Anti-Mosque protest in TennesseeSean Hannity doesn't understand or is just out to promote propaganda against Islam. Hannity for instance refuses to allow his guest to explain anything to him about Sharia . She tries to explain that Sharia is handled differently from one nation to another. She attempts to explain that such religious law of Islam or Judaism etc. are permitted as long as they don't contravene US Law and its constitution.
Hugh Hewitt & Sean Hannity disrespect Muslim Guest Jahan Harney accusing her of trying to deceive the public On Sharia Law In The U.S. Hewitt takes for granted thathe principles of Sharia Law are barbaric and evil and UnAmerican refering to a few extreme examples of the application of Sharia Law. Hewitt even brings his and Sean hannity's pro-Israel stance and implies that since Jahan is a Muslim she must of course be anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. They also miss the point that the referendum held in Oklahoma to prevent the use of Sharia Law is really just another attack on Muslim Americans and is an expression of Religious Intolerance.. Note how Hugh Hewitt in his disrespect for their Muslim guest says he will speak slowly to explain Sharia Law to her when she is in fact a Muslim. Meanwhile whenever she speaks Hannity Hewitt just laugh at her and cut her off mid-sentence. This again is what passes as a rational fair open-minded discussion on Fox News and in most of the mainstream Media in America today. Jahan Harney
Why on Earth Would Americans Vote the Old Bush-Cheney Agenda Back into Power? Europeans Are Perplexed
Even conservatives in Europe are scratching their heads over their transatlantic allies who appear to hate the idea of cheaper, universal health care. By Steven Hill Alternet, Nov. 12, 2010
For several weeks before the recent U.S. election, there was much nervous speculation among Europeans as they watched the fluctuations of the poll numbers. Now that the results are in, Europeans are perplexed by this turn back toward the politics of the Bush-Cheney era.
Like the rest of the world, Europe cheered the election of Barack Obama as a change from the economic and foreign policy disasters of his predecessor. Yet just two years later the US government is returning to Bush-lite. How could this be, Europeans are wondering? The American electorate is looking like a coyote with its leg caught in a trap, chewing its own leg off to get out of the trap.
Europeans are puzzled by the success of the populist Tea Party movement, which seemingly wants to roll back the last two years and return to how things were at the end of the Bush-Cheney years. Even conservatives in Europe are scratching their heads over their transatlantic allies -- “Americans don’t want health care??? How can these Tea Party people say ‘Get government out of my Medicare -- don’t they know Medicare IS a government program???”
Another bit of Mainstream US media craziness as they try to chummy up to the Radical Religious Right and the Ultraconservatives - rational discourse out while the loons get respect.
AP Washington Post blog argues Obama to blame for Muslim smears By Alex Pareene at Salon.com nov. 15, 2010
Here is a very interesting and provocative column in the Washington Post about how it is Barack Obama's fault that so many people think he's a Muslim, because Obama has been "circumspect about his religion" and he refuses to release his elementary school grades. It is basically an intro to "respectable" crypto-birtherism, in which you repeat discredited conspiracy theories about the president's background while being careful to note that you totally believe him when he claims to be a Christian.
The column, by law professor Ronald Rychlak, uses a number of context-free quotes that most likely came directly from some chain e-mail. (Or World Net Daily.) He says Obama's "support for the Ground Zero Mosque also positioned him on the side of Islam." (The religion of a billion people has "a side" and it is in apparent opposition to the "side" of Americans, I guess?)
Of course, this isn't a column in the print edition (that's still reserved for torture apologists and run-of-the-mill liars). This little disquisition on Obama's Otherness was posted as part of the Post's "On Faith" project, an online-only experiment in giving Sally Quinn, wife of Post "vice president-at-large" Ben Bradlee, something to do with her time.
Meanwhile Americans are acting rather peculiar insisting on legislation to enshrine the notion that all Americans put their trust in God? not homeland security, not the police , the military etc.
Kentucky's National Defense Strategy: "Reliance on Almighty God"
Members of the Kentucky House of Representatives and Senate are demanding the state acknowledge "reliance upon Almighty God" in its Homeland Security department. Church & State Magazine via Alternet, Nov. 14, 2010
Nearly every member of the Kentucky House of Representatives and Senate has signed a court brief demanding that the state be permitted to acknowledge “reliance upon Almighty God” in its Homeland Security department.
The controversy started last year after Franklin Circuit Court ruled that provisions in two laws requiring the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge God were a violation of church-state separation.
The first law, passed in 2002, contains a “legislative finding” declaring that the “safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”
The second law, passed in 2006, goes a good bit further. It requires the Homeland Security Office to publicize the state’s “dependence on Almighty God” in agency educational and training material and mandates that a permanent plaque acknowledging God be posted at the department’s Emergency Operations Center.
The American Atheists v. Commonwealth of Kentucky case is on appeal, and the lawmakers have decided to weigh in. Ninety-six of the state’s 100 House members signed one brief while 35 of 38 state senators signed another.
The brief filed by the senators was written in part by Roy Moore, former chief justice of Alabama. Moore was ousted from the state’s high court in 2003 after he defied a federal court order to remove a 2.5-ton Ten Commandments monument from the judicial building in Montgomery.
Moore’s brief argues that the U.S. Supreme Court has misconstrued decades of church-state law and asserts that the First Amendment prohibits only the establishment of a national church.
The brief filed by the state representatives cites four antiquated Supreme Court rulings, some from the 19th century, in which justices referred to the United States as a Christian nation.
One of the few legislators who didn’t sign on told the Louisville Courier-Journal that he found the exercise offensive.
“We really do not depend on God for our physical security,” Rep. Jim Wayne, a Louisville Democrat who is Catholic, said. “We really continue to believe we can master that on our own with arms and spending about 50 cents of every tax dollar to the federal government to build up the American military-industrial complex. That to me is a bit of idolatry right there.”
Meanwhile the citizens of Murfreesboro protest the building of a Mosque in their town because the professional Anti-Muslims in the Media and on the internet have convinced them that Muslim Americans do not have the same rights as other Americans. Fox News, the GOP, the American Religious Right and Islamophobes such as Robert Spencer, Pam Geller, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich have been hammering away attacking Islam as if Islam were the cause of all of America's problems social, economic, political including it's domestic and foreign policy and is therefore a threat to the United States. These Islamophobes erroneously compare Islam to Nazism and Stalinism etc. On the flip side the Islamophobes erroneously claim that Christianity and Judaism have a history of tolerance and peaceful coexistence. Their propaganda tactics appear to be working as the mainstream Media has adopted the Islamophobes message of hate and intolerance . Soon Hannity and the gang of uberconservative thugs will be insistin on loyalty oathes be taken by Muslim Americans and that they have their freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of movement and freedom of association be restricted to defend America in their view from these "Stealth Jihadists".
The people of Murfreesboro have bought into the Islamophobes fear mongering and so : claim that Islam is a political ideology and not a religion and so does not deserve the same respect as other religions.
and They believe that the building of more Mosques in America is an attempt by Muslims to take over America.
and: They believe Islam preaches violence and hatred of all other religions .
and they have come to believe the prophet Muhammad was a sexual pervert and a hater of women and that Islamic principles demand the destruction of all Jews and Christians.
And : These citizens have been duped into believing that President Obama is a secret Muslim and is setting policies to make America into an Islamic state.
and : They believe that all forms of Sharia Law are brutal, barbaric and are unjust.
Hearing over Tenn. mosque turns into 'circus' of attacks on Islam, vague rumors of Muslim plot LA Times Nov. 11, 2010
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) — Islam is suddenly on trial in a booming Nashville suburb, where opponents of a new mosque have spent six days in court trying to link it to what they claim is a conspiracy to take over America by imposing restrictive religious rule.
The hearing is supposed to be about whether Rutherford County officials violated Tennessee's open meetings law when they approved the mosque's site plan. Instead, plaintiff's attorney Joe Brandon Jr. has used it as a forum to question whether the world's second-biggest faith even qualifies as a religion, and to push a theory that American Muslims want to replace the Constitution with extremist Islamic law.
"Do you want to know about a direct connection between the Islamic Center and Shariah law, a.k.a. terrorism?" Brandon asked one witness in a typical line of questioning.
Brandon has repeatedly conflated a moderate version of Shariah with its most extreme manifestations, suggesting that all Muslims must adhere to those interpretations.
At one point, he asked whether Rutherford County Commissioner Gary Farley supported hanging a whip in his house as a warning to his wife and then beating her with it, something Brandon claimed was part of "Shariah religion."
The commissioner protested that he would never beat his wife.
County attorney Jim Cope objected to the question, saying, "This is a circus."
The rhetoric has conjured up comparisons to another culture clash that played out in a Tennessee courtroom a hundred miles and nearly a century away from Murfreesboro, a college city of 100,000 that is among the fastest-growing communities in the country. In 1925, the world watched as evolution came under attack at the Scopes monkey trial in Dayton, Tenn.
Chancellor Robert Corlew has consistently given the plaintiffs leeway to present testimony by nonexperts and documents that they cannot prove are legitimate, saying he reserves the right to strike things from the record later.
Corlew, who holds an elected office, has given little explanation for why he has allowed the testimony to stray so far afield.
Since it is not a jury trial, the judge can ultimately disregard anything he deems irrelevant. Several attorneys suggested he may want the plaintiffs, three residents who object to how the mosque came about, to feel they were able to have their say.
That could explain why Corlew has allowed Brandon to repeatedly question witnesses about whether Islam is a legitimate religion — even after the Department of Justice stepped in with a brief stating that it was.
When Farley, the commissioner, told Brandon the federal government defined Islam as a religion, Brandon responded, "Are you one of those people who believes everything the government says? Are you aware the government once said it was OK to own slaves?"
Other faiths have risen to the defense of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. The newly formed Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, which is composed of prominent Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Southern Baptists and other Protestants, has filed a brief in the case.
Meanwhile Islamophobe "Agent Provocateur" Robert Spencer is now upset that moderate mainstream Muslims are speaking out against Muslim extremists and those who use their religion to justify immoral, unjustifiable terrorist tactics.
Spencer according to his air-tight preposterous Muslim conspiracy theory can always claim that these Moderate Muslim either represent a small minority of Muslims or they are merely using a strategy of misinformation , misdirection and outright deception what he refers to as "taqiyya " which he erroneously argues the Quran justifies in order to spread Islam. The only justification for such deception is only allowed when authorities are persecuting Muslims that is out to eliminate, kill or expel or convert all Muslims that is to essentially destroy Islam and Muslims .
A similar case can be made in reference to Jewish law and ethics which also allows for deception and or lying if it is done to protect the believers from persecution. In other word a believer whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian should not seek martyrdom when it could be avoided. It is better that the religion and its believers survive than to Grand Stand and be slaughtered when there are other alternatives to extermination.
The point is that according to Spencer one cannot trust anything a Muslim says because you do not know when they are being truthful or attempting to deceive. So if Muslim Americans say that they do not want to institute Sharia in America it is more than likely according to Spencer that these Muslims are just out to deceive the American public.
November 8th, 2010 Spencer upset Muslims take on extremists at Spencer Watch
Robert Spencer is miffed. There has just been too much good press for those pesky Moozlims. Writers of late have pointed out that the mainstream Muslim community is at the forefront of combating terrorism and extremism; such as the Muslims who prevented the recent Yemen mail bomb plot or Muslims who have prevented numerous other cases of terrorism. If Spencer’s goal was to prevent terrorism, one would think these news stories are cause for celebration. But if the goal is to tar all of Islam in a fear-for-profit holy war racket, eh, not so much.
For Spencer, highlighting anything positive Muslims do in the fight against violent extremism just doesn’t jive with his lop-sided cherry-picked contextless narrative that Islam is the root cause of all evil. He says,
There is a counterproductive aspect to this kind of publicity for the Muslim community in America: that these stories would be considered newsworthy at all is due to their unusual, man-bites-dog aspect.
It bewilders those of us not indoctrinated with prejudiced anti-Muslim hostility to see how stories about ordinary Muslims thwarting terrorist attacks are “counter-productive.” These stories are positive reminders that our fight is against violent extremism, not the religion of Islam or all Muslims. But Spencer’s transparent goal is not to prevent terrorism as much as it is to profit by demonizing all of Islam and its adherents. He continues,
If the teachings of Islam and the sentiments of the Muslim community in the U.S. really were the way they are ordinarily represented by the mainstream media and assumed to be by the U.S. Government, then there ought to be a concerted, organized, ongoing effort among Muslims in the U.S. not only to foil jihad terror plots, but also to eradicate the Islamic teachings that inspire and encourage such plots.
Here Spencer fumes with conspiracy-mongering indignation as he decries how the mainstream media and the U.S. government fail to smear the entire religion of Islam and its 1.5 billion followers. Then he demands that Muslims “eradicate the Islamic teachings” that inspire terrorists while he ignores the mountains of empirical research which demonstrate that military occupations are the root cause of terrorism, not the religion of Islam, or that alienation
from the mainstream Muslim community leads to terrorism, not engagement with it. But he continues,
Also, these writers and others generally assume that the Muslims who foiled these jihad plots did so out of Islamic conviction, and that they therefore represent an alternative perspective on Islamic teaching, one that opposes and counters that of the jihadists. Unfortunately, that is not established.
This sentence explicates Spencerian Islamophobic doctrine: when a Muslim commits a criminal act, that is “true Islam,” but when a Muslim does a good deed, he is somehow acting against the teachings of Islam. Of course, this non-terrorist “alternative perspective on Islamic teaching,” which those of us in the real world call “mainstream Islam” is in fact well-established not only in countless scholarly books, organizations, and websites, but also by scientific polling of global Muslim attitudes. Unsurprisingly, Spencer has been unable to publish any of his Muslim-bashing conspiracy theories in a single academic peer-reviewed journal. No need for balance, scholarship, or polling; mere speculation and “truthiness” are good enough for Spencer.
Mr. Spencer, your stubborn self-serving denial of reality obscures our country’s ability to tell the good guys from the bad guys. As Jon Stewart recently said, “…the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more.”
Mr. Spencer, you are making us less safe, not more.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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