Spencer, Robt islm

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see jihad watch also horowitz</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">islamophobe horwitz canary mission</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-march-20-2019/">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-march-20-2019/</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bs</font></p><header class="entry-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px;"><a class="entry-title-link" rel="bookmark" href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/04/adl-smears-canary-mission-as-islamophobic-for-exposing-islamic-anti-semitism" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">ADL smears Canary Mission as “Islamophobic” for exposing Islamic anti-Semitism</font></a></h2><p class="entry-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><time class="entry-time" itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2018-04-29T15:30:09-04:00" style="box-sizing: border-box;">APR 29, 2018</time>&nbsp;<time class="entry-time" itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2018-04-29T15:30:09-04:00" style="box-sizing: border-box;">3:30 PM</time>&nbsp;BY&nbsp;<span class="entry-author" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/author/samir" class="entry-author-link" itemprop="url" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">ROBERT SPENCER</a></span></font></p></header><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Canary Mission, an estimable group, is not the first supporter of Israel to be smeared by the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL has likewise defamed Pamela Geller and me for standing against jihad terror and Sharia oppression. The ADL has also libeled the preeminent lawyer and orthodox Jew David Yerushalmi as an “extremist,” an “anti-Muslim bigot” […]</font></p></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/tag/canary-mission">https://www.jihadwatch.org/tag/canary-mission</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">zach b vox</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: inherit;">All of this, combined with Trump’s much more overt anti-Islam rhetoric, has helped turn the Muslim religion into a partisan issue:</span></p><div id="4dj1xr" style="font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div data-analytics-viewport="autotune" data-analytics-label="vox-partisan-attitudes-towards-islam-october-2016:3860" id="vox-partisan-attitudes-towards-islam-october-2016__graphic" data-autotune-alt-embed-type="image" data-autotune-alt-embed-url="https://apps.voxmedia.com/at/vox-partisan-attitudes-towards-islam-october-2016/screenshots/screenshot_s@2.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p id="qXjOzy" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Right-wing media, recognizing the appeal of the counter-jihadist message among their audience, has embraced this extreme anti-Islam narrative the counter-jihadists are peddling. A study published by&nbsp;<a href="http://nhmc.org/sites/default/files/Social%20Networks%20for%20Hate%20Speech_UCLA%20CSRC.pdf" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center</a>&nbsp;found that guests with extreme anti-Muslim views made up 11 percent of all guests on prominent conservative talk radio during a period they studied in 2010</span>. Two prominent counter-jihadists appeared on Fox News 15 times between September 2015 and February 2016, according to a count by&nbsp;<a href="https://mediamatters.org/research/2016/02/18/fox-news-the-home-of-two-newly-designated-anti/208671" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">Media Matters</a>. Prominent televangelists spread the anti-Islam gospel to yet another group of reliable conservatives. Pat Robertson, the host of the widely broadcast&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">700 Club</em>, once said&nbsp;<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2008/04/09/700-clubs-robertson-islam-is-not-a-religion-it/143166" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">on air</a>&nbsp;that “Islam is a political system that is bent on world domination.”</font></p><p id="rA87hO" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this is supplemented by a vast grassroots network, centering on a group called&nbsp;<b>ACT for America.</b>&nbsp;Billing itself as the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; background-color: transparent !important;">“the NRA of National Security,”</a>&nbsp;it claims to have a membership of 500,000 nationwide, clustered in 1,000 chapters around the country.</font></p><p id="octBjI" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Its president,&nbsp;<b>Brigitte Gabriel,</b>&nbsp;is the author of one of those mid-2000s counter-jihadist bestsellers (<em style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Because They Hate</em>). A Lebanese Christian immigrant who calls herself “one of the leading terrorism experts in the world,” Gabriel has no formal background in terrorism, either through working in government or academia. According to her book, the highest level of education she received was a one-year course in business administration at a YWCA. Her claim to authority stems, allegedly, from experiences of persecution at the hands of Muslims during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s — a historically dubious story that Lebanese-American journalist Michael Young once labeled a&nbsp;<a href="https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/the_dark_angel_gabriel" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; background-color: transparent !important;">“con act.”</a></font></p><p id="M1DCHv" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a speech in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZJ7TFcj6s&t=3443s" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; background-color: transparent !important;">May 2016</a>&nbsp;at the Oasis Church in Middletown, Ohio, Gabriel delivered an accessible and entertaining speech on the counter-jihadist view of Islam. In her telling, the&nbsp;<b>history of Islam is a history of bloodshed.&nbsp;</b>Between Islam’s founding in the seventh century and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, she says, “Islam was responsible for 270 million people across the globe — killed by the sword.”</font></p><p id="dOJhSn" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This violence was not accidental, Gabriel told the rapt crowd. It was the core of Islam itself.</font></p><p id="8FPO5A" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gabriel believes that for 12 years, Mohammed attempted to peacefully proselytize — and failed, miserably. Only when he turned to violence, to conversion at the point of the sword, did he begin to win success.</font></p><p id="UwAB0R" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Islam went from being strictly a spiritual movement, after 12 years, to becoming a political movement cloaked in religion,” she says. “Jihad is mentioned in the Quran 40 times — 36 times out of 40 as a holy war against the infidels, to either kill them or subjugate them.”</font></p><p id="IYAH4U" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">These are all historically inaccurate claims. Haroon Moghul, a fellow at the New America Foundation,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013127211920494.html" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">writes</a>&nbsp;that they “play loose and fast with very different eras, places and peoples,” in order to put together a narrative of a uniformly aggressive Islam. Yet Gabriel’s group has been profoundly influential.</font></p><p id="IYAH4U" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="text-decoration-line: inherit;">[twt mar&nbsp; lago sec breifing look who i ran into djt</span><span style="text-decoration-line: inherit;">]</span></font></p><p id="IYAH4U" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="text-decoration-line: inherit;"><b>Her activists have worked tirelessly to pass legislation, based on a template constructed by Gaffney and CSP in-house counsel David Yerushalmi, that would ban state courts from considering sharia a valid source of law.&nbsp;</b>By 2016, they had succeeded in</span><span style="text-decoration-line: inherit;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-sharia/2016/06/24/7e3efb7a-31ef-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html?utm_term=.a1145c741fe8" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; background-color: transparent !important;">nine states</a><span style="text-decoration-line: inherit;">: Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, South Dakota, Arizona, and Tennessee.</span></font></p><p id="iOEXCT" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“No court, administrative agency, or other governmental agency may enforce any provisions of any religious code,” the&nbsp;<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/south-dakota-governor-signs-unconstitutional-anti-muslim-bill-c0bfc738a004#.5npawfu3o" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">South Dakota version reads</a>, neutral language obscuring&nbsp;<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/south-dakota-governor-signs-unconstitutional-anti-muslim-bill-c0bfc738a004#.5npawfu3o" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">the clear intent</a>.</font></p><p id="dCvfU9" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">More alarmingly, the ideas pushed by Gabriel and CSP have been embraced by the most important members of the Trump White House.</font></p><p id="4KdEuG" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Most people in the Middle East, or at least 50 percent, believe in being sharia-compliant,”<b>&nbsp;Bannon</b>&nbsp;said on the<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fbreitbart%2Fbreitbart-news-daily-rosemary-jenks-december-8-2015" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">&nbsp;Breitbart Daily News</a>&nbsp;radio show in 2015. “Sharia-compliant” is an innocuous phrase commonly used by Muslims to denote that something is in line with Islamic law: For instance, you can find&nbsp;<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/11/shariah-compliant-islamic-financing-usa-europe/16828599/" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">sharia-compliant home mortgage companies</a>&nbsp;in the US that cater primarily (but not exclusively) to Muslims, because Islamic law forbids Muslims from collecting or paying interest on loans.</font></p><p id="qArJHO" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Team B II report’s authors sees things like sharia-compliant financial institutions as an insidious threat to the US Constitution (they never really explain&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">how</em>&nbsp;a home mortgage company that doesn’t charge interest threatens the Constitution).</font></p><p id="8grkhy" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="text-decoration-line: inherit;">It’s not just Bannon.</span>But the Team B II report also frequently uses the term “sharia-compliant” to describe not institutions or practices, but people: specifically, Muslims with dangerous, anti-American beliefs, anti-constitutional beliefs. And this is exactly the way Bannon is using the term. “If you're sharia-compliant or want to impose sharia law, the United States is the wrong place for you,” Bannon proclaimed.</font></p><p id="4ilJ5M" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In his 2016 book<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fdZJDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=sharia+katherine+gorka&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIgf7IvfTRAhWDRiYKHShCBQ0Q6AEIQzAG#v=onepage&q=sharia&f=false" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Field of Fight</em></a>, Trump’s new national security adviser, Michael Flynn, wrote that Islamic scholars are attempting to trick the West to obscure the true nature of sharia.</font></p><p id="WNgv9B" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These so-called Islamic scholars keep their message so complicated so as to create chaos, to confuse in order to control,” Flynn writes. “Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mussolini were more transparent. Sharia is a violent law that is buried in barbaric convictions.”</font></p><p id="5HJWat" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said more or less the same thing — in an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=8384F9F2-ACBC-40B9-8403-A2E2F9B36843" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; background-color: transparent !important;">official Senate press release</a>. “Once again we face a totalitarian threat to the free world. This time it’s from ideological and apocalyptic Islam,” Sessions said.</font></p><p id="HBWtUp" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Theologically-based sharia law,” Sessions argued, “fundamentally conflicts with our magnificent constitutional order that separates church and state, and that considers free debate and dissent the way to a better world.”</font></p><p id="fjQe7J" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That these individuals all espouse the same weirdly specific interpretation of sharia is not a coincidence. Each one of them is deeply connected to the counter-jihadist world.</font></p><p id="ZigS3F" style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bannon hosted counter-jihadists on his Breitbart radio show 41 times,&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">according to a count by&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-muslims-fear-loathing" style="background-color: transparent !important; text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">Mother Jones</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">’s Josh Harkinson</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. <b>Flynn</b> is an adviser to the board of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/28/following-trump-appointments-anti-muslim-act-america-may-see-growing-influence" style="text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">Gabriel’s ACT for America</a>,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and local ACT chapters organized many of the stops on the speaking tour for Flynn’s book. In 2015, <b>Sessions</b> received CSP’s</span><a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/10/22/center-celebrates-sen-jeff-sessions-and-adm-james-ace-lyons/" style="background-color: transparent !important; text-decoration: inherit; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">&nbsp;Keeper of the Flame</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;award, in honor of “his leadership on issues of great importance to the national security.”</span></font></p><p id="ZigS3F" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cal Poly &nbsp;spkr bureau, vic woman?</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">hmmn</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://spencerwatch.com/about-robert-spencer/</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></p><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5em; font-stretch: normal;"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280501/horowitz-and-spencer-s-islamophobia-matt-duss?pg=1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Horowitz and Spencer’s Islamophobia</font></a></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Matt Duss</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278722/rational-fear-islamism-robert-spencer" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">recent article</a>&nbsp;for National Review Online, David Horowitz and Robert Spencer criticized the Center for American Progress’s report “<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/islamophobia.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America</a>.” Following a familiar formula, the authors play the victim, accusing CAP of peddling “conspiracy theories” about anti-Muslim activists like themselves.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even a cursory glance at our report, however, shows we have done no such thing. Quite the contrary, the dissemination of hateful anti-Muslim ideas by Horowitz, Spencer, and others is done right out in the open. CAP’s contribution was to document these efforts, to draw together the various strands in order to properly view them as part of a coherent whole — an organized campaign to spread misinformation about the religious faith of millions of Americans.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The authors first take issue with our use of the term “Islamophobia,” claiming “the purpose of the suffix —&nbsp;<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">phobia</em>&nbsp;— is to identify any concern about troubling Islamic institutions and actions as irrational, or worse as a dangerous bigotry that should itself be feared.” This is false. As my co-authors and I note in our report, we don’t use the term “Islamophobia” lightly. We define it as an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We think that any fair-minded reader of Horowitz and Spencer’s work, which our report extensively documents, would conclude that it qualifies.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Engaging in exactly the sort of careless slander that our report examines, the authors then deride similar reports from what they refer to as “[Muslim] Brotherhood fronts like CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations], and jihadist apologists like the Southern Poverty Law Center.” Interestingly, they spare the Anti-Defamation League, which released a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/sioa.htm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">backgrounder</a>&nbsp;earlier this year declaring that Spencer’s group, Stop Islamization of America, “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spencer’s group, the Anti-Defamation League wrote, “seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy ‘American’ values.” Should the Anti-Defamation League also be lumped with the “jihadist apologists”?</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather than addressing such charges, however, the authors spend the majority of their response listing reasons why Islamic extremist terrorism represents a genuine threat to American security. But they are rebutting an argument we have not made. As evidenced by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">the considerable amount of work</a>&nbsp;CAP has produced on the subject, we take the issue of national security extremely seriously — far more seriously than Horowitz and Spencer’s selective, inflammatory, and unscholarly rendering of the Islamic peril suggests that they themselves do.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is enormously revealing that Horowitz and Spencer do not address the actual argument made in “Fear, Inc.,” which is that they, along with a small cadre of self-appointed experts and activists, promote the idea that religiously inspired terrorism represents true Islam. (“Traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful,”&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/01/what-is-a-moderate-muslim.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a>&nbsp;Spencer in 2006. “It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”) They also promote the idea that Sharia law is incompatible with a modern society (“There is no form of Sharia that does not contain&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;[the] death penalty for apostasy,”&nbsp;<a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39471" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a>&nbsp;Spencer, obviously ignorant of the manner in which Islam is practiced by millions of Sharia-adherent Muslims in the United States).</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The unmistakable implication of these claims is that all observant Muslims should be viewed with suspicion simply by virtue of being observant Muslims. That’s obviously Islamophobic. (It also flies in the face of the evidence. Earlier this year, the largest study of Muslim Americans ever done,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.muslimamericansurvey.org/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">the Muslim American Public Opinion Survey</a>, found that “involvement with the mosque, and increased religiosity increases civic engagement and support for American democratic values.”)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is worth noting here the irony of Horowitz and Spencer’s accusing CAP of promulgating a conspiracy theory, because, as the Anti-Defamation League’s backgrounder also notes, a conspiracy is precisely what those authors themselves allege in regard to American Muslims’ supposed efforts to infiltrate the American legal system with Islamic Sharia law. (For an examination and rebuttal of those claims, see CAP’s previous issue brief, “<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/sharia_law.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Understanding Sharia Law</a>.”)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And finally, a word about the venue in which Horowitz and Spencer’s piece was published, National Review. While we don’t share many of this magazine’s positions, we recognize it as an institution of American conservatism and a key player in the American political debate. Its imprimatur matters, which is why we’re concerned that that imprimatur should be granted to characters like Horowitz and Spencer.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in the 1950’s, the stridently anti-Communist John Birch Society made very similar claims about the threat of Communism that Islamophobes now make about the threat of Islam. At one point, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, wrote that Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Review’s founder and editor, William F. Buckley Jr., responded to Welch’s allegation with condemnation. “How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by&nbsp;<a id="KonaLink0" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280501/horowitz-and-spencer-s-islamophobia-matt-duss?pg=2#" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">a man</span></a>&nbsp;whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;so far removed from common sense?” Buckley asked. “That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America.” Buckley’s condemnation helped marginalize the John Birch Society from the mainstream conservative movement for decades.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Horowitz’s&nbsp;<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">FrontPage</em>&nbsp;magazine on Feb. 3, 2011, Spencer&nbsp;<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/03/barack-obama-and-the-muslim-brotherhood/print/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a>, “[Muslim] Brotherhood operatives are in the American&nbsp;<a id="KonaLink1" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280501/horowitz-and-spencer-s-islamophobia-matt-duss?pg=2#" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">government</span></a>&nbsp;and working closely with it, thanks to Barack Obama.” On Sept. 12, 2011, Spencer&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/09/obama-reads-biblical-passage-at-911-ceremonies-implying-that-911-was-an-act-of-god.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">criticized</a>&nbsp;President Obama’s choice of a&nbsp;<a id="KonaLink2" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280501/horowitz-and-spencer-s-islamophobia-matt-duss?pg=2#" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Bible</span></a>verse read at the 9/11 commemorations as evidence of the president’s “remarkable, unqualified and obvious affinity for Islam.” The list of similar allegations from Spencer is not short.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This new dilemma should weigh on conservatives across America. David Horowitz, Robert Spencer, and the rest of the Islamophobes we name in our report are the modern version of the John Birch Society. Judging Robert Welch’s allegations of President Eisenhower’s supposed Communist sympathies to be beyond the pale, William F. Buckley denounced them in the pages of National Review. It’s unfortunate that, rather than do the same in response to Welch’s heirs, today’s National Review gives them a platform.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Matt Duss is a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and the director of the Center’s Middle East Progress project. He is a co-<a id="KonaLink3" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280501/horowitz-and-spencer-s-islamophobia-matt-duss?pg=2#" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">author</span></a>&nbsp;of “Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.”</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/leading-tech-companies-help-extremist-sites-monetize-hate" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.propublica.org/article/leading-tech-companies-help-extremist-sites-monetize-hate</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Jihadwatch.org</b> is considered an<b> active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League</b>. The views of the site’s director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But its designation as a hate site hasn’t stopped tech companies — including&nbsp;<b>PayPal, Amazon and Newsmax</b>&nbsp;— from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially. PayPal facilitates donations to the site. Newsmax — the online news network run by President Donald Trump’s close friend Chris Ruddy — pays Jihad Watch in return for users clicking on its headlines. Until recently, Amazon allowed Jihad Watch to participate in a program that promised a cut of any book sales that the site generated. All three companies have policies that say they don’t do business with hate groups.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jihad Watch is one of many sites that monetize their extremist views through relationships with technology companies. ProPublica surveyed the most visited websites of groups designated as extremist by either the SPLC or the Anti-Defamation League. We found that more than half of them — 39 out of 69 — made money from ads, donations or other revenue streams facilitated by technology companies. At least 10 tech companies played a role directly or indirectly in supporting these sites.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Traditionally, tech companies have justified such relationships by contending that it’s not their role to censor the Internet or to discourage legitimate political expression. Also, their management wasn’t necessarily aware that they were doing business with hate sites because tech services tend to be automated and based on algorithms tied to demographics.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the wake of last week’s violent protest by alt-right groups in Charlottesville, more tech companies have disavowed relationships with extremist groups. During just the last week, six of the sites on our list were shut down.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Even the web services company Cloudflare, which had long defended its laissez-faire approach to political expression, finally&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-hate-site-off-the-internet" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1;">ended its relationship</a>&nbsp;with the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer last week.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I can’t recall a time where the tech industry was so in step in their response to hate on their platforms,” said Oren Segal, director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “Stopping financial support to hate sites seems like a win-win for everyone.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But ProPublica’s findings indicate that some tech companies with anti-hate policies may have failed to establish the monitoring processes needed to weed out hate sites.<b>PayPal,</b>&nbsp;the payment processor, has a policy against working with sites that use its service for “<a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; line-height: 1;">the promotion of hate, violence, [or] racial intolerance</a>.” Yet it was by far the top tech provider to the hate sites with donation links on 23 sites, or about one-third of those surveyed by ProPublica.</span>&nbsp;In response to ProPublica’s inquiries, PayPal spokesman Justin Higgs said in a statement that the company “strives to conscientiously assess activity and review accounts reported to us.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>After Charlottesville, PayPal stopped accepting payments or donations for several high-profile white nationalist groups that participated in the march.</b>It posted a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.paypal.com/stories/us/paypals-aup-remaining-vigilant-on-hate-violence-intolerance" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">statement</a>&nbsp;that it would remain “vigilant on hate, violence & intolerance.” It addresses each case individually, and “strives to navigate the balance between freedom of expression” and the “limiting and closing” of hate sites, it said.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After being contacted by ProPublica, Newsmax said it was unaware that the three sites that it had relationships with were considered hateful. “We will review the content of these sites and make any necessary changes after that review,” said Andy Brown, chief operating officer of Newsmax.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Amazon</b> spokeswoman Angie Newman said the company had previously removed Jihad Watch and three other sites identified by ProPublica from its program sharing revenue for book sales, which is called Amazon Associates. When ProPublica pointed out that the sites still carried working links to the program, she said that it was their responsibility to remove the code. “They are no longer paid as an Associate regardless of what links are on their site once we remove them from the Associates Program,” she said.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where to set the boundaries between hate speech and legitimate advocacy for perspectives on the edge of the political spectrum, and who should set them, are complex and difficult questions. Like other media outlets,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-investigated-technology-companies-supporting-hate-sites" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">we relied in part</a>&nbsp;on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s public list of “<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/active-hate-groups-2016" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">Active Hate Groups 2016</a>.” This list is controversial in some circles, with critics questioning whether the SPLC is too quick to brand organizations on the right as hate groups.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, the center does provide detailed explanations for many of its designations. For instance, the SPLC documents its decision to include the Family Research Council by citing the evangelical lobbying group’s promotion of discredited science and unsubstantiated attacks on gay and lesbian people. We also consulted a list from ADL, which is not public and that was provided to us for research purposes.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-investigated-technology-companies-supporting-hate-sites" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">See our methodology here.</a></font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The sites that we identified from the ADL and SPLC lists vehemently denied that they are hate sites....</span></font></h2><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></h2></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/robert-spencer

About <b>Robert Spencer</b>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He insists, despite his lack of academic training in Islam, that the religion is inherently violent and that radical jihadists who commit acts of terror are simply following its dictates. His writing was cited dozens of times in a manifesto written by the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. Spencer was banned from the United Kingdom as an extremist in July 2013.</span>

In His Own Words:

"Osama [bin Laden]'s use of these and other [Koranic] passages in his messages is consistent … with traditional understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don't interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved them away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition."
—&nbsp;&nbsp; The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 2005

"Of course, as I have pointed out many times, traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers."
— Jihad Watch blog, Jan. 14, 2006

“Islam is not a religion of peace. It has an inherently political character that is being brought to the West by immigrants, and will cause more trouble in the future. The jihadists have not hijacked it. Peaceful Muslims should be encouraged but do not have a sufficiently influential voice in the Islamic world to allow them to be counted on. The jihadists will not be bought off by negotiations or concessions. This is the revival of a 1,400-year-old war, and we need to be prepared for the fact that it will not end anytime soon – and prepared to defend ourselves militarily and ideologically.”
— Interview with the Liberal Institute, September 2007

Background:

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Robert Spencer is the director of the <b>Muslim-bashing Jihad Watch website, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.</b> He is also the co-founder, along with <b>Pamela Geller</b>, of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). </span>

Spencer received bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees (religious studies) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published 12 books (as of July 2013) focusing on radical Islam, two of which are New York Times best-sellers. Spencer has given seminars on Islam and jihad to the U.S. Central Command, Army Command and General Staff College, the Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community. He also appears regularly on Fox News Network.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In July 2011, the Gawker website reported that two of Spencer’s controversial books were listed in<b> FBI training materials</b>. Both The Truth about Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam were recommended for agents hoping to better understand Islam. </span>

Self-taught in the study of modern Islam and the Koran, Spencer has been widely criticized for espousing ultra-literal readings of the text. He considers the text to be innately extremist and violent, and refuses to acknowledge nonviolent passages and centuries of adapted interpretations. He also refuses to accept moderate Islamists who do not explicitly denounce the portions of the Koran he finds objectionable. According to Spencer, “traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”

Spencer argues that radical Muslims, like Osama bin Laden, are interpreting the Koran properly. Peaceful and moderate Muslims, according to Spencer, either do not understand their own holy book or are faking their moderate stances. He depicts isolated incidences of extremism as normative and representative of the entire group. Critics have been quick to point out that Spencer’s argument requires an exceptionally narrow reading and that it exempts the Koran, hypocritically, from the benefit of interpretation granted to other religious texts, like the Bible.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> One example of this tactic can be seen in Spencer’s and Geller’s treatment of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the American-born project leader of the <b>Park51 project aiming to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks</b>. By painting Rauf as a radical Islamist who was striving to build a “victory mosque” to celebrate the destruction of the World Trade Center, the two leaders of SIOA sought to block the project while portraying all Muslims as radical – an assertion simply not supported by facts. </span>

Spencer also attacks individuals and organizations that claim to represent moderate Islam. This is most commonly done through accusations of those entities acting as secret operatives to destroy the West. Spencer engages in fear-mongering through steady reference to theories like “stealth jihad,” eminent “Islamization of America,” and the infiltration of Congress by “Muslim spy interns.”

Spencer is known to have associations with European racists and neo-fascists. However, he claims that his contact with them is merely incidental. On June 25, 2013, Spencer and Geller were banned from Britain after planning to attend a rally organized by the English Defence League, an anti-Muslim extremist group. According to a letter issued by the Home Office of the United Kingdom, “The Home Secretary has reached this decision because you have brought yourself within the scope of the list of<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> unacceptable behaviours by making statements that may foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.” Spencer’s response to the announcement was to accuse the British government of being a “de facto Islamic state.” </span>

<b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Anders Behring Breivik, </span>the Norwegian terrorist who slaughtered 77 people, mostly teens, in Oslo and the nearby island of Utoya on July 22, 2011, referenced Spencer’s writings dozens of times in his 1,500-page manifesto.</b> He believed that Islam was destroying Western civilization. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In response to media reports about the connection, Spencer likened the situation to Charles Manson’s statements about drawing inspiration from the Beatles.</span>

In her 2008 book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West, the late prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, pointed out that Spencer is “falsely constructing a divide between Islam and West,” and that he presents “a skewed, one-sided, and inflammatory story that only helps to sow the seed of civilizational conflict.

Related News & Articles:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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===
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">bs</span>

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ROBERT SPENCER is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David

Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of fifteen books, including the

<em>New York Times</em> bestsellers <em>The Truth About Muhammad</em> and <em>The<b> Politically Incorrect Guide</b> to Islam (and the Crusades)</em> (both Regnery). His latest book is <em>The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran</em> (<b>Regnery).</b></font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United

States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff

College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism

Task Force (JTTF), and the U.S. intelligence community. He has discussed

jihad, Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State

Department and the German Foreign Ministry. He has served as a

contributing writer to Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on

Terrorism and as an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Spencer is a weekly columnist for PJ Media and <em>FrontPage Magazine</em>,

and has written many hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic

terrorism. His articles on Islam and other topics have appeared in the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Post, the <b>Washington Times,</b> the Dallas Morning News, National Review, the Detroit News, <b>TownHall.com, Real Clear Religion, the Daily Caller, </b>the New Criterion, the Journal of International Security Affairs, the UK’s Guardian, Canada’s National Post, Middle East Quarterly, WorldNet Daily, First Things, Insight in the News, Aleteia</span>, and many other journals. For nearly ten years Spencer wrote the<b> weekly Jihad Watch column at <em>Human Events</em>.</b></font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Spencer has appeared on the BBC, ABC News, CNN, FoxNews’s <b>O’Reilly

Factor, Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File, the Sean Hannity Show, Geraldo

Rivera Reports, the Glenn Beck Show, Fox and Friends, </b>America’s News HQ

and many other Fox programs, PBS, MSNBC, CNBC, C-Span, CTV News,

France24, Voice of Russia and Croatia National Television (HTV), as well

as on numerous <b>radio</b> programs including&nbsp;The Sean Hannity Show, Bill

O’Reilly’s Radio Factor, The Mark Levin Show, The Laura Ingraham Show,

The Herman Cain Show, The Joe Piscopo Show, Bill Bennett’s Morning in

America, Michael Savage’s Savage Nation, The Alan Colmes Show, The G.

Gordon Liddy Show, The Neal Boortz Show, The Michael Medved Show, The

Michael Reagan Show, The Rusty Humphries Show, The Larry Elder Show, The

Peter Boyles Show, Vatican Radio, and many others.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Robert Spencer has been a featured speaker at the <b>University of

California-Irvine,</b> Temple University,<b> Dartmouth</b> College, Penn State

University,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> the University of California-Los Angeles, Stanford

University</span>, New York University, Brown University, the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Virginia, State

University of New York-Binghamton, State University of New York-Stony

Brook, Florida State University, DePaul University, the College of

William and Mary, Washington University of St. Louis, the University of

Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Boise

State University, <b>Cal Poly, </b>Portland State University, and many other

colleges and universities. He has also addressed the<b> Heritage

Foundation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in New

York City, the Temple of the Arts in Los Angeles, the Conservative

Political Action Conference (CPAC), FreedomFest, </b>Hershey’s Sweet

Retreat, Train the Trainer, and many other audiences.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A complete listing of Robert Spencer’s books:</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><ul><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith</em> (Encounter);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West</em> (Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics</em> (with Daniel Ali) (Ascension);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims</em> (Prometheus);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)</em> (Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion</em> (Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t</em> (Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs</em> (Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran</em> (Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America</em> (with Pamela Geller) (Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster).</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins</em> (ISI);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Not Peace But A Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam</em> (Catholic Answers);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In </em>(Regnery);</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS</em> (Regnery).</font></li><li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><em>The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran</em> (Regnery).</font></li></ul><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Spencer’s books have been translated into many languages, including

Spanish, Italian, German, Finnish, Korean, Polish and Bahasa Indonesia.

His Qur’an commentary at Jihad Watch, <em>Blogging the Qur’an</em>, has been translated into Czech, Danish, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Spencer (MA, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill) has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in

depth since 1980. His work has aroused the ire of the foes of freedom

and their dupes: in October 2011, Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups wrote

to Homeland Security Advisor (and current CIA director) John Brennan,

demanding that Spencer be removed as a trainer for teaching JTTF agents

about the belief system of Islamic jihadists; Brennan immediately

complied. Spencer has been banned by the British government from

entering the United Kingdom for the crime of pointing out that Islam has

doctrines of violence against unbelievers. He has been boycotted by the

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for refusing to adhere to their

“Islam is a Religion of Peace” line, and was invited by name to convert

to Islam by a senior member of al-Qaeda.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">

<b>Q: Why should I believe what you say about Islam?</b>

RS: Pick up any of my books, and you will see that they are made up

largely of quotations from Islamic jihadists and the traditional Islamic

sources to which they appeal to justify violence and terrorism. My work

sheds light on what these sources say.

The evidence stands by itself; readers can evaluate it for themselves. I

would, of course, be happy to debate any scholar about Islam and jihad;

this is a standing invitation.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Have you debated Islamic scholars and spokesmen?</b>

RS: Yes, I have debated imams and Islamic scholars including Anjem

Choudhary, Omar Bakri, Moustafa Zayed, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, and

many others. I have discussed and/or debated various aspects of it with

Jaafar Siddiqui and Salam Al-Marayati (twice) on the Michael Medved

Show; Al-Marayati again on the Alan Colmes Show and Radio Islam; Hussam

Ayloush on the Dennis Prager Show and another show; Hussein Ibish on CNN

radio; As’ad AbuKhalil (the “Angry Arab”) on a station in San Diego;

Muqtedar Khan on a Jamaican radio station; Ibrahim Hooper on MSNBC TV

with Keith Olbermann; Abdul Malik Ali on Pax TV; two Islamic scholars on

Michael Coren’s TV show in Toronto; Abdulaziz Sachedina and an Iranian

scholar on the Lou Dobbs show; and Ayloush and AbuKhalil, as well as

Khaleel Mohammed, in print. Others also.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Why have you studied Islam for so long?</b>

RS: It has been an enduring fascination. Since childhood I have had an

interest in the Muslim world, from which my family comes. When I was

very young my grandparents would tell me stories about their life there,

and I always heard them with great interest. When I met Muslim students

as a college undergraduate I began reading and studying the Qur’an in

earnest. That led to in-depth forays into <em>tafsir </em>(interpretations of the Qur’an), <em>hadith </em>(traditions

of the Prophet Muhammad), and much more about Islamic theology and law.

While working on my master’s thesis, which dealt not with Islam but (in

part) with some early Christian heretical groups, I began to study

early Islamic history, since some of these groups ended up in Arabia and

may have influenced Muhammad. In the intervening years I continued

these studies of Islamic theology, history, and law out of personal

interest.

This led to my consulting privately with some individuals and groups

about Islam, but I had never intended to do such work publicly. However,

after 9/11 I was asked to write my first book, <em>Islam Unveiled</em>, in order to correct some of the misapprehensions about Islam that were widespread at that time.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: I’ve read that you are secretly a Catholic and have a religious agenda.</b>

RS:<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> My being Catholic is no secret; </span>I co-wrote a book called <em>Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics</em>.

But I have no religious agenda. In fact, Jihad Watch covers jihad in

all its manifestations, and emphasizes the need for all the actual and

potential victims of jihad violence and oppression — Jews, Christians,

Hindus, Buddhists, secular Muslims, atheists, whatever — to join

together to defend universal human rights. There are many things about

which we all disagree, but at this point we need to unite simply in

order to survive. We can sort out our disagreements later.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: I’ve read that you are a member of Opus Dei.</b>

RS: No, I am not.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Q: I’ve read that you are actually Jewish.</b>

RS: I do not have that honor.[// jared taylor?] &nbsp;</span>Jihadists commonly label all their

opponents as Jews and Zionist. I am proud to be able to stand with Jews

and others in defense of human rights against the totalitarian,

supremacist jihad ideology.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: I’ve read that you are actually a white supremacist neo-Nazi.</b>

RS: No. I have consistently opposed racism and supremacism of all kinds — otherwise, I wouldn’t oppose the global jihad. See <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022665.php" target="_blank">here</a> for more on this.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: I’ve read that you are actually ignorant of Islam.</b>

RS: Such a charge is a common, albeit empty, rhetorical tactic of jihadist apologists. <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015565.php" target="_blank">Here</a> are two examples of how it is used.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: What do you say to those who criticize your work?</b>

RS: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011259.php" target="blank">Here</a>, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/014139.php" target="blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015486.php" target="blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/018752.php" target="blank">here</a> are some responses to critics. There are others here and there in the archives.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Why do so many people convert to Islam?</b>

RS: There are many attractive elements of the religion. Its adamantine

certainties appeal to many people who are disgusted with the current

relativism and amorality of the Western world. Also there are many rich

and grand aspects of Islamic history and culture which also make the

religion attractive today. The global jihad against the West today also

helps Islam gather converts in the West from among groups that feel

themselves to be oppressed or marginalized. Conversions have been

stimulated by successful, if often fanciful, Muslim efforts to present

Islam as a religion free of the sins of the West — particularly racial

discrimination.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Do you hate Muslims?</b>

RS: Of course not. Islam is not a monolith, and never have I said or

written anything that characterizes all Muslims as terrorist or given to

violence. To call attention to the roots and goals of jihad violence

within Islamic texts and teachings, and to show how jihadists use those

texts and teachings, says nothing at all about what any given Muslim

believes or how he acts. Any Muslim who renounces violent jihad and

dhimmitude is welcome to join in our anti-jihadist efforts. Any hate in

my books comes from Muslim sources quoted, not from me. Cries of

“hatred” and “bigotry” are effectively used by American Muslim advocacy

groups to try to stifle the debate about the terrorist threat. But there

is no substance to them.

It is not an act of hatred against Muslims to point out the depredations

of jihad ideology. It is a peculiar species of displacement and

projection to accuse someone who exposes the hatred of one group of

hatred himself: I believe in the equality of rights and dignity of all

people, and that is why I oppose the global jihad. Those who make the

charge use it as a tool to frighten the credulous and politically

correct away from the truth.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Some time ago <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2004/04/dutch-mosque-girls-must-be-circumcised.html#c8475" target="_blank">here at Jihad Watch</a>

I had an exchange with an English convert to Islam. I said: “I would

like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim

world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in

Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding

legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc.” Is all that

“anti-Muslim”? My correspondent thought so. He responded: “So, you would

like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become

non-Muslims.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

In other words, he saw a call for equality of rights for women and

non-Muslims in Islamic societies, including freedom of conscience,

equality in laws regarding legal testimony, and equal employment

opportunities, as a challenge to his religion. To the extent that they

are, these facts have to be confronted by both Muslims and non-Muslims.

But it is not “anti-Muslim” to wish freedom of conscience and equality

of rights on the Islamic world — quite the contrary.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?</b>

RS: See above.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Are you trying to incite anti-Muslim hatred?</b>

RS: Certainly not. I am trying to point out the depth and extent of the

hatred that is directed against the United States, because efforts to

downplay its depth and extent leave us less equipped to defend

ourselves. Anyone who targets innocent Muslims in the USA is not only

evil, but is playing into the hands of the jihadists who are trying to

fan the flames of anti-American hatred. Also, one of the reasons why the

war on terror is so important is that those who would destroy Western

civilization do not believe in the principles of due process and justice

that are central elements of the American system.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: Are you deliberately ignoring more liberal schools of thought in Islam?</b>

RS: Certainly not. Any Muslim individual or group who works for genuine

reform of the Islamic doctrines, theological tenets and laws that

Islamic jihadists use to justify violence, is to be commended. But this

reform must be undertaken honestly and thoroughly, confronting the texts

of the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira that are used to justify violence

against unbelievers, and decisively rejecting Qur’anic literalism. Not

all self-proclaimed moderates are truly moderate: many deny that these

elements of Islam exist at all — hardly a promising platform for reform.

It is important to make proper distinctions and speak honestly about

the roots of the terrorist threat.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">

<b>Q: Can you recommend a good English translation of the Qur’an?</b>

RS: N. J. Dawood’s is the most readable in English. However, most

versions do not mark the verse numbers precisely. Some non-Muslims don’t

like it because he uses “God” for Allah, although since Arabic-speaking

Christians use “Allah” for the God of the Bible, and have for over a

millennium, this is a problem for poseurs and pseudo-scholars but is not

really a serious objection to anyone who knows both languages. Also,

many Muslims dislike this translation because Dawood was not a Muslim,

and doesn’t sugarcoat any of the passages. Two translations by Muslims,

those by Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, are

generally reliable, although both write in a stilted, practically

unreadable pseudo-King James Bible English. Of the two, Ali’s contains

more liberties with the text — such as adding “(lightly)” to Sura 4:34

after the directive to husbands to beat their disobedient wives. The

Arabic doesn’t say to beat them lightly, it just says to beat them.

Pickthall’s is generally accurate.

There are other good translations. For years I have liked Arberry’s for

its audacious literalism and often poetic English. Compare, for example,

81:15-18:</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><blockquote><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">فَلَا أُقْسِمُ بِالْخُنَّسِ الْجَوَارِ الْكُنَّسِ وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا عَسْعَسَ وَالصُّبْحِ إِذَا تَنَفَّسَ</font></p></blockquote><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">…in Pickthall and Arberry: Pickthall: “Oh, but I call to witness the

planets, the stars which rise and set, and the close of night, and the

breath of morning…” Arberry: “No! I swear by the slinkers, the runners,

the sinkers, by the night swarming, by the dawn sighing…” Shades of the

Symbolists. Arberry gives a hint of how the book sounds in Arabic, in

which it is full of beguiling rhymes and rhythms.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Q: What can we do about this threat?</b>

RS: Many things, but what we must do above all is remain true to our

principles of freedom and equality of rights and dignity for all. These

ideas and related ones are what set us apart from global jihadists. If

we discard them in order to fight the jihadists, we risk erasing the

distinction between the two camps.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Q: What is Jihad Watch?</b>

RS: Jihad Watch is an attempt to raise awareness about the activities of

the global jihadists. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We are a 501c3 organization affiliated with the

David Horowitz Freedom Center.</span>

<b>Q: Why are you doing this?</b>

RS: The doctrines of jihad and Islamic supremacism threaten the peace

and human rights of all free people. If it is not confronted and

resisted, it will prevail.</font></p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">

</font><div>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer is available to speak to your

group </b>or on your program regarding current events and/or other issues

relating to jihad and dhimmitude. Contact him at

director[at]jihadwatch.org.</font></p>

</div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ISLAMOPHOBIA AND ITS IMPACT IN THE UNITED STATES | LEGISLATING FEAR</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>02 | THE INNER CORE</div><div>Council on American-Islamic Relations 33</div><div>
</div><div><b>Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer</b></div><div>
</div><div>Spencer operates the blog "Jihad Watch," which is notorious for its depiction</div><div>of Islam as an inherently violent faith.</div><div>In Smearcasting, the group Fairness</div><div>and Accuracy in Reporting noted,</div><div>"By selectively ignoring inconvenient</div><div>Islamic texts and commentaries,</div><div>Spencer concludes that Islam is</div><div>innately extremist and violent."</div><div>
</div><div>Smearcasting quotes Spencer as</div><div>saying, "Unfortunately, however,</div><div>jihad as warfare against non-believers</div><div>in order to institute 'Sharia' worldwide</div><div>is not propaganda or ignorance,</div><div>or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny</div><div>minority of extremists. Instead, it is a</div><div>constant element of mainstream Islamic theology."</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Spencer has referred to Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a<b> "con man.</b></span></div><div>Someone who is knowing [sic] that what he is saying is false, but is fooling</div><div>his followers." In the same video he asserts, "From a historical stand point, it</div><div>is not even clear that Muhammad existed." 68</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Spencer believes that, "traditional Islam is not moderate or peaceful"</b> 69 and</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">says assertions "that the Qur'an doesn't teach violence any more than the</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">'Bible or Torah' is flatly false."</span> 70</div><div>
</div><div>Spencer also attempts to assert that the violent extremists interpretation of the</div><div>Quran is mainstream, "Of course, the devil can quote scripture for his own purpose,</div><div>but [Osama bin Laden's] use of these and other passages in his messages</div><div>is consistent (as we shall see) with traditional understanding of the Quran…" 71</div><div>
</div><div>Academics formally trained in Islamic studies, such as Dr. Carl Kenan and</div><div>Dr. William Kenan at UNC-Chapel Hill, have flatly stated that Spencer's</div><div>views have "no basis in scholarship." 72</div><div>
</div><div>Spencer has referred to Islam's Prophet</div><div>Muhammad as a "con man. Someone who is</div><div>knowing [sic] that what he is saying is false, but</div><div>is fooling his followers." In the same video he</div><div>asserts, "From a historical stand point, it is not</div><div>even clear that Muhammad existed."&nbsp;</div><div>
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</div><div>32 Council on American-Islamic Relations</div><div>Spencer has been named part of the Top 10 "Anti-Islam inner circle" 73 by the</div><div>Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC has listed Spencer's blog</div><div>Jihad Watch74 and his organization "Stop the Islamization of America" 75 as</div><div>hate groups.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2006, Spencer participated in a conference honoring anti-Muslim,</div><div>anti-immigrant Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who sought to legalize government</div><div>discrimination in the Netherlands. Spencer proudly highlights his</div><div>participation in this conference among his "Notable Speaking Engagements."76</div><div>Fortuyn's anti-Muslim views and the resulting backlash against Muslims</div><div>living in the Netherlands are noted in the Department of State's International</div><div>Religious Freedom Reports for 2002 and 2005.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes</b></div><div>
</div><div>Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, a right-wing think tank.</div><div>In 2004, Pipes supported the widely-repudiated internment of JapaneseAmericans</div><div>writing: "<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Yes, I do support the internment of Japanese Americans</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">in World War II." 77</span></div><div>
</div><div>President George W. Bush was forced to bypass a Republican-controlled</div><div>Senate confirmation process to place Pipes temporarily on the board of</div><div>the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Pipes' nomination faced stiff</div><div>opposition and he would not have been confirmed if his nomination was</div><div>subjected to a vote.</div><div>
</div><div>At a July 23, 2004 Senate committee meeting, Sens. Edward Kennedy (DMA),</div><div>Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) all opposed his</div><div>appointment. Sen. Harkin, who was involved in the formation of the USIP,</div><div>spoke at length about Pipes' statements warning of the "dangers" posed by</div><div>the enfranchisement of American Muslims and his "dossiers" on academic</div><div>critics of Israeli policies.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pipes has stated that the views of far-right French racist Jean-Marie <b>Le Pen</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"represent an important outlook in the national debate over immigration</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">and Islam" and said that he (Pipes) supports racial and religious profiling of</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Muslims and Arabs.</span></div><div>
</div><div>In 1990, he said: "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive</div><div>immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining</div><div>different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and</div><div>attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." 78</div><div>
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</div><div>"This religion would seem to have nothing functional to offer," Pipes said of</div><div>Islam in 1996.79</div><div>
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