“The High Price of Telling the Truth About Islam”

How Making a Documentary Defending the Rights of Muslims
Turned my Worldview Upside Down

By Eric Allen Bell

A strange thing happened to me today when I was driving past the Federal Building in Los Angeles. There were a crowd of people assembled there with signs which said that Israel is an aggressive force in the Middle East and that Iran is being picked on. As I stopped at a red light I heard a man with a mega phone lead the protesters in a chant charging Obama with genocide. I saw many young people and several Muslim women with their heads covered. It was an anti-war demonstration that probably a year ago I would have supported. But although I am not in favor of military action, I know that Iran is not another Iraq, and that in fact there is more going on here than the overly-simplified picture that the protestors were painting, as cars drove by honking in support. As the light turned green another sign caught my eye – a picture of the Twin Towers burning which read “911 Was an Inside Job”. As I looked at a sea of Palestinian flags and college kids banging on drums I felt a certain frustration – frustration based on a series of events that have changed my world view.

In the Summer of 2010, having recently escaped Hollywood, CA to take a much needed break from my profession as a film maker, I was driving in my car listening to a story on NPR. It seems the people in my new home of Murfreesboro, TN were up in arms over the proposed construction of a 53,000 square foot mega mosque, to be built in their small town in the middle of the American Bible Belt.

I listened carefully, to the sound bytes, of those who had shown up to a town hall meeting to voice their opposition and, as someone who was rather new to the South, I was surprised by what I was hearing. “America is a Christian nation and there is only one God and his name is not Allah and his son is Jesus Christ” and “America is a Christian Nation” and “These Muslims do not share my values and I don’t want them in my backyard”. Growing up in Southern California, I had never heard anything like this before in my life. And I started to follow the story with great interest.

On the outer edge of town, off a small country road, there was a large parcel of land, right next door to a Baptist church, with a big sign that read, “Future Home of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro”. Over the past 6 months that sign had been defaced twice. Once it was broken in half and another time the words “Not Welcome” were spray painted over it.

Rutherford County, which includes Murfreesboro, only has a little over 100,000 residents and yet the area boasts nearly 200 Christian churches. Having not been much of a fan of Islam or Christianity or religion in general (and that’s putting it mildly) I saw this as something of a David vs. Goliath story – with fanatical Evangelicals bullying a peaceful Muslim population, which had been in the community for over 30 years without there ever being any trouble. And, after learning that in July there was to be a big parade down Main Street to the town square, protesting the construction of this new mosque, I decided someone really needed to make a documentary about this. And even though I had gone to Murfreesboro to escape the film world for a while, it seemed pretty clear that if I did not document this in a movie, no one else would. I wanted to show the world what I was seeing. So I put together a small film crew and began production on a documentary I would title, “Not Welcome”.

I had never seen more American flags assembled together in one place than I had on that hot July morning as the anti-mosque crowd gathered at the base camp to prepare for the parade. Many of the marchers showed up wearing red, white and blue. I had 4 cameras covering the event with one crew embedded with the Liberal activists who were going to counter-demonstrate and the rest of the cameras with me, embedded with those who were to march against the mosque. I conducted several interviews in the school parking lot where locals and those who had driven for hours gathered, prepared to march against what they perceived to be not only a threat to their way of life, but also something of an insult given the events of September 11, 2001. Two Congressional candidates, both promising to “stop the Islamic training camp” showed up and used this opportunity to campaign, one of whom even gave a speech through a mega phone reminding folks to vote for him if they wanted to stop Sharia Law from coming to Murfreesboro. The pastor of Baptist church gathered everyone together in prayer, and the parade took off down Main Street with signs that read “Google the Koran” and “Stop Homegrown Terrorism” and someone in the crowd handed out hundreds of small Israeli flags as several hundred Southerners marched against the mosque.

About six months later I had accumulated over 300 hours of footage, interviewing the parade organizer, both Congressional candidates, the Mayor, the Imam at the mosque and several of its board members, numerous concerned residents on both sides of the issue, Muslim residents, city council members, a Christian Zionist lobbyist who was organizing the opposition to the mosque – and I had even filmed weeks of court proceedings, as a local group had filed suit against the County to stop them from issuing any construction permits to the Islamic Center. The court proceedings were truly a circus as a country lawyer in loud suit with a bow tie argued that Islam is not a religion and that he was prepared to take this matter to the Supreme Court if necessary. That legal action had failed and failed miserably. And although many of the townspeople did in fact have a number of very valid concerns, I felt that those whom they had chosen to represent them were not their best foot forward. In many ways, for the people of Murfreesboro, TN this turned out to be an international embarrassment – given the level of interest from the press.

Also, someone tried to set fire to some construction equipment at the site of the new mosque and the student activist group, calling themselves “Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom” put together a candle light vigil where hundreds of townspeople showed up in support of tolerance. A few young men showed up in a pickup truck and honked their horn repeatedly throughout the vigil. Their clothes seemed to indicate they had spent the work day hanging drywall. And when they put up a huge sign in the back of their truck which read “No Mosque” while misspelling the word mosque, I did not hesitate to film them but to also sort of taunt them, in order to provoke a good response on camera. And I got it. One of them said we should suspend the Constitution and went on to say that “All them Mooslums should be shipped home” even the ones who were born here.

Adding more fuel to that fire was an incident that took place when I attempted to interview Kevin Fisher at a Tea Party event on the town square. It was my opinion that in order to avoid accusations of being bigoted, the money interests (a Christian Zionist organization called Proclaiming Justice to the Nations) chose the only person of color, already involved in this issue, to lead the parade and to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Kevin Fisher was an African American college dropout, who worked as a prison guard and became a passionate opponent of the new mosque, after his wife divorced him and became, you guessed it, a Muslim convert. When I approached him on the square with a crew that included 4 cameras, saying only “Hi, Kevin” he dialed his cell phone and called 9-1-1 saying that he was being “racially harassed”. This not only made the headlines of the local paper but the incident, including audio from the 9-1-1 call was played over and over that night on the local evening news. This became something of a running joke, when I was recognized at the grocery store in Murfreesboro for instance, people would often point at me and say, “Hey, stop racially harassing me” and then we would all have a big laugh. And Islamic blogs such as Loonwatch.com were only too happy to run an article about how an opponent of the mosque was “playing the race card” against a filmmaker who was just trying to ask questions.

CNN breezed through town and produced a quick hit piece painting all of the mosque opponents as uneducated rednecks and the Islamic community as everyday people who were being wrongly persecuted. Soledad O’Brien’s producer offered to buy some of my footage from me with the explicit promise that their piece was going to be called “Islam: In America” and would not focus more than a few minutes on Murfreesboro. After an inside tip that this producer was lying to me, I confronted him and got some rather vague answers. So I declined to license him any of my material. And sure enough, the CNN documentary did in fact focus exclusively on Murfreesboro and was called “Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door”. Somehow Hollywood, with its usual backstabbing tricks, had managed to find me hiding out in Tennessee.

I had accumulated a lot of good quality footage. That, combined with the increasing number of physical threats to me personally while filming in large crowds, and death threats that had arrived via email (causing me to look over my shoulder everywhere I went and making it necessary to spend a small fortune on private security) told me it was time. The writing was on the wall. It was time for me to leave Murfreesboro, hire a professional Editor and get to work on assembling my footage to create a feature length documentary for theatrical distribution.

Before I go any further, I should mention that, while all of this was happening, I had become involved in the story itself. I took sides. I sided with the Islamic community in their legal right to build a house of worship and when I was interviewed by the local papers (it’s not every day that a small town like this has someone shooting a documentary there) when I was asked where I stood on the issue I never hesitated to give my point of view. And after a time my point of view was sought out by larger newspapers and several local and syndicated radio programs – mostly Conservative and mostly taking issue with my stance. And I was also invited to write several pieces for Michael Moore’s blog as well.

Although I had left town to edit, there continued to be letters to the editor on a few of the local papers saying that I should leave TN and go back to where I came from. I could not believe the cartoonish way in which those who opposed the mosque were making their case. I felt like I was on the right side of this thing – absolutely certain. But in fact, I was wrong.

Everything I have told you up until now – this version of my story – is exactly how I was seeing things up until something changed. I went home to Los Angeles, showed my 25 minute short version of the documentary to some distributors and backers, and did the usual dog and pony show that had worked so well to raise funds, for other motion picture projects I had been involved with in the past. And sure enough someone said they would back the completion of the movie. It was decided that the focus would be on “the enemy at home” that being what we were calling “Apocalyptic Christianity” (as there was concern about using the word “Zionism” in “Christian Zionism”). The Murfreesboro issue was to be used as something of a jumping off point to take a look at the expanding influence of the End Times Evangelical lobby in the United States and how they use their influence to manufacture consent for the bombing of oil rich Islamic countries and to influence policy on social issues. The theme would focus on the problems we have in America, with our own religious lunatic fringe, rather than on a peaceful group of non-Christians who just wanted to build a place of worship.

After writing a few articles for Michael Moore, I also wrote for a liberal blog called Common Dreams and I wrote over a hundred articles for the Daily Kos, a liberal blog so popular that they receive over one million visitors a day. I felt I was protecting the underdog, going after the bullies. I really believed that I was on the right side of this thing.

But something kept nagging at me on a gut level. Something about all of this didn’t quite feel right. The Arab Spring, which I supported, started to degenerate into the Islamist Winter, and I grew more and more concerned. I flew back to Nashville to shoot a conference on whether or not Islam was conducive with Democratic Values and on the way to my hotel room I learned that my cab driver was from Egypt. I asked him how he felt about the fall of Mubarak, a dictator worth over $70 billion dollars while so much of his country was living in poverty and he told me he was concerned. Concerned? Wasn’t this good news? The cab driver was a Coptic Christian and he told me that he feared for his family back home. “If the Muslims take control, and they will, it will be very dangerous for my parents and my sisters. I’m scared for them right now”. After that conversation, I started to pay more attention to the news coming from the Islamic world in the Middle East.

Over the coming months I watched as the Muslim Brotherhood gained political power in Egypt. I saw that cab driver’s worst fears come true as Coptic Christians were attacked by Islamic mobs. I saw Tunisia institute Sharia, the brutal Islamic Law. After Libya fell, the Transitional Council also instituted Islamic Law. The nuclear armed Islamic government of Pakistan arrested and punished those who cooperated with the United States in killing Osama Bin Laden. A woman under the Islamic government of Afghanistan faced execution for the crime of being raped. Similar news stories emerged from Iran. A man who typed “there is no god” as his Facebook status in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, was arrested for blasphemy. Several Muslim men in England were arrested for handing out leaflets to Londoners demanding that homosexuals be executed by hanging for violating Islamic Law with their lifestyle.

And it struck me. Even though these angry townspeople in Mufreesboro, TN had not articulated their concerns very well, they were only half wrong. I remember meeting Frank Gaffney and interviewing him in front of the courthouse and asking him if he really thought that the peaceful Muslims here actually presented a real threat to America and he said no. That caught me off guard so I asked if he really thought it was a credible threat that a community that makes up about one percent of the United States population was just going to suddenly rise up one day and try to take over the country and force Sharia Law onto all of us. Again he said no. Then he told me I was asking the wrong questions. He suggested that I was only looking for answers that would support the conclusions I had already arrived at. He said he had, after much research, arrived at a different set of conclusions and he challenged me to look a little deeper. He gave me a report to look at and many, many months later I did look at his report.

It was at this time that I went to my backers and told them that we were not making an honest documentary. I felt that everything I had put into the 25 minute short version (the one I used to raise the completion funds) was true, but only half true. It was critical that we also show the very real threats that exist within Islam. We needed to show that what is happening to these small communities of peaceful Muslims in America were the exception to the rule. I wanted to show what happens to countries when they gain a Muslim majority, how women are treated, that homosexuals were executed, that free speech did not exist, that the forced Islamic Law was not consistent with Democratic Values – anything and everything I could think of that ought to strike a chord with the Liberal mindset. And the response I received was, “Eric you are starting to sound like an Islamophobe. We don’t want to make a movie that promotes fear. Let’s just stick with the existing plan, okay?”

I fought and I fought. I showed them a book called “The Truth About Mohammed” but was struck down since the author was a man named Robert Spencer and my backers pointed out that the Southern Poverty Law Center named his “Jihad Watch” site as part of a hate group. I asked them to watch a documentary called “Islam: What the West Needs to Know” and pointed out that I had researched independently and verified the truth of what was being presented there, but they would not even watch this documentary as they were sure in advance that it was “hate speech” and “propaganda designed to spread fear”. It probably goes without saying that by now I was very frustrated. I showed my new backers several verses from the Koran that call for the killing of infidels and was told that these verses were probably being taken out of context. I showed them a video clip from MEMRI TV of a young Egyptian child reciting a Hadith that calls for the killing of Jews and was told that “you can’t trust MEMRI because they have an agenda”.

I mentioned the popular Islamophobia watchdog site “Loonwatch” and how I had noticed a pattern of deflecting all criticisms of radical and violent Islam by calling anyone who publicly raises these concerns a “Loon” and how I felt this was an intentional effort to provide a smoke screen for the terrorists. I also noted that everything Loonwatch said was in lockstep with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and how CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation – the largest Islamic charity at one time, which was found to be funneling monies to Islamic terrorist organizations. I also noted that CAIR had ties to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and that Al Qeada had come out of the Muslim Brotherhood. I expressed my concerns that the Egyptian Imam of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro might have ties to the MB, something I had failed to properly investigate. But since CAIR had the support of Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman’s show, Democracy Now, I was told that I had my facts all wrong. It was also pointed out to me that if CAIR was allegedly some kind of terrorist front then why do they still have a special tax status and why are they still around? When I said I do not know but it was possible that the government might prefer to watch them out in the open rather than risk them going underground I was told that my judgment was sounding less and less clear and that maybe I needed to take a step back from the project for a while.

As a last attempt I showed them footage of the Imam in Murfreesboro condoning stoning, admitting that Mohammed had stoned someone to death, saying that women cannot be trusted with money because they are irrational. Then I pointed out that a board member of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was investigated after pictures from his MySpace page had surfaced indicating his strong sympathies for Hamas. I was reminded that Hamas was also a political party which was voted in Democratically and that I needed to make a choice – either stick with the original blueprint or else give the money back and go find myself another backer. So I did. I walked. If I can’t make an honest documentary then I’m in the wrong business. I didn’t want to add to more of the noise that’s out there – I wanted to make something that told the truth, even if that truth is hard to swallow.

It’s funny because I run a website called Global One TV, which has had about 23 million visitors so far, and the theme of this blog is that “Inward Revolution Creates Outward Revolution”. And here I was, having to take my own medicine. My own inward revolution – the questioning of one’s conclusions in search of a deeper truth – had lead me to a very strange place. I thought of the famous Nietzsche quote that says “When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you”. And with nothing left to lose, I used my position at Daily Kos to go about telling the truth.

In January of 2012 I wrote 3 consecutive articles for the Daily Kos. The first was entitled “Loonwatch.com and Radical Islam”. Here I pointed out the how Loonwatch only deflects criticism of radical Islam. I was also critical of Islamic theology while noting over and over that most Muslims were peaceful. The comments section of Daily Kos made me feel like I was attending my own funeral. It was like a public stoning. There wasn’t much in the way of responding to any of the points laid out in my article but hundreds of comments accusing me of being “right wing” a “bigot” and an “lslamophobe”. This was disappointing.

The next day I received an email from Loonwatch.com with an article showing my name and a photograph of my face, going out to much of the Islamic world, calling me the “Loon at Large”. This article was picked up by IslamophobiaToday.com and TheAmericanMuslim.org – later being repurposed by numerous Islamic blogs around the world, including in places where we all know what happens to anyone who is perceived to be the enemy of Allah or who dares to “insult” Islam.

My next article sought to further substantiate my point with regard to these wolves in sheep’s clothing calling themselves “Islamophobia Watchdog sites” and their first line of defense, that being a blogosphere of liberal lemming infidels who are pre-programmed to blurt out the word “Islamophobe” on cue. That article was called “How and Why Loonwatch is a Terrorist Spin Control Network”. And as you might have guessed, this piece was met with the same mob mentality of those who, rather than read the article and criticize it on its merits, instead shot the messenger with charges of “Islamophobia”. There were also 2 Daily Kos articles written in response attacking me personally, another Loonwatch article where someone suggested I must be from TN and have no education, etc. And once again, my name was put out on the street through a network of Islamic Blogs, including the landing page for CAIR, using a form of Islamic double speak which translated to any serious Jihadist means “enemy of Allah” and “insulting Islam”.

Given the incredible density of the popular Liberal mind, how the readers of my articles were unable to see how their beliefs of Islam were in direct conflict with human rights, gay rights, women’s rights and basic Democratic Values, I wrote a final piece called, “Are You In Favor of Human Rights?” and that one of course got me banned from Daily Kos. It should be noted that in one of the Loonwatch.com articles the author, a person simply calling himself “Danios” demanded that DKOS silence me and provided a link for its readers to email the editors of the Daily Kos, demanding that this “Islamophobe” be censored. And it worked – once again proving the oil and water relationship between Islam and tolerance for free speech.

Things got even stranger from there. Robert Spencer himself wrote me an email and we had a rather interesting dialogue. It became apparent almost immediately that there was nothing about this man that was even remotely hateful. So when Robert Spencer asked if I minded if he reprint my email in response to his on Jihad Watch, I said “sure, why not?” Once that surfaced, the friend count on my Facebook fan page dropped suddenly. Friends and acquaintances told me I had become a hatemonger, a fear monger and an Islamophobe. I pointed out that an Islamophobe is someone with an irrational fear of Islam but there was no reasoning with anyone so deeply indoctrinated into the tyranny of political correctness.

And almost right on cue the news story broke about the NYPD using as a training video a documentary narrated by a devout Muslim who opposes terrorism and jihad, someone who has advised law enforcement and served in the military and as a physician to highly placed members of the United States government. That documentary was called “The Third Jihad” and the story surfaced that CAIR was calling this film “Islamophobic” and demanding that the NYPD pull it right away, which of course they did. CAIR demanded the removal of the head of the NYPD and the liberal blogosphere sang backup – most notably with articles on Huffington Post calling “The Third Jihad” propaganda, hate speech and of course more “Islamophobia”. When I posted a link to this documentary on my Facebook page I was met with more charges of being an Islamophobe by people who had only recently told me how much they had been inspired and influenced by my writings.

After Jamie Glasov of FrontPage Mag – part of the David Horowitz Freedom Center – reached out to me to ask me to be on his radio show (which I agreed to) I surfed the web a bit trying to get a better sense of who exactly David Hororwitz was. It became clear almost immediately that we do not share the same political views, but one thing Horowitz did say that came through with stunning clarity was an assertion that there was an unholy alliance between the Left and Islam, with radical Islam using the Liberal media to create a smoke screen for it – a place where radical can appear moderate and receive Liberal support. He also went on to say that in many Universities across America that students were being radicalized, indoctrinated into the far Left. And I remembered something. Nearly all of the organizers for the college aged activist group who demonstrated in favor of the new mosque in Murfreesboro were either Socialists or Communists. These were kids and they all seemed to share one Professor in particular who was something of a mentor to them, a Socialist who always seemed to be hanging around their college parties, infiltrating into their social scene, taking the smarter and more articulate ones under his wing as their campus group called simply “Solidarity” grew in numbers – in fact recruiting quite a few students while organizing in favor of the mosque. Yikes.

So here we are today, as news that Kuwait goes Islamist and the NYPD answers to CAIR, an arm of a terrorist organization, out of concern for political correctness. Have I become a Conservative out of all of this? Not really. I still oppose the invasion of Iraq. I still feel that all wars should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. I still think that George W. Bush was one of the worst things to happen to America in my lifetime. I still support marriage equality. But I’m also still pro-life. Do you see a trend here? I support human rights and oppose anything which I perceive to be in violation of human rights.

Where do I stand on Islam? Let’s look at its founder – a man who raped a 9 year old girl, a slave owner, a leader who ordered people to be tortured, for adulterers to be stoned, for countless nonbelievers to be beheaded, a killer, a warmonger who spread his “religion of peace” by the sword, a man who suffered from hallucinations of voices telling him to do violent things, a tyrant, a homicidal maniac perhaps the equivalent of 100,000 Osama Bin Ladens. And this sadistic lunatic is considered to be the “ideal man” in Islam. What more needs to be said about Islam than that?

So in this climate where innocent people are killed when Korans are burned, when there are riots and bomb threats and killings over cartoons that offend Muslims, when a novelist such as Salman Rushdie is advised by Indian intelligence authorities that it is unsafe for him to enter the country to attend the world’s largest literary festival, when Muslims outside the festival threaten violence such that the festival organizers decide to cancel even patching in a video of Rushdie for the conference, in a world where a man, Theo Van Gough, was shot a couple dozen times in broad daylight, then stabbed, then had a sword rammed into his heart on the sidewalk of a European street simply for making a 10 minute film about the mistreatment of Muslim women – in such a world that is constantly terrorized by Islamic militants whose insanity is co-opted by an army of Liberal bloggers who make excuses for them – who tell us that 911 was probably our fault – what will become of my documentary when I finish it?

How will “Not Welcome” be received? Will movie theaters refuse to show it, just like those many bookstores who removed the Danish cartoons from their shelves? Will film festivals be afraid to screen it? Will my life be in danger? Will some lunatic Islamic cleric issue a Fatwa ordering my death? Will CAIR gain even more political influence and work within the system to get it banned as “hate speech”? Will critics fear for their lives and thus refuse to review it?

Is the Liberal view that Stealth Jihad is just some whacky conspiracy theory really true? Who will win – free speech of the savagery of a growing mob hell bent on Jihad? I can only tell you this. I will not back down. I will not be bullied, threatened, coerced or terrorized by the “religion of peace”.

We each have a responsibility to the other people on this planet, and especially to those whom we will leave this planet to after we are gone. And this sometimes means taking an unpopular stand in order to protect the rights of innocent people. Loonwatch, CAIR and the other numerous terrorist spin control networks – you’ve not seen the end of me. Not by a long shot. As the saying goes, “You have a right to swing your fists, but that right ends when your fist connects with my nose”.

And by the way, I still believe that unless they break the law, the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has a legal right to build their house of worship. We don’t have to like it, but then again the First Amendment was designed not to protect popular ideas – as they don’t need protecting – but to protect unpopular ideas as well. This is something you won’t find in any Islamic country and it is also something worth protecting – even when the so-called “religion of peace” tries to shut you down.

Peace,

Eric Allen Bell

READ MORE: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/07/the-high-price-of-telling-the-tr…

From YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by blazingcatfur on Dec 20, 2011
Michael Coren & Robert Spencer:The Not So Moderate Muslim Nation Of Indonesia

Zilla has more about the attack on Indonesia’s punk rock kids by shari’a and regular police:

Take Your Sharia and SHOVE IT! Long Live Punk Rock Edition

Islamonazis locking up punk rock kids. I say HELL NO!
Check out the cool videos at the end of my post, we should support the right of those kids to ROCK!

From ACT for Australia:

Thanks to Colonel Neville for the footage and Nilk for the files and the Q society for bringing Mr. Spencer to Oz.
Further links:
Robert Spencer takes questions from Muslim callers on 2GB radio in Australia

Q&A session after Robert Spencer speech, Melbourne, Nov 26 2011

Typically after an event like this, the Q&A session is a bunch of people who grab the mic and give their own mini-lectures, often forgetting to even up-talk at the end to make it appear like a question.

Not in this case. The questions are interesting, important, and I’m sure, questions that most of us have wondered at one point or another.

Thanks again to the Q Society of Australia for this opportunity.

With thanks to Vlad Tepes

Michael Coren with Robert Spencer – Dec 8, 2011

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 8, 2011

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch joins Michael Coren to discuss jackass English judge Robert Brown who gave a gang of muslim attackers a suspended sentence “after hearing mitigation that as Muslims, the women were not used to being drunk.”

From Blazing Cat Fur:

h/t Vlad & Sheik

Eloquent as ever!

I would say he had a very sympathetic interviewer, which is unusual for the ABC. This is the taxpayer-funded broadcaster that is essentially an arm of the government propaganda machine.

Click here to listen!

Also see:

• The Q Society
• Winds of Jihad: The Great Spencer Schlep Around Australia

It was a great night! Spencer shone!

We really loved it.

It was terrific to meet up with some fellow Aussie bloggers and to be able to speak freely as mentioned in the article below. Looking forward to seeing the video.

by PJG (longtime Jihad Watch commenter)

On a day of relentless spring rain, Melbourne – or a select contingent thereof – welcomed Robert Spencer for his first talk in his first ever visit to Australia, courtesy of the Q Society of Australia. The 250-seat room was full to capacity, booked out well in advance of the day.

For a change I decided to put aside my old habit of taking notes. After all, the event was being filmed, and I would have access to the film. But afterwards, Robert asked me to write about the event for Jihad Watch, so what follows is a brief snatch of snippets.

Vickie Janson, Vice-President of the Q Society and candidate for the Christian Democratic Party, led off with a sobering disclaimer, mindful as we all are now of local laws restricting free speech, and – with a winning smile – invited anyone with ultra-sensitive feelings or a plot to use those laws against us to kindly leave. She then gave us a run-down on what is happening vis a vis the encroachment of Islamic laws and norms, that is, the steady road to control of us by them, here in Australia in schools, universities, workplaces and elsewhere. As keeping up with Islamic advancement and its enabling and funding by our government is now virtually a full-time job, much of what she informed us in her inimitably cheerful style shocked the audience.

Vickie quoted a Muslim cleric who said that there was no “clash of civilizations, but instead a rise and fall of civilizations.” It is clear that to many Muslims here and abroad their religion constitutes the “rising civilization” and ours the falling (not that they would prefer to stop at ours; Hindu and Buddhist civilizations are in their sights for being given a helping hand to disappear…)

Another member of Q called Warren then gave a talk about what he has seen in recent years in Europe, including the car-burning in France and a memorial (!) devoted to the young Muslim car thieves who were accidentally killed when they hid from pursuing police in an electricity compound and whose deaths were “avenged” by Muslim anti-police rioting. These were stories of immigration-related events our government smugly believes cannot happen in sunny Australia, where it is constantly proclaimed that multiculturalism is an outstanding success story and caution is brushed aside.

When Robert Spencer took the floor, it was clear from the enthusiastic atmosphere that few in the room were new to his views and that his message was seen as acutely urgent. He talked of the responsibility of Western people to learn and respond to the Islamic perspectives which are giving rise to Muslims’ so-frequently misinterpreted words and actions, and expanded on the theme that terrorism and da’wa (the call to Islam) are but two sides of the same coin and directed at the same result, the imposition of Shari’a law. Quoting from Maududi’s commentary in a Koran given to him by the Finsbury Park mosque and using Koran 9:5 as an example, Spencer demonstrated that what Muslim apologists claim to be a misleading absence of “context” proves to be from their own side a misleadingly invalid argument, “context” being at least as alarming as verse and backed up by respected Muslim commentary.

He spoke of many topics which will be familiar to JW readers: the Mafia-like dhimma pact, the absence of the “clash” factor as we in the West politely accede to Muslim demands, the campaign of erosion of our free speech which is central to the Islamic agenda, the existence of self-protective Western laws which are being ignored or under-utilized in the interests of political correctness, and the highly successful phenomenon of contrived Muslim victimhood which has the effect of causing us to rush to make further accommodation for them after every terrorist attack and every expression of grievance.

This last aspect was in reply to one of the many spirited questions asked of him in the latter half of the evening. Many questions reflected the helpless frustration people felt in the face of the plethora of tactics employed by Islamic organizations and individuals and shameful capitulation by our own political parties. Spencer advised not only being persistent in our efforts to inform governments and fellow citizens, but to emulate his colleague Pamela Geller’s creativity, for example her “copycat” bus and taxi advertisements which forced public enquiry into Islamic human rights abuses such as death for apostasy and honour killings.

When pressed as to the vexing question of whether President Obama is a Muslim, Spencer could only surmise that if he were, he would not be doing anything differently; the outcomes of Obama’s policies have been extraordinarily helpful to zealots in the Muslim world – both outside and inside America.

As for Iran, it is important that we understand the Iranian Shi’ite view about the Twelfth Imam and about how Muslim “victimhood” can exist in a most threatening and sinister form on a national level as a tactic of war.

And lastly, about “moderate’ or “secular” Muslims about whom so many nurture great hope, Spencer wasted little time. Of course there are many, many Muslims who pose no threat and are not determined to impose the supremacist aspect over us their religion demands they do, but he did caution, in view of fatally naïve exercises of US soldiers teaching Afghani soldiers, against playing with guns with Muslims.

We may not all be able to dazzle people with erudition and quickness of wit the way Spencer can, but at events such as this one we can develop arguments and tactics based on stated intentions of Muslims which are derived from their texts and their own tactics based on principles within those same texts. Robert Spencer and the Q Society on this night helped and encouraged us to work harder, and to devise means in the vital job of defending the uniquely free and prosperous civilization we have inherited through the blood, sweat and inspiration of others before us and which it is our sacred duty to deliver untarnished to our descendants. They will have their own battles, as we have had ours; let us at least spare them the vice-like grip of Islam.

Oh, and a good time was had by all before and after the talks. So many conversations with so many people; the freedom to speak one’s mind; not once being glared at or called a racist/bigot/Islamophobe…!

Thank you, Q and Mr Spencer!

Gates of Vienna has the story:

As mentioned here a couple of times last month, Robert Spencer is about to begin a whirlwind tour of Australia under the auspices of the Q Society.

The Q Society just sent out a press release with Mr. Spencer’s full itinerary for Down Under (dated tomorrow, because it’s already tomorrow in Australia):

Q Society of Australia Inc
24 November 2011

Robert Spencer in Australia

America’s outspoken researcher and bestselling author on Islam and Jihad is about to start his Australia tour. Robert will visit the following cities:

Melbourne		26 November
Perth		27 November
Sydney		29 November
Brisbane		1 December
Cairns		4 December

The Melbourne lecture is already sold out and interest in the other cities is not far behind.

While more Islamic countries fall into turmoil impacting immigration and refugee flows to Western countries, Australians are increasingly concerned about balancing humanitarian response and the consequences of Islamisation upon our security and the social, legal, economic and cultural fabric of society.

At this critical time comes a unique opportunity to gain valuable insights from one of the foremost experts in understanding the Islamisation process and what is at stake. The key theme for Spencer’s first Australian lecture tour is Socio-Political Jihad: Conquering the West without Swords, Guns or Bombs.

Robert Spencer (49, MA, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in depth since 1980.

He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

Robert is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, and author of ten books, including New York Times best-sellers ‘The Truth About Muhammad’ and ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam’. He has also written monographs for the David Horowitz Freedom Center: Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future (with David Horowitz); Obama and Islam (with David Horowitz); What Americans Need to Know About Jihad; The Violent Oppression of Women In Islam (with Phyllis Chesler); Islamic Leaders’ Plan for Genocide; and Muslim Persecution of Christians.

More details can be found on the website www.qsociety.org.au.

Details here and at SheikYerMami’s site.

While there exist in Islam many lamentable violations of human rights, a primary issue continues to cast ultimate doubt upon its claim as a valid religion. The taking of innocent life through terrorism remains a fundamental deal-breaker with respect to any possible acceptance of Islam as a genuinely legitimate faith.

Clearly, the institutionalized misogyny of purdah ― the Islamic confinement of women ― shall always loom large in any such decision process but many aspects of that dubious practice can be debated on cultural grounds as compared to the indisputable abhorrence of mass murder through terrorism.

Regardless of the damage being done to modern Christianity by its misguided attempts at universalism, the manner in which it is capable of sincerely embracing such noble concepts as universality or the Golden Rule is far more to the credit of Christian faith than the way in which Islam deceitfully channels all advantage to Muslims ― through such religiously sanctioned shams as taqiyya, kitman and hudna ― even while feigning an outward appearance of universality.

At the apex of these questions regarding legitimacy resides one of Islam’s most repugnant practices. Islamic doctrine purports to share with Christianity a similar regard for the sanctity of human life:

Qur’an Surah 4:29 ― (Surat An-Nisā’)

O you who have believed, do not consume one another’s wealth unjustly but only [in lawful] business by mutual consent. And do not kill yourselves [or one another]. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful. [emphasis added]

Ostensibly, Islam condemns murder and suicide. However, a closer reading of its scripture makes clear that there are significant contingencies attached to this proscription. At its most basic, murder is only forbidden when it is committed against other Muslims. No better example of this exists than the original Bali atrocity of October 2002 that claimed over 200 lives. Many in the West welcomed how numerous Muslim religious authorities condemned the perpetrators for taking innocent human life.

What few people realized is that the preponderance of criticism leveled by Muslims at bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Samudra was based on how their terrorist act had claimed almost twenty Muslim lives. Throughout much of Islam, nowhere was there any concern or embarrassment over how the deaths of almost 200 non-Muslims went largely unnoticed, save unless they were joyously celebrated.

Further, it is indicative of how Islamic doctrine remains thoroughly imbued with war and hostility when one sees that the bombers themselves were referred to as “martyrs at the battle of Bali”. It requires a stunning degree of disconnection to call such one-sided and brutal mass murder a “battle”. Yet, this epitomizes just how pervasive the entire wartime mindset is throughout Islam.

In a similar manner to its professed condemnation of murder or suicide, Islam also decries any rejection of faith. However, once again, there emerges an essential divergence away from the tenets of Christianity. To this day Islam remains, essentially, a battlefield religion. An example being how, at its most basic level, Islam divides the world into dar al-Islam, “the house of Islam”, and dar al-harb, “the house of war”. Everywhere outside of dar al-Islam is a zone of conflict, struggle and, eventually, war. One need merely examine a map of global conflicts to see that most of them exist at Islam’s “bloody borders”.

Steeped in militancy, Islam extols the warrior spirit and rewards it with a sexual paradise. In diametric opposition is how Islam copes with apostasy. Departing the faith is a capital crime and punishable by death. There is no better analog than how a soldier’s desertion in time of war is an executable offense. The inescapable upshot of this being that Islam is in a perpetual state of war and all Muslims are soldiers. It is this element of death that permeates Islam which is so problematic for those who try and come to terms with it. That there are, in fact, no terms to be had with Islam, is another matter entirely and only cements this entire issue.

So we see that a Muslim’s rejection of Islam becomes an automatic death penalty. It strikes an odd and insincere note for any religion to coerce piousness out of its followers. Faithfulness under duress is hardly the definition of devout belief or even genuine allegiance, for that matter. Yet, this singular aspect of Islam goes largely unquestioned. No other large-scale creed in the world has a death penalty for apostasy.

A Comparison

In total contrast, Christianity’s own examples of believers who were encouraged to give up their faith tell an entirely different tale. Innumerable Christian Saints were cruelly tortured and slain even as they individually refused to abandon their belief. This concept of martyrdom lies at the very heart of a most glaring difference between Christianity and Islam.

It also returns us to the original question surrounding Islam’s legitimacy as a genuine faith. The Islamic definition of “martyrdom” is so diametrically opposed to everything implied by the Christian meaning of this word as to demand intense scrutiny.

Today’s modern Islamic “martyr” usually attains such status by donning a high-explosives laden vest whose charges are usually studded with ball bearings, bolts and other shrapnel that have often been coated with warfarin, a blood-thinning anticoagulant intended to enhance profuse bleeding in victims of the ensuing attack. The assailant typically seeks to enter into a crowded location, be it a disco, popular pizza parlor at mealtime or a commuter-packed city bus. The vest is then detonated in order to maximize loss of human life.

What follows is an excerpt from one of the several fatwan issued by Yusuf Qaradawi that sanction so-called “martyrdom operations”:

The martyr operation is the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah. A martyr operation is carried out by a person who sacrifices himself, deeming his life [of] less value than striving in the cause of Allah, in the cause of restoring the land and preserving the dignity. To such a valorous attitude applies the following Qur’anic verse: “And of mankind is he who would sell himself, seeking the pleasure of Allah; and Allah hath compassion on (His) bondmen.” (Qur’an, 2: 207)

But a clear distinction has to be made here between martyrdom and suicide. Suicide is an act or instance of killing oneself intentionally out of despair, and finding no outlet except putting an end to one’s life. On the other hand, martyrdom is a heroic act of choosing to suffer death in the cause of Allah, and that’s why it’s considered by most Muslim scholars as one of the greatest forms of jihad. [emphasis added]

Please keep in mind that Qaradawi is widely regarded both as the “Pope of Islam” and as a moderate Muslim despite validating “martyr operations” along with his open declarations that wives should be “beaten lightly” and all homosexuals be put to death.

There can be no doubt that such a vicious act flies in the face of traditional Christian martyrdom. It is a total affront to every characterization of those Christian Saints who voluntarily refused to renounce their faith and, alone, paid the ultimate price for it. As can be seen from the above excerpt, both Islam and Christianity forbid suicide. Yet, as is all too often the case with Islam, loopholes are created by which even the most heinous acts can find approbation and religious sanctioning.

Far more disturbing is the notion that Islamic “martyrdom operations” amount to nothing more or less than human sacrifice. The unimaginable hatred of life required to engage in such activities is predictably alien to those in the West who have not been brought up from childhood on such a steady diet of genocidal hatred. Again, in another bizarre inversion of Christian traditions where nuns are wed to Jesus, prior to bomb vest attacks the perpetrator is given a “martyr’s wedding” to one of the virgins that supposedly await him in paradise.

The degree of this hatred is difficult to convey. Imagine a woman expressing pride that more than one of her own sons had committed such horrible acts. That woman would be Umm Nidal Farhat. Known as “mother of the struggle”, she is now an elected legislator and a celebrity in Gaza for voluntarily sending three of her six sons to their terrorist deaths.

Umm Nidal: “Nothing has changed. The strength and honor have only increased. It doesn’t matter to me whether I have two or three Shahid [sons]. [As far as I'm concerned], let all my sons be Shahids. [emphasis added]

To those who respect the sanctity of human life, Fahrat’s mindset may as well be from a different planet. It exemplifies not just a “life is cheap” attitude found throughout the MME (Muslim Middle East), but also reflects upon just how meager Islam’s estimation of human worth continues to be. It may be argued that rewards of the afterlife outweigh any momentary losses but there is a lingering taint of literally cannibalizing intensely devout converts ― as supposed “martyrs” ― who might have peacefully convinced far more people to join Islam had they lived full, productive lives.

Nor is there any sense of embarrassment over the magnitude of this hatred. There are video interviews of Muslim children calmly discussing how they want to become bomb vest murderers. Despite every imaginable gesture of conciliation, Israel is subjected to constant terrorist attacks, in some cases attacks led by those individuals who owe their health to the Israelis. No better example exists than the case of Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss

Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss is a 21 year old Palestinian woman, who lives in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza strip. In January 2005 she suffered burns in a cooking accident in her home. She was admitted for treatment to the Soroka hospital in the Israeli town of Beer Sheva. She became an outpatient and was issued by the Israeli authorities with a special pass entitling her to cross into Israel to receive medical treatment.

On 21 June 2005 she was arrested at the Erez crossing point, on her way out of Gaza and to Soroka, wearing 10 kgs of explosives in her underwear. On Israeli TV she admitted that she had planned to explode the bomb in the hospital where she was being treated. She stated that she had been recruited by the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, and added that she had wanted to target as many children as possible. [emphasis added]

The depth of such ingratitude is beyond conception and remains largely incomprehensible to Western minds.

Military Contradictions

None of this even addresses other attacks by Palestinians — called “no-escape” attacks — as in how the chances of staying alive after, for example, firing on an army position or a settlement are next to zero. Intentionally using a soldier only once — for a martyrdom operation or “no-escape” attack — is not just inefficient but an obscene estimation of human worth. It betrays why Islamic militaries are so unsuccessful.

The level of indoctrination required to program a prospective Islamic “martyr” flies in the face of what a moral, free thinking — as in being able to refuse an order on conscientious grounds — competent soldier should be. It is strong evidence that Muslim terrorists are not fighting for freedom but, as they often will freely admit, abject slavery; in this case, to Allah. Again, it points to why Arabs lose wars.

It is also curious to note how few, if any, Muslims decried such “martyrdom operations” when they were only employed exclusively against Jews. By contrast, examine the Muslim outrage now that the use of bomb vests has been extended to the Sunni versus Shi’ia conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. This is exemplary of Islam’s narrow selectivity in conferring its graces upon Muslims only.

Concomitantly, it beggars the question of why isn’t there any significant outcry against Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi for his almost singlehanded role in sanctifying this ultimately rapacious form of terrorism. Why has there been no death fatwan sworn out by ostensibly “moderate” Muslims against the cleric who has inspired so much bloodshed and loss of Muslim life? One might ask the same question about Osama bin Laden during his last years but that is another matter. The fact remains that terrorism is so essential and irreplaceable in what is otherwise wholly ineffectual Islamic war-fighting capability, that even something so hideous and detrimental to Islam itself cannot be foresworn.

All of this makes it more than apparent that Islamic “martyrdom” is done in the name of political domination — jihad’s mission to impose global shari’a law — and, therefore, it is not a religious act but one that is strictly military in nature. While this is in total concordance with Islamic canon, it is wholly alien to most other religious doctrines, including the Christian Church militant.

Piety and Coercion

Perhaps most telling of all is how Islam remains satisfied with, and by, involuntary conversion. What then to make of its supposed martyrs, are they genuine or false? It makes torturing people for information, along with all the risks of inaccuracy that freight such a sordid practice, seem like some sort of minor ethical lapse compared to how Islam is naively willing to accept forced conversion even as it most cynically punishes even minor blasphemy, an oxymoron in Islamic terms, or other relatively innocuous, transgressions ― whose criminal behavior might be rehabilitated ― with irreversible amputation, or capital punishment.

Unless, of course, it is the case that many Islamic clerics know full well how most rational human beings cannot be persuaded to voluntarily adopt something so patently anti-life as Islamic doctrine and, therefore, they must be coerced and intimidated into accepting Islam rather than charismatically proselytized. Ultimately, this reliance upon coercion provides strong evidence that true love is a foreign concept in Islam. That Muslim women are often treated worse than animals bears this out. With its child brides, sanctioned spousal rape and physical abuse, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and forced marriages, Islam continuously degrades human life and treats with contempt any sense of romantic love.

Another case involves an Iraqi woman named Samira Ahmed Jassim also known by the nickname Umm al-Mumineen or “the mother of believers”. This individual was responsible for enlisting some 80 young women to commit bomb vest attacks. Her method of recruitment involved having these young women gang raped. In Arabic culture they were “impure” and now effectively worthless as mates such that she then used their shattered self-esteem to persuade them how a sole path to “redemption” lay in carrying out so-called “martyrdom operations”.

This abject debasement of human life is a constant theme that permeates Islamic culture and drives out any notion of it being life-oriented. What’s more ― like Umm Nidal Farhat’s willing disposal of her own children ― Samira Ahmed Jassim betrayed her fellow women with brutal sexual assault and death. This is coercion of a most monstrous sort and bespeaks a heartless manipulation that could never succeed if left to stand on its own, admittedly nonexistent, merits.

This callous attitude is betrayed by another hideous practice that has recently come into play. It involves the use of retarded children, or young adults, in bomb vest terror attacks and represents an ultimately cynical method of disposal for all of the human detritus resulting from consanguineous Muslim marriages. If such heartlessness is disturbing, then how to describe the way that an Iraqi car bomber ― using two infants riding with him to get through a check point ― then left them strapped into their car seats to die in the subsequent explosion.

What sort of belief system could possibly accept such heinous acts as demonstrations of piety? Moreover, it demands an even harsher question of Islam. What Creator is worth worshiping that would reward with paradise the wanton destruction of his own creations? This is the sine qua non of any argument concerning Islam and its lack of respect for human life. For whatever shortcomings Christianity may have, it holds human life sacrosanct. No such thing can be said for Islam. It not only eliminates all discussion of moral relativism between these two ancient creeds but drags out into the disinfecting sunlight Islam’s true standing as a political ideology and no sort of legitimate religion.

This glaring and diametric opposition with respect to Christian and Islamic definitions of martyrdom must serve as a touchstone for Western minds as they learn to disassociate Islam from any genuinely religious context and relearn its more accurate status as a political ideology.

NEW YORK CITY

On September 9th Dr Terry Jones and Pastor Wayne Sapp will be flying to New York where on September 10th they will be holding a Rally in the center of New York City.

Dr Terry Jones and Pastor Wayne Sapp will appear in
Times Square, at the Red Steps at 47th Street and Broadway Saturday, September 10th at 4pm
and
Ground Zero, Sunday, September 11th at 11am, at Dey Street near Church Street by the Century 21 Building (Point A on Maps)
to respond to Mayor Bloomberg’s exclusion from the official ceremony of First Responders, the real heroes of the 9/11 tragedy, and the clergy. This is an un-American outrage, and we invite First Responders and clergy to stand with us. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

We will be joined by the 911 Ground Zero Truck, owned by Mark Anthony Niemczyk.

We will be at the Park 51 Ground Zero Mosque on September 11th at 1pm (point B on maps).

At 3pm, we will be attending the event, 911 Freedom Rally at Ground Zero, hosted by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.

For information concerning exact times and locations for these events in New York City, please contact us at 352-371-2487 or info@standupamericanow.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: 352-371-2487 or 352-871-2680 (Stephanie Sapp) or info@standupamericanow.org.

Click here for Stand Up America’s Ustream Channel

MICHIGAN

OPERATION FREEDOM’S TREE and STAND UP AMERICA NOW RALLY
Featuring Speakers Dr. Terry Jones and James Terpening

Wednesday, September 7, 6pm

Location:
Front Steps of the State Capitol Building
Lansing, Michigan, 48922

Dr Jones will be speaking on the topic, “The Destructive Force: Islam” and also the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks.

Pastor Wayne Sapp will also speak at the Rally
To contact James Terpening for more information about the Rally and Operation Freedom’s Tree, email operationfreedomstree@gmail.com

Thursday, September 8, 2pm

On Thursday, September 8th, Dr Terry Jones and Pastor Wayne Sapp will be appearing at a 2pm Circuit Court Hearing dealing with the unlawful ruling and arrest of Dr Jones and Mr Sapp in Dearborn, Michigan on April 22, 2011.

Location:
Coleman A Young Municipal Center
2 Woodward Ave
Detroit, Michigan 48226

• Dearborn Muslims Mob Pastor Terry Jones: The First “No Go Zone” on American Soil?
• VIDEO: Dearborn Muslims Mob Pastor Terry Jones

STAND UP AMERICA NOW will hold an open meeting with the support of OPERATION FREEDOM’S TREE & James Terpening

Thursday, September 8th, 7pm

“We understand the St. Johns Banquet and Conference Center has canceled our event on September 8.

We have been informed by an inside source that the St Johns Chief of Police has been going around talking to individuals and discouraging them from allowing us to hold our meetings.

We will be holding a meeting in Hunter Park in Lansing, Michigan on the Thursday afternoon, September 8.

We will announce the time of the meeting at the Operation Freedom’s Tree and Stand Up America Now rally on Wednesday, September 7.”

– Dr. Terry Jones
Founder and President
Stand Up America Now

NEW YORK CITY

On September 9th Dr Terry Jones and Pastor Wayne Sapp will be flying to New York where on September 10th they will be holding a Rally in the center of New York City.

Dr Terry Jones and Pastor Wayne Sapp will appear in
Times Square Saturday, September 10th at 4pm
and
at Ground Zero, Sunday, September 11th at 11am
to respond to Mayor Bloomberg’s exclusion from the official ceremony of First Responders, the real heroes of the 9/11 tragedy, and the clergy. This is an un-American outrage, and we invite First Responders and clergy to stand with us. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

We will be joined by the 911 Ground Zero Truck, owned by Mark Anthony Niemczyk.

We will be at the Park 51 Ground Zero Mosque on September 11th at 1pm.

At 3pm, we will be attending the event, 911 Freedom Rally at Ground Zero, hosted by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.

For information concerning exact times and locations for these events in New York City, please contact us at 352-371-2487 or info@standupamericanow.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: 352-371-2487 or 352-871-2680 (Stephanie Sapp) or info@standupamericanow.org.

Click here for Stand Up America’s Ustream Channel

If you’ve been around video or pinball arcades, no doubt you’ve encountered Whac-A-Mole. If you haven’t, you can play it online for free at Addicting Games.

According to Wikipedia:

Whac-A-Mole is an arcade redemption game. A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player’s score. The more quickly this is done the higher the final score will be.
[…]
Colloquial usage
The connotation of “Whac-a-mole” or “Whack-a-mole” in colloquial usage is that of a repetitious and futile task: each time the attacker is “whacked” or kicked off a service, he only pops up again from another direction.[5][6] The term has been used in the computer and networking industry to describe the phenomenon of fending off recurring spammers, vandals or miscreants. It is also used in the military to refer to opposing troops who keep re-appearing.[7] This use has been common in the Iraq War in reference to the difficulty of defeating the Iraqi insurgency.[8] Nuclear scientist Edwin Lyman compares the multiple simultaneous crises at Fukushima I to a game of “whack-a-mole” [9]

Let’s go get ‘em!

We in the blogosphere can help by uncovering at least some of the Muslim Brotherhood bad guys (and some bad women, of course), so that we don’t have to wait for them to rear up their ugly heads on their own.

We’ve recently drawn your attention to that wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, Grover Norquist, who has insinuated himself into conservative and Republican circles as an anti-tax activist, but who is a vile agent of the Muslim Brotherhood.

American Thinker: Grover Norquist’s Jihad

By Pamela Geller

The Freedom Defense Initiative, a new organization I started with author and scholar Robert Spencer, hosted its inaugural event to an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 19. But this event was at CPAC, not of CPAC. Could this be because of the influence of conservative kingmaker and power-broker Grover Norquist, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC? The only event concerning the war on America at CPAC was worse than nothing at all: It was an Islamic propaganda (taqiyya) presentation entitled “You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terror.” Its message was that “real conservatives” don’t support the war on terror because it is a creation of the “Israeli lobby.”

How did CPAC come to this?

Grover Norquist’s ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes — who was director of communications for his Islamic Free Market Institute until they married in 2005 — are very active in “Muslim outreach.” Just six weeks after 9/11, The New Republic ran an exposé explaining how Norquist arranged for George W. Bush to meet with fifteen Islamic supremacists at the White House on September 26, 2001 — to show how Muslims rejected terrorism. Wrote TNR author Franklin Foer:

On the afternoon of September 26, George W. Bush gathered 15 prominent Muslim- and Arab-Americans at the White House. With cameras rolling, the president proclaimed that “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” It was a critically important moment, a statement to the world that America’s Muslim leaders unambiguously reject the terror committed in Islam’s name.

Unfortunately, many of the leaders present hadn’t unambiguously rejected it. To the president’s left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the American Muslim Council, an organization whose leaders have repeatedly called Hamas “freedom fighters.” Also in attendance was Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who on the afternoon of September 11 told a Los Angeles public radio audience that “we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list.” And sitting right next to President Bush was Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America, who last fall told a Washington crowd chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans that “America has to learn if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.”

It was Norquist who ushered these silver-tongued jihadists into the Oval Office of an incurious president after the worst attack ever on American soil. Instead of Hamas, Hezb’allah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or, and Wafa Sultan should have been advising the president. Instead, at that September 26 meeting, Bush declared that “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” It was a critically important, historic incident. What should have been the most important teaching moment of the long war became a propaganda tool for Islam. A singular opportunity was squandered, and the resulting harm is incalculable.

Bush did this because he trusted Norquist, who vouched for these Muslim leaders. Yet “the record suggests,” wrote Foer, “that [Norquist] has spent quite a lot of time promoting people openly sympathetic to Islamist terrorists.” And this continued for years. In December 2003, David Horowitz wrote that Norquist,

…has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover’s part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends.

Horowitz wrote this in an introduction to a detailed exposé by Frank Gaffney showing how Norquist had given Muslims with jihad terror links access to the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Grover Norquist was on the Islamic payroll before and after the carnage of September 11. Gaffney revealed Norquist’s close ties to Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving twenty-three years in prison for financing jihad activity. In 2000, Alamoudi said at a rally, “I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here? … Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wished they added that I am also a supporter of Hezb’allah.” Alamoudi was at that time head of the now-defunct “moderate” group known as American Muslim Council (AMC), and he was active in other Muslim groups in the U.S. that showed sympathy to or support for jihadists. And Alamoudi, according to Gaffney, gave $50,000 to the lobbying group Janus-Merritt Strategies, which Norquist co-founded.

Alamoudi’s money bought influence. Gaffney wrote in 2003: “It seems unlikely that even in Alamoudi’s wildest dreams he could have imagined the extent of the access, influence and legitimacy the American Muslim Council and allied Islamist organizations would be able to secure in Republican circles, thanks to the investment they began in 1998 in a relationship with Norquist.”

Alamoudi also helped found Norquist’s Islamic Institute with a $10,000 loan and a gift of another $10,000. The founding director of the Islamic Institute is Khaled Saffuri, a Palestinian Muslim who had previously been active in Islamic groups in Bosnia, where Islamic jihadists from all over the world gathered “to establish,” says Gaffney, “a beachhead on the continent of Europe.” Gaffney adds that Saffuri “has acknowledged personally supporting the families of suicide bombers — even though, in public settings, he strenuously denies having done so.” Saffuri also denounced Bush’s shutdown of the Holy Land Foundation, which was funneling charitable contributions to Hamas.

Norquist has also carried water for Islamic supremacist attempts to weaken anti-terror efforts. Gaffney reveals that “Norquist was also a prime-mover behind efforts to secure one of the Islamists’ top pre-9/11 agenda items: the abolition of a section of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that permits authorities to use what critics call ‘secret evidence.’ … Norquist was an honoree at an event held by Sami Al-Arian’s National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom in July 2001, two months before 9/11. The award was for being a ‘champion of the abolishment movement against secret evidence.’” Al-Arian in 2006 pleaded guilty “conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds to or for the benefit of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” Palestinian Islamic jihad is even worse than Hamas’s; it celebrates the killing of Israeli civilians and calls repeatedly for the destruction of Israel.
[…]
Much more here.

We’ve already pulled the bedcovers (both figuratively and literally) off Hillary Clinton and her pet MB mole, Huma Abedin, in the context of Weinergate.

Anthony Weiner resigned, but the real problem is his wife Huma, and she is still around!

Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack: U.S Ignores Hillary Clinton’s Powerful Aide Huma Abedin at Its Own Risk

[…]
Even more disconcerting…is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton​’s aide and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, who has been with Clinton since 1996. She was never properly screened, this will be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

To be concerned about Abedin’s access to sensitive information is an issue that will most likely garner unsolicited curses from “sensitive” Americans who are enamored with her. These same people ignore this diva’s familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood…

Abedin is even more potentially dangerous: She can leak state secrets. She is closely associated with her Muslim Brotherhood​ family and even joined Clinton at an event with her mother, Saleha Abedin, at Dar El-Hekma College in Saudi Arabia. Also present was a close associate of Saleha Abedin—Suheir Qureshi. Qureshi’s name later appeared in several prominent Arab newspapers when it was revealed that she belonged to a list of 63 members of the secret arm of the Muslim Brotherhood called The Sisterhood. The full list was later revealed—Huma Abedin’s mother is on it. Huma’s brother—Hassan Abedin—also collaborates with Omar Naseef and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, two of the most influential terror supporters in the world.

Yet, as detractors argue “guilt by association,” they unwittingly strengthen our case, because this is what the FBI uses when investigating federal employees: “Character. Associates. Reputation. And Loyalty to the United States. (CARL).” This checklist was never applied to Huma Abedin, who still associates with her family. Dismissing all this as “guilt by association” ignores a tough question:

Other than Huma Abedin, has there ever been a case in which a family member who either belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood or was a prominent Islamist did not denounce a Muslim female relative who married a non-Muslim male?

It’s a question with only one answer: Her family made an exception for her because Huma has a higher calling.

Westerners erroneously compare the “Middle East” mindset with that of the “Midwest,” and fail to shift gears to understand the Muslim worldview. They do not comprehend the seriousness of a Muslim “daughter” or “sister” marrying a Jewish male, particularly because the Islamic Shariah Faculty in Kuwait has deemed Huma Abedin’s marriage to a male Jew null and void.

While Westerners portray The Sisterhood as a simple “mule service,” our own detailed research—which will be released shortly—reveals male supervisors as official members along with their wives and/or daughters. The list includes spies who have proudly disclosed their heroic acts during Israel’s wars with Egypt. Others are Nazi-style propagandists, Nazi affiliates from the time of the Brotherhood’s inception, hijab (Muslim head covering and modest styles of dress) advocates in Europe, prominent doctors, popular conspiracy theorists and media icons that closely emulate the Goebbels propaganda machine of Nazi Germany.

The group’s influence spans several international organizations from the United Nations to the United States to women’s advocacy groups worldwide. Its influence is immense. Overlooking this group—and by extension, Huma Abedin—is not dissimilar to ignoring the Able Danger intelligence operation’s revelations about Mohamed Atta​ prior to 9/11.

Any doubting Thomas must acknowledge the validity of The Sisterhood list because it follows the same agenda and direction shown on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official website, and it has been confirmed by Egyptian security services and top experts, including the Arab Center for Research and Studies, headed by researcher Abdul Rahim Ali.

To give you a taste of this bitter herb, we will examine a single name before we publish all 63. Take Najla Ali Mahmoud, who is supervised by her husband, Mohammed Aidalmrsi, member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau and the current leader of the Justice and Freedom Party (the Brotherhood’s new propaganda name). He recently appeared on national television and explained why “Egypt needs to ban Western dress” and how “no one with a full mental faculty can believe in the Trinity.” He even condemned Egyptian monuments as “idols.” This group differs from the Taliban only in that it has a Western propaganda machine.

Will Egypt do to the Sphinx what the Taliban did to the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan? Will Egypt perpetrate a holocaust on Coptic Christians who are already portrayed as having a mental deficiency for believing in the Trinity?

And while this “Goebbels” runs his propaganda machine, the naysayers demand evidence of Huma Abedin’s membership in this notorious group. Would someone have appointed the daughter of Magda and Joseph Goebbels as the deputy chief of staff for Cordell Hull—the U.S. secretary of state during World War II​—arguing that she was not a member of the Nazi party?

It is not “racist” to compare the Muslim Brotherhood with the Nazis. Hassan Al-Banna, the grandfather of Tariq Ramadan​(Ramadan’s ban from the U.S. was lifted by Clinton), collaborated with Hitler henchman Haj Amin al-Husseini, who became the Muslim Brotherhood leader after the war. Neither has the Brotherhood repented. They still take pride in their collaboration with the Nazis.

And while the U.S. House of Representatives debated whether to cut off funds for Obama’s military campaign in Libya, which aids the Brotherhood-backed rebels, Clinton challenged Congress over its position, asking, “Whose side are you on?”

This is a question the secretary of state should ask herself.

Read it all.

But wait, there’s MORE…

MB moles in the Obama White House!

NoisyRoom: Did Obama’s actions put Seal Team Six in danger? Muslim Brotherhood in our White House

By: AJ of NoisyRoom.net & Arlen Williams
Contributor: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

New details and names have emerged regarding appointees that Obama brought into our White House who allegedly have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. This article lays out what we have learned and calls for an immediate Congressional investigation.

It is no secret that Obama has embraced an enemy that openly states their desire to destroy Western Civilization and declares “Death to America.” Obama’s perplexing actions over the course of his Presidency appear to be more aligned with the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and United Nations than with America’s agenda.

From Obama’s illegal war in Libya with U.S. military support to Al Qaida insurgents (under UN direction) – to his most recent war waged in Yemen – to the murders of 30 U.S. special operations troops which included 17 members of SEAL Team Six who took out Osama bin Laden, the truth about Obama’s actions and those he has placed in our White House must be found.

Background:

As documented in our previous article, “Muslim Brotherhood in Our White House and the Murders of SEAL Team Six”:

“Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, author and self-described Liberal Democrat Marxist Muslim who campaigned for Barack Obama, revealed the identity of Obama’s White House appointees who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (see Muslim Brotherhood in our White House – Vetting Obama).

Obama and Hillary Clinton are reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic fundamentalist group committed to the destruction of America, Britain and Israel and identified as a terrorist organization by the U.S.

Obama began talks with the Taliban to negotiate with these terrorists.”

Obama sells tanks and weaponry to the Islamists in Egypt who want to suspend the treaty with Israel and annihilate them. They have formed a NAZI party that is gaining strength in Egypt today.

Obama invites people to our White House during Ramadan who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; he omits their names on the Iftar guest list.”

New Details:

We now learn that the threat of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration runs much deeper in our White House. WND’s investigative reporting uncovered stunning information from a former FBI special agent in Washington D.C. and WND presents that information in: “Underpublicized threat deep in White House.”

WND reports, “Former FBI special agent John Guandolo says Obama’s ties to agents for the Muslim Brotherhood are even more extensive.”

Excerpt from the WND article:

“Another Brotherhood-tied figure influencing the White House is Azizah al-Hibri.

Obama this June appointed her to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. A Muslim professor, al-Hibri is also the granddaughter of a sheik, who claims the Saudi criminal justice system is more moral than the American one because it accepts blood money from murderers.

Al-Hibri herself has proclaimed: “Islamic fiqh (law) is deeper and better than Western codes of law.”

She served on the advisory board of the American Muslim Council and made joint appearances with its leader Abdurahman Alamoudi. Now defunct, the AMC was a front group for the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, and Alamoudi was the Brotherhood’s top leader in America. He is now behind bars as one of al-Qaida’s top fundraisers in America.

Al-Hibri has also made appearances at Islamic Society of North America conferences. The Justice Department says ISNA is a Brotherhood front and recently named the group an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to provide material support to Hamas terrorists.

Guandolo identified several other Brotherhood-connected agents of influence – all of whom are just as politically savvy and moderate sounding – who have worked their way into government positions, including:

Arif Alikhan, who was assistant Homeland Security secretary for policy development and is now a distinguished visiting professor of homeland security and counterterrorism at the National Defense University.

Syrian-born Kareem Shora, who is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s senior policy adviser.

Navy Cmdr. Youssef Aboul-Enein and Jocelyne Cesari, a Muslim convert who previously worked with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, both of whom teach at colleges within the National Defense University.

Guandolo blames the advances Brotherhood figures on political correctness and lax vetting at government agencies.

Even at the FBI, he notes, an Iranian-born Muslim has taken over the agency’s weapons of mass destruction program.”

Conclusion:

SEAL Team Six was in danger if Obama brought individuals into our White House who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a terrorist organization that created Al Qaida, Hamas and the Taliban. It was reported that it was the Taliban who murdered our troops on August 6, 2011.

There is no question that the Muslim Brotherhood would want to exact revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden. Obama not only enabled them by permitting public release of the identity of our troops, but he may also have unwittingly provided them with access to mission-related information from within the White House by his own appointees.

Serious questions remain from the moment Obama allowed the release of SEAL Team Six’s identity up to the day our troops were murdered.

[…]
More here.

Not that long ago, enemy foreign agents were rooted out and then hanged. Now we can’t even get them FIRED. Is that too much to ask?

Also see:

• Denying Islamists Federal Security Clearances

Grover Norquist is a professional Islamoblow who, for many years, under the guise of an anti-tax activist, has made a career out of corrupting the Republican Party with his “Muslim outreach”. The upshot is that the Muslim agenda has reached into the Republican party and has tainted many prominent Republicans, including the Bush family.

We have no need for Norquist to be our spokesman for cutting taxes and spending – we have the Tea Party for that. Norquist is also at the root of the Perry/Aga Khan curriculum controversy in Texas, about which there is much more at the link below.

It is not too late for Rick Perry to show Norquist the door, and to disavow any further efforts to “reach out” to the “Muslim community” – who actually are enemy aliens for all intents and purposes, even (or perhaps especially) those who have sworn an oath of citizenship in violation of the teachings in the Qur’an. We don’t need to “reach out” to enemy aliens – we need to deport them forthwith. The main thing that we need to teach people about Islam is that it is one hundred percent incompatible with the US Constitution and with life in any part of the civilized world.

Yeah, I’m a hard liner if there ever was one. And I will never apologize for that.

The Perry/Aga Khan curriculum: Ace folds, presents as the curriculum material that isn’t the curriculum at all

Ace asks: “Ummm… we’re not allowed to talk with Grover Norquist anymore, Pam? Can’t sign his anti-tax pledges?” Actually, it’s the other way around: is it really necessary to play ball with Norquist in order to come out for cutting taxes? Is there no candidate who will have the courage to endorse his tax policies but distance himself from him because of his Islamic supremacist ties?

Read it all. There’s tons of well-researched information here.

I don’t speak for Pam Geller. But I do say this: No, you’re not allowed to talk with Grover Norquist anymore, unless you want the whole world to know that you are a sellout to the Islamic expansionist agenda. It’s all up to you.

Much more about Grover Norquist here.

Yes, Norquist is married to a Palestinian Muslima, hence his personal reasons for pushing the Islamic agenda every chance he gets. I remember the days when marriage to an enemy alien (which is exactly what she is) disqualified a person from any position of public trust. The above link also details Norquist’s associations with CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups. He should be in prison for aiding and abetting terrorist organizations, not posturing as a “conservative” and corrupting the entire Republican Party.

Update:

As Rodan pointed out:

Why must Rick Perry distance himself from Grover Norquist? The whole GOP should. He’s vile agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. He should be shunned by ALL Republicans, not just Rick Perry.

So singling out Perry is intellectually dishonest. Grover should be purged and shunned by all.

Fair enough. Consider it said.

Obviously, I am not sold on Rick Perry. That said, I am a counterjihad blogger, and it is not my business, nor that of 1389 Blog, to get in bed with any political candidate. We are not part of anyone’s political campaign. Our job is to determine where politicians actually stand on the counterjihad, and to hold every politician’s feet to the fire.

However, if Rick Perry is the GOP candidate, and I’m still alive by then (never a foregone conclusion for any of us over 55), I expect to be voting for him.

If I’m DEAD by then, I expect to be voting for Obama, along with the rest of the deceased-American community. Too bad this isn’t a joke.

More here:

Sultan Knish: Rick Perry and Islam

From Winds of Jihad:

AFDI/SIOA 9/11 Freedom Rally: Stand Against Ground Zero Mosque, and Durban III, Stand for America

And if you’re in Germany on the 3rd of September, the Parteitag of Die Freiheit is the place to be:

NEW YORK: The human rights organization American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) will be hosting its second annual 9/11 Freedom Rally on September 11 at 3pm at Park Place and West Broadway.

Free citizens are coming from all over the U.S. to attend the rally. “It is crucial to stand for freedom on this tenth anniversary of the heinous 9/11 jihad attacks,” said AFDI Executive Director Pamela Geller. “We must show the jihadists we are unbowed in the defense of freedom. As a judge yesterday dismissed a suit by a New York firefighter challenging the construction of the mosque, the last legal hurdle blocking it has been removed. But we are not giving up. It is time for free citizens to make a stand.”

AFDI and its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program are encouraging all Americans to stand against the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero and the anti-Semitic Durban III conference that will be held in New York City at the same time, and for American values on the tenth anniversary of the worst attack ever on American soil.

The confirmed list of speakers includes 9/11 family members Alexander and Maureen Santora, who lost their firefighter son Christopher; Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian was killed on 9/11; Nelly Braginsky, who lost her son Alexander; and others.

Other speakers include former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton (video message); German MP René Stadtkewitz, leader of Germany’s Freedom Party; the courageous ex-Muslim human rights activist Wafa Sultan; war hero and North Carolina Congressional candidate Ilario Pantano; former prosecutor and bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy; popular radio host Joyce Kaufman; Darla Dawald, National Director of the Patriot Action Network; James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Taskforce (VAST); Coptic Christian activist Joseph Nassralla; Iraqi ex-Muslim Paul Gaynos; and others.

Hosting the rally are Pamela Geller, publisher of the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog, executive director of AFDI and SIOA, and author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books); and AFDI/SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of Jihad Watch.

Building the Ground Zero mosque is not an issue of religious freedom, but of resisting an effort to insult the victims of 9/11 and to establish a beachhead for political Islam and Islamic supremacism in New York. Cordoba Initiative board member imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is an open proponent of Sharia, Islamic law, a system that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. Given the thousands of triumphal mosques that have been built on the cherished sites of conquered peoples throughout Islamic history, the mosque leaders’ claim that this mosque would be understood differently by Muslims worldwide lack foundation.

The Durban III conference follows upon two previous conferences that scapegoated and demonized the state of Israel in service of Islamic jihad and Islamic supremacist interests. The rally will defend Israel against the defamation to which it will be subjected at this conference. It will also call upon the city to remove roadblocks to the reconstruction of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed on 9/11 and since then mired in bureaucratic red tape that has prevented its rebuilding – in stark contrast to the help Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials have given to the Ground Zero Mosque project.

AFDI/SIOA is one of America’s foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.