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American Muslims ten years after 9/11 - Page Two
Right-Wing anti-Muslim extremist strategy
Under the guise of defending freedom and American values, Right-Wing anti-Muslim extremists are campaigning to prevent Muslim-Americans from freely worshiping and practicing their religion, curtail their political rights, and even compel their deportation says a July 2011 report by People For the American Way (PFAW).
The report – titled “The Right Wing playbook on anti-Muslim extremism” – enumerates the specific strategies used by the Right-Wing to stir up destructive fears, and as a result are putting our fundamental tradition of equality and justice at risk. The PFSW report identifies the scare tactics used by the Right Wing to conjure up anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States and outlines some ways that concerned Americans can push back against anti-Muslim extremism.
“Right-wing activists, elected officials and even some presidential candidates have launched an overt assault on American Muslims, using a religious minority as a scapegoat for any number of national fears and frustrations,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way.
The report enumerates eight strategies employed by anti-Muslim activists to cast doubt on the validity of Islam as a religion and the integrity of American Muslims in order to justify prejudice and illegal discrimination:
Strategy One: Frame Muslim-Americans as dangerous to America
Strategy Two: Twist statistics and use fake research to “prove” the Muslim threat
Strategy Three: Invent the danger of “creeping Sharia”
Strategy Four: “Defend liberty” by taking freedoms away from Muslims
Strategy Five: Claim that Islam is not a religion
Strategy Six: Maintain that Muslims have no First Amendment rights under the Constitution
Strategy Seven: Link anti-Muslim prejudice to anti-Obama rhetoric
Strategy Eight: Claim an “unholy alliance” exists that includes Muslims and other groups targeted by the Right Wing
Oslo Massacre: Connections to US extremists Geller & Spencer
Tellingly, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, just happen to be among the heroes cited in the 1,500-page manifesto written by Andrew Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist whose anti-Muslim paranoia apparently drove him to kill 77 people, most of them kids, on July 22, 2011. According to the New York Times, Breivik was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers lacing his manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber. [7]
Unsurprisingly, on that day, for hours Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Dennis Prager, David Horowitz, CNN, Fox News and many others were touting the Oslo massacre as most likely an act of Muslim Jihadists.
Breivik is apparently an avid fan of U.S.-based anti-Muslim activists such as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes. He lauds the Stop Islamization of America co-founded by Geller and Spencer. JihadWatch of Robert Spencer was cited 112 times. Breivik cited Robert Spencer 54 times in his manifesto. Pamela Geller, and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times. Daniel Pipes is cited 11 times and his blog danielpipes.org 14 times.
The nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing extremism was clearly on display during last summer’s “Ground Zero mosque” hysteria, which culminated in a rally where Geller and Wilders addressed a crowd that included members of the the English Defense League (EDL) waving Israeli flags. Breivik is also a fan of EDL.
Islamophobia – now in American Children’s books
As if the adult media’s vitriol wasn’t enough, the American Muslims are now being faced by the alarming publication of a series of ‘children's books’, containing misleading and inflammatory rhetoric about the Islamic faith. The 10-book series - entitled the "World of Islam," – is published by Mason Crest Publishing in collaboration with the Philadelphia-based pro-Israel and pro-war Foreign Policy Research Institute. [8]
One of the book in the series - "Muslims in America" - says that "some Muslims began immigrating to the United States in order to transform American society, sometimes through the use of terrorism." The cover of Radical Islam features a machine gun and a Muslim head scarf, with what looks like bloodstains underneath the scarf and the title word Radical. The book is rife with incorrect information and fear mongering and ultimately seeks to paint a picture that Muslims in America are to be treated with suspicion and that they all have links to terrorism.
The latest attempt to demonize Muslims and Islam came in the shape of a children coloring book titled "We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids' Book of Freedom.” The 36-page "graphic novel coloring book" published recently by St. Louis, Mo. Publisher Wayne Bell virtually characterizes all Muslims as linked to extremism, terrorism and radicalism, which may lead children reading the book to believe that all Muslims are responsible for the tragedy of 9/11. It could give a message to children that followers of the Islamic faith are their enemies.
Criminalizing Muslim communities
On August 24, 2011, the Muslim American community was shocked at the revelation that the New York City Police Department have carried out covert surveillance on Muslims with the help of the CIA. An Associated Press (AP) report published by the Washington Post [9] exposed the NYPD spy program, which is allegedly being conducted with the assistance of individuals linked to the CIA. Following a month-long investigation, the AP reported that the NYPD is using covert surveillance techniques “that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government” and “does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.”
The AP report follows a recent Mother Jones [10] revelation that after years of emphasizing informant recruiting as a key task for its agents, the FBI now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies — many of them tasked with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. “In addition, for every informant officially listed in the bureau’s records, there are as many as three unofficial ones, according to one former high-level FBI official, known in bureau parlance as “hip pockets.” The informants could be doctors, clerks, imams. Some might not even consider themselves informants. But the FBI regularly taps all of them as part of a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical peer might be COINTELPRO, the program the bureau ran from the ’50s to the ’70s to discredit and marginalize organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to civil-rights and protest groups.”
Earlier in May 2011, a report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law pointed out that since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has targeted Muslims in the United States by sending paid, untrained informants into mosques and Muslim communities. According to the report - titled “Targetted & trapped: Manufacturing the “Homegrown Threat” in the United States” - ”, this practice has led to the prosecution of more than 200 individuals in terrorism-related cases which the government has touted as successes in the so-called war against terrorism. However, in recent years, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, local lawmakers, the media, the public, and community-based groups have begun questioning the legitimacy and efficacy of this practice, alleging that—in many instances—this type of policing, and the resulting prosecutions, constitute entrapment, the report said.
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