The manufacture of an "expert"

First, a little background. The man who composed the score for Slumdog Millionaire also composed a piece of Islamic devotional music, called Zikr, or "Remembrance" in Urdu, which due to being (unlike much of the genre) actually sing-able, and moreover, actually appealing to people who don't spend most of their time in the mosque. The piece was picked up by a choir director in a school in Somewhere State, USA and . . . action!



Naturally, my favourite hatemonger picked up the story.

Now, who is this "Expert," Steve Hagerman?

Well, googling "World Turkish Organization" didn't help much. That's because Mr. Hagerman (and "Steve Hagerman" is a curiously un-Turkish sounding name) is not actually associated with any such organization.

He is, however, the president of "Turkish World Outreach." Outreach for what? The beautiful Turkish culture that he wants to share with the world?

Let's check the website, shall we? Oh, here's Mr. Hagerman himself:



So there you have it. The "expert" on Islam is a Christian missionary, whose conception of Muslims is that they are ignorant little children, who sit around the wise white man as he tries to sell them on the idea that the Almighty God needed an innocent upon whom to unleash unspeakable cruelty in order to avoid having to do it to everybody else for a sin committed by Adam.

The kid who quit the choir, is, incidentally, indulging in a little self-righteous attention-seeking. I have been in choirs (baritone/bass, thank you very much) and even sung Christmas carols. I just close my mouth during the bits about divine progeny. This kid could have done the same, but he wanted to be the poster boy for oppressed Christians, and so he got his wish.

A website I wish I had made. . .

. . . and, in fact, did.

A couple of years ago, when I had a lot of time on my hands, and the quantity of subject material was more manageable, I created a blog called The Mozlems Are Coming! I had intended to devote it to ridiculing the xenophobic conspiracy theory, forwarded by Spencer, Geller, Wilders and co., that there is a vast and ancient Muslim plot to conquer and subjugate non-Muslims everywhere.

I'm only slightly kidding.

Then, a combination of being busy, being lazy, the mushrooming of the Fear-O-Sphere genre, and the limited hit-count of this blog itself led me to put the project on hold indefinitely. It's something I regret. Since then, what used to go on in the darker corners of the internet has gradually moved into the mainstream, from the anti-Mosque protests in New York to the appearance of the many books penned by anti-Muslim wingnuts in hands of strangers I see on busses and trains. Before he spectacularly and gruesomely disproved every argument ever made about Scandinavians and racial profiling, Anders Breivik added his own 1500-page magnum opus to this growing body of hate literature.

For Spencer, Geller, et al to claim they weren't responsible is a bit like saying that Wagner wasn't responsible anti-Semitic violence. It's true, but he did inspire some people who were.

It is, therefore, regrettable that there aren't more people engaged in countering this burgeoning industry, whose intellectual products have already made a bloody imprint upon the world. Fortunately, a few brilliant people have stepped into the gap:


The site provides profiles regular updates on all the activities going in the Fear-O-Sphere, well-informed refutations of its (ahem) "scholarly" works, and unlike most political blogs (including and especially the anti-Islam ones), some healthy debate and disagreement in the comments, with regular contributions from a haters themselves.

I highly recommed the exposé on "Muslim Reformer" Wafa Sultan, one of the leaders of the cottage industry of Islam-Experts-With-Funny-Sounding-Names that professional hatemongers have come to rely upon.

None other than anti-Islam kingpin Robert Spencer himself has taken to flailing wildly at Loonwatch, calling it an "Islamic hate site." No comment from me is needed.

In summary: TheProudIslamist <3 Loonwatch.

Shorter Michael Taube

Stephen Harper's former speech writer, published every Saturday in the loony bin of the Postmedia news empire:

Geert Wilders' Canadian hosts did us a favour

While I knew that he felt threatened by Islam and wanted to ban the Qur'an, I was shocked to find out that Geert Wilders also doesn't like Muslims.

Like it or not . . .

A company like Newscorp can turn anyone into a sensation, even a third-rate fearmonger like the zany Randroid proprietor of the blog "Atlas Shrugs." Salon.com's Jason Elliot lays out a neat summary of how the media giant has turned a relatively uncontroversial construction project into America's national anti-Muslim hatefest.

How the "ground zero mosque" fear mongering began

. . . 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? . . .

Fortunately, this would probably never happen in Canada, because it is a better country.

I think.

Tales from the Fear-o-Sphere

Teh Mozlems are coming, teh Mozlems are coming!

From the unintentionally funny folks at FrontPageMag, and Pamela Gellar, the queen of cheap internet fearmongering, comes this lovely passage, as FPM's editor interviews Ms. Gellar about her new magnum opus about the Obama presidency:

FP: Tell us a bit about how anti-Semitism plays into all of this. We know Islam’s disposition to Jews and so, perhaps, Obama’s bullying of Israel is no coincidence at all?

Geller: Indeed Jamie, Islamic anti-Semitism is part of the Koranic imperative and the pervasive influence of Islamic Jew-hatred cannot be ignored when assessing the impact of Barack Obama’s early life experiences upon the later trajectory of his career. If a devout Muslim prays the obligatory five daily prayers, he will repeat the Shehadah*, the first chapterof the Koran, seventeen times; that chapter concludes with prayers that Muslims generally understand as asking Allah not to make the believer like the Jews (“those who have earned Allah’s anger”) or the Christians (“those who have gone astray”). The prayers generally conclude with the dua qunoot, a prayer that Allah’s wrath would overtake infidels.

Imagine the influence that all this – inculcating contempt for Jews and Christians seventeen times a day – might have on a young mind and a future president. Troubling psychological wiring might have been set in place for a lifetime.

Yet Obama has never spoken about the influence his early experiences with Islam had upon his mind and heart – in sharp contrast to others who were raised in Islam and left the faith. Obama would have had to make a decision to reject Islam.

If so, when did he make that decision? How?

Muslims who have left Islam are generally vocal about why they left: Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, and others have spoken out fearlessly on these issues. Obama may not wish to engage in critiques of Islam, but if he left Islam, he must have very definite thoughts about it. And even if this is simply not an important issue to him, then he can still appreciate how important it is – knowing what he knows about Islam and apostasy.

Apostasy is punishable by death in Islam. Yet there have been no calls for Obama’s death from the Islamic world. Why is this? Islam gives no free passes.

That's right Pam, we're all in cahoots. Thank goodness someone is blowing the lid off this global conspiracy.

-------------------

* Actually, the Shehadah contains no such thing - it is simply the sentence "I bear witness that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Messenger." What Pam is refering to, in her pretense of expertise, is Surah Fatiha, whose meaning is certainly open to interpretation, but definitely not open to her interpretation.

God Bless You, Guillaume Morand. . .

. . . regardless of what your religious beliefs are.

From AFP: Swiss businessman builds minaret in protest

BUSSIGNY, Switzerland — A Swiss businessman appalled by his fellow countrymen's decision to ban minarets has extended a chimney above his company building into a minaret in protest.

"It was scandalous that the Swiss voted for the ban. Now we have the support of all the far-right parties across Europe. This is shameful," Guillaume Morand, who owns a chain of shoe stores, told AFP.

The businessman, who is not a Muslim, explained that the he had constructed the mock minaret at his building near western Switzerland's city of Lausanne in protest, and at the same time, to "send a message of peace."

More than 57 percent of voters upset opinion polls and defied their government by approving the right wing motion to ban minarets -- the turrets or towers on mosques from which Muslims are called to prayer.

The outcome of the referendum brought by members of the hard-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) and other right wing groups was also hailed by anti-immigrant party leaders elsewhere in Europe.

Morand blamed other political parties in Switzerland for not having campaigned against the far-right motion ahead of the referendum.

"They were all against it but they did not explain the issue clearly to the country," he said, pointing out that only the SVP's controversial poster campaign was visible.

The SVP had sought support for the ban through a poster campaign depicting a burqa-clad woman against a background of a Swiss flag upon which several minarets resembling missiles are erected.

Morand said he viewed the ban was all the more "scandalous" given that Switzerland actively encourages Arabs to "visit the country and to spend their money here."

The minaret, which has been in place since Tuesday, has "generated a lot of interest," he said, adding that he will wait and see before deciding if further action was needed to push his point.

The fearmongers out there will doubtless retort "Try putting up a steeple in Saudi Arabia!" as they are wont to do. This tells us something about them, however, which is that they aspire to no greater example of religious pluralism than what is set by the ibn Saud.

The "Ultra-Secretive" Muslim Brotherhood

Since I enjoy subjecting myself to large doses of online wingnuttery, I was reading an article in Human Events, the self-proclaimed "Headquarters of the Conservative Underground." In the the minds of its publishers, conservatism in the United States has been somehow driven "underground."

According to the headline by Rowan Scarborough, the "FBI Partners With Jihad Groups!" Oh noes! Which Jihad groups?

A former agent told HUMAN EVENTS the bureau is dealing with the groups that maintain an under-the-radar alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. The ultra-secretive Muslim Brotherhood, with chapters worldwide, is the glue for a network of Islamic groups.

"ultra-secretive", eh? Wow. That's between mega-secretive and terra-secretive, right? I wonder if it's possible to find traces of this shadowy organization on Ye Olde Internets.


Conveniently, they are at http://www.ikhwanweb.org . Of course, one can't expect to find any meaningful information on the Brotherhood's site. You're probably never going to find the celebrated manifesto, for instance, where members of the Brotherhood propose a "kind of grand jihad in America." It's probably all just propaganda, codewords, and side-of-nose-tapping to signal execution of plans made three years earlier in a musty room with a single swinging lightbulb somewhere near a railway track.

Let's try searching the site for the terms "grand jihad," :

Reporting The Muslim Brotherhood

In a federal courtroom in Dallas last October, the leadership of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the nation’s largest Muslim charity, stood accused of using the charity as a Hamas fundraising front. It was the federal government’s most important terrorism fundraising case to date.

By Rod Dreher

What follows is a damning exposé of the Brotherhood's alleged role in fomenting radical interpretations of Islam in the United States, along with the same quotation from the manifesto produced above.

So not only is the Muslim Brotherhood no more "ultra-secretive" than, say, any major political party anywhere (and it is Egypt's largest opposition party, despite being banned by Mubarak's repressive regime), it also publishes withering criticism of itself on its own website. Either the Ikhwan (Arabic for brotherhood) are true believers in open debate and ideological forthrightness, or they are very careless about what they post on their website.

So why the hyperbole in the Human Events article? Simple: to make people scared. As one lone commenter added after the article:

The hypocrisy festering below the surface of this, and most articles I read on this website, astounds me. Who armed the jihad groups in the first place in the 1980s? And have you seen the photos from that same decade, of U.S. politicians shaking hands and smiling and being buddy-buddy with Saddam and other dictators (ahem, Rumsfeld, Bush I, etc.)

I'm a scientist. As such, I understand that the search for truth (if it can be found) fundamentally depends on identifying my own assumptions and biases. This website and almost everything in it fails to meet this most basic principle. You play on emotions and fear and this is irresponsible journalism at best, and anti-american and anti-humanity at worst.

- Casey, Clemson

At which point, the anti-intellectualism of the "Conservative Underground" necessitated a pile-on.