992
"Muhammed is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves." 48:29
"...for the Prophet said, "If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him." Bukhari 4:52:260
"War is ordained of Allah." 2:216
"Lo! Those who disbelieve our revelations, we shall expose them to the fire. As often as their skins are consumed we shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment (again). Lo! Allah is ever mighty, wise." 4:56 (but not forgiving or merciful) This helps engender hatred of non-Muslims
"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land! That is their disgrace in this world and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter." 5:33(Quranic commentator Ibn Kathir intreprets this to mean those who 'criticize' or 'oppose' Islam, Allah & Mohammed)
"The infidels should not think they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them." 5:51 (t
"Your Lord inspired the angels with the message: 'I will terrorize the
unbelievers. Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and
incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers
and toes." Qur'an 8.12
Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 327: -“Allah said, ‘A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives. A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land. Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring. But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.’”
This comment was obviously written by a Muslim. It is the kind of deceit they practice every day, some from embarrassment of the hatred of Islam and some from working to lull you into dropping your guard, they tell you things like 'there is no compulsion in religion', right? That is an outright lie and they know it. That was an early verse that was abrogated by all the many hateful ones after. Allah changed his tune many times and the later ones are the accepted ones. Read this stuff and quit being so gullible.
Monies supporting Muslims are monies not supporting Christians. They both covet your $oul. Get on your knees that I may smite you with righteousness.
Alas.
Halliburton announces 284 percent increase in war profits--25 July 2005
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/earnings072205.html
Sometimes I wonder if America is America's real enemy.
Stop wondering, my friend. Accept it as a bedrock truth.
"We have met the enemy and he is us" is not just a glib cartoon throwaway joke.
Sorry. The politically astute Walt Kelly did not not intend this comic strip comment to be a throwaway joke. Kelly was a brilliant satirist of American politics and some foreign policy matters. When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came to the US for a visit, a large bear with heavy eyebrows appeared in the Okefenokee swamp. The bear told Pogo and Albert and Churchy and Howland that Russia had invented everything in the swamp FIRST. Flat bottom boats and poles. Trees. Water.
From the pen of Walt Kelly I first learned how absurd politics is, and politicians are. IMO =Pogo= had a salutary effect upon MAD magazine, causing them to upgrade the caliber of their satire from grade school scatology. MAD had not realized their readers were kids at the top of the IQ bell curve. Kelly knew who read =Pogo=.
Trylon