The Southern Poverty Law Center has been discredited mainly by the behavior of its top executives, especially Morris Dees. Its extraordinarily well-paid executives, like those who direct CAIR, have made free with their charges of “islamophobia,” which they use to describe, in order to undermine, any effective islamocriticism. They are also sloppy in making other charges. In one notorious case, the SPLC was sued by Maajid Nawaz, a well-known former radical who became a moderate Muslim, for having included him in a list of “Anti-Muslim Extremists.” The SPLC lost, and had to pay Nawaz $3.375 million dollars and issue a public apology for describing him as “an anti-Muslim extremist.” .
Conservative journalist Marc Thiessen tells the story:
After years of smearing good people with false charges of bigotry, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has finally been held to account. A former Islamic radical named Maajid Nawaz sued the center for including him in its bogus “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,” and this week [in June 2018] SPLC agreed to pay him a $3.375 million settlement and issued a public apology.
The SPLC is a once-storied organization that did important work filing civil rights lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. But it has become a caricature of itself, labeling virtually anyone who does not fall in line with its left-wing ideology an “extremist” or “hate group.”
Nawaz is a case in point. Since abandoning Islamic radicalism, he has advised three British prime ministers and created the Quilliam Foundation, to fight extremism. He is not anti-Muslim. He is a Muslim and has argued that “Islam is a religion of peace.”
So how did he end up in the SPLC’s pseudo-guide to anti-Muslim bigots? His crime, apparently, is that he has become a leading critic of the radical Islamist ideology he once embraced. Thanks to his courage, the SPLC has been forced to pay a multimillion-dollar penalty and acknowledge in a statement that it was “wrong” and that Nawaz has “made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism.”
Let’s hope this settlement is the first of many, because this is not the first time the SPLC has done this. In 2010, it placed the Family Research Council (FRC) — a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage — on its “hate map.” Two years later, a gunman walked into the FRC headquarters with the intention to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces.” He told the FBI that he had used the SPLC website to pick his target.
Unfortunately, many in the media still take the SPLC seriously. Last year, ABC News ran a story headlined: “Jeff Sessions addresses ‘anti-LGBT hate group,’ ” in which it reported that “Sessions addressed members of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was designated an ‘anti-LGBT hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2016.” The Alliance Defending Freedom is a respected organization of conservative lawyers dedicated to defending religious liberty, and it just argued a case before the Supreme Court, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. It won, 7 to 2. It is not a “hate group.” If anything, it is fighting anti-Christian hate.
The SPLC has had a long run, but that run as a virtue-signalling non-profit, fighting the good fight against racism and lavishly supported by Northern liberals still under the impression that it is fighting the KKK, and other Southern racists, has come to an end. Too many scandals, involving money, sex, and even racial discrimination, finally caused the SPLC to fire their long-time director, Morris Dees, this past March. Though the SPLC did not give the reasons for Dees’s firing, it is known that he was charged with “mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism,” which threatened SPLC’s moral authority and integrity. A former employee said that Dees had a “reputation for hitting on young women” and that his ouster came “amid a staff revolt over the mistreatment of non-white and female employees” by Dees and the SPLC leadership. There was also the question of the enormous sums – many hundreds of thousands of dollars annually — Dees managed to have the SPLC pay him, even though he has been semi-retired for the past 15 years. He is not the only SPLC executive to be compensated so highly. The SPLC has an endowment of $450 million, but it is said to spend a very small proportion of that on its programs and lower-level employees.
Even the left-leaning Washington Post, for so many decades a supporter of the SPLC, declared in an editorial that “the SPLC has lost all credibility.” Yet it is this SPLC, with such a record, that continues unchallenged to malign Jihad Watch, so that WBUR can airily refer to the “now discredited Jihad Watch.” Discredited” by whom? By CAIR, with its Hamas-supporting Executive Director, and by the “now discredited” SPLC.
WBUR continues:
“We’ve seen throughout history that hateful rhetoric inspires violence,” Jetpac’s executive director, Mohammed Missouri, said in a statement. [Jetpac describes itself as a group “committed to empowering American Muslims in the democratic process. It is very proud of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar”]
“Councilor Rotondo has the right to say what he wants on his own time, but Revere residents also have a right to know if he’s using any public resources as a city councilor to promote hatred of Muslims.”
Yes, we have seen throughout history “hateful rhetoric” that “inspires violence.” But the most hateful rhetoric coming from any major religious faith is that which is to be found in the Qur’an, where Muslims are told that non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings.” They are further told not to take Christians or Jews as friends, “for they are friends only with each other.” Does Mohammed Missouri have any comment to make on those verses? Let’s remember, too, the 109 verses in the Qur’an that command Muslims to wage violent Jihad. Here are a few of the Qur’anic verses that have had devastating consequences for Infidels over the past 1,400 years:
2:191. And kill them [the Infidels] wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing. And fight not with them at Al-Masjid-al-Haram, unless they fight you there. But if they attack you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.
2:192. But if they cease, then Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
2:193. And fight them [the Infidels] until there is no more Fitnah and worship is for Allah. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)
4:89. They wish that you reject Faith, as they have rejected (Faith), and thus that you all become equal. So take not Auliya’ (protectors or friends) from them, till they emigrate in the Way of Allah. But if they turn back (from Islam), take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them, and take neither Auliya’ (protectors or friends) nor helpers from them.
8:12. Your Lord inspired the angels: I will cast terror into the hearts of those who have disbelieved, so strike them over the necks, and smite over all their fingers and toes…
8:60. And make ready against them all [the Infidels] you can of power, including steeds of war to threaten the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides whom, you may not know but whom Allah does know…
9:5. Then when the Sacred Months have passed, then kill the Mushrikun [the Idolaters] wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform Salat, and give Zakat, then leave their way free.
9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
This is a very small, but representative, sample of the “rhetoric” – that is, the Qur’anic commands – that have inspired violent Jihadis over the past 1,400 years. One would like to present these examples of such murderous “rhetoric” to Muhammad Missouri, for his comment.
John Robbins, executive director of the council’s Massachusetts chapter — the state’s largest Muslim advocacy organization — said the posts “demonstrate a disturbing pattern of animosity against Muslims.”
Rotondo should tell John Robbins that his posts do not demonstrate “a pattern of animosity against Muslims,” but rather, a desire to understand, and to share with others, his deepening understanding, of Islam, based primarily on the texts. Does Robbins find that inadmissible? Too bad. As for the single YouTube video to which Rotondo posted a link, in which someone mentions that Portland, Maine is “overrun” with migrants, this was a statement of fact, and furthermore, was not a description that included only Muslims.
That won’t satisfy the taqiyya masters at CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center, consumed as they appear to be with their witch-hunt for “islamophobes.” But for the fair-minded, those willing to take up Rotondo’s challenge to read the Qur’an and other Islamic texts, and to do so with JW-supplied commentary, it might be hair-raisingly enlightening. That’s exactly what is needed: both the hair-raising and the enlightenment.
mortimer says
This is how freedom of expression is removed in preparation for a great persecution.
mortimer says
Just using slanderous adjectives, does not prove any wrongdoing, but unlearned people might think so. This is the Stalinist technique … ‘Don’t listen to him. He’s a counter-revolutionary, capitalist roader.’ The libel may not make any sense to a common person, but it sounds scary and an added threat of ‘smashing’ or ‘crushing’ such people is implied violence towards you if you step out of the party line.
I have found I can open people’s minds by sticking to the facts, namely, that 35% of Muslims are non-practicing and don’t wish to have Sharia law at all; 65% of Muslims want Sharia law to some degree; and 15% of Muslims (one out of six or less) support a jihad terror group; less than one percent of Muslims are involved in jihad activities. This fraction of 1% cause 3 to 4 deadly jihad attacks every day of the year (a yearly total of well over a thousand deadly attacks and with a total yearly death toll of over 18,000 killed from jihad attacks. In addition, many more thousands of people are permanently injured by jihad attacks and lose loved ones, parents or children. Jihad can happen almost anywhere, at the theater, at restaurant, at the shopping mall or at a train station … and even while walking down a street.
When jihad can be described as something that can happen to them personally, it takes on a more real and less theoretical aspect.
In addition, it should be pointed out that there is no way to distinguish a jihadi from another Muslim, because the jihadists hide their intentions from everyone.
By sticking to facts without using ‘your opinion’, you will make more people reconsider their uncritical acceptance of the Leftist narrative about ‘benign’ Islam.
I conclude that at least 35% of Muslims are simply ignoring most or all Islamic doctrines including jihad which is one of the six pillars of Islam and the one that is considered the highest in value.
Lydia Church says
“Discredited Anti-muslim groups” is as oxymoronic a term as “islamophobia” is!
Angemon says
As “moderate” as Tariq Ramadan, I’d say…