Why Americans have grown more suspicious of American Muslims

I want to show some of what we have been presented since the previous anniversary of 9/11 in terms of American Muslims who turn out to be secret terrorists:

September 2009 -- just days after the anniversary of 9/11 Najibullah Zazi a resident of Colorado was arrested along with two of his high school classmates from Queens, his father, his uncle, and an imam from Queens, New York, on charges related to a plan to detonate backpack bombs on the New York subway system, similar tothe July 2005 London Subway Bombing.

September 2009 --- Michael Finton, a US citizen who had converted to Islam was arrested for the attempted bombing of the Federal Building in Springfield Illinois. He thought he was working with Al Qaeda, but his accomplice was an FBI agent. At the same time the FBI also arrested Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, an illegal immigrant from Jordan who attempted to kill as many people as he could with what he thought was a car bomb in the basement of the 60 story building Fountain Place in downtown Dallas. ABC News reports FBI Stings Are Chilling Evidence of Homegrown Terror

November 2009 NY Times A Terror Suspect With Feet in East and West, about David Headley, an American citizen with an American mother and a Pakistani father who was involved in the gruesome and sadistic Islamic terrorist Mumbai Massacre.

November 2009 -- Nidal Malik Hasan, American born of Palestinian descent, a US Army Major, who committed 13 murders and attempted 32 more in the Ft. Hood Massacre. See the presentation he made on The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the US Military.

December 2009 --- 5 young men, Umer Farooq, Ramy Zamzam, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Waqar Khan and Aman Hassan Yasir, all US citizens from the suburbs of Washington DC, are arrested for traveling to Pakistan to join the Taliban and al Qaeda to fight American troops in Afghanistan.

December 2009 --- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a Nigerian man who had studied engineering and finance in London and headed the student Islamic Society there attempted to blow up an airplane flying to Detroit on Christmas Day. The Sunday Times Online article Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: one boy’s journey to jihad details how he went to Yemen and met up with the American Anwar al-Awliki and Al-Qaeda where he is believed to have received the bomb materials and training.

January 2010 NY Times Magazine article exploring how an American became The Jihadist Next Door. Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki a man raised in Alabama with a white Christian (Southern Baptist) mother and a father who immigrated from Syria who now leads a group of Islamic fighters in Somalia supporting the destruction of Sufi shrines and the imposition of brutal Islamic law.

March 2010 --- An American citizen who had worked at five different nuclear power plants in the US, Sharif Mobley, is arrested in Yemen with ten other suspected Al Qaeda members.

March 2010 --- We learned that an American woman from the Philadelphia suburbs, Colleen LaRose had been arrested the previous fall as a terrorist recruiter and had been involved in a scheme to kill the Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks. The New York Times quoted the the United States attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, Michael L. Levy, that "the case illustrated how terrorists were looking for American recruits who could blend in." Another American woman who had been recruited by LaRose was also arrested, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Colorado.

May 2010 NY Times article titled Imam’s Path From Condemning Terror to Preaching Jihad exploring how a man born and educated in America, Anwar Al-Awliki went from being presented by the MSM as a moderate Muslim to revealing himself to be a radical jihadist. Al_Awliki's preaching was an inspiration to both the Ft Hood Shooter and the Christmas Day Bomber.

May 2010 -- Faisal Shazad, an American citizen born in Pakistan was trained and financed by the Pakistani Taliban in his attempt to Bomb Times Square in New York. Politicians and the media initially suggested: 1) the bombing was not Islamic terrorism and 2) it was a one person job.

Fear of Islam is not a Phobia

Last night on TV I saw Imam Rauf tell us that if he has to move his planned mosque, there will be an explosion of violence in the Muslim countries. Does that mean Imam Rauf is Islamophobic, expressing a pathological fear of Muslims? Or is he a person particularly knowledgable about Islam and Muslims whose characterization of their expected behavior is reasonable?

And today I see that the US State Department has issued a travel advisory over fears of violent Muslim reactions to the planned burning of some Qurans by a small church in Florida:

The Department of State is issuing this Travel Alert to caution U.S. citizens of the potential for anti-U.S. demonstrations in many countries in response to stated plans by a church in Florida to burn Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Demonstrations, some violent, have already taken place in several countries, including Afghanistan and Indonesia, in response to media reports of the church's plans. The potential for further protests and demonstrations, some of which may turn violent, remains high. We urge you to pay attention to local reaction to the situation, and to avoid areas where demonstrations may take place. This Travel Alert expires on September 30, 2010.

So, is the US State Department Islamophobic, expressing a pathological fear of Muslims? ? Or is the US State Dept. particularly knowledgable about Islam and Muslims and this anticipation of their expected behavior is reasonable?

If Americans are frightened of Muslims, I am thinking maybe it is due to actual world events and anticipated world events as expressed by Imam Rauf and the US State Dept.

In support of the US State Dept travel advisory, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan says that if the Pastor in Florida burns Qurans, it will be received as "a declaration of war":

Claiming that burning the Koran is a part of freedom of expression is ridiculous and does not make any sense," the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, said in a statement.

"Insulting religions and holy books is a crime that provokes people. It is a declaration of war against them," it added.

I'm not supporting the idea of burning Qurans. But I do think it is a free speech issue. I wish he wouldn't do it. But the blame for any violence that results must be placed on those who react violently to a symbolic act.

This is comparable to the way women in the USA had to deal with arguments about rape. The fact that a woman dressed in a sexy way used to be used against her in rape trials in the USA. But now, in the USA, we accept that the man is responsible for his own actions. Hmmm, of course in many Muslim countries, women are still held responsible for the actions of the men. Women have to wear burkas so the men won't be aroused.

It sure seems like Muslim men have not been taught to separate their feelings from their behavior and that they are responsible for their own actions. They blame others for provoking them to violence and they blame others for provoking them sexually. It makes sense to me to be afraid of people who don't take responsibility for their own actions.

thinking about IQ and Islam

I've been wondering about people who would commit murder over cartoons or a book burning. I've been thinking that the people we are dealing with are unable to think in categories and make necessary distinctions. I remembered that there was an article in the Economist last month on infectious diseases and their possible effect on children's intellectual development. The study used IQ data from 184 countries. It occurred to me to look at the average IQ's for some of the countries provided in the study. I've selected out some and grouped them.

98 United States
99 Canada

108 Singapore
105 China
106 South Korea
105 Japan

98 France
99 Germany
100 Netherlands
101 Switzerland
102 Italy
98 Spain
97 Russia

95 Israel

90 Turkey

82 Lebanon
82 Egypt
83 Syria
83 Libya
84 Pakistan
87 Iraq
84 Iran
84 Afghanistan
86 Kuwait
84 Saudi Arabia
84 United Arab Emirates
85 Yemen
84 Morocco
84 Jordan

Moderate Islam? 75% of Muslims Want Sharia Law

There is a great article posted at Big Peace today exploring the op/ed in last Saturday's Wall street Journal Islam is Not Islamism. The must see chart in the article is this one from a 2007 study of Muslim opinion by researchers at the University of Maryland

Looking through the study, I found on page 16 that 20% or less of the Muslims in the four countries polled had a negative opinion of Bin Laden.

What US soldiers see in Afghanistan -- rampant sexual abuse of boys.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article his Sunday by Joel Brinkley on the study by social scientist AnnaMaria Cardinalli on man-boy love in Afghanistan. The military commissioned this study because soldiers were disturbed to see Afghan men trying to "touch and fondle" boys.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.

"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.

Cardinelli's study explains that this is the culture, but she is not a cultural relativist:

"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."

The article says the source of the problem is Islamic law, because men are forbidden to see women and told that women are unclean:

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

and

Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"

Understanding Islam: What "Bridge Building" Means

When Imam Rauf says the goal of the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero is meant to build bridges, we may naively assume he means inter faith dialogue. But he has stated to Arabic speaking audiences that he disdains interfaith dialogue. As reported at Former Muslims United, in an article titled “I do not believe in religious dialogue” Rauf wrote:

And regarding religious dialogue Abdul-Rauf stated “this phrase is
inaccurate. Religious dialogue as customary understood is a set of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing. Religions do not dialogue and dialogue is not present in the attitudes of the followers regardless of being Muslim or Christian. The image of Muslims in the West is complex which needs to be remedied.”

On May 25th Rauf wrote an op/ed in the New York Daily News that included this:

My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists. We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric. Our purpose is to interweave America's Muslim population into the mainstream society.

So to English speaking Americans he says he wants to "interweave America's Muslim population into the mainstream society", but to Arabic speakers he claims he "does not believe in religious dialogue". Is there a contradiction going on here?

Well, Rauf's father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood andFrank Gaffney at Big Peace provides this quote to help us understand what the Muslim Brotherhood means by the phrase "bridge building".:

For example, Team Obama fails to recognize that when Rauf talks about “bridge-building,” he means it the same way as did Seyyid Qutb, one the Brotherhood’s most important ideologues. In his seminal book, Milestones, Qutb makes clear that this term does not translate into a quest for interfaith and cross-cultural harmony. Rather, it is meant to achieve the infidels’ submission: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah (unbelievers – the land of gross ignorance and disbelief) is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

This attitude makes sense when we accept that Muslims view Islam as the last and superior prophesy, and that conversion from Islam is viewed so unfavorably that it is punished by death.

Which reminds of another quote from Imam Rauf's NY Daily News op/ed:

Freedom of religion is something we hold dear. It is the core of what America is all about, and it is what people worldwide respect about our country. The Koran itself says compulsion in religion is wrong.

But Rauf refuses to sign Former Muslims United's Freedom Pledge:

I renounce, repudiate and oppose any physical intimidation, or worldly and corporal punishment, of apostates from Islam, in whatever way that punishment may be determined or carried out by myself or any other Muslim including the family of the apostate, community, Mosque leaders, Shariah court or judge, and Muslim government or regime.

Courage and the Ground Zero Mosque Debate

I I have been thinking that it takes no courage to advocate for the Ground Zero Mosque. No one is going to violently attack the politicians and media celebs who support the building. But there may be a real danger of violent attack against those who are exercising their constitutional 1st Amendment right of free speech to oppose the mosque. Have the mainstream media and so many politicians taken up the Muslim Brotherhood talking points and sought to silence this debate because that is the safe thing to do in the short run?

It is the elephant in the living room. No one is talking about it. But the symbolism of Ground Zero to me is that we are vulnerable to attack by people who hate us. The attack on the World Trade Towers was the midpoint of a more than twenty year era of fear of radical Islam.

I pulled out Christopher Hitchens piece about the twenty year anniversary of the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Hitchens says the violent threats have done there job and there is now a pervasive climate of self-censorship in the media. We know these are not just threats, the violence is real, as we saw in the Danish cartoon controversy. And he says that we use the "guise of good manners and multiculturalism" to hide that we are actually caving in to the threat of violence and failing to support the true moderate Muslims.

Sometimes this fear—and this blackmail—comes dressed up in the guise of good manners and multiculturalism. One must not wound the religious feelings of others, many of whom are poor immigrants in our own societies. To this I would respond by pointing to a book published in 1994. It is entitled For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Among its contributors is almost every writer worthy of the name in the Arab and Muslim world, ranging from the Syrian poet Adonis to the Syrian-Kurdish author Salim Barakat, to the late national bard of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Darwish, to the celebrated Turkish writers Murat Belge and Orhan Pamuk. Especially impressive and courageous was the list of 127 Iranian writers, artists, and intellectuals who, from the prison house that is the Islamic Republic, signed their names to a letter which said: “We underline the intolerable character of the decree of death that the Fatwah is, and we insist on the fact that aesthetic criteria are the only proper ones for judging works of art.… To the extent that the systematic denial of the rights of man in Iran is tolerated, this can only further encourage the export outside the Islamic Republic of its terroristic methods which destroy freedom.” In other words, the situation is the exact reverse of what the condescending multiculturalists say it is. To indulge the idea of religious censorship by the threat of violence is to insult and undermine precisely those in the Muslim world who are its intellectual cream, and who want to testify for their own liberty—and for ours. It is also to make the patronizing assumption that the leaders of mobs and the inciters of goons are the authentic representatives of Muslim opinion. What could be more “offensive” than that?

Andrew McCarthy has a piece in National Review Online today that discusses the difference between the fake moderate Muslims supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas versus the true moderate Muslims that are threatened by the the Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas who will use violence to impose their will.

It doesn't take courage to kowtow to those who threaten violence. It does take courage to speak up against them. McCarthy says Imam Rauf and the Ground Zero Mosque are on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Why doesn't the MSM research this it? Or do they know but are to afraid to say?