Selling the Big Lie to unwitting students
Islamic supremacist Boy Reza Aslan preaches hate in Love Auditorium at Colgate University, blaming none other than Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller for the rise in "anti-Muslim sentiment" in the U.S. since 9/11. His claims are worth examining, since the "Islamophobia" tactic (a strategy that the Muslim Brotherhood originated) continues to be a favorite of the Left and the mainstream media, and Reza's use of it is revealing of what they're trying to do. "Best-Selling Author Reza Aslan Lectures on Islamophobia," by Amanda Golden for the Colgate University Maroon-News, February 16:
On Monday evening in Love Auditorium, Colgate welcomed Reza Aslan, author of Ten Years Later: Fighting Islamophobia and Understanding Muslims, to campus. He addressed a full house and concluded the talk with a book signing. Aslan, who is the Chief Executive Officer of BoomGen Studios, centered his lecture on the ideas of rising Islamophobia and overall anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States. His previous work, No god but God, was an international bestseller.
Aslan began his talk by speaking about his own identity within a societal context, saying that he and his family left Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Because of the standing Iran had in the United States after the Iranian Hostage Crisis, he spent most of the early 1980s trying to assimilate into American culture. He found being Iranian in America at the time was not easy.
Easier than being American in Iran.
Aslan, through his own experiences of cultural identity, said that he believed there to be a "malleable American identity that allows for different cultures to easily absorb into the national American heritage." He said that even after 9/11, he still felt at home in America.
"Everyone thought there would be an enormous backlash against Muslims," Aslan said, "but there was actually an enormous amount of unity between different faiths that rallied to the side and cause of Muslims after 9/11."
Actually, no one thought there would be an enormous backlash against Muslims except the Islamic supremacist groups and Leftist media hacks who longed for that backlash so as to use it to promote privileged victim status for Muslims and deflect attention away from jihad terror activity. And Islamic supremacist groups like Hamas-linked CAIR are still trying to convince the American people that such a backlash did occur and is still occurring: that's why Hamas-linked CAIR and other Muslims have not hesitated even to fabricate "hate crimes." Thus Reza's admission that there was actually no such backlash is likely to get him a few scolding phone calls from his Islamic supremacist masters.
Aslan addressed the growing unease among many Americans.
"Anti-Muslim sentiment is at all-time highs," he said. "Far higher today than they were in the immediate aftermath of 9/11."
Aslan shared that these sentiments are almost 14 percent higher today than they were 10 years earlier.
"Attitudes towards Muslims in the United States are getting progressively more and more bigoted," he said. "Two-thirds of Americans don't think Muslims should have the same rights or civil liberties as non-Muslims."
Aslan routinely lies about the positions of his opponents -- apparently the real points they make are beyond his meager intellectual abilities to answer, so he has to resort to setting up straw men, and does so regularly. No one of any prominence in the anti-Sharia movement actually wants to deprive Muslims of rights or civil liberties. They just don't want to allow Islamic supremacists to subvert our Constitutional rights and civil liberties under the guise of exercising them, by asserting elements of Sharia in the U.S. and demanding that where Islamic law and American law conflict, American law must give way. They want to stop Muslims from forcing non-Muslims to abide by Sharia provisions -- such as in Pennsylvania just recently, where Muslim leaders are threatening Muslim shop owners to get them to stop selling alcohol, tobacco and pork, thereby at very least inconveniencing must of these shops' non-Muslim clientele.
Aslan spoke extensively on how he believed that this surge in anti-Muslim sentiment is not a naturally evolving phenomenon.
"It is not the result of a slow-moving grassroots sentiment," he said. "On the contrary, this is the result of a very well-organized, well-funded campaign by a handful of far-right extremist groups (Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America) to convince Americans that Islam is the enemy."
Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America: that's essentially Pamela Geller and me. Did Aslan actually expect his marks at Colgate to believe that two people are responsible for the alleged "surge in anti-Muslim sentiment"? While I appreciate his estimation of our extraordinary powers, and perceive how large we must loom in his fever dreams, in reality, we ain't that good. Any actual rise in "anti-Muslim sentiment," or in rightful suspicion of Islamic jihadists and supremacists, is not due to anything we have done, but rather to the activities of Muslims such as Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; and Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of Islam and motivated by its texts and teachings -- all in the U.S. in the last couple of years.
Recently, seven funders have spent almost $40 million within the Islamophobia industry to create fear-mongering reports about the dangers of Islam and Muslims in America, Aslan explained.
Aslan didn't make clear, for obvious reasons, that this $40 million was distributed among eight organizations over a period of nine years. That's an average of $555,555 per organization per year -- and even though I am mentioned in the report, I have never had that kind of funding for any year since I began Jihad Watch. Or even a third of that much. Neither has SIOA. Aslan's chief bogeymen have been operating on a pittance compared to the hard-Left Center for American Progress, which originated the "Islamophobia" report. Its budget for 2009 alone was $38,187,695. So Aslan would have us believe that there is an "Islamophobia industry"? An Islamic supremacist anti-"Islamophobia" industry, sure. But not an "Islamophobia" industry.
The reports are then fed into the echo chamber and served to a handful of media outlets that consequentially invite people who wrote the reports onto their news shows to confirm and cite the information. The echo chamber, he said, becomes news, and is then spread to the general public and then is picked up by political leaders. It is then fully part of the mainstream of American society and the rhetoric of Muslims. Aslan said that this is what happened with the "Mosque at Ground Zero" last year as well as the reports surrounding the "Sharia-ization of America."
This is a far more accurate depiction of the symbiosis between the Leftists and Islamic supremacists and the mainstream media (witness Reza's own frequent appearances on Colbert, Jon Stewart, Christiane Amanpour, NPR, etc.) than anything on the Right. Most of the conservative-leaning media is populated by cowards and venal self-seekers who would sooner sell their own mothers than feature anyone whom the Left has targeted for demonization, marginalization, and destruction.
"Studies have shown that the single greatest determinant to your views on Islam is whether you watch Fox News or not," Aslan said. "Fox News watchers have a worse view of Islam than tea-partiers who don't watch it."
Aslan pulls "studies" out of thin air, ignores all requests for documentation, and then goes on to the next stop in his "Islamophobia" traveling clown show and does it again. But even if such "studies" did exist, what exactly would they prove? They might indicate that Fox News informs its viewers more fully and accurately about the jihad threat and Islamic supremacism than do other networks. They might just mean that Fox tells the truth where the others don't.
Aslan shared that there are now 23 states that have either passed legislation or are in the process of passing legislation banning Sharia, which is the set of laws by which Islam societies are governed. Sharia has itself become a symbol of Islam, and has been associated with extremist leadership promoting an Islamic lifestyle.
"Every single one of those laws will be repealed," Aslan said. "The first to pass in Oklahoma has already been repealed because it's anti-constitutional. We can't allow one religious community not have the same rights as another. The court of appeals have overturned it in Oklahoma and will for all the other ones."
The law in Oklahoma was indeed blocked, but Aslan should not be so sanguine about the others falling as well. The Oklahoma law was poorly written, and Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists immediately argued before a Leftist judge that the law would infringe upon Muslims' rights -- as Aslan does here. However, in reality, no one cares about individual Muslim religious practice or wants to restrict it, and the judge should have known that the purpose of the law was not to stop Muslims from getting married in Islamic religious ceremonies and the like, but to stop the political and supremacist aspects of Islam that infringe upon the rights and freedoms of non-Muslims. Newer versions of the law, introduced in other states, make this clear.
Going off this, Aslan spoke about the motives that drive the Islamophobia network. He addressed how in actuality, Muslims are the most loyal American religious group. A recent Gallup poll shows that 93 percent of Muslims say they are loyal to America, and that Muslim-Americans are most likely out of any major faith in the U.S. to reject violent attacks against citizens.
"There are more planned attacks against the US by homegrown Christian militias than Muslims of any nationality," Aslan said. "There is no reason to think there has been a sudden spike in homegrown national terrorism, but facts and data are irrelevant in issues of bigotry."
The claim that "there are more planned attacks against the US by homegrown Christian militias than Muslims of any nationality" is pure fabrication. Can Aslan produce a list of such attacks by Christian militias over the last few years comparable to my list of jihad plots and attacks above (and my list isn't even complete)? Of course he cannot and will not. He has learned the technique of the Big Lie very well.
Aslan said that Islam has become the dumping ground for all things uncomfortable."Islam has become otherwise a receptacle where Americans are throwing their fears about the economy, changing racial landscape, etc. – whatever is fearful, foreign, exotic, unfamiliar is increasingly being tagged as Islam."
Here again, Aslan cannot or will not depict his opposition accurately. In reality, concerns about jihad and Islamic supremacism have nothing to do with the economy, or race, or what is "fearful, foreign, exotic, unfamiliar." They have to do with a desire to protect our lives and our freedoms from a system of law and governance that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women and non-Muslims.
Aslan returned to his earlier point about the power of the American identity in order to address the stigmas that are so often associated with it.
"The miraculous thing about the American identity is that it can absorb different ideas and cultures," he said. "The problem is that in times of societal stress, that identity gets tested. We are certainly in one of those times. A lot of Americans are waking up to an America that they don't recognize."
He explained that while education is a powerful tool in creating the change necessary to alter peoples' perceptions of their Islamophobia, he doesn't feel it is enough.
"Data does not change peoples' minds," Aslan said. "Information does not change peoples' minds."...
Aslan apparently doesn't even believe that himself, since he lies so often and does his best to keep people from getting accurate information about Islam and jihad.
About to get a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card?
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So terribly, terribly haram