The Speaking Of The Rauf

Pam Geller:

The media frenzy to destroy good, decent Americans who oppose a 15-story mega-mosque on Ground Zero is rabid. Even for them. Despite red flags everywhere and the nationwide grief caused by this grotesque act of Islamic supremacism, why isn’t the media doing its job, investigative journalism?

Instead, the morally ill media is in full-on operational smear machine mode in the raging war of ideas, the information battle space, the objective of which is to erect the Ground Zero mega mosque. Tolerance is a crime when applied to evil (Thomas Mann). Whilst the NY Times front page spins interfaith yarns into PR gold faster than Rumpelstiltskin and accords godlike status to Imam Feisal Rauf, new audio surfaces. Here are a couple of soundbites of tolerance:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf: “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.

No mention of the 270 million victims of over a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilation and enslavement. No mention of the recent slaughter by Muslims of Christians, Hindus, Jews, non-believers in Indonesia, Thailand, Ethiopia, Somalia, Philippines, Lebanon, Israel, Russia, China……………. no candor, no criticism of Islam.

Andy McCarthy at The Corner:

At Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller has uncovered audio of imam Feisal Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque, making public statements in which he opines that “the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”

There’s more . . . and it’s here. YouTube video link is here.

The Jawa Report:

Once again, this is not evidence that Rauf is an extremist wolf in moderate sheep’s clothing. For Muslims, the idea that US foreign policy is hostile to Muslims and that Americans don’t care about the deaths of innocents is widely held. By definition, this makes Rauf’s opinion mainstream in most majority Muslim countries.

On other issues, Rauf would be considered quite liberal in the Muslim community.

But to equivocate between the intentional killing of civilians by al Qaeda and the unintended killing of civilians by the US is worse than wrong — it is evil.

Yes, we kill civilians sometimes. That is truly one of the many sad realities of warfare.

When al Qaeda kills civilians they not only do it intentionally, but they also celebrate it.

No one in the West praises the Predator drone operator who accidentally blows up a wedding party. We think of such acts as the regrettable but inevitable outcome of war.

But in many parts of the Muslim world “The Magnificient 19” — the men who carried out the 9/11 attacks — are praised as heroes and martyrs.

I heard someone on the radio today (Hannity or Rush?) make a good point about this. He mentioned that Rauf’s equivocation seemed very much in line with Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s theory of America. Which may be why Obama’s State Department has no problem with paying for this guy to go on a goodwill mission to the Muslim world. If these are the kinds of speeches he has been delivering, then of course they will like what he is saying!

Let me add that the SOB still has a right to build a mosque wherever the hell he wants. Even the Nazis have that right.

Jim Geraghty at NRO:

If someone wants to argue that the sanctions regime on Iraq was counterproductive, because Saddam’s regime simply seized the resources they needed and let the Iraqi people suffer and starve, that’s a fair point. Madeline Albright’s comment that containing Saddam was “worth it” — i.e., the death of Iraqi children — was idiotic. But to suggest that the indirect effects of a U.S. sanctions regime is remotely morally comparable to al-Qaeda’s deliberate mass murder — much less to suggest that they are morally worse — is to eviscerate one’s claim to be moderate, pro-American, or sensible. He says it is a “difficult subject to discuss with Western audiences.” Does he ever wonder why?

From this audio, we can conclude that Rauf has a gentle tone of voice. But that does not mean that his words are gentle.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

[…] Rauf uses the word “innocent” only in the part about non-Muslim blood. But I doubt he would have drawn the comparison unless he believed that the U.S. is culpable in something like the same way as al Qaeda for wrongful killing.

Indeed, the Muslim blood Rauf refers to is that of “innocents”; specifically Iraqi children he says died as a result of American sanctions. Rauf not only fails to mention that the sanctions were designed to undermine one of the most unjust and bloodthirsty regimes of modern times, he proceeds to take the U.S. to task for “its contribution to injustice in the Arab world.” By overlooking the injustice of Saddam Hussein, and failing to acknowledge our efforts against that tyrant, Rauf reveals himself to be an anti-American ideologue, an apologist for al Qaeda, and a charlatan.

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard:

Yes, U.S. taxpayers are spending $16,000 so Rauf can spread his “moderate” message.

Alex Massie:

I continue to be impressed by how thin the case against Faisal Abdul Rauf is. You’d have thought that by now the staunch defenders of liberty crazies would have found either a smoking gun or a ticking bomb. To be fair, Pamela Geller* certainly thinks she has found evidence that he’s just as bad as his critics would have us believe. Or maybe even – and this may make your (my!) weak dhimmi-flesh creep – worse…

But, actually, all she has unearthed from a 2005 talk Rauf gave to, of all places, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, is evidence that Faisal Abdul Rauf could be considered a neoconservative. That is, he shares a central neoconservative insight:

How many of you have seen the documentary: Fahrenheit 911? The vast majority – at least half here. Do you remember the scene of the Iraqi woman whose house was bombed and she was just screaming, “What have they done.” Now, I don’t know, you don’t know Arabic but in Arabic it was extremely powerful. Her house was gone. Her husband, I think, was killed. What wrong did he do? I found myself weeping when I watched that scene and I imagined myself if I were a 15-year old nephew of this deceased man, what would I have felt?

Collateral damage is a nice thing to put on a paper but when the collateral damage is your own uncle or cousin, what passions do these arouse? How do you negotiate? How do you tell people whose homes have been destroyed, whose lives have been destroyed, that this does not justify your actions of terrorism. It’s hard. Yes, it is true that it does not justify the acts of bombing innocent civilians, that does not solve the problem, but after 50 years of, in many cases, oppression, of US support of authoritarian regimes that have violated human rights in the most heinous of ways, how else do people get attention?

Emphasis added. This is a core tenet of neoconservative foreign policy thought (and, in my view, a salient point too). Condi Rice made a famous speech making exactly this point and acknowledging that there was a terrible disconnect between proclaiming the universality of human rights, self-determination and freedom of expression and yet also propping-up ghastly, coercive, dictatorial regimes across the middle east for fear something worse might succeed them were those great American ideals and principles given free expression.There were – and are – good, or to put it differently, expedient, reasons for US policy and true too the evangelism of the Bush administration might have been both too optimistic (or naive) and, in the end, awful precisely because in the end it accepted that the bastards we know, for all their bastardy, may be better than the bastard nutters that might follow them.

Nevertheless, Imam Rauf shares at least some of the Bush administration’s diagnosis of the pathologies afflicting much f the middle east.

So how does Pamela Geller characterise this statement? “And the Imam is conspiracy theorist – 911 was an inside job.” I don’t actually understand how you get from watching Fahrenheit 9/11 (for all its many faults) to here. Then again, Geller does seem to have a curious interpretation of these matters. So when Rauf says:

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.

Well, you or I or any other ordinary person might think this a statement of the, alas, bleeding obvious, Geller thinks it needs to be glossed, thus: No mention of the 270 million victims of over a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilation and enslavement. Never mind that it’s obvious that Rauf is talking about the post-9/11 world, not the 750 years before the United States even existed.Needless to say Andy McCarthy thiks this means Rauf is saying US Worse than al-Qaeda when, clearly, he’s not saying that at all. It is, I think, incontestable that the United States and its allies have killed more Muslim civilians than al-Qaeda have killed non-muslims since 9/11. Noting this has precisely zero impact on one’s views of the wars or their righteousness.

Rauf, in fact, seems to have some understanding that empathy – which is not the same thing as either agreement or, for that matter, “appeasement” – is a useful quality when it comes to foreign policy:

The West needs to begin to see themselves through the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world, and when you do you will see the predicament that exists within the Muslim community.

This, quite evidently, does not mean that the west need agree with the arab world and nor is it a call for “surrender” or any such nonsense. Nor is it any kind of endorsement – if this needs to be pointed out – of the Wahhabist worldview.I suspect that I’d disagree with Faisal Abdul Rauf on a good number of issues. But his opponents – who have had ample opportunity to discover all that’s bad about him – have, to my mind, singularly failed to produce any real and damning evidence against him. Surely they can do better than this and if, in time, they do then I’ll be happy to change my mind even if my understanding of the First Amendment would require me to support his plan even if I were more strongly disapproving of it.

Oh My God, They Went After Kenny! You Bastards!

Max Read at Gawker:

Both supporters and opponents of the “Ground Zero” “Mosque”—a proposed community center—held rallies in lower Manhattan today. Can you guess which side started chanting “no mosque here” at a black guy wandering through the crowd?

While you spent your Sunday trying to teach your cat to go to the bathroom on a human toilet, a group of brave, freedom-loving Americans gathered in New York City to express their extreme disapproval with the Park 51 project, an al-Qaeda plot to build a community center featuring a swimming pool and auditorium on the very site where a Burlington Coat Factory once stood.

As you can see in the video above, at some point during the rally, a dark-skinned man wearing an Under Armor skullcap and what looks like a necklace with a Puerto Rican flag walked through the anti-“Mosque” crowd. The crowd, astutely recognizing that he was on his way to build the mosque, began to chant “NO MOSQUE HERE” at him. In the video, someone says, “run away, coward.” The man turns around, perturbed. “Y’all motherfuckers don’t know my opinion about shit,” he says. Au contraire, my friend: You are a black man wearing a skullcap, after all! You are definitely a pro-Mosque, anti-freedom Jihadist! Why, aren’t you, in fact… Osama Bin Laden??

No, actually, according to the guy who uploaded the video to YouTube, the skullcap-wearing gentleman’s name is Kenny and he’s “a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero.” Kenny is also—as he points out several times in the video—not a Muslim. (No word on whether or not he voted for Obama, as one of the very reasonable and intelligent-sounding anti-“Mosque” protestors speculates.) But I’ll bet you Kenny has been totally convinced about the truth of the Burlington Coat Factory Desecration Community Center. Who wouldn’t be?

Glenn Greenwald:

Can anyone watch the video of that disgusting hate rally and dispute that?  That’s exactly why I’ve found this conflict so significant.  If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will seriously bolster and validate the ugly premises at the heart of this campaign:  that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect.  As Aziz Poonawalla put it:  “if the project does fail, then I think that the message that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective.”

That’s exactly the message that will be sent, and that’s what makes this conflict so significant.  Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as overtly hateful as those in that video — and not all opponents are themselves bigots — but the position they’ve adopted is inherently bigoted, as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the aberrational acts of a small number of individual members.   And one thing is certain:  if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the sentiments driving it will become even more potent.  Hatemongerers always become emboldened when they triumph.

The animosity and hatred so visible here extends far beyond the location of mosques or even how we treat American Muslims.  So many of our national abuses, crimes and other excesses of the last decade — torture, invasions, bombings, illegal surveillance, assassinations, renditions, disappearances, etc. etc. — are grounded in endless demonization of Muslims.  A citizenry will submit to such policies only if they are vested with sufficient fear of an Enemy.  There are, as always, a wide array of enemies capable of producing substantial fear (the Immigrants, the Gays, and, as that video reveals, the always-reliable racial minorities), but the leading Enemy over the last decade, in American political discourse, has been, and still is, the Muslim.

That’s why the population is willing to justify virtually anything that’s done to “them” without much resistance at all, and it’s why very few people demand evidence from the Government before believing accusaitons that someone is a Terrorist:  after all, if they’re Muslim, that’s reason enough to believe it.  Hence, the repeated, mindless mantra that those in Guantanamo — or those on the Government’s “hit list” — are Terrorists even in the absence of evidence and charges, and even in the presence of ample grounds for doubting the truth of those accusations.

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs:

Wow. This is where we’re going, folks. Pamela Geller should be proud of her work.

Pamela Geller:

Max Blumenthal, notorious Jew hater, is lying, slandering and making up racist propaganda against me again. I have no idea what this rally is. I have no idea who these people are. I have no idea who organized this rally. Clearly, whoever organized this was careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip and harmful to the cause of freedom and compassion. I wasn’t even in the state, nor did I know anything about this half-assed effort. Check this out.

MaxBlumenthal: Pam Geller’s pogromists harass, nearly assault black man mistaken as Muslim@Ground Zero rally. http://bit.ly/aN5Tkm

[…]

Blumenthal is the personification of  the lazy, leftwing Jew-hating propagandist who shows complete contempt for the facts, or he would have known that my rally had been announced for September 11th for months. But Blumenthal has no use for truth or facts; he serves his Islamic overlords in the pursuitof the elimination  of Israel and the Jewish people.

You won’t win, kapo. Not this time. I am so on to you, racist.

Donald Douglas:

There most likely were many Pamela Geller supporters on the ground. But considering that Pamela’s being viciously slurred as a “pogromist” and “Atlas jugs” racist, I can understand her response. Not only that, scheduling duel protests was in fact a bad idea. Ground Zero attracts a lot of antiwar freaks, truthers, and America-bashers. Why make it even worse by scheduling an event vis-à-vis the Daisy Khan terror-enablers. And clearly, Max Blumenthal and the folks at Balloon Juice fall into that latter category.

John Cole:

Here’s some video from the Atlas Jugs anti-mosque rally, where some black guy made the mistake of looking Muslimish and was harassed and nearly assaulted by the collection of lily white mouth-breathers at the event:

[…]

At about 25 seconds in, he quite astutely points out to the crowd that “All y’all dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit.”

*** Update ***

Atlas claims she had nothing to do with this particular rally. Just, you know, starting the entire controversy.

Oh My God, They Went After Kenny! You Bastards!

Say “Divest” In A Bahston Accent

Hillel Koren at Globes:

In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.

Harvard Management Company stated in its 13-F Form that it sold 483,590 shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) for $30.5 million; 52,360 shares in NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) for $1.67 million; 102,940 shares in Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) for $3.6 million; 32,400 shares in Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) for $1.1 million, and 80,000 Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR) shares for $1.8 million.

Stephen Bainbridge:

I’m not sure where Globes got the sales data. The 13-F form is a holdings report, not a transaction report. In other words, institutional investors use the 13-F to report their current holdings at the end of the quarter, not sales. But if you compare the first quarter and second quarter 13-Fs, the endowment management company owned the stocks in question at the end of the first quarter and no longer owned them at the end of the second quarter.

In one sense, Harvard did divest–they dumped all their Israeli stocks. But most people use divest in a more nuanced way; i.e., to intentionally sell and thereafter refrain from investing in stocks of a particular country for political reasons. So the interesting question is why Harvard sold the stocks at issue. Was it coincidence, a purely investment-driven decision, or a surrender to political activists opposed to Israel? Only the latter would count as divestment in my book.

John Hinderaker at Powerline:

If this is right, it assorts oddly with Harvard’s acceptance of large amounts of money from Saudi Arabian sources. Also, what are Harvard’s largest securities holdings? Two ETFs, each worth $295 million, one in Chinese equities and the other in emerging markets. So Israel doesn’t meet Harvard’s moral test, but China does; and it would be interesting to see what countries are included among those emerging markets.

There is a pretty clear pattern here–again, assuming that the five nearly-simultaneous sales of shares in Israeli companies were not coincidental. Harvard is happy to do business with oppressors–real oppressors, that is–as long as there is enough money in it. China and Saudi Arabia have, in sheer monetary terms, a lot to offer. But taking a “principled” stand against Israel, still the Middle East’s only democracy (unless you count Iraq, on which the jury is still out) and the only country in the region with a Western human rights sensibility, is cost-free. Sort of like banning military recruiters.

Israel Matzav:

On Monday morning, there were several comments and emails providing plausible explanations for Harvard’s sale of their Israeli shares (and apparent purchase of Turkish shares in their place) for reasons that are not political. There are two principle schools of thought.

One is that with Israel’s admission into the OECD, we are no longer an emerging market, and therefore the emerging market section of the portfolio had to be reshuffled.

The other is that the Israeli stocks in Harvard’s portfolio had performed poorly of late.

I actually find the first explanation more plausible than the second. University endowments are long-term investments and would not be likely to be reshuffled solely on the basis of a quarter or two of poor performance. On the other hand, the OECD admission is a recent, verifiable event.

One would hope that a statement from Harvard will be forthcoming once the business day starts in the US. But that could be a vain hope. The SEC report on which the Globes article was ostensibly based (which is nothing but a list of Harvard’s current holdings) is here, here and here (an overall document and two subparts).

Globes probably put together the list of Israeli shares sold by comparison to last quarter’s report and updating the prices. But that says nothing about why the shares were sold.

Pam Geller:

Look at how far we have sunk. America’s once leading institution for higher learning pimps for jihad. We knew that these institutions like Harvard, Georgetown, etc., would unashamedly dance on demand when those Saudi 20 million dollar gifts began rolling in. Middle Eastern Studies departments are hotbeds of radicalism. Jewish students are persecute, harassed and physically threatened on these campuses.

If these institutions of higher learning get federal taxpayers dollars, is this not against the law? It’s one thing when jihadist frenemies violate the Arab boycott of Israel. We expect that from these players, they lie and are incapable of being honest merchants. When Saudi Arabia joined the World Trade Organization, they promised to end their participation in the Arab boycott of Israel, but they have not done so.

But this is Harvard. It is wrong, outrageous, that these tools of the stealth jihad are supported by your taxpayer dollars and private endowments (many from Jewish families). The whole moral structure is disintegrating before our very eyes. These whorehouses do not deserve one thin dime from public or Jewish coffers. This is getting very ugly. I expect Tariq Ramadan will be offered the Edward Said chair at Columbia in no short order.

Hugh Hewitt:

I find it hard to believe that the country’s oldest university would take such a step at all, much less without a full discussion and consultation with the broader university community.

This would be a very big story if it is in fact correct, so look for MSM to follow up tomorrow.  Certainly thousands of alums will react with extraordinarily negative consequences for the university, so President Drew Gilpin Faust should move quickly to answer all questions about the concern.

Jeffrey Goldberg:

I read on the Atlantic Wire earlier today that Harvard’s endowment had quietly dumped its investments in Israeli companies. Several bloggers had already picked up on the story, following a report in an Israeli newspaper. This seemed strange to me (for, among other reasons, the simple fact that there is no divestment campaign targeting Harvard at the moment) so I contacted Harvard. I was told that the university was not divesting itself of Israeli companies; quite the opposite, it was moving its Israeli investments out of a developing-market fund to another fund focused on more advanced economies. An hour later, Harvard issued a statement saying the same thing.

So the question is: Why didn’t anyone simply pick up the phone and call Harvard’s public relations office and find out exactly what was happening before posting, and repeating, what turned out to be pure speculation?

Wonder What Henry Ford Would Say About This?

Micha J. Stone at The Examiner:

Last Friday the annual Dearborn Arab International Festival in Dearborn Michigan became the sight of a mini holy war pitting Christian against Muslim. Accusations are being made that Dearborn police have been enforcing Sharia law after the arrest of four Christian evangelists, and the confiscation of their cameras.

[…]

Thompson alludes to a video made by the group, Acts 17 Apologetics, that went viral last year after recording security at the Arab festival “ruffing up” the Christian missionaries.

Are the Dearborn Police guilty of defending Islam against the Constitution, of bringing Sharia to Michigan? Time will tell.

One thing is certain: Christians and Muslims are equally deluded, both endorse superstitious non-sense. But this is America. It is wrong for Police to confiscate cameras and interrupt our constitutionally protected right to free speech, regardless of who that speech may offend.

John Hinderaker at Powerline:

Under Sharia law, it is forbidden to proselytize to Muslims, and no Muslim can leave the faith. Dearborn, Michigan, is home to a substantial Muslim population, and there is strong evidence that local authorities now enforce sharia in preference to the Constitution of the United States. Thus this Associated Press story about the arrest of four Christian missionaries that took place on Friday:

Police in the heavily Arab Detroit suburb of Dearborn say they arrested four Christian missionaries for disorderly conduct at an Arab cultural festival.

Police Chief Ron Haddad says his department made the arrests Friday. The four are free on bond.

Here is video of the arrest. The “disorderly conduct” consisted of handing out copies of the Gospel of John outside the festival. Note the police demand that one of the group stop filming the arrest:

Pamela Geller at Human Events:

On Saturday, I got this message from David Wood of Acts 17: “Muslims threatened to kill Nabeel [Qureshi, an ex-Muslim and David’s colleague] and me if we showed up again at Arab Fest in Dearborn, so we went there yesterday. They didn’t kill us. Instead, police arrested us and we got to spend a night in jail (along with two others who were video recording us).”

Wondering if they were arrested for passing out fliers in defiance of the ban, I asked David about the ban. He answered, “Yes, we’re banned from handing out literature, but we didn’t do that. We followed the rules, and still got thrown in jail. They flat out lied about us. We can prove they lied with the video footage (just like last year), but the police took our cameras and won’t let us have the footage. There’s major oppression of anyone who criticizes Islam.”

Last year, Nabeel, David and friends went to the Arab Festival and filmed a video that went viral. It is amazing to see in that video what happened in America. It was free speech under siege.

Nabeel and David were harassed and intimidated, aided and abetted by law enforcement. Said David and Nabeel: “The conclusion of this video is a mob of festival security attacking our cameras, pushing us back, kicking our legs, and lying to the police. We ask you, is it a coincidence that the city with the highest percentage of Muslims in the United States is the city where Christianity is not allowed to be represented (let alone preached) on a public sidewalk?”

The video was shocking because it exposed the lack of freedoms for non-Muslims in America where Islam is involved. Muslims are given special rights, treated as a special class that gets special treatment.

mailloux at Redstate:

I had the great pleasure of seeing Pope John Paul II in 1993 during the World Youth Day events held in Denver, Colorado. I have fond memories of that time, for it was a very moving and influential experience.

But, it was also punctuated by debate. On many street corners anti-Catholic groups were handing out literature to the throngs of Catholic pilgrims who were making their way from event to event. The anti-Catholic groups were actively proselytizing by engaging World Youth Day participants in conversations both civil and not so civil.

No one in authority stopped the non-Catholic groups from their efforts to proselytize the Catholic pilgrims (many of which were high school and college age). And, speaking as a Catholic who was at the event, I’m glad for that. I took the literature, read it, and engaged in conversations. For goodness sake, they were handing me a pamphlet, not pointing a gun at me. They told me I was going to hell by virtue of being Catholic. I disagreed and stated my case as to why. There was freedom here. There were spirited conversations. There were challenges and questions proposed, some fair and some patently unfair. You could choose to engage in debate or you could choose not to. There was no, as far as I could tell, disorderly conduct. We, both the Catholics and the anti-Catholics, were Americans exercising our rights to free expression and freedom of religion.

Fast forward now to 2010, to Dearborn, Michigan, where an Arab Cultural Festival was recently held … a group of 3 Christians stood outside of the festival grounds and peacefully handed out the Gospel of John presented in both English and Arabic. They did not harass. They did not throw about epithets. They simply handed out a book for anyone willing to take one.

Allah Pundit:

Via Powerline, so insane is this that I’m paranoid there’s a key detail missing somewhere that might explain the whole thing. Could the Christians have been trespassing on private property, maybe? Sure doesn’t look like it, and in any case, they weren’t arrested for trespassing. They were arrested for “disorderly conduct,” which apparently now extends to the offense of offering religious literature to someone who might not want it.

If this is what it looks like, replete with cops confiscating video cameras to keep what happened off the record, it’s one of the most ridiculous First Amendment violations you’ll ever see.

[…]

Here’s the Thomas More Center’s press release, which notes that there was trouble at last year’s Dearborn Arab festival too. Evidently the cops were worried that the presence of Christian lit at a mostly Muslim event might produce some “excitement,” so they solved the problem by punishing the party that tried to peacefully exercise its rights. Note to the defendants: Don’t forget to ask for damages. A lot of damages.

Atlas May Shrug, But The Right Blogosphere Does Not

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs:

The little money that Atlas generates (I have no large donors) is about to be cut off. Apparently the jihad is hard at work trying to kill free speech (and the bus ads and the 911 no mosque movement), preventing it from making its way to those in pursuit of truth. Paypal contributions help pay for bus ads, rallies, live coverage (everything), and I so much as said so when asked repeatedly by the press who paid for the bus ads. Readers do and did.

Paypal is calling Atlas a “hate” site and will close my account if I do not remove the paypal option from my website. Accurate reporting and news is hate.

Truth is the new hate speech:

Please email or call paypal and let them know Atlas Shrugs is a news site and political blog. I am not responsible for the bad news in the world. I just report.

Great, another lawsuit. Want to make a contribution to my fight?

Mail a check to Pamela Geller, PO Box 121, 1040 1st Avenue, NY NY 10022. Until I beat those pathetic Paypal pussies. Unbelievable.

Robert Stacy McCain at The American Spectator:

PayPal is a division of the online market eBay, whose former CEO Meg Whitman recently won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California

Geller helped organize a major protest against the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City. The shutdown notices from PayPal, Geller said in a telephone interview Saturday, came after she received widespread media attention and sponsored an advertising campaign that offered support to former Muslims threatened for renouncing the faith. Her activism is funded almost entirely by small online contributions from readers.

An Associated Press article about Geller last month quoted Faiza Ali, of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who accused Geller of a “long-standing history of anti-Muslim bigotry.” Geller said Saturday she is considering pursuing legal action against PayPal’s attempt to attach a “hate” label to her site.

“What do they expect me to do, stop blogging about jihad?” said Geller, whose blog emphasizes national security issues, Mideast policy and the War on Terror. “These are strange times. And they’re going to get stranger still.”

Instapundit:

A couple of readers wonder if this will hurt Meg Whitman’s candidacy. Someone should ask her . . .

John Hinderaker at Powerline:

As Pamela points out, Paypal is not exactly consistent in its evaluation of “hate” sites. Revolution Muslim, for example, uses Paypal.

One can surmise that Paypal’s action against Atlas Shrugs was prompted by complaints from pro-terrorist elements. Be that as it may, it is undoubtedly one small part of a broad effort to stigmatize and delegitimize the expression of mainstream, conservative views. (I’m not sure whether Pamela is a conservative or not, but her anti-terrorist stance represents a key element of contemporary conservatism.) If you would like to complain to Paypal or support Pamela’s work, follow the link above for instructions.

James Joyner:

Does Gellar’s site “promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime” in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy?  While it’s far too polemical for my tastes, I think it falls short of that.   She’s passionately Likudist and opposed to the whitewashing of the legitimate horrors perpetrated in the name of Islam.   But it’s not unreasonable to think regular readers who find her persuasive will have increased contempt for even mainstream Muslims and by extension most Arabs.

But PayPal gets to make the call, alas, putting the onus on those whose accounts they freeze to fight them.   Gellar’s soliciting donations — via mail rather than PayPal! — to do just that.   I am not a lawyer, but I think she’ll have a hard time.  Moreover, as the old saying about our legal system goes, the process is the punishment.   Even if she wins, it’ll cost her an inordinate amount of time and money.  Almost certainly more than her PayPal account is worth.

Charles Johnson:

Today the wingnuts are overwhelmingly falling in line to support Pamela Geller, spewing hatred at PayPal for shutting down her account (because she’s using it to promote hatred), and accusing PayPal of being part of the global jihad.

The pathetically ironic part of all this yelling and whining: these are the same people who insist that businesses have an absolute right to deny service to anyone for any reason.

The fact is that there are plenty of good reasons to make the judgment that Pamela Geller promotes crazy hate speech, racist groups, and conspiracy theories; her main targets are Muslims, but many of these reasons have nothing to do with Islam, radical or otherwise.

For example, her bizarre racist accusation that Barack Obama is the illegitimate child of Malcolm X. Or her promotion of Birther theories. Or her association with far right fascist parties in Europe, such as the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the BNP-linked English Defense League, and the neo-Nazi-linked Pro-Koln group. Or her outrageous support and whitewashing of murdered South African neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terreblanche.

I could continue listing examples for a very long time. She’s been dealing in hate speech and extremism for years.

Or I could just direct you to her latest post for another blatant example of her hate-based insanity: ‘I am a Muslim,’ Obama Tells Egyptian Foreign Minister Gheit Islamic Coup on the White House – Atlas Shrugs.

Her sources for the claim that President Obama has staged an “Islamic Coup on the White House:” wacko fringe fundamentalist sites linked to people like Chuck Baldwin.

More Geller:

And so today, about an hour ago, a very pleasant and rather deliberately clueless executive called me from paypal to say it was all a big misunderstanding and Atlas would be reinstated (and the subsequent restriction of SIOA and FDI removed also).

Not so fast, Leslie.

I asked her why I was singled out and who designated me as a hate speech site, and on what basis? Why was revolution muslim (which threatened to murder the producers of Comedy Central)  and Imam Awlaki DVDs part of the paypal stable of vendors? She said she was “unaware of a hate speech designation and would inquire and call me back.”

And so she did.

She said Atlas was mistakenly designated when “in review.” I asked why was Atlas in review. Paypal has been on this website since 2005. She did not have an answer. I asked what recourse do smaller websites have? As this is my real concern. My soapbox is pretty big, but what about small blogs?

I told Leslie that reinstating me was not good enough. If a site is designated a “hate site,” who decides? Once designated, you have two choices — lose paypal, or change content. Unfair, mon frere. Leslie agreed. She said she was going to recommend a third choice so that one could contest the designation before a mandatory choice had to be made of either signing off of paypal or changing content.

Frankly, I find this weak. They should remove the designation altogether. If they are going to allow jihadis to raise dough using paypal, what’s the point of any hate speech designation?

Needless to say, I am not going back. I told her that, too. She wished I would reconsider. But, no. I am sticking with Gpal — the G stands for guns 🙂

The real story is that we stood up and the weasels backed down. We will fight each battle this way.

There Are Cordoba Guitars And Cordoba Houses

Dana Chivvis at Politics Daily:

A government group representing lower Manhattan voted last night in favor of plans to build a controversial mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site. After four hours of discussions between opponents and supporters of the proposed Muslim community center, called Cordoba House, the community board voted 29-to-1 in favor of the plans.

The vote is not binding in any way, but is seen as a gauge of public opinion. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, State Senator Daniel Squadron and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn support the plans for the 13-story building, which would include a swimming pool, auditorium , exhibition space and as an area for worship.

Still, many others nationwide have voiced their opposition to the plans, saying the mosque will be an ugly reminder of the extremist ideology behind the terror attacks. Julie Menin, the community board chairwoman, told The New York Times she had received hundreds of calls and emails about the plans, most of which were from outside New York.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

My conservative cousin from New York writes:

Plans to build Cordoba House, a 15-story Islamic Center two blocks north of Ground Zero, received a major boost yesterday when a Manhattan community board backed the proposal by a 29-to-1 vote. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said the center would help “bridge and heal a divide” among Muslims and other religious groups.

Perhaps the Imam is sincere but I find the whole project an outrage. The name Cordoba House at best conveys a total insensitivity to the families of victims of the attack at worse it shows sympathy with the terrorist’s goals. Cordoba, was the Capital of Al-Andalus the Islamic Caliphate that ruled much of Spain during the Middle Ages. One of Al-Qaida’s main goals announced after the 9/11 attack was the restoration of the Cordoba Caliphate in Al-Andalus.

The Project is said to cost $100 million and no one seems to know who is paying for all of this. There are hundreds of Mosques in the New York area in a nation dedicated to religious freedom. If the Imam wants to “bridge and heal a divide” among Muslims and other faiths he should look beyond Manhattan. There are no churches or synagogues in Mecca, Riyadh or Kuwait. In Egypt, Iran and other Islamic nations those who don’t adhere to Islam practice their faiths at great risk to themselves and their families. I don’t understand why Mayor Bloomberg and other local officials are supporting this project.

Can anyone explain?

I can’t. But the name of the Center should help increase our understanding of Islam.

Julie Marsh at The Stir:

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear up front: I’m no fan of Islam. Then again, I’m no fan of the Catholic church or fundamentalist Christianity either. I confess that Mormonism befuddles me, and I’m weirded out by Wicca.

But the First Amendment allows all of these religions and more to be practiced freely here in the United States. Meanwhile, the Fifth Amendment covers private property rights, among others.

Conservatives love to cite the Constitution when arguing a point, but in the case of the proposed Cordoba House community center in lower Manhattan, they’ve conveniently forgotten about both of these amendments.

First, I’d like to dispel some misinformation regarding this project. The site is not at ground zero, but a few blocks away — an existing building already owned by the two groups spearheading the project. It’s not set to open on September 11, 2011, but will take three to five years to complete. It’s not just a mosque but an entire community center, including “a performing arts center, swimming pool, culinary school, child care facilities … [and] it would provide 150 full-time jobs, 500 part-time jobs, and an investment of more than $100 million in infrastructure in the city’s financial district.”

The project sponsors voluntarily presented their plans to the Community Board of lower Manhattan on Wednesday, May 5; they did not have to do so. As board member Ro Sheffe noted, “They own the land, and their plans don’t have any zoning changes.” The board members present at the meeting voted unanimously to support the project.

Rod Dreher:

There are some things you just don’t do, no matter how well-intentioned. You may recall in 1993, Pope John Paul II ordered Carmelite nuns to remove themselves from a convent they established on the grounds of Auschwitz, after years of Jewish protest. Even though the Nazis did not massacre Jews there in the name of Christianity, Jews saw the presence of the convent on the most notorious site of the Holocaust as an affront. It was plainly not meant to be, but it was, and one can certainly understand why, given what happened on that site, and the history of anti-Semitism in European Christianity. If reconciliation and peace is what one wants to see between Jews and Christians in the Holocaust’s wake, erecting a site of Christian religious worship on the site where millions of European Jews were gassed and burned is not the way to do it.

Though the numbers of dead in the 9/11 attacks were incomparably smaller than the Holocaust, the inescapable fact is that those killings were carried out by Islamic religious fanatics who believed they were serving Islam through mass murder. Again, it would be very wrong to hold all Muslims responsible for what those monsters did. At the same time, however distorted the religious views of those terrorists may have been, it is deeply offensive to build a giant mosque in what would have been the shadows of the Twin Towers, had they not been brought down explicitly for the greater glory of Allah. I see the desire to erect such a building on that site not as a gesture of interreligious peace and reconciliation — which we need — but rather as an outrageous act of nerve and arrogance

Gabriel Winant at Salon:

Mark Williams, a Tea Party leader and Fox News commentator, wrote on his blog, “The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god.” He added, “In the meantime I have a wonderful idea along the same lines as that mosque at Ground Zero thing… a nice, shiny new U.S. Military Base on the smoldering ruins of Mecca. Works for me!”

At WorldNetDaily, the Birther Web publication popular on the conservative fringe, an article, written in classic WND style, begins by acting like a straight report — albeit laced with purple prose about “that fateful day when time stood still.” Then author Chelsea Schilling moves on to ominously noting that building inspectors had trouble investigating construction complaints — almost as if somebody was hiding something. She finishes up by quoting a random selection of racist blog commenters: “Muslims are doing this only to see if they get away with it. It’s the way Islam spreads in every country these days, like a cancer — through incremental totalitarianism,” writes one. Another writes, “This is not different than allowing the Nazis to establish their headquarters and propaganda office in NYC in 1938. How come people could tell right from wrong then and not now?”

Lest you think it’s just anonymous trolls producing this stuff, though, check out Pamela Geller, the head of the group “Stop Islamization of America,” talking to Joy Behar on CNN. According to Geller, instead of a mosque, the site should be host to a monument to the “victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter.”

You’d think someone who runs a group with “Islam” right in its name might know that the religion is about 1,400 years old — not “hundreds of millions.” I know that all that desert stuff seems super-ancient — “sands of time” and and all that — but honestly. “Hundreds of millions”? That’s way, way older than homo sapiens as a species. (Maybe that explains Williams’ “monkey god” reference?)

Then there’s Andy McCarthy, National Review writer and recent author of a book arguing that liberals are consciously conspiring to betray America to the ravenous Muslim horde. McCarthy recently pointed out on Fox News that there are 2,300 mosques in America, but no churches or synagogues in Muslim holy cities Mecca and Medina.

First of all, I think this fairly puts to rest any notion that the more militant strain of anti-Islamist hawkishness is anything other than full-scale, civilizational hatred. After this eruption, it’s going to be a stretch to take seriously claims that the interest of the right-wing base in armed conflict in the Middle East is about anything but an active desire for full-on race war. (I’ve taken some heat in the past for using this term, but I stand by it. The occurrence of the phrase “monkey god,” I think, makes my point rather neatly.) Moreover, it’s penetrated quite far into the mainstream of the right, with the flowering of a sub-literature that treats migration patterns and labor markets in Europe like they’re the secret plan for the conquest of Christendom.

In recent years, liberals have become fond of pointing out that this kind of belligerent overreaction to the terrorist threat is exactly what makes terrorism effective. It plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden to treat Islam like our foe in a global, apocalyptic struggle. That’s exactly how he sees it, and joining him in this fantasy endorses al-Qaida’s ideology.

This is a true and important point, pragmatically. But there’s something even worse going on here. It’s not just that Gellar, McCarthy, Williams and the rest in the War-with-Islam group are inadvertently playing into the hands of Islamic extremists. They are, exactly, their analogue within our own society. The same things that benefit Islamic radicals benefit anti-Islamic militants. Both groups feed off conflict, and prosper when violence erupts. Their only break from accusing Islam of guilt in wars and mass violence seems to come when they call for wars and mass violence against Muslims.

UPDATE: Pamela Geller at Big Government

Joe Klein at Swampland at Time

UPDATE #2: Michelle Malkin

Alex Pareene at Gawker

UPDATE #3: Charles Johnson at LGF on the ad

Greg Sargent

Jim Newell at Gawker

UPDATE #4: Stephen Schwartz at The Weekly Standard

Jules Crittenden

Scott Johnson at Powerline

UPDATE #5: Michelle Goldberg and Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloggingheads

UPDATE #6: Robert Wright on Schwartz in NYT

Jonathan Chait at TNR

Matthew Yglesias

The Ballad Of Glenn And Geert

David Weigel at The Washington Independent:

Here’s one repercussion of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders surging in the polls and looking more and more like his county’s next prime minister. While Wilders has a robust community of support in America — in some circles he’s considered a hero for his campaign against Islam — Glenn Beck went after Wilders on his TV show as an example of how far-right fascism can rise in a crisis.

The video’s been pulled, but here’s a transcript.

In France, polls have this guy, the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, he is center-right. He’s hitting now new lows. Look out, because whoever is ruling now in any country no matter what, as this economy tanks and they spend all this money and it doesn’t matter if they’re right or left, as they tank, they’re going to become extraordinarily unpopular. So his approval rating is down to 36 percent. However, this guy, far right, Villepin (sic) — he’s at 57 percent.

Also, you have far right Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders. Last year, he was banned from the U.K. They said his presence could threaten community a harmony and therefore public safety. Last week, not only was he allowed into England, he was at the House of Lords, where he screened a film on the Quran.

The right and left are growing again in Europe. The left — listen carefully — the left in Europe is communism. The right is fascism, in Europe.

Europe is making the same mistakes that they made at the turn of the century. Mark my words — watch, please, do me a favor. We don’t have enough staff to watch this and nobody else is looking for it. Please, watch the crazy fringe groups over in Europe and e-mail. Tweet them to me at Glenn Beck on Twitter. Please, watch them as a watchdog, because they’re headed down the wrong tracks and we have to be prepared.

Pamela Geller:

Something very disturbing happened today on FOX. Glenn Beck, who has, for the most part, steered clear of jihad, sharia and Islamic supremacism, put his toe in the water, and for the first time since I started fighting  the long war, I got nervous.

Beck just called Wilders a fascist, and far-right.

He also mixed up Dominique de Villepin with Jean Marie Le Pen.

What is he doing?

Why would he stigmatize Wilders this way? Wilders is the embodiment of what our founding fathers extolled. Individual rights. Freedom of speech. Not sharia law.

Was Beck saying that the UK was right to ban Wilders in the interest of “community harmony?” And the fact that he was allowed to enter the UK last week was a dire sign?

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

I happened to see Wilders’ appearance on Beck’s show. Beck did not challenge Wilders’ statements as fascist. He made a comment that, to me, indicated a bit of discomfort with Wilders, but only after Wilders was gone.

It was apparent to me that Beck was out of his depth with Wilders. Pamela Geller makes the same point in response to Beck’s latest attempt to engage the WIlders phenomenon.

I’ve said before that the European “right” is a complex phenomenon that does contain fascist elements. It takes a little bit of work to identify those elements.

Beck complains that he lacks the staff to keep track of European “right-wng” politics. That’s a good reason to exercise more caution than he does in his comment on Wilders.

Diana West:

It was pile-on time at Fox News tonight as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, a gal whose name I missed [update — A.B. Stoddard] and Bill Kristol all branded Geert Wilders beyond the pale tonight.

Beck classified Geert as a fascist.

Krauthammer said Geert didn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism — never mind that according to Krauthammer’s idea of  Islamic scholarship, neither did Mohammed.

[Stoddard] said she agreed with Imam Krauthammer and added that if people like this (Geert) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.

Kristol called Geert a demagogue.

In other words, a stomach-turning display — or should I say halal?

Fact is, this anti-Geert pundit solidarity will only delight Newscorp stakeholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. That’s because it is Wilders in the Netherlands who stands as the unexpectedly strong spearhead of resistance to the Islamization of Europe and the wider West. As a scion of the most powerful sharia  dictatorship in the world, Prince Talal doesn’t like that. How fortunate for him  that Fox News doesn’t like it, either.

Dan Riehl:

But he didn’t let that stop him from going on about them. What’s it going to take for people to realize the guy doesn’t seem to give much thought to what he says on air? And if he does, then it’s his mind that’s weak, not his willingness to do his homework.

But that’s okay. He doesn’t like Obama and says George Washington a lot, so he must be one of us.

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs:

The wingnut blogosphere is in full shrieking harpy mode over Glenn Beck’s statement about anti-Muslim Dutch MP Geert Wilders (who wants to ban the Koran and make Islam itself illegal).

This is one of those Bizarro days, because I actually find myself agreeing with Glenn Beck. Geert Wilders is a far right ideologue, and the European far right does often equal fascism. How the heck did Beck ever get this one right?

David Frum at FrumForum:

Life isn’t long enough to keep track of the dumb things said by Glenn Beck, still this may hold some kind of record. The linked blogpost is mostly offended that Beck calls Dutch MP Geert Wilders a fascist. Even more amazing to my ears however was what comes immediately before that: the section in which Beck predicts a challenge to French President Nicolas Sarkozy led by that sinister figure from the French far right … Dominique de Villepin!

This is a little like a French radio host warning his audience of the danger of an American populist upsurge led by the notorious demagogue, John Kerry.