In November 2008, Kenneth Timmerman reported that the National Iranian American Council “has been lobbying Congress to win support for an agenda that mirrors the goals of the Tehran regime. The name of this group itself is misleading. Rather than assemble a broad cross-section of Iranian-Americans, most of whom came to this country to escape the totalitarian clutches of the Islamic dictatorship, NIAC has alienated them by brazenly portraying the Tehran regime as moderate, reasonable, and misunderstood.”
Persian Journal reported in 2007 that “NIAC and its main spokesman, Trita Parsi, have become apologists for the regime in Tehran.”
The adorably tousle-headed faux moderate Muslim spokesman Reza Aslan is a Board member of the National Iranian American Council. It’s no wonder, then, that Aslan wants Barack Obama to “stand up to Israel” and make a deal with Tehran’s genocidally-inclined antisemite, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Aslan is also, predictably enough, clearly afraid of the growing resistance to the stealth jihad and creeping Sharia in the U.S.. However, since he can’t very well win friends and influence people even among the Leftists he regularly dupes at the Daily Beast by openly plumping for a religio-political system that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women and non-Muslims, he resorts to the familiar refuge of the intellectually and morally bankrupt: character assassination of those who are sounding the alarm for freedom and against Sharia.
“America’s Sharia Hysteria,” by Reza Aslan in the Daily Beast, October 12:
The loudest and most hysterical voice among the Muslims-are-taking-over-America chorus belongs to the pseudo-scholar and professional noise-maker Robert Spencer who, along with Pamela Geller–most famous for her theory that Obama is Malcom [sic] X’s bastard Muslim love-child–formed the organization behind the anti-mosque protests that have erupted all over the country. Spencer is convinced that Sharia has begun to take over the American legal system. His proof? The new Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan.
Note that Aslan, like the Leftist pseudo-journalist Justin Elliott of Salon, links to Gawker, not to Atlas Shrugs. If this tacky taqiyya practitioner had bothered to do some fact-checking, Aslan might have found this statement from Pamela Geller on the actual post in question: “The ‘Atlas says that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child’ charge has gone viral among leftards and lizards. The only problem with it is that it is false. I am not the author of this post, and I posted it because the writer did a spectacular job documenting Obama’s many connections with the Far Left. The Malcolm X claim is one minor part of this story, and was of interest to me principally as part of the writer’s documentation that Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been where the Obama camp says she was at various times. I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did — but there remain many, many unanswered questions about his early life and upbringing.”
But what cares Reza Aslan for truth or accuracy? Absolutely nothing. Read on.
In an interview with the conservative website The Daily Caller, Spencer claimed that Kagan “would knowingly and wittingly abet the advance of Sharia,” in her tenure as Supreme Court justice because, as a liberal, she shares with Muslims “a hatred of the West and Western civilization.”
Aslan doesn’t tell you, unsurprisingly, that as dean of Harvard Law School, according to former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, Kagan “became the champion of sharia.” McCarthy explained: “While Kagan was at the law school, her patron, Harvard’s president Larry Summers, accepted a stunning $20 million donation for the creation of a program of studies to lionize Islam’s history and jurisprudence. The cash came from the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire investor whose attempted $10 million contribution to the Twin Towers fund had been refused by New York mayor Rudy Giuliani when bin Talal blamed the 9/11 atrocities on American foreign policy. Summers, the anti-Giuliani, not only took the money but named the program and an endowed professorship in the prince’s honor. And why not? By then, as Ben Shapiro reported, Harvard’s law school already had three Saudi-funded institutions devoted to the study of sharia….Yet there were no condemnations from Dean Kagan over the prince’s lavish gift. To the contrary, she proceeded to forge the law school’s ‘Islamic Finance Project.’ Its purpose is to promote sharia compliance in the U.S. financial sector.”
Aslan mentions none of this, instead opting to give the easy marks who read his Daily Beast column the idea that I made up the material about Kagan out of whole cloth. Accuracy, you see, would get in the way of a good smear.
Now, Spencer also believes that the decision by Campbell Soup to create a line of halal soups to accompany its kosher line is another sign of the Muslim takeover of America (“why is Campbell’s Soup rushing to do [Muslims’] bidding?” Spencer wrote in his blog. “M-M-Muslim Brotherhood Good?”), so he is obviously a nut who should not be taken seriously on any subject.
Aslan hopes people won’t take me seriously, because I am telling the truth about him. And I am going to continue to do so. His commitment to the truth, meanwhile, is not quite so absolute. If Aslan were interested in accurate reporting instead of defamation and personal destruction, he might have noticed that on October 9, I wrote this about the halal Campbell’s Soup: “Actually, I couldn’t care less if Campbell’s Soup introduces a halal line: if there are Muslims in Canada who will buy the soup, then that’s the free market for you. Nor is it a sign of Sharia coming to America, unless Campbell’s is planning to make all of its products halal, which it is not.”
So not only did I not say that the halal soup was “another sign of the Muslim takeover of America,” I actually said directly and explicitly that it wasn’t.
Note also how this execrable libel artist alters a quote from me. He says that I said this: “why is Campbell’s Soup rushing to do [Muslims’] bidding?” Go back to the source, however, and you find this: “ISNA has admitted ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. So why is Campbell’s Soup rushing to do its bidding?” So Aslan took a clear reference to Hamas-linked ISNA and altered it to appear as if I was referring to all Muslims.
Over the years, I’ve run into quite a few Islamic supremacist liars and deceivers. Few have been as vile and inept at their deception as Reza Aslan. I would, nonetheless, happily meet him in debate in an open forum. But I know that he won’t, because his lies would be exposed.
UPDATE: I’ve now tried twice to post a link to this exposure of Aslan’s lies at the Daily Beast, but neither of my comments has shown up. Approving the comments yourself over there, Reza? Meanwhile, Aslan’s article went out in today’s “American Muslim News Briefs” mailing from Hamas-linked CAIR. Will the vaunted moderate repudiate the support of this Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood group? I won’t be holding my breath.