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Posts Tagged ‘Racism’

On 8.28.2010, Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The purpose of the rally, which Beck claimed to be “non-political” despite featuring Tea Party-favorite Sarah Palin as a speaker and its being attended entirely by conservatives, was unclear. The participants spoke abstractly about the need to restore “honor” and “pride” to a country that had lost it. When pressed for when our country had lost its honor, most cited the election of Barack Obama.

8.28.2010 also represented the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and Glenn Beck has been criticized for by civil rights groups for trying to misappropriate the occasion.

Last year, Beck referred to Barack Obama—our country’s first African-American President–as a “racist… who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” When offered the chance to respond to Beck’s statements, his fans either agreed with him or simply refused to believe that he had ever made them.

While the speaker list was diverse, the overwhelmingly white crowd expressed paranoid and conspiratorial fears of multiculturalism—that atheists or black liberation theologists or radical Muslims or “free-loading” Latinos were going to ruin our country. There was the constant suggestion that white Christians and their way of life are somehow under assault, and that the attendees of this rally were here to put an end to it and return the country to what it used to be.

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This NEW LEFT MEDIA film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviewer) and Erick Stoll (camera operator) with additional camera work from Kasey Hosp.

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson.

Special Agent Andy Anderson of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told CBS News that the fire destroyed one piece of construction equipment and damaged three others. Gas was poured over the equipment to start the fire, Anderson said.

The ATF, FBI and Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office are conducting a joint investigation into the fire, Anderson said.

WTVF reports firefighters were alerted by a passerby who saw flames at the site. One large earth hauler was set on fire before the suspect or suspects left the scene.

The chair of the center’s planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff’s department.

“Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen,” said Fathy. “They are so scared.”

The fire was smoldering by the time Fathy and the center’s imam, Ossama Bahloul, had arrived. Fathy was told that responders had smelled gasoline near the fire.

Fathy was later contacted by members of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, who told him the incident was under investigation and to remain calm.

Digging had begun at the site, which was planned as a place of worship for the approximately 250 Muslim families in the Murfreesboro area, but no structure had been built yet, according to Saleh Sbenaty, a member of the planning committee and a professor of engineering technology at Middle Tennessee State University.

“This is a shock,” said Sbenaty. “We’ve had small act of vandals. But this is going to be a crime and whoever did it, they should be punished to the full extent of the law.”

The center had operated for years out of a small business suite. Planning members said the new building, which was being constructed next to a church, would help accommodate the area’s growing Muslim community.

“We unfortunately did not experience hostilities for the 30 years we’ve been here and have only seen the hostility since approval of the site plan for the new center,” said Sbenaty.

Opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer; they are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

“They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group,” Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area, told The Associated Press.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore “Vote for Jesus” T-shirts and carried signs that said “No Sharia law for USA!,” referring to the Islamic code of law.

Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the “Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro” and tearing it up.

Earlier this summer opponents criticized the planned mosque at hearings held by the Rutherford County Commission, as supporters held prayer vigils.

At one such prayer vigil, WTVF reported opponents speaking out against construction.

“No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don’t want it. I don’t want them here,” Evy Summers said to WTVF. “Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity.”

*NOTE FROM THE EDITOR*: Having been to this area many times, the location for this mosque is about a mile south of the Walmart, a mile east of a junkyard and about 6 miles NW of the nudist colony. Those Muslims are really going to bring the neighborhood down aren’t they?

Despite the city’s fire protection ordinances, the poorly-named Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL is committed to hosting “International Burn a Quran Day” on September 11. The radical church, which boasts an “Islam Is Of The Devil” message on a sign outside the church and as the title of its pastor’s book, insists “we will still burn Korans” on the church grounds despite being denied a permit. While the church may be fined for openly burning the holy texts, one “armed Christian conservative group” aptly named Right Wing Extreme vowed Sunday to protect the church from any other harassment during the burning:

The Christian conservative organization Right Wing Extreme has offered its support and protection for the International Burn a Quran day.

Right Wing Extreme was founded in April of 2009 after the Department of Homeland Security’s report titled Right Wing Extremism.[...]

“We fully support Dove World Outreach Center and its efforts to put an end to the notion that Islam is a peaceful religion. Islam is a violent cult with the goal of world domination.” Says Right Wing Extreme founder Shannon Carson.

Right Wing Extreme insists that “President Obama is a Muslim who is intentionally destroying America’s economy, constitution, and has a socialist agenda aimed at bringing about a New World Order.” The group measures its “state of alert” through a “Defcon system.” Currently set at level 3, the “Defcon system” warns that the group’s “moral and ethical code are under moderate attack” and that the U.S. Constitution is only “partially intact.” According to their ethical code, members swear to defend the Constitution and recognize “that freedom comes by the shedding of blood and sacrifice.”

While Right Wing Extreme is supporting the church’s “protest” of Islam by militaristic means, one non-profit Muslim group, the Book of Signs, is countering the protest by “distributing 50 free Qurans for every Quran burned” and by urging bookstores to refuse to sell Qurans to those involved.

So by now you’ve heard about the “Ground Zero Mosque” right? Will if you haven’t you’re one of the lucky ones. The biggest reason people don’t want a religious cultural center built 2 blocks from ground zero is because it’s too close (so they say). So there shouldn’t be a problem with a proposed mosque located 965 miles away right? That should be far enough from ground zero right? Well, according to this Paducah Sun article, about 250 residents cheered when the city rejected the paperwork for a new mosque where previous permits had been granted for houses of worship for other faiths.

The current obsession with the building of mosques in America, the opposition, Newt Gingrich and Fox News’s horribly bigoted embrace of the “Anti-Islamization” meme, is dangerous. Dangerous for American Muslims, dangerous to American minorities in general, and dangerous to America herself, for what we are and what we could become.

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy. And yet it has become just that, dominating the political conversation for weeks and prompting such a backlash that, according to a new poll, nearly 7 in 10 Americans now say they oppose the project. How did the Cordoba House become so toxic, so fast?

In a story last week, the New York Times, which framed the project in a largely positive, noncontroversial light last December, argued that it was cursed from the start by “public relations missteps.” But this isn’t accurate. To a remarkable extent, a Salon review of the origins of the story found, the controversy was kicked up and driven by Pamela Geller, a right-wing, viciously anti-Muslim, conspiracy-mongering blogger, whose sinister portrayal of the project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Here’s a timeline of how it all happened:
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Tea Party-backed candidate Marg Baker was given the chance to explain what she meant when she said she wanted to put illegal immigrants in “camps,” and it turns out she meant pretty much what it sounded like.

“We can ship them out to the middle of the country and put up high walls and leave them there,” Baker, who seeks the Republican nomination in a Florida statehouse race, told Salon Thursday.

Baker first announced the proposal earlier this month at a meeting sponsored by Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project. Baker’s opponents quickly distanced themselves from her plan.

More from Salon’s report:

Asked if what she had in mind was more like the Japanese internment camps of the World War II era, Baker said, “something like that. But unfortunately in the Japanese camps they detaineed American citiziens. The only ones I want to detain are the ones who are illegal.”

She added, “You’ve gotta have places for them to eat and sleep and breathe fresh air. It can be a tent city … You don’t want to make them too comfortable or they’ll want to come back.”

A National Tea Party leader protesting a proposed mosque near Ground Zero set off a firestorm of anger Wednesday by saying that Muslims worship “the terrorists’ monkey god.”

Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, blogged about the 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned at Park Place and Broadway, calling it a monument to the 9/11 terrorists.

“The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god,” Williams, a frequent guest on CNN, wrote on his Web site.

His statements drew a sharp rebuke from City Hall and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.
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The right-wing propaganda machine continues its manufactured freak-out over plans to build a Muslim Center near Ground Zero. Now, the American Family Association has weighed in, with predictable results — grotesque anti-Muslim propaganda, open calls for discrimination, endorsement of totalitarian tactics, etc.

Kyle at Right-Wing Watch:

Yesterday we noted that the AFA’s Bryan Fischer was demanding the end to the construction of all mosques on the grounds that “each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”

He made the same case on his radio program, at first talking about the “Ground Zero Mosque,” but then issuing a call for a blanket ban on the construction of any new mosques anywhere in the country:

Another day, another group of Muslims trying to ruin America.

Their target? Six Flags. You know what they say, More fatwas, more fun!

Because when in doubt, start at an amusement park. Bring your kids! Get them wet on the log flume! Pose for pictures with Bugs Bunny! The terrorists will win!

Come to think of it, if they could get rid of that dancing bald guy, they might be doing a real service to America.

But don’t tell the Tea Party.

They’re up in arms about Six Flags Muslim Day, a tradition that technically pre-dates September 11, 2001.

In a blog on the Tea Party website, member Annie Hamilton speaks for the boycott of the amusement park chain:

“First, Islam is NOT a religion, it is an ideology — the religious portion only encompasses 11% (the qur’an) the rest is the Sira and Hadith and the closest parallel to Islam is the Ku Klux Klan — if that is Six Flag’s idea of ‘appropriate’ then by all means, hold your day on September 12th but don’t plan on expanding any time soon because not only will we ensure that you don’t grow, we’ll make sure that your parks become a thing of the past.”

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On Tuesday, the NAACP passed a resolution denouncing racist elements within the Tea Party movement. Responding to the resolution, Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams lashed out against the civil rights group, claiming that “they make more money off of race than any slave trader ever.” Williams continued his assault last night on CNN, telling host Roland Martin, “Racists have their own movement. It’s called the NAACP.”

Williams, however, is doing little to refute the notion that there is racism in the Tea Party movement. Last night, the proud Tea Partier wrote a blog post mocking NAACP president Benjamin Jealous. The post takes the form of a fake letter to Abraham Lincoln, in which Jealous asks the former president to repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments (and to reinstate slavery) because the “coloreds” don’t agree with the Tea Party’s version of “freedom.”

The entire post is quoted below:
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