As we have seen many times, "Islamophobia" is a spurious, trumped-up phenomenon that is most often used to describe, and denigrate, the legitimate suspicion that people have of Islamic supremacism and the jihad ideology. Nor has the unindicted co-conspirator CAIR refrained from manufacturing "hate crimes" and incidents to bigotry in order to enhance its victim status. However absurd all of this may be, it is also ominous, given that the Organization of the Islamic Conference is seeking to mau-mau Western governments into criminalizing "Islamophobia" -- which would amount to forbidding infidels from speaking about the Islamic supremacist imperative precisely as jihadists step up their efforts to conquer and Islamize the West.
It is no surprise that CAIR (Dawud Walid is the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the CAIR) would be trying to make the presidential candidates kowtow in a similar way. I just wish that either of them had a clue about what was going on here.
"Obama, McCain should condemn Islamophobia," by Dawud Walid in the Detroit News, July 8 (thanks to James):
Now that Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have become the presumptive presidential nominees for the Republicans and Democrats, they should address how all bigotry, including Islamophobia, hurts America.The need to address this issue is urgent given the spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric and fear-mongering during the presidential campaign. Former GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee wrote a commentary titled "We must defeat Islamofascism" in an effort to prove his national security prowess. His commentary falsely linking Islam to the odious philosophy of fascism was published on the same day that the British government announced the curtailment of "aggressive rhetoric" relating to Islam and Muslims.
During the Nevada caucuses, anonymous phone calls repeatedly referring to "Barack Hussein Obama" reached thousands of voters. Invoking the name "Hussein," which means handsome in Arabic, has become a key weapon of Obama's Islamophobic detractors.
Islamophobia, like other forms of bigotry, is un-American. Allowing it to grow unchallenged is opposed to our national values that mandate dignity and freedom from marginalization for all people, regardless of race, gender or creed.
The candidates have made positive statements about Muslims or have repudiated anti-Muslim comments to some degree. In an interview with Beliefnet, McCain stated, "I admire the Islam. There are a lot of good principles in it."
On "60 Minutes," Obama responded to rumors about him being Muslim by stating: "I have never been a Muslim. Am not a Muslim. These e-mails are obviously not just offensive to me, somebody who is a devout Christian, who's been going to the same church for the last 20 years, but it's also offensive to Muslims, because it plays into, obviously, a certain fear-mongering there."
Such statements are welcome, but not sufficient. Strong statements that Muslims are legitimate Americans with the right to full expression and that Islamophobia is counterproductive to our national interests have been sorely missing from the political landscape.
If the presidential nominees fail to speak out strongly against bigotry, they should take responsibility for the fact that being soft on bias against Muslims will harm our nation's commitment to civil rights and could promote increased anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.
For American Muslims, Islamophobia is a reality. Discrimination at schools, vandalism of mosques and workplace harassment has been rising each year since the 9/11 attacks. Anti-Muslim rhetoric from the likes of radio talk show host Michael Savage and televangelist Pat Robertson is also on the rise....
Right again, Robert.
I wish one of the two had a clue... too.
I'll have to get really drunk to pull the lever for McCain.
CAIR rep: Obama, McCain should condemn "Islamophobia"
I'd settle for them condemning CAIR.
CAIR is angry that Muslim groups including unindited co-conspirators are being snubbed by the Presidential candidates.The candidates are avoiding Muslims because they have to be concerned that any Muslim leader they meet will later be exposed as a Jihad sympathizer.Muslims will need to clean their own dirty houses if they want candidates to court them, whining about so-called Islamophobia won't be enough.As for these two unappealing candidates. I decided long ago that I would never vote for Obama, even if he wasn't the most liberal member of the Senate, his support by Muslims is reason enough not to vote for him.The real question is can I vote for McCain. I do not trust him at all, I also promised myself I would never vote for any politician who supported amnesty.
I think they should ban CAIR, I mean what are they doing about their co-religionists who are going about wanting to harm non Muslims and using the mandates of the Koran for their acts of violence.
Condemn kafir-phobia first.
"I admire the Islam. There are a lot of good principles in it." --John McCain
Obviously, McCain didn't know what he was talking about. That's a classic example of BS'ing.
Roxane, you are right our choice for the next Pres is "unappealing" as all-get-out. Definitely not Hussein, which leaves Juan McCain.
But, here's something to consider. A while back my husband and dad went to a $1,000.00 a plate luncheon with McCain as speaker. Within that private venue, they reported that McCain said that his primary goal was to "defeat Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism." And he also used the word "Jihad."
So, that's not bad! Publicly he must be more PC, I suppose.
I also have a new "DEFEATJIHAD/Jihad Watch.org" bumper sticker story. A few days ago a knock at the door. I didn't know this man, and asked through the door what he wanted. He replied, "Your sticker. Where'd you get the "Jihad" sticker? LOL!
So, I gave him one, he was very pleased.
There are many of us out there.
CAIR rep: Obama, McCain should condemn "Islamophobia"
They can all go "should on themselves" as far as I'm concerned.
There we go again! The perpetually offended want to silence our voices. Well, I've got news for these clowns: it is not going to happen. Islamophoebia will disappear once Muslims stop terrorism and their quest for supremacy; once they stop their show of arrogance. Afterall, you don't see Hindu phoebia or Buddhist phoebia, except in Muslim countries. The very acronym CAIR is obnoxious, as if Islam is a nation with whom America has to have some relations (Council on American Islamic Relations). Is this supposed to be along the same lines as, say, Council on American British Relations? The Islamists would sure have you believe that Islam is a nation and they constantly try to shove it down our throats. If these people learn to behave in a civilized manner, Islamophoebia will go away. But, it won't go away by their constant and annoying whining.
"I admire the Islam.[sic] There are a lot of good principles in it."
-- John McCain, quoted in the article above
"it's [charges that Obama is a Muslim] also offensive to Muslims, because it plays into, obviously, a certain fear-mongering there."
-- Barack Obama, quoted in the same article above
Both comments are worth holding up for inspection and criticism.
First, the Republican McCain, still apparently a sentimentalist, because still apparently misinformed, or under-informed, about Islam.
McCain tells us that he admires "the Islam." And he admires it because there are "a lot of good principles in it." What are those "good principles"? And is there anything else in Islam -- in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira -- that might lead non-Muslims, to worry, and not just a bit, about the Muslim texts and tenets as they relate to all non-Muslims? Anythiing at all? And, further, is there anything in the observable behavior of Muslims today, and not just those in Al-Qaeda or a hundred other groups, or ten thousand groupuscules, from Pakistan to Great Britain, from Thailand to France, from Algeria to Russia, that should give non-Muslims pause?
And Obama is quoted as saying that charges that he is a Muslim are "offensive to Muslims, because it [that charge] plays into, obviously, a certain fear-mongering there."
What "fear-mongering" is this? Do Infidels in this country - and I include not the usual rounded-up blend of wild-eyed "right-wing" Christians and of course "neocons" (this means Jews), but everyone who is non-Muslim, whether he has ever suffered directly from Islamic attack -- and there are plenty of people, Jews, and Christians, and Hindus, who have come to this country who have indeed suffered directly, been refugees (including Copts, Maronites, Assyrians, ARmenians) from the Middle East, or North Africa,or Anatolia, or fled Muslim persecution in the southern Sudan, or Nigeria, or have lived in Infidel lands that, like India, suffer from low-level but constant Muslim attacks and violence. And there are others who have been learning, not content to believe what the political and media elites, who with a very few exceptions have done little to instruct others, as they have done so little to educate themselves, at a time, and over a lapse of time, that makes their behavior criminally irresonsible.
The next President should be someone who does not have to learn about Islam, but will have learned already. Neither candidate at this point is satisfactory. Not McCain, with his sentimentalim that echoes that of Bush: the Higher Bomfoggery, in which we are asked to belief that deep beliefs do not matter, that despite what Islam teaches, deep down inside People Are the Same The Whole World Over. It isn't true.
McCain's insistent clinging to Tarbaby Iraq (which bespeaks a miscomprehension of the main instruments of Jihad, and the best use to which Iraq, or rather the sectarian and ethnic fissures in Iraq, not to be solved or even mitigated by American intervention, could be put to use, or exploited, to divide and demoralize and thereby weaken the Camp of Islam).
Obama's filial piety, a filiel piety that comes from his interst in "discovering" (rather: "creating") his identity, and "exploring his roots," and all that other fashionable and apparently fascinating pseudo-discovery of -- guess what? the author himself? -- made him give great attention to his father, who left his mother, and left Obama, when Obama was two. The father called himself a "Muslim." It may well be that Obama, having visited Kenya, and met other Muslim relatives, thinks that their easygoing, syncretistic, black-African version of Islam -- Islam not yet whipped into shape by money and imams and training for local imams, that comes from the Middle East, and especially from Saudi Arabia. He, Obama, may mistake the unusual, the unrepresentative Kenyan Muslims he met, for Muslims elsewhere. But perhaps he should have a good long talk to Christians in Nigeria, about the "Jihad" -- the word used by Col. Ojukwu, leader of the Christians during the Biafran War of 1967-69, and found out what has been happening to that nice, syncretitistic, easygoing Islam ever since among the Muslim black Africans of northern Nigeria, where a dozen states have now instituted Shari'a law. He could ask Laurant Gbagbo and others in the Ivory Coast about Islam, or find out what Nkrumah, Osagyefo, for all of his marxisant thoughts, always recognized about the threat of Islam (which is perhaps why Nkrumah was so well-disposed toward Israel).
And if Obama's Muslim relatives have perhaps given him the dangerous illusion that he "knows about Islam" and Islam "is okay" his experience as a child living in Indonesia, in a most unusual setting, among the most advanced Indonesia Muslims, at a time when secularism, not unconnected to the first nationalist leaders -- Suharto and Sukarno -- was still riding high, and Wahid, a remarkable exception, for personal reasons, among Muslim leaders, still had power, and, furthermore, the kind of Muslims Obama would have met would be 1) mostly children, who are not yet full of the tenets of Islam -- look at those sweetly-smiling children who greet American soldiers, for they have not yet had their years of indoctrination in suspiciion and anti-Infidel hostility; those years are yet to come and 2) the parents of those children, but since those parents chose to send those children to school with Christians, they are already a self-selected group, akin to those members of the Egyptian Muslim elite, or Pakistani anglophone elite, or Iraqi Baghdad elite, who send their children to Victoria college, or to Catholic girls' schools (Lady Ahmed, now in the House of Lords, attended such a school), or Baghdad College, run by Jesuits from Boston College, a high school where absolutely everyone -- le gratin of Baghdad, Chalabi and Iyad Allawi and so many others -- attended, if their Muslim parents wanted them to get a good (as opposed to a Muslim) education.
To draw conclusions about Islam and its "tolerance" or at least its capacity for tolerance, or about much of anything about it, from two such remarkably unrepresentative things as his Kenyan father, and then his school experience in Indonesia, would be like all those high-and-mighty denizens of Washington who learned what they knew about Saudi Arabia by playing tennis afternoons with, or having port-and-cigars we-are-all-just-a-leetle-bit-corrupt-aren't-we-gentlemen? evenings with, Prince Bandar.
Neither Obama, nor McCain, has ever visited the real Muslim societies of the Middle East or Pakistan, and now it is too late for them to learn anything, because every visit for a dignitary is a false visit, a portable Potemkin village, that is immediately inflated on arrival of the prominent visitor, a Potemkin village not physical, but intellectual, in the facade thrown up by the local leaders, as they make claims, and pretend this, or feign indignation about that, and keep far away from the texts and tenets that really explain their indignation, their pretenses, their claims.
But it is not too late, either for the sentimental Tarbaby-Iraq-clinging McCain, or for indignant about "fear-mongering"-by-anti-Muslim campaigners Obama, to start reading, start listening to intelligent expositors (expositors, not espositors), and beginning to do what millions of people in the Western world have done, or started to do, over the past seven years -- which is to learn what is in the Qur'an, Hadith, Sira, to find out what is on Muslim websites, to look at what is the daily fare on Muslim (especially Arab) television, inclduing the sermons of respected clerics, in other words to do something as utterly unremarkable as educate themselves.
Naive assumptions of the kind that George Bush made, in his own version of the Higher Bomfoggery, that is the dreamy belief that other peoples' beliefs don't really matter, that they don't really take them seriously because you, you see, don't take your beliefs that seriously, or your beliefs are strictly religious in nature, and not also political and geopolitical, but you fail to recognize that Islam is a unique case, unlike any other of the world's faiths that we call, faute de mieux, "religions." It is, rather, a Total Belief-System, and the Five Pillars of worship -- shehada, zakat, salat, ramadan, hajj --hardly exhaust Islam. What is central to Islam, not tangential, is the duty of "jihad," that is the "struggle" to remove all obstacles, wherever they may be, of whatever sort they may be (the American Constitution, and especially the First Amendment, is a formidable obstacle to Islam), to the spread, and then the necessary dominance, of Islam.
The next President should be someone sufficiently well-versed in Islam to understand that Jihad is not now mainly being conducted by warfare, in the traditioinal sense. The main weapons of Jihad, especially in Western Europe, are the Money Weapon (which comes mainly from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs), campaigns of Da'wa (well-financed, and carefully targetted at certain populations, those that are socio-economically marginal, such as black prisoners, that are already alienated from the circumambient society, and the psychically marginal, including the usual upper-class twits or spoiled and confused brats On Their Spiritual Search, who keep getting on and off the bus, but when they get off the bus at the stop marked "Islam" they are prevented from ever getting back on again.
It would be a great idea for both McCain and Obama -- and the one who does it first will win a great many votes, and should -- to meet with, to talk to, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq. They should find out, not from the espositos and armstrongs, not from the bought-and-paid-for boys or the apologists for Islam (and how one hopes that when he returns from his honeymoon with Samantha Powers Cass Sunstein will start reading about Islam, but not, please, from a list provided by a colleague, the suave but misleading (see Bernard Lewis, see Joseph Schacht, see Snouck Hurgrinje) and misled (see Roy Mottahedeh, see John Esposito) sammy-glick (hardly the first one) of Langdell Hall, Noah Feldman.
The fiasco in Iraq comes directly from a failure of intelligence: of intelligence about Islam, and about how to weaken the Camp of Islam. (Google: "The Failure in Iraq Is A Failure Of Intelligence"). The next president cannot do either of two things. He cannot squander the lives of men, and money, and materiel, and morale, in any more acts of sentimental messianism, as the fiasco in Iraq has been. And he cannot, even though he should immediately withdraw from Iraq, ignore the real threat of Islam because of the unhappy and wrong-headed undertaking in Iraq, but must more cunningly resurrcect a NAT0-like alliance that will again harness the power, and the intelligence -- in every sense -- of those most aware of the civliizational legacy they inheried and are morally obligated to defend, against those conducting Jihad not merely by "terrorism" (a tactic, and not the most effective), but also by such means as the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest.
When it comes to the first, McCain seems less willing to grasp reality, or to supplant the false reality supplied by the Bush Administration with the true reality of Iraq as presenting, on a platter, sectarian and ethnic fissures that it would be foolish to ignore, foolish not to recognize and exploit in furtherance of our goal, which after all should not be lost sight of: to weaken the Camp of Islam, everywhere in the world. No more invasions of this nature are needed. Rapid attacks, on military targets, such as a nuclear project, of course. Rapid seizure, of easily-seized territories whose populations are either non-Muslims or non-Arab Muslims, both suffering from genocidal attacks by Arab Muslims -- as in the southern Sudan, as in Darfur -- of course, that not only can be done, but should be done, simultanteously with a withdrawal from Iraq, to make sure that nobody gets the wrong, and everybody gets the right, idea.
Is McCain, is Obama, up to it?
So far, it doesn't look good.
One hopes for someone devoid either of dull-witted sentimentalism (McCain) or, still worse, of naivete, born possibly of childhood experiences and a later desire to seek out an "identity" composed partly of a non-existent father, and time in Indonesia, both of which offered an impressionable young man - I doubt if Obama has spent time, since his schooldays in Indonesia, reading a single sura (he could start with Sura 9) of the Qur'an, or any of the Hadith, or that he knows anything about Muhammad, the Perfect Man (and if he wishes to find out, he should start with Asma bint Marwan, the Banu Qurayza, the Khaybar Oasis, little Aisha, and of course the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya).
Obama, and McCain, have a great responsibility. They are asking us to trust them, to trust them with the adequate protection of the West, and indeed of the entire Infidel world, against the forces of Jihad, and against the many, and varied, instruments of Jihad -- including what Robert Spencer has called "the Stealth Jihad."
Yet neither has given any signs that he has been studying the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the true atmospherics (not what smiling Kenyan relatives, not what childhood companions, making faces and acting up inh class, tell you) of Islam.
We have a right, we voters, to demand that they do. They can start with the texts, and a meeting, or two, or five, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq. I've met all three. They won't bite. They're articulate, intelligent, humorous, wonderful. What more could a candidate ask for, surrounded as he is by the dullards of official politics and fund-raising and all the rest of it?
Good God, come to think of it, what more could anyone ask for, then to spend time with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq?
My letter to the Detroit News:
Any bets on whether or not it gets published?
Posted by: Godefroi at July 8, 2008 12:46 PM
It's up.
Anyway, in response to Mr. Walid's ridiculous piece of fiction, the words of Jason Mattera immediately spring to mind.
Vote Obama, and let the anti-Jihadis in the GOP claim the party in 2010 and 2012. It won't happen if McCain gets elected, and even the Democrat party won't be home to anti-Jihadis if that happens.
Alternative - if the Loyalist party features a candidate, vote for him/her.
CAIR rep: Obama, McCain should condemn "Islamophobia" no what they should do is condem cair and ban it
McCain, to his credit, not only (more or less) correctly named our foe, but correctly linked our security and our success against the apparatus of terror to our independence from foreign petroleum.
Of course Hassan al-Banna and Mufti al-Husseini linked Islam to fascism long before Huckabee. I'd provide links as I did at Hot Air, but everyone here probably knows CAIR is directly linked to Hitler through al-Ikhwan Musilmoon (Muslim Brotherhood).
Walid's column needs a little editing:
the header should be "Obama, McCain should condemn Islam,"
the lead sentence should be "Now that Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have become the presumptive presidential nominees for the Republicans and Democrats, they should address how all bigotry, including Islam, hurts America."
and further down: "Islam, like other forms of bigotry, is un-American. Allowing it to grow unchallenged is opposed to our national values. . . ."
You see, Mr. Walid, one can write much more sensibly if one gets rid of one's "phobias".
Please sign the petition to the UN at the American (and European) Center for Law and Justice website opposing the OIC's proposal to ban "islamophobia" at:
https://www.aclj.org/Petition/Default.aspx?sc=3359&ac=1
Also note they are looking for others to link to their petition and that they have a presence in both New York and Brussels.
N'ObamaNation.
eve_anne_gelical,
I'm impressed by ACLJ's petition--will you contact Robert, asking him to display a link to it?
I also have a new "DEFEATJIHAD/Jihad Watch.org" bumper sticker story--posted by Darcy
Darcy, I get comments about mine often, or people ask me what it means. A reckless adolescent ran into my parked car at the grocery store a few weeks ago so I had to take it to a body shop for an estimate. The owner of the body shop was very curious about my bumper sticker and asked me what it meant. When I explained that "jihad" means islamic holy war or the effort by muslims to conquer the West and rule the entire world, he understood and said that both of his daughters are avid anti-islam activists. At least he understands that islam is bad news and that's encouraging. I was so thrilled to find a semi-cognizant fellow citizen that I'm going to let him fix my car!
I was at a convenience store in Atlanta last year and a lady ran all the way across the parking lot to ask me where I got the bumper sticker! She wrote down the JihadWatch web address so I'm sure she ordered some of her own. The bumper stickers definitely get noticed. The first one I had was black letters on a white background. I bought a new (black) car and ordered some more, which are blue on a white background! Oh well, maybe it's more noticeable since it doesn't match.
I'd agree with CAIR entirely, the day that CAIR comes out against anti-Semitism AND the anti-Semitic portions of the Qur'an and Hadiths.
Until then I'll take their demands as proof positive that we SHOULD be worried about Islam if not many or most of its members.
{^_^}
I also have a new "DEFEATJIHAD/Jihad Watch.org" bumper sticker story--posted by Darcy
Darcy, I get comments about mine often, or people ask me what it means. A reckless adolescent ran into my parked car at the grocery store a few weeks ago so I had to take it to a body shop for an estimate. The owner of the body shop was very curious about my bumper sticker and asked me what it meant. When I explained that "jihad" means islamic holy war or the effort by muslims to conquer the West and rule the entire world, he understood and said that both of his daughters are avid anti-islam activists. At least he understands that islam is bad news and that's encouraging. I was so thrilled to find a semi-cognizant fellow citizen that I'm going to let him fix my car!
I was at a convenience store in Atlanta last year and a lady ran all the way across the parking lot to ask me where I got the bumper sticker! She wrote down the JihadWatch web address so I'm sure she ordered some of her own. The bumper stickers definitely get noticed. The first one I had was black letters on a white background. I bought a new (black) car and ordered some more, which are blue on a white background! Oh well, maybe it's more noticeable since it doesn't match.
Posted by: Susanp at July 9, 2008 12:25 AM
Susan, I'm thrilled to see another JW'er with their own bumper sticker stories. You must have missed all my previous ones, 'cause I've shared about 7 stories here, which includes my husband's when he uses my vehicle. For example, on an overnight business trip to a nearby city, he drove my vehicle as it's newer. After dinner with clients, he emerges from the restaurant to find the sticker ripped off! Ripped off! Now, I wonder who did that?! I would have LOVED to have seen the perpetrator - whether it was a Mohammedan or an Apologist.
"When I explained that "jihad" means islamic holy war or the effort by muslims to conquer the West and rule the entire world..." --Susanp
That's just what I say, Susan. Islamic Holy War and the goal of World Domination. Sometimes I say World Hegemony. Either one!
"I bought a new (black) car and ordered some more, which are blue on a white background!" -Susan
My small suv is silver, and I've got the blue/white stickers, too.
Looking forward to more of your stories as they occur. Make sure I see 'em!
SusanP - who rips off bumper stickers?! I've seen many a "Ron Paul" bs and I certainly didn't go and rip 'em off!
I bet you the perp was Mohammedan.