Will ignoring and denying a problem make it go away? My latest in FrontPage:
A controversy has erupted over a mosque in New Hampshire that an investigator contends is preaching jihad. Instead of investigating, however, the local police chief has doubled down, claiming that the charges are just “Islamophobia.” Is he really willing to bet the safety of the local citizens on that?
The New Hampshire Union Leader broke the story several weeks ago, not by reporting on the investigation of the mosque, or even what was being claimed about it, but on the reaction from the mosque leaders and local law enforcement officials, both of whom agreed that the mosque had been unfairly accused. Since the Union Leader, however, did not detail the charges, there was no way to tell whether or not this was true. Then last Wednesday, investigative journalist James Simpson published the evidence at Bombthrowers, and made it clear: this mosque warrants investigation, and the police chief, Nick Willard, is derelict in his duty.
Simpson reports that investigator Dave Gaubatz found a great deal of material promoting jihad in the mosque, including a brochure entitled Jihad in Islam. Simpson writes: “This 33-page document makes clear that the goals of Islam are to subjugate the world. Under the heading What Jihad Really Is? (sic) it states:
In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. ‘Muslim’ is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And ‘Jihād’ refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective…
…Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet—not because the sovereignty over the earth should be wrested from one nation or several nations and vested in one particular nation, but because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare programme or what would be truer to say from ‘Islam’ which is the programme of well-being for all humanity. Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution and a composite term for the use of all these forces is ‘Jihad’. (p. 5)”
The Union Leader piece does quote Gaubatz saying: “On a scale of 1 -10, with 10 being the most extreme, I rate this mosque a 10.” Then it goes to the chairman of the Islamic Society of New Hampshire, Mohammed Ewiess, who “said these unsubstantiated charges are ‘full of lies’ and have spread distrust of his community.”
Unsubstantiated? Not really. Nor does the Union Leader bother to mention, and probably didn’t bother to find out, that the literature Gaubatz found in the mosque is not surprising: four separate studies since 1999 all found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. There are no countervailing studies that challenge these results. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi Muslim leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.”
Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.
In the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don’t teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism. Specifically: “A random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S. was conducted to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers. Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all. Mosques that presented as Sharia adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-Sharia-adherent counterparts. In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at Sharia-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshiper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-Sharia-adherent mosques. Fifty-eight percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who were known to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises.” That means that around 1,700 mosques in the U.S. are preaching hatred of infidels and justifying violence against them.
None of that is in the Union Leader article. All we get is this from Manchester, New Hamsphire Police Chief Nick Willard: “What [Gaubatz] wrote in this piece of paper is slanderous. I do not believe the mosque is a hotbed for terrorism. I don’t trust this gentleman’s research. I think he is trying to sell a book. I think the guy is a crackpot and I don’t believe we have those issues in this city.” The Union Leader stated: “Manchester Police Chief Nick Willard said his detective embedded in the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has no information that corroborates Gaubatz’s claims.”
Willard doesn’t mention, and probably doesn’t know, that the FBI is forbidden to study anything involving Islam in connection with terrorism, and so it wouldn’t know the danger signs to look for in a mosque even if those danger signs stabbed them with a four-foot sword while screaming “Allahu akbar.” Willard offers an argument from authority, the weakest of all arguments, in invoking the JTTF, without establishing that the JTTF is competent in this area. He then offers an ad hominem attack on Gaubatz, asserting (with what evidence?) that Gaubatz is just trying to sell a book and is a “crackpot.” This is a classic example of “‘Shut up!,’ he explained,” and lends credence to Gaubatz’s claims: clearly the Manchester Police Department doesn’t even want to consider the possibility that there may be problems with this mosque. So if there really are, what then?
Willard wasn’t alone. Alderman Chairman Patrick Long declared: “Personally this hate talk has no place in this city, that’s just my opinion. Alderman-at-Large Dan O’Neil said: “There is no need in the city of Manchester for hatred. I know this board won’t stand for it; our citizens won’t stand for it.”
Long and O’Neil ought to be ashamed of themselves, if they still have the capacity for shame, and ought to be voted out of office at the earliest possible opportunity. It is not “hatred” to raise legitimate concerns about what is taught in mosques, given the survey information above, as well as the fact that 80% of mosques in the U.S. are Saudi-funded, and the reality of Islam’s teachings on jihad, the rights of women, Jews, etc. To smear Gaubatz as spreading hate without any investigation of his specific assertions about the mosque is to do what they claim he is doing.
Willard added that Gaubatz “stokes the flames of fear, but he does so through hatred, bigotry and intolerance. His islamophobia has no place in our country and certainly no place in the fine city of Manchester that embraces diversity of all levels to include freedom of religion.”
“Islamophobia” is a propaganda term designed to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror. Willard’s statement here is a classic example of how it works. What if Gaubatz’s claims about the mosque are true, and this is the response he is getting? In the future, people will be afraid to speak up about what they may see going on in mosques, for fear of incurring charges of “hatred” and “Islamophobia.”
But Chief Willard needs to be put on notice: if Gaubatz’s charges are true, and you waved them away just by defaming him, then when it becomes clear that he was right, the responsibility for the devastation in Manchester will be on your head.
In a sane city, Willard would be forced to resign in disgrace. But like so many others in America today, Manchester, New Hampshire is not a sane city.
WPM says
Is Police Chief Willard appointee by the local elected leaders ? If so he can be removed by local elected leaders if he is not parroting the leaders of that towns official line. Who donated to their political campaigns and what connections to the Islamic leaders of the Mosque have to Aldermans O,Neil and Long that they feel they have to keep anyone from investigating or even sitting in on sermons under cover there. Do the elected leaders have business investments with the locals who run the Mosque? Do the elected officials have investments over seas? Instead of questioning the police chief question the people who appointed him. If there were rumors of someone renting a hall in the town for meetings of men covered in bedsheets screaming about Jews control the world and the pope controls the banking industry the local police would have at least a look see in on it. Maybe have someone local police officer with a warrant investigate if the rumors were true. Islam always have the three monkeys running the local government on their side, see no Islamic evil, hear no Islamic evil, speak no possible offense against evil Islamic practices.
JawsV says
“Islam always have the three monkeys running the local government on their side, see no Islamic evil, hear no Islamic evil, speak no possible offense against evil Islamic practices.”
Very good. Yes, they turn a blind eye.
For “speak” I would say, “speak no offense against evil Islam.”
Anne Smith says
So true. A blind eye is always turned. That is what happened in Rotherham, Rochdale and all the other towns where white under age girls were continually raped by organised Muslim gangs, despite appeals to the Police and counsellors.
The only ones to be arrested were a couple of father who tried to rescue their daughters – the Police arrested them, not the rapists.
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/rotherham-dads-were-arrested-after-tracking-down-abusers-1-6807187
JawsV says
The police chief is a know-nothing about Islam. It’s written all over his face. Dummkopf.
eagle Nest says
Police Chief Willard is simply a dumb bastard or is on the take with the Muslims in Manchester.
Dave says
Sixteen years since 911 and this idiot of a police chief doesn’t have the professional sense nor the curiosity to educate himself about the basics of Islam and how Mosques operate in the US. He should be dismissed for putting his community at risk and for his apparent incompetence.
By his intellectual passivity and negligence and through his public statements he is engaging in Islamic propaganda that is promoting a myth about the nature of Islam. He should be dismissed.
Kay says
At least our flags were at half mast on Monday. But unless you searched for it, did you hear any news about memorials for the heroes and for the thousands murdered?
Carlos Danger says
Very good points, Dave!
Patk Morrison says
Could the police chief at least familiarize himself with the Koran and then make a decision as to whether or not to further investigate?
John A. Marre says
New Hampshire was once a great place to be. I see the liberals have invaded and taken over. Real sad.
Westman says
“Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet—not because the sovereignty over the earth should be wrested from one nation or several nations and vested in one particular nation, but because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare programme or what would be truer to say from ‘Islam’ which is the programme of well-being for all humanity. Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution ..”
This could have been written by Karl Marx. Perhaps we should use a terminology that the liberals and police understand:
Islam is Communism and Jihad is its revolution.
Norger says
The problem lies with what othodox Islam in fact teaches. It seems unfathomable that a police chief in any American city could be this ignorant of the obvious threat, 16 years after 9/11, but we have truly regressed. If no Muslims in Manchester NH are (at present) actively engaged in killing non-Muslims. it necessarily follows that the Islamic theology being taught at this mosque is 100% benign. It is possible that this “see no evil” mentality is just for public consumption but I doubt it.
Wellington says
This police chief said that Manchester “embraces diversity.” This is always a bad sign when someone, like this police chief, uses this phrase seriously because what it invariably means is that no one can be criticized except white heterosexual males of European origin.
epistemology says
Exactly that’s what it comes up to. I’m terrified that even the country of the First Amendment isn’t much better when it’s about justified criticism of Islam than Western Europe, it’s disgusting
Dear friend thanks again for your kind words, you’re right Unity is strength and we need to stick together, that’s the only way to solve our problems. Take care and all the best to you and yours.
Carlos Danger says
Trump was elected to counter this sort of thing. If he’s too busy, maybe we can find someone else with time on their hands.
Judy says
If you were in his place could U keep up on everything?
mortimer says
Those who have not done the READING LIST of Islam, preposterously, are making policy about Islam… a highly complex and confusing subject. How is that non-experts present themselves as experts on Islam when they have not read, let alone studied Islam’s primary, foundation texts, the Sira, hadiths and Koran. Nor have they read the canonical commentaries, nor any modern text on jihad doctrine. So how can POLICE RECOGNIZE JIHAD if they have not STUDIED JIHAD?
Clearly, the NH police are UNSTUDIED, UNPREPARED and UNEQUIPPED to recognize jihad or assess the DANGER of jihad.
Bowen G says
Consider the Muslim committees in Great Britain that, in 2005, urged then–prime minister Tony Blair to replace Holocaust Memorial Day (dedicated to the Shoah) with Genocide Day. “The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims,” one committee member argued. “It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of [some] people are to be remembered more than others. It is a grievance that extremists are able to exploit.” Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Great Britain until 2006, added: “The message of the Holocaust was ‘never again’ and for that message to have practical effect on the world community it has to be inclusive. We can never have double standards in terms of human life. Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time.”
On the view of Islamic fundamentalists and many progressives, the Muslim should replace the Jew for another reason: the Jew has dishonored his status and become in turn a colonizer, with the creation of the State of Israel. The idealization of the Jew after the war prepared the subsequent smear campaign; in other words, the Judaizing of the Muslims entailed the Nazification of the Israelis. There is the good Jew of yesterday, eternally persecuted, and the bad Israeli who has taken hold in the Middle East, imperious and racist. Traverso makes the formulation candidly: in the past, he argues, Jews and blacks fought together as antifascists and anticolonialists; then the Jews broke through the color line and became “white”—that is, oppressors. Today’s true Jew wears the headdress and speaks Arabic; the other is an imposter and usurper. To quote one statement among thousands, here’s former French diplomat Stéphane Hessel, speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in 2011: “If we compare the German occupation with the present occupation of Palestine by the Israelis, then it was relatively inoffensive, apart from exceptional elements such as incarcerations, executions, internments, and the theft of works of art.”
Once the equivalence between Judeophobia and Islamophobia is established, the next step is to put in place the principle of elimination—a subtle but effective process of symbolic expropriation. It is our turn, say the Islamic fundamentalists. In this way, Islam is able to present itself as the creditor of humanity as a whole: we are in its debt because of the wrongs inflicted since the Crusades, the wound of colonization, and the occupation of Palestine by the Zionists—and finally because of the bad image from which the religion of the Prophet suffers.
How should we react to this semantic racket? By affirming that we must not misunderstand our debts. Europe has an obligation where Judaism is concerned, since it has been part of Europe’s history from its origins. Islam is part of the contemporary French and European landscape, yes, and thus has the right to our sympathy, to freedom of worship, to police protection, to appropriate places for prayer, and to respect. But it must in turn respect republican and secular rules, not claim an extraterritorial status with special rights, such as exemption from swimming and gymnastics for girls, prayer places within businesses, separate instruction, and various favors and privileges in hospitals. Believers must be protected, but so must unbelievers, apostates, and skeptics. I proposed as early as 2006 the creation of a vast support system for dissidents from Islam, just as we helped Soviet dissidents. We must advocate freedom of doctrinal criticism, too, just as we do for Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism. The point is not to make Europe Islamic but to make Islam European, so that it is one religion among others and might, someday, help spread tolerance and a renewal of critical thought to the rest of the umma.
This conception of a secular society that encompasses a large Muslim community—5 to 6 million individuals—distinguishes France from the Anglo-Saxon world, which tends to believe that it can protect itself from Islamist terrorist attacks through respect for cultural differences and noninterference in the internal affairs of communities. Yet this principle of noninterference didn’t prevent the terror attack in London that killed five in March 2017 or the Manchester massacre of May 2017 that killed 22. And British cities such as Bradford (where hundreds of copies of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses were burned in 1989, just as the Nazis burned “degenerate” books in Nuremberg in 1933) and Birmingham, ever more dominated by Muslim fundamentalists, have transformed into little emirates, stifling to friends of freedom. As for the United States, despite President Obama’s outreach to Islam in Cairo in 2009, the Muslim world still detests it, whatever it does, owing to the simple fact of its existence.
France is attacked not because it oppresses Muslims but because it liberates them from the hold of religion. It offers them a perspective that terrifies the devout—that of spiritual indifference, the right to believe or not to believe, as Jews and Christians are able to do. If France were this prison that some describe, how can one explain the fact that so many people from North Africa and the Middle East come to live there, day after day, as much for economic opportunities as for the freedoms they can enjoy, including the freedom finally to leave behind bigotry, rites, and the power of mosques and of imams? Let’s not forget that, for two centuries, since Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt in 1798, France has maintained close ties with the Arab-Muslim world and has at least the potential to become the leader of an Islamic Enlightenment, as the great orientalist Jacques Berque has suggested.
The notion of Islamophobia is meant to give the religion of the Prophet a status of exemption denied to other spiritual systems. Thus, we have the reprehensible law enacted by the Canadian Parliament this March that prohibits criticism of Islam, while other confessions still can be denigrated without any problem. Such a law is a poisoned gift that risks producing the opposite of what it intends, since it can incite anger and resentment against the believers of the crescent. To regularize the presence of Islam in free societies means giving the faith exactly the same status as other confessions: neither moronic demonizing nor blind idealizing. Muslims in free societies must accept what Jews and Christians have accepted: that it is not a superior religion that should benefit from advantages refused to other confessions. We must beware when fanaticism borrows the language of human rights and dresses up as a victim in order better to impose its grip on power. There is an old saying: the devil also likes to quote scripture.
Walk through the streets of any big European or American city, and you will pass innumerable Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, and evangelical churches, Hindu temples, synagogues, mosques, pagodas, and on and on. This peaceful cohabitation of diverse expressions of the divine is a wonder of the West. “When there is only one religion, tyranny rules; when there are two, religious war reigns; when there are many, liberty comes,” Voltaire observed. The best that we can wish for Islam is not “phobia” or “philia” but a benevolent indifference in a spiritual marketplace, open to all beliefs. But it is precisely this indifference that the fundamentalists want to eradicate. It cannot be the equal of other faiths, since it believes itself superior to them all. This is the core of the problem.
Pascal Bruckner is a French writer and philosopher. His article was translated by Alexis Cornel.
Keith Jordan says
I live near New Hampshire, in Maine, and lately Jehovah’s Witnesses are coming to my door and telling me that Islam is a good religion, and Mohammed was a good man. They are willing to argue in favor of Islam. Does anybody here know about this? Has anybody investigated?
Wellington says
Keith Jordan:
No, I didn’t know about this but then Jehovah Witnesses are already missing a few toys in the attic, though the positive here is that they are not violent at all. I have to wonder if these people know that in Islamic theology Jesus is one of the greater Muslim prophets before the last and greatest of them, Mohammed, and that at the end of the world Jesus is going to come back and throw all the Christians into Hell for deifying Him. Perhaps next time you come across a Jehovah person or two you might want to mention this to them. Get their reaction and all that.
I understand as well that Mormons also honor Mohammed as a prophet. Like Jehovah Witnesses Mormons are a little strange but not violent, but why they would honor a brutal psychopath like Mohammed is beyond me. Perhaps it’s due to just plain ignorance. Don’t know for sure.
Carolyne says
Mormons have been violent. When they were establishing their base in Utah they massacred a wagon train. men women and children, while dressed as American Indians. They kept as many non-Mormons out of Utah as they were able.
Joseph Smith based this “Religion” on a message which he could see on the bottom of a hat through rocks, a popular “Medicine show” trick at the time. He also bought some mummy cases from a traveling carnival and said that he could read the hieroglyphics on the cases as “Reformed Egyptian.” They were no such thing. They were regular funerary writings. There were some golden tablets given to him by the angel, “Moroni” Which no one else ever saw. You can see a statue of this said angel “Moroni” on the steeple of the Mormon temple in Washington DC and perhaps other places. And then there’s the white salamander………..
Native jo says
Like all the others, he will live to regret those words.
Carolyne says
I attempted to email this person, Willard, but as is so ften the case, email was refused. I am never rude and never do I threaten anyone, just explain the tenets of Islam as I know them and tell the person to whom I am writing that he/she would do well to read about Islam.
I wrote to LE in Shrewsbury England some weeks ago about their anti=common sense actions and got an automated reply that they would answer soon. I’m still waiting. The Fire Chief who fired one of his employees did write me back, saying that there were other facts which were not made public which led to the firing. He did answer and he was very polite. But I don’t know how to get through to these people.
JIM says
KEEP ELECTING DEMOCRATS NH …now just days later we find some moslem brought to America by Ayatollah obama and allowed to relocated in Nashua NH by Shaheen Hassan and Kuster has molested 4 young girls ..the girls are ALL most likley islamophobic though, right chief willard ..you worthless pile of camel dung REMEMBER YOU GET WHAT YOU VOTE FOR