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Jews, Not Muslims, Are the Primary Victims of Religion-Based Hate Crimes in the U.S.

Yet the media continues to focus on the phantom of “Islamophobia.” My latest in FrontPage:

As the nation observed the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 jihad terror attacks, the establishment media’s focus was largely on how Muslims were victimized in the wake of the attacks. A wave of “Islamophobia” supposedly swept over the United States, and is still very much with us. Reality, however, is (as usual) sharply different from the establishment media narrative. Jews, not Muslims, have both before 9/11 and after been the far most common victim of hate crimes in the United States. Yet the media indefatigably focuses on “Islamophobia,” not anti-Semitism.

George W. Bush got the ball rolling on September 17, 2001. He appeared at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., in the company of several prominent Muslim leaders, including Nihad Awad of the The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Abdurahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who is now in prison for funding al-Qaeda, and put the spotlight squarely on Muslims as victims:

America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect.

In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect. Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value. I’ve been told that some fear to leave; some don’t want to go shopping for their families; some don’t want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they’re afraid they’ll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.

The only problem with this was that Muslims were not being subjected to wholesale vigilante attacks in the United States, at that time or at any point subsequently. A Sikh, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was mistaken for a Muslim and murdered on September 15, 2001; the following day, a Muslim, Waqar Hasan, was murdered. On October 4, 2001, the man who murdered Hasan, Mark Anthony Stroman, killed a Hindu named Vasudev Patel, mistaking him for a Muslim.

That was all. These three murders were heinous crimes; Balbir Singh Sodhi’s killer, Frank Silva Roque, is serving life in prison, and Mark Stroman was executed in 2011. But to claim that “9/11 released a dangerous wave of white supremacy and Islamophobia that, two decades later, continues to manifest in attacks on members of a variety of belief traditions,” as AP did in noting the anniversary of Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder Thursday, is wildly exaggerated. Muslims have not suffered widespread persecution, discrimination, and harassment in the U.S. since 9/11. FBI hate crime statistics bear this out.

In 2000, the year before the 9/11 attacks, the FBI noted 33 anti-Islamic hate crimes; in 2001, that number skyrocketed to 546. That’s 546 too many, but a bit of perspective is in order: also in 2001, there were 1,117 anti-Jewish hate crimes. These were not, mind you, all violent incidents: the FBI report explained that “A review of the total offenses (11,451) demonstrated that intimidation was the most frequently reported hate crime, accounting for 37.9 percent of the total. Destruction/damage/vandalism made up 26.4 percent; simple assault, 18.8 percent; aggravated assault, 10.8 percent. The remaining offenses accounted for 6.1 percent of the total.” Intimidation can be just saying something rude, or something perceived as rude.

In 2002, the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes fell sharply, to 170; the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes held steady at 1,039. And so it has been every year since then. In 2018, there were 225 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 896 anti-Jewish hate crimes; in 2019, there were 219 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 995 anti-Jewish hate crimes. In 2020, anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased by 42%.

Yet ABC News gave a Muslims-As-Victims spin to all this on September 11 when it stated: “Hate crimes against Muslims rose 1617% from 2000 to 2001, according to the FBI marking some of the highest numbers of Islamophobic hate crimes ever in the U.S. But even as the country moved further from the attacks and the Muslim American population in the country grew, discrimination against this community has not waned, Pew Research Center reports.”

This kind of “journalism” is published as Jew-hatred becomes increasingly legitimized on the Left. Around the time of the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel last spring, Palestinian Muslims and their supporters committed acts of violence against Jews and supporters of Israel all over the United States. In New York City, a Muslim mob screaming “Allahu akbar” attacked a Jewish man in midtown Manhattan. Also in Manhattan, Palestinians threatened violence and screamed anti-Semitic slurs at Jews. One threw a mini-firebomb. Pro-jihad protesters stormed a restaurant and spat on Jewish patrons; one of the thugs threw a bottle. A Muslim, Waseem Awawdeh, was arrested for viciously beating a Jew in Times Square.

In Los Angeles, Palestinian protesters asked people dining at the Sushi Fumi restaurant if they were Jewish, and proceeded to attack them with knives. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, two cars festooned with Palestinian flags chased a Jewish man down a street as he was leaving his synagogue. In Florida, a van also bearing a Palestinian flag and emblazoned with the slogan “Hitler was Right” drove past a pro-Israel demonstration. In Skokie, Illinois, a pro-jihad vandal wearing an Arab headdress smashed a synagogue window and left a Palestine flag and a pro-jihad sign inside. And in Boston, an anti-Semitic Muslim migrant named Khaled Awad approached a rabbi outside a Jewish day school and stabbed him eight times.

There will likely be much more of this, while the media continues to hunt for “Islamophobia” and demonize and stigmatize all those who stand against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. The facts are clear to anyone who searches for them, but most people won’t; and establishment media “journalists” will continue to do all they can to hoodwink Americans into swallowing their tendentious, inaccurate, and divisive narrative.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Muslim Student at Washington University Removes 2,977 American Flags Commemorating 9/11 Victims

My latest at PJ Media:

Fadel Alkilani, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, is an enterprising young man who clearly has a bright future ahead. On Saturday, as people all over the world mourned the deaths of 2,977 people in jihad attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Alkilani busied himself with pulling up 2,977 flags that had been placed on campus in honor of the victims and throwing them away. Among Leftists today, that’s the kind of behavior that leads to rapid career advancement– clearly, Fadel Alkilani is an up-and-coming young man.

The flags were part of the Young America’s Foundation’s “9/11: Never Forget Project”: “YAF activists at high schools and colleges across the country are keeping alive the memory of those lost to radical Islamist terrorists in the world-changing events of September 11, 2001.  The iconic displays made up of 2,977 American flags—one for each innocent life taken—bring schools, communities, and individuals together to pay tribute and continue our promise to ‘never forget.’”

YAF members at Washington University duly placed the 2,977 flags, only to have Alkilani, wearing a mask and his hair in a bun, come pluck the flags up and fill trash bags with them. In a video YAF posted on Twitter, Nathaniel Hope of Washington University’s hearty band of College Republicans confronts Alikani, who justified his action by claiming (falsely) that the flag display was a “violation of school rules.” He maintained that he, on the other hand, had not violated any university rules, telling Hope: “I did not violate any university or legal policy. Now go away.”

Later, Alkilani posted online a “Formal Statement on the Flag Relocation Incident,” in which he sanctimoniously employed that tried-and-true strategy of Leftists everywhere: He claimed victimhood. Instead of apologizing for his callous, thuggish, and fascist act, Alkilani wrote: “Currently, there is a massive harassment campaign propagated primarily by Washington University College Republicans, as well as the national Young American’s Foundation [YAF] regarding an incident that occurred at approximately 6 am on Saturday, September 11, 2021. There is a large amount of misinformation circulating, and I seek to explain both what occurred and why it happened.”

The “misinformation” that he proceeds to clear up is the claim that he was “‘stealing’ the flags. This is due to a WashU College Republicans member, taking a video of me collecting flags in plastic bags. However, I had no intention of removing the flags from the Mudd Field area, and my full protest did not have the chance to be actualized. My planned protest was to place the bags of flags on Mudd field, along with various statistics [including those below] explaining the human cost of 9/11 in the past 20 years. On the sides of the bags, some writing may be visible, but the full statement was not outlined at the time of the video. I did not deface, destroy, damage, nor steal any flags, nor did I interfere with any registered event time. I assert that I did not violate any University Code of Conduct policy, though the conduct process is undergoing. Additionally, I was verbally and physically harassed by numerous WashU students and WUPD officers, whom I plan to report through official channels.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib Mark 9/11 With Resolution Claiming Muslims Were the Real Victims

Some people did something. And by some people, they mean Americans.

If there was one day of the year where the most loathsome members of the Squad should summon up some lingering decency and shut up, it would be this one. But of course, the terror caucus can never rest and so it had a plan for defiling the September 11 anniversary.

And so Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, along with Pramila Jayapal, introduced a resolution claiming that Muslims were the real victims of September 11 and suffered persecution due to counterterrorism.

The hateful resolution reads in part…

“Whereas there was a climate of hate in which Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Sikh communities experienced bullying and violence in their everyday lives and in their workplaces, businesses, community centers and houses of worship;

Whereas the government targeted Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Sikh communities with overreaching policing, surveillance, and criminalization policies that resulted in wrongful interrogation, coercion, detention, deportation, arrest, and incarceration;

Whereas core principles like due process, presumption of innocence, and evidence of wrongdoing were replaced with mob mentality and guilt by association; Whereas the fearmongering and hateful rhetoric witnessed in the aftermath of the attacks remain commonplace today;

Whereas border officials and government authorities cast aside constitutional rights and engaged in discriminatory searches and seizures of Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Sikh community members;

Whereas false narratives about Arabs, Islam and American Muslims abound, and are encouraged and justified by a network of closely connected and well-funded organizations and activists that seek to propagate misinformation about these communities and provide support for policies that curtail their rights;

Whereas the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, as well as human rights violations ranging from torture at Guantanamo Bay to extrajudicial drone strikes, also contributed to this climate of hate and the government targeting of these communities;”

The resolution “acknowledges the climate of hate that Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Sikh communities have experienced since September 11, 2001” and “) Calls the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Health, and the National
Science Foundation to work together to study the impact of hate, government targeting, and profiling on physical and mental health.”

Maybe this is why Muslim apologists keep claiming that every Muslim terrorist is suffering from mental illness.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Virginia Public Schools to Focus on Muslims—As Victims—in Teaching About 9/11 On Attacks’ 20th Anniversary

My latest in PJ Media:

On Thursday, the Virginia Department of Education published a video entitled, “Culturally Responsive and Inclusive 9/11 Commemoration,” detailing how Virginia public school teachers should handle the upcoming twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 jihad terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The emphasis on that day and thereafter must not be on the ideology of the attackers or the ongoing jihad terror threat; rather, the focus is entirely on acknowledging and eradicating what the video calls “anti-Muslim racism.”

The video is narrated by a hijab-wearing woman, Amaarah DeCuir, who describes herself as “Professorial Lecturer, School of Education, American University & Paragon Education Consulting, President.” One would think that with all her expertise, Ms. DeCuir would know the elementary fact that Islam is not a race, and that there are Muslims, and Islamic jihadis, of all races. And of course she does know that, but she is operating in this video on the basis of the Leftist contention that opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women really stems from an irrational animus against Muslims as a people, and hence is a “racialized” form of “hatred.”

Yes, it’s toxic nonsense, but that’s the Left for you. In any case, Virginia public schools that implement DeCuir’s recommendations (and since the Virginia Department of Education published her video, it would appear that the department wants that to be all of them) will give students a presentation on the twentieth anniversary of the worst attacks ever on American soil that will portray Muslims as the primary victims of those attacks, and make herculean efforts to deflect attention away from the extremely inconvenient fact that the attacks were perpetrated in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings.

If you doubt that fact, note that in March 2009, five masterminds of the 9/11 plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin As-Shibh, Walid bin ‘Attash, Mustafa Ahmed AI-Hawsawi, and ‘Ali ‘abd Al-’Aziz ‘Ali – styling themselves as the “9/11 Shura Council” – wrote a lengthy communiqué titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” In it, they called the 9/11 attacks an “act of Jihad,” and explained: “The Jihad in god’s [sic] cause is a great duty in our religion.” They quoted numerous Qur’an verses, including the notorious “Verse of the Sword”: “Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush” (9:5) and another enjoining Muslims to “strike terror into the heart of the enemies of Allah” (8:60).

Attorney and columnist Marina Medvin, who broke the story of this video, notes that the 9/11 Commission Report “mentions ‘Islam’ over 1,000 times and the word ‘Muslim’ over 1,000 times,” for obvious reasons. But Virginia students will learn nothing about any of that. Instead, they’ll be taught about “phobias stemming from 9/11,” “anti-Muslim racism spikes,” and the evils of the fictional “Muslim Ban.” DeCuir offers as an example of “harmful teaching” any “teaching about Islam and/or Muslims” in connection with 9/11, except, evidently, insofar as Muslims were victims of the American response to the attacks.

There is more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Islamophobia and the Threat to Free Speech

My latest book, Islamophobia and the Threat to Free Speech, is available now from Center for Security Policy Press.


CLICK HERE TO ORDER ISLAMOPHBIA AND THE THREAT TO FREE SPEECH


It shows how the demonization of foes of jihad violence and Sharia oppression was a dry run for the Left’s attempt now to silence and criminalize all opposition to its agenda.

“Free speech, the cornerstone of our freedom, hangs by a thread. This book is an essential read to understand how we reached this point, and the key role ‘Islamophobia’ played in normalizing the assault on our most basic right to free expression. May it serve as a wake up call for us to exercise this right, and prevent Trojan Horse blasphemy laws of all types from superseding our freedoms before it is too late.” — Noor bin Ladin, writer and advocate dedicated to defending freedom and those threatened by the adherents of oppressive ideologies

“Robert Spencer provides a chilling account of the ongoing campaign against free speech. He reveals a sinister timeline of decades of deliberately dismantling the most important right we have. It requires much courage to disseminate that truth. As restrictions continue to gain ground in the free world, this book should inspire all to protect freedom of speech and to stand up to the policy of criminalizing words in order to silence us. And make it unequivocally clear that we will never be silenced.” — Geert Wilders

“The most important war that people face today is the global war to limit, and ultimately destroy, the freedom of speech, the indispensable foundation of any free society,” begins best-selling author Robert Spencer, noting the successful “cancellation” of the elected president of the United States by big tech social media companies.

How did we get to this point where presidents, college professors, business leaders, and of course regular citizens face silencing (and worse) at the hands of political zealots?

In Islamophobia and The Threat to Free Speech, Spencer argues that America, and the larger Western world was primed and prepared to surrender its free speech in a campaign that goes back more than three decades,

The unprecedented and disquieting acceptance by so many on the Left of the need to force their foes into silence and deny them access to the primary means of communication today did not spring up out of nowhere in 2020. In fact, the groundwork for it had been laid for it, and the pattern set, years before, in the treatment of opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others. Long before “cancel culture” became a common phrase, the Left and the establishment media canceled foes of jihad terror, defaming, demonizing, marginalizing, and deplatforming them without any rational consideration of the points they made.

Spencer takes the history of the war on free speech back to the 1989 death fatwa pronounced upon author Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini, and then takes us through how a once robust western tradition was steadily undermined by international pressure, jihadist violence, and U.S government and corporate influence. He traces the rise of the “new brownshirts” on college campuses who have used techniques of slander, disruption and threats to turn bastions of free expression into indoctrination centers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FASCISM: Simon & Schuster Employees Demand Publisher Drop Books They Disagree With

Over 200 employees of Simon & Schuster have gone full fascist, signing a petition calling on the publishing giant to stop providing a platform for everyone except fellow leftist fascists. The haters of the freedom of speech made three demands:

  1. Cancel the two-book deal with Mike Pence and do not sign any more book deals with former members of the Trump administration.
  2. End Simon & Schuster’s distribution deal with Post Hill Press [which publishes conservative books].
  3. Commit to ongoing reevaluations of all clients, authors, distribution deals, and all other financial commitments that promote white supremacist content and/or harm the aforementioned marginalized communities.

The fascists claimed that “when S&S chose to sign Mike Pence, we broke the public’s trust in our editorial process, and blatantly contradicted previous public claims in support of Black and other lives made vulnerable by structural oppression. Simon & Schuster has chosen complicity in perpetuating white supremacy by publishing Mike Pence and continuing to distribute books for Post Hill Press, including predator Matt Gaetz’s FIREBRAND. By choosing to publish Mike Pence, Simon & Schuster is generating wealth for a central figure of a presidency that unequivocally advocated for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and violence. This is not a difference of opinions; this is legitimizing bigotry.”

Of course. No dissent from the left is a legitimate “difference of opinions,” because leftists see the world in a way that religious fanatics throughout history would find familiar: they alone have the vision of what is good and just, and since all those outside the fold are ignorant and evil, they have no rights that the arbiters of what constitutes acceptable opinion are bound to respect.

So far, however, Simon & Schuster’s chief executive Jonathan Karp has shown himself to be among the unredeemed. Karp reminded the fascists in his employ that the job of a publishing house was to allow for “a diversity of voices and perspectives.” Diversity! Karp’s choice of words must have driven the petitioners up the wall, because like all leftists, they are no doubt extremely proud of their commitment to “diversity” in all forms except, of course, a genuine diversity of thought. Black and brown and queer and trans voices and all the rest are welcome among them, as long as they all think the same way and say the same thing. But here was Karp gently making it clear that the petitioners weren’t really in favor of diversity in any meaningful way. “We come to work each day to publish, not cancel,” he said, “which is the most extreme decision a publisher can make.”

For that he will likely be canceled himself before too long.

The American left long ago embraced authoritarianism and fascism, and is increasingly intolerant of any point of view other than its own. Note that the petitioners included in its laundry list of denunciations the spurious propaganda neologism “Islamophobia.” “Islamophobia” is an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: crimes against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. It is inconceivable that anyone would want to publish a book calling for attacks on innocent Muslims or any innocent people, but there are many books discussing the motivating ideology of jihad terrorism.

Islamic advocacy groups and their leftist allies have been insisting for years that such books, too, constituted “Islamophobia.” Such analyses are what these fascists at Simon & Schuster want to stamp out. If the left succeeds in consolidating power, it will be impossible to publish, and likely illegal to enunciate publicly, any opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others, for there is no example of any such opposition not being considered “Islamophobic.”

The fascist employees also demanded that Simon & Schuster cut ties with my publisher, Post Hill Press (my last six books have been or are in the process of being published under Post Hill’s imprint, Bombardier Books), with which Simon & Schuster has a distribution arrangement. The petition libelously asserts that Post Hill “openly supports and normalizes violence against minors, Black women, and all Black people by individuals and the state.” This is, of course, not remotely true. It is how left-fascists lie in order to demonize and destroy their opponents. Although Karp has rejected this petition, expect to see much more of this sort of thing. We have not yet reached the high tide of left-fascism in America today.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Turkey blasts Geert Wilders ‘anti-Islam’ tweet to start Ramadan

To highlight the jihad during Ramadan, Geert Wilders released a tweet which drew stinging attack from Turkey — illustrating yet again the validity of Geert Wilder’s warnings about Islam.

Listen to clip HERE.

For many, Ramadan is the month of jihad:

month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators.” — Qaedat al-Jihad

Quiet prayer during Ramadan, needless to say, isn’t the issue, but alerting people about the heightened threat of jihad during Ramadan is a big issue. And beyond Ramadan, the global jihad against infidels is a critical issue, far too often avoided. That includes the stealth invasion of the West, which includes the “Islamophobia” subterfuge, which is intended to beat down critics of Islam.

Turkish officials reacted angrily, accusing Wilders of being “racist.” What race is Islam again? Wilders’ critics keep on proving him correct, from their reaction to his criticisms, to the widespread reaction by Muslims to the Muhammad cartoon that was shown in the classroom by French teacher Samuel Paty (who was beheaded for it). Such a mentality (which is pervasive) isn’t compatible to the values of the Netherlands, and not only the Netherlands, but the entire Western world, in which freedom of thought and speech have been protected, at least up to now.

Turkey condemns Dutch lawmaker’s anti-Islam tweet

Al Jazeera, April 14, 2021:

Turkish officials reacted angrily to far-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders after he made disparaging remarks about Islam at the start of Ramadan.

On Monday, Wilders, chairman of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, shared a short video clip on Twitter attacking Islam and the Muslim holy month.

Turkey’s ruling AK Party spokesman Omer Celik on Wednesday accused Wilders of having “a racist and fascist mind”.

“Enemies of Islam also hate migrants, poor people, needy people and foreigners,” he said on Twitter.

Ali Erbas, the head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs, condemned Wilders’ remarks as “unacceptable”.

“I invite the international community to a conscious struggle against the racist mentality that incites Islamophobia and targets social peace,” Erbas said.

Turkey’s Communications Director Fahrettin Altun also condemned Wilder’s remarks.

“Heartless @geertwilderspvv is racist, fascist and extremist. Islam condemns all. Stop racism,” Altun said on Twitter, tagging the Dutch lawmaker….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Daniel Pearl’s Widow Highlights Message She Got About His Murder: ‘This is Not Islam’

Suicidal self-hatred continues to sweep the West. Mariane Pearl, the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic jihadis in Pakistan in 2002, has suffered a great deal, and it is perhaps churlish and uncharitable to venture any critical word at all. But it isn’t she I am criticizing. It is the general tendency, the felt need or the unspoken imperative, to take all possible opportunities to exonerate Islam of all connection to crimes done in its name and in accord with its teachings. One can never solve a problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. But that is exactly what we are doing.

The 19th anniversary of Daniel Pearl’s murder was Monday, and on Wednesday, Mariane Pearl published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “My husband’s killer could go free in Pakistan. Despite the injustice, I still have hope.” It began: “Almost two decades ago, the people of Pakistan sent me messages expressing sadness and anger at the murder of my husband, Daniel Pearl, in their beloved country. Danny was 38 years old and the Wall Street Journal’s bureau chief for South Asia. “I am a Muslim and this, my friend, is not Islam,” one wrote. My favorite message read: “Your husband had a great smile . . . a happy mixture of Pope John Paul and Dean Martin.”

It is certain that Mariane Pearl received numerous messages after the murder of her husband. The one that she and/or the Post chose to give first mention, however, was “I am a Muslim and this, my friend, is not Islam.”

The first question that springs to mind about this is: Why this message? Why is cleansing Islam’s image the number one priority?

The second question is: Why is this always asserted but never explained? Daniel Pearl was made to state that he was a Jew in a video, where he likely read a statement the jihadis had prepared for him: “My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California USA. I come from, uh, on my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel. Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great grandfather Chaim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town.” Then he was beheaded.

In a hadith that Muslims consider authentic, Muhammad is depicted as saying:

“The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim 6985)

And the Qur’an says:

“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (47:4)

In light of all that, it is unfortunate that Mariane Pearl’s interlocutor apparently did not explain how the killing of Daniel Pearl was not Islam, how the jihadis who killed him were transgressing Islamic tenets, or how the passages of the Qur’an and Hadith that seem to allow for such behavior actually have some other meaning or can be interpreted in a benign manner.

In the article, Mariane Pearl describes how it all happened, and how a Muslim who was the chief of the counter-terrorism unit in Karachi offered his help. Mariane Pearl jokes in response to kindness from this man and his wife: “Stop being so nice. How am I ever going to hate you guys?” That is the choice as most people see it today: one must either hate Muslims, or pretend that Islam is a religion of peace. But in reality, the fact that Islam teaches warfare against unbelievers does not mean that every Muslim will believe this to be an imperative or practice it. It doesn’t mean that no Muslims will be kind to unbelievers. But to believe that such kindness precludes the possibility that Islam does teach this warfare is to be willfully blind. And that’s where we are as a society.

The third and easiest question to answer is: Would the Washington Post ever print an explanation of the Islamic justification for the murder of Daniel Pearl, even if such a story included statements by Muslim spokesmen in the West offering differing interpretations of the passages in question? And the answer is, Not on your life! Not only is the Post, and all the rest of the establishment media as well, dedicated indefatigably to whitewashing and obfuscating the ideological roots of jihad terrorism; it is also determined to pretend that there isn’t even a question about those roots: they lay, according to the Post and its colleagues, in “racism” and “Islamophobia,” not in Islamic texts and teachings, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a racist “Islamophobe” himself.

The victory of “Islamophobia” propaganda has been so complete that the elites don’t even consider it remotely necessary even to address the arguments of those whom they smear as “Islamophobes,” or to acknowledge that they have any arguments at all. The only problem with all this is that the jihad, motivated by Islamic texts and teachings according to numerous statements of jihadis themselves, is not going to go away for all this pretending that it doesn’t exist.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Wonder Woman 1984: ‘I didn’t pick up on the blatant Islamophobia during my initial viewing’


Trailer WW84:


Maybe Farid-ul-Haq initially missed the “Islamophobia” in “Wonder Woman 1984” because one has to strain so hard to see it at all. What exactly constitutes “Islamophobia” is never defined in this article; it is taken for granted that everyone knows what it is, and it appears that Farid-ul-Haq thinks of it as an irrational prejudice against Muslims. He bases his case that “Wonder Woman 1984” (which I haven’t seen and have no intention of seeing) is “Islamophobic” on its “featuring a Muslim character as one of the bad guys” while not having “a single Muslim character playing the role of a good guy.”
Farid-ul-Haq thus takes for granted that Hollywood must never portray Muslims as “bad guys,” despite the existence of Islamic jihad terrorists all over the world, or at least must not do so without a balancing Muslim “good guy.” Why must Hollywood act as a PR service for Islam? Farid-ul-Haq would likely say that it is because Muslims are particular targets of “hate and discrimination in the real world,” but this is actually not true. The FBI listed 995 anti-Jewish “offenses” in 2019, and 219 anti-Muslim “offenses.” Even one is too many, but 219 offenses against Muslims in a year in a country of 330 million actually shows that such offenses are quite rare, as they should be. Would Farid-ul-Haq agree that Hollywood should show four and a half times more Jewish “good guys” than Muslim “good guys,” so as to combat “hate and discrimination” against Jews? Must Hollywood always balance portrayals of “bad guys” who really exist in the world with “good guys” from the same group? Would Farid-ul-Haq want every movie that features a neo-Nazi to feature also a good German for balance?
Farid-ul-Haq is also enraged at “Wonder Woman 1984” because a character was depicted as “swatting away a pendant, inside a taxi, with the name Allah and Muhammad (P.B.U.H) written on it.” However, a commenter on his article states: “Thanks to this article, I’ve re-watched this scene over and over, and it looks to me that Steve is swatting the rear-view mirror to get it out of the way so he can climb out of the taxi after crashing it into the armored vehicle. Watching it frame-by-frame, it’s obvious he’s aiming for the mirror and not the pendant. The other issues brought up I can see, but I don’t see the pendant one.” Even if the character were swatting away the pendant, must Hollywood also abide by Sharia provisions mandating absolute reverence for Islamic religious objects? Has Hollywood ever shown similar deference toward Christianity, the cross, the Bible, the name of Jesus, etc.? Here again, why should Muslims and Islam be singled out for special consideration?

“Addressing the Islamophobia in ‘Wonder Woman 1984,’” by Farid-ul-Haq, The Geekiary, December 27, 2020:

Turns out, along with being problematic when it comes to consent, Wonder Woman 1984 also features Islamophobia. Sigh! At this point, if you’re out there supporting Wonder Woman 1984 while ignoring or excusing certain narrative issues, I don’t know what to say to you.
This piece contains minor spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984. Consider yourself warned. 

Full disclaimer, while I rolled my eyes at Wonder Woman 1984 featuring a Muslim character as one of the bad guys, I didn’t pick up on the blatant Islamophobia during my initial viewing. I got to know about the implications of the scene in question after I decided to head on over to the Muslim side of Twitter.

An action sequence during Wonder Woman 2 occurs in Cairo. Maxwell Lord goes to meet Emir Said Bin Abydos and take over his oil empire. The Muslim character’s wish is to construct a wall and regain control of his ancestral land.

During the final moments, the movie also had a character in mujahideen-looking garb wishing for nuclear weapons.
Yes, it felt weird this movie didn’t have a single Muslim character playing the role of a good guy, especially after the first Wonder Woman had a Muslim character be one of Diana’s friends. But it is what it is. I would like Hollywood to do better, of course.
Now, coming to the most problematic and Islamophobic scene that involved Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). I was surprised when I saw tweets about said scene and how blatantly Islamophobic it was to show Steve swatting away a pendant, inside a taxi, with the name Allah and Muhammad (P.B.U.H) written on it.

Turns out, my mind didn’t even register such a moment. Instead of realizing what had transpired onscreen, apparently, my brain did something and I thought Steve had quickly placed the pendant on the dashboard before crawling out of the taxi to help Diana.

I rewatched the scene and was quite disappointed to see the scene for it was. In my opinion, there was no reason for such a scene to exist. It served no narrative purpose other than Steve being shown throwing away the names of two beings held in high regard in the Muslim community.
Such artistic content uses fictional Muslim characters to challenge the “interpretations” of Islam that continue to be used to encourage hate and discrimination in the real world….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ADL smears foes of jihad violence against Israel as ‘Islamophobes,’ gets canceled as ‘anti-Muslim’ anyway


Jonathan Greenblatt is discovering that any dissent, no matter how small and qualified, from the far-Left agenda — which is increasingly open in its hostility to Israel — will get you defamed as an “Islamophobe,” no matter how much you pander, no matter how much you desperately try to stay in the good graces of those who set the tune to which the rest of us must dance. The sinister Salam al-Marayati of MPAC has smeared ADL as “anti-Muslim” for supporting Israel, and Greenblatt is dismayed, saying that “the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false.”
Of course it is. The ADL has repeatedly done to foes of jihad violence against Israel and other states, and foes of Sharia oppression of women and others, exactly what Salam al-Marayati is doing to him now. Greenblatt could have used this as an occasion to wake up and realize how he is being played, and how the entire “Islamophobia” enterprise is a scam designed to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror, for fear of falling prey to what al-Marayati is doing to him now. But instead of having an original thought for the first time in his life, Greenblatt is doubling down, pleading with al-Marayati to accept him. Will it work? Almost certainly not, but it will likely lead the ADL to become even more anti-Israel than it is now.
“ADL: We’re proud of our record defending Jews — and Muslims,” by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Forward, December 16, 2020:

As one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the Jewish community, we’re not unaccustomed to criticism, even in the pages of one of America’s oldest Jewish news outlets. But the OpEd by Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which the Forward published on Tuesday morning, was illuminating about how certain quarters in our society desperately try to employ cancel culture to silence others. In this case, the author is trying to marginalize ADL and make support for the State of Israel disqualifying in pursuing civil rights for all Americans, including the Muslim-American community.
Al-Marayati argues that ADL is a source of “anti-Muslim” rhetoric and cannot be fully trusted as an ally in the fight for civil rights because of our support of the Jewish state. It is an argument taken from the playbook of a fringe smear campaign being run against ADL that, to its credit, MPAC has not signed his name to, but which he still chose to directly quote in his piece. Still, their campaign is wrong and without merit on a number of levels. It is also dangerous, creating a space where we as a Jewish organization are judged more for what we do or do not say about Israel than for all of the advocacy work we do here in the U.S. and abroad fighting for marginalized communities.
This is a common tactic in a smear campaign – narrow down a broader argument (in this case, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) into a singular, unfounded allegation (in this case, that ADL is Islamophobic because of our support for the Jewish State). But the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

15 Dem Senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, urge Facebook to block ‘anti-Muslim hate’


Incitement to violence against any group should always be blocked. The problem here is that Islamic advocacy groups and their allies in the West have for years claimed that any honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence was “anti-Muslim hate.” Facebook already makes such discussion virtually impossible to find. Expect it to be completely blacked out in a Biden/Harris administration.
“US senators call on Facebook to address anti-Muslim bigotry,” Middle East Eye, November 16, 2020 (thanks to Henry):

Democratic senators are calling on Facebook to “do more” to mitigate the spread of anti-Muslim bigotry, after the social media giant was criticised for failing to address attacks against the faith group on multiple occasions, including the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings.
In a letter sent to Facebook to CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, a group of 15 Senators said the platform needed to immediately enforce its community standards to address anti-Muslim hate and ban the use of event pages for the purpose of “harassment, organizing, and violence” against the Muslim community.
The letter also said that Facebook had not taken proper steps to enforce its “call to arms” policy, a year-old rule created in large part due to pressure from Muslim advocacy groups, which since 2015 had flagged multiple instances where organisers of Facebook events had advocated for followers to bring weapons to mosques and other places of worship.
“We recognize that Facebook has announced efforts to address its role in the distribution of anti-Muslim content in some of these areas,” the letter, signed by Senator Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and 12 others, said.
“Nevertheless, it is not clear that the company is meaningfully better positioned to prevent further human rights abuses and violence against Muslim minorities today.”
An independent civil rights audit of the social media company released in July outlined that despite having policies that did not allow for hate speech against religious groups, incidents of hate speech continued to persist across Facebook.
Muslim Advocates, a rights group that called for the audit two years ago, thanked the senators for writing the letter.
“Since 2015, Muslim Advocates had warned Facebook that the platform’s event pages were being used by violent militias and white nationalists to organize armed rallies at mosques,” the group’s executive director Farhana Khera said on Monday.
“We need to know what Facebook plans to do to end the anti-Muslim hate and violence enabled by their platform – and end it now.”…
“As members of Congress who are deeply disturbed by the proliferation of this hate speech on your platform, we urge you to do more,” the senators’ letter read.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.