The Southern Poverty Law Center has released a report detailing some of the anti-Muslim ideologues who has done so much to make Islamophobia fashionable among certain sectors of the right.
Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.
The field guide includes Steven Emerson, Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, David Horowitz, Ryan Mauro, Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat and Robert Spencer.
Here is part of the report's introduction:
Ever since the Al Qaeda massacre of Sept. 11, 2001, American Muslims have been under attack. They have been vilified as murderers, accused of conspiring to take over the United States and impose Shariah religious law, described as enemies of women, and subjected to hundreds of violent hate crime attacks. A major party presidential nominee has even suggested that America ban Muslim immigrants.
Fueling this hatred has been the propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.
Sadly, a shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested. ....
To give an example: One of the extremists profiled in this guide has said that 480 million to 640 million Muslims “support the notion that it’s okay to bomb the World Trade Center”; another claimed that 180 million to 300 million Muslims “are willing to strap a bomb on their bodies … and blow us all up.” In fact, terrorism expert Peter Bergen polled other extremism experts in 2014 and concluded that the real number of Muslims in terrorist groups was between 85,000 and 106,000. That means that fewer than one in every 15,000 Muslims is part of such a group.Alas, the COGs have been influenced by persons such as this.
Arabs, Persians, and other Middle Eastern people who are Islamic are facing a more extreme version of what Italians were confronted with during a former wave of immigration. Criminal members of the Cosa Nostra, also Italian, came in shielding themselves under the blanket of the peaceful Catholic Italians who simply wanted a better life for their families, here in the USA. There was omerta, silence on the pain of death, known and understood by the entire Italian-American community, which until the time of Joseph Valachi, suppressed the knowledge of the organized criminal activities in their own communities.
ReplyDeleteThe differences today are that while the Mafia was primarily interested in generating wealth through criminal activities, and in "buying" politicians and law enforcement officials as a means to that end, international radical Islam is working to convert the world's population by force to their beliefs and ideology. The gloves are off for this "holy" war. The stakes are much higher for freedom-loving, law abiding people. There must be a much higher level of scrutiny, and more vigilance, because the consequences are much more grave. It often seems unfair, but the fact is, until the situation is under control, there will be inconveniences experienced by those who are closest to the criminal element. It's either that, or the freedom of entire nations will be lost.
The muslims contribute next to nothing for the benefit of mankind. Their main export (if we can call it that) is religion.
ReplyDeleteJust Google "Muslim contributions to civilization", Opinionated. You are in for a big surprise!
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No I was not surprised. What good as an advanced civilization they did was many centuries ago. My idea was not to bash them but to mention that their religion had kept them back from worthwhile contributions for one hell of a long time.
DeleteDr. Neil deGrasse Tyson lectures a crowd on how religious fundamentalism is the root of the collapse of the Islamic Golden age of Science and Mathematics in Baghdad. An Islamic scholar named Hamid Al-Ghazali deemed Mathematics evil.
ReplyDeleteLet's be clear here: If Armstrongists were to gain ascendancy, they too would squelch Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in order to bring about another Dark Ages, captivating the world in the thrall of ignorance, slavery, poverty and magical thinking to keep themselves in control and power as the ruling class. In fact, they look forward to the millennium with anticipation so that they get to do that very thing to enable an oppressive dysfunctional environment, much like their mini kingdoms of cultic compounds are today.
Let's be thankful that they will never get enough power to bring this evil darkness to the earth. It's enough for Islam to have done it.