Tag Archives: islam

Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

by MurrayQxbxwezgo Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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One of the odd Republican obsessions of the moment is their outrage over liberal refusal to “call radical Islam by its name.” In the wake of today’s Brussels bombing, Ted Cruz naturally says this kind of namby-pamby political correctness is at an end. But that’s not all:

We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. “We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration.

“Patrol and secure.” That has an ominous sound to it, especially the “secure” part. Apparently Cruz is trying to out-Trump Trump before Trump even has a chance to say something stupid. This is some campaign these guys are running.

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Ted Cruz Calls For Massive Police Presence in Muslim Neighborhoods

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Donald Trump Trots Out Tale Of Muslims, Pig Blood, and Bullets

by LouzConstant Posted on February 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump ended his final campaign rally of the South Carolina primary Friday night with a story about a four-star general, Muslim insurgents, and bullets dunked in pig blood. Forty minutes into his address at a not-quite-full convention center in North Charleston, after mocking Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s lack of enthusiasm for waterboarding, the Republican presidential frontrunner told the crowd he wanted to share an anecdote he’d heard about General John Pershing.

“General Pershing was a rough guy,” Trump said. He explained that during the early 1900s, the general was battling Muslim insurgents in the US-controlled Philippines, he decided to make a point:

He caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage…and he took the 50 terrorists and he took 50 men and dipped 50 bullets in pig’s blood. You heard about that? He took 50 bullets and dipped them in pig’s blood which is considered haram. And he has his men load up their rifles and he lined up the 50 people and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, you go back to your people and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem.

“We’ve got to start getting tough and we’ve got to start being vigilant and we’ve got to start using our heads or we’re not gonna have a country, folks,” he concluded.

Snopes, the online mythbuster, classifies the Pershing tale—which is popular on the right—as a “legend.” “We haven’t eliminated the possibility… but so far all we’ve turned up are several different accounts with nothing that documents Pershing’s involvement,” it explains.

But a lack of evidence has never stopped Trump, especially when it comes to the anti-Islam invective that has helped keep him atop the polls in South Carolina. His proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States is hugely popular among Republicans; a recent survey of his supporters found that just 44 percent believed Islam should even be legal. So with his candidacy on the line, he’s sticking with what got him to this point.

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Donald Trump Trots Out Tale Of Muslims, Pig Blood, and Bullets

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Lindsey Graham Apologizes to the Muslim World for Donald Trump

by LaraeVestal074 Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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The GOP undercard debate has almost solely focused on how to deal with ISIS and terrorism, with a lot of talk about how the overall religion of Islam factors into the situation. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham continually stressed that framing the fight against terrorism as a fight against Islam is counterproductive and dangerous. At one point, he even apologized to the Muslim world for Trump’s anti-Islam rhetoric.

“To all of our Muslim friends throughout the world…I am sorry,” Graham said. “He does not represent us.”

Later in the debate, Graham laid blame for the rise of ISIS squarely at President Barack Obama’s feet, and then things got pretty interesting: “I miss George W. Bush,” he shouted. “I wish you were president right now!”

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Lindsey Graham Apologizes to the Muslim World for Donald Trump

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This is What It’s Like to Be a Muslim Schoolkid in America Right Now

by PenneyEstep Posted on December 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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“Are you part of the 9/11 or are you ISIS?” “Did you ever kill anyone?” “Are you going to bomb this place?” These are some typical questions that 12-year-old Abdu Rrahman Mohamed says he’s been asked by his non-Muslim classmates week after week in his Long Beach, California, school, he told youth radio VoiceWaves.org last week.

Earlier this year, a high school teacher in Richmond, Texas, sent all his students home with a new study guide he had created, with the title, “Islam/Radical Islam (Did You Know).” In the study guide, which had not been approved by the school, the economics teacher presented fictional statements as if they were facts, including, “38% of Muslims believe people that leave the faith should be executed.” The teacher also wrote up instructions for what to do “if taken hostage by radical Islamists.”

In Weston, Florida, a high school French teacher allegedly called one 14-year-old Muslim student a “rag-head Taliban” in February. The student’s father, Youssef Wardani, a software engineer and an immigrant from Lebanon, said his son, an honor roll student, now hates going to school.

These are not isolated incidents. The federal government, leaders of Muslim organizations, many Muslim students, and parents report an increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric and abuses in classrooms.

Last week, during an event hosted by the nonprofit organization Muslim Advocates, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch expressed concerns about what she sees as an uptick in anti-Muslim incidents in schools. The Department of Justice has partnered with the Department of Education to advise schools on anti-bullying measures. Lynch added that the DOJ is investigating MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas; the school in September called the police and suspended 14-year-old Ahmed Muhammad when he brought a clock he had made to school, to show it to his engineering teacher. School administrators assumed it was a bomb.

Recent figures from a 2014 California survey of students by the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA) show that 55 percent of Muslim students in California reported being the target of verbal abuse and insults. That’s twice as many students as those who report being bullied based on gender and race nationally. The survey also found that 29 percent of students who wear a hijab reported offensive touching or pulling of their headscarves. One student said, “They would call me a terrorist and ‘towel head’ and throw rocks at me.” Another student reported, “Someone threatened to kill me if I went to school on 9/11.”

Research shows that students who are bullied do worse academically, and abuse can reappear later in life; former victims have reported struggles with depression and anxiety, as well as risks of suicide.

Perhaps most concerning in the figures and news reports is the number of anti-Muslim incidents that have originated from teachers and administrators, as was the case with Ahmed in Irving. One in five Muslim students in California said they experienced discrimination by a teacher or an administrator. Of these, only 42 percent said reporting a problem to an adult made a difference.

This poses a challenge for advocates and parents who are working to combat Islamophobia in schools. While students, especially in high schools, play a large role in combating any form of meanness and abuse at their schools, adults play a greater role in setting the tone of their classrooms and enforcing positive social norms.

The rise in bullying of Muslim students is a reflection of the rising Islamophobia in the United States since 9/11. As Mother Jones‘ Edwin Rios reported last week, “The most recent FBI data indicates that hate crimes based on race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation have dropped across the board—with the exception of crimes against Muslim Americans. In 2014, even as the total number of hate crimes dipped nearly 8 percent from the year before, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 14 percent.” And on Sunday, the New York Times‘ Laurie Goodstein found that in the aftermath of attacks in Paris and the mass shooting in San Bernandino, California, “Muslims and leaders of mosques across the United States say they are experiencing a wave of death threats, assaults and vandalism unlike anything they have experienced since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.”

(Are you a Muslim student who doesn’t feel safe in your school, or is your school a good model that others should learn from? I’d love to hear from you. Email me at krizga at motherjones.com.)

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This is What It’s Like to Be a Muslim Schoolkid in America Right Now

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We Need to Re-Learn the Lessons of the Iraq War

by OrvalMedrano Posted on November 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeff Guo writes about the likelihood that the Paris attacks will inspire reprisals against Muslims:

“This is precisely what ISIS was aiming for — to provoke communities to commit actions against Muslims,” said Arie Kruglanski, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland who studies how people become terrorists. “Then ISIS will be able to say, ‘I told you so. These are your enemies, and the enemies of Islam.’”

….The researchers see the Paris attacks increasing radicalization in two potential ways. First, the killings project power and prestige, burnishing ISIS’s image and attracting those who want to feel potent themselves.

Second, the attacks will escalate tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims. They have already led to some anti-Muslim activity, and will likely provoke more. Not only will these events make Muslims in the West feel marginalized, but they will also provide extremist propagandists with examples of Western oppression.

What really gets me about this is not just that it’s true. It’s that we’ve seen this movie before with Al-Qaeda. We know perfectly well that it’s ISIS that wants to turn this into a war of civilizations, just as Al-Qaeda wanted to do. It’s no secret. Why are so many conservative hawks so willing to play along with this?

More generally, it’s astonishing—or depressing, take your pick—how soon we forget what we learned just a few years ago. Should we send a massive force into Anbar to crush ISIS once and for all? Well, we’ve tried that before. Remember? We sent a massive force into Iraq and, sure enough, we toppled Saddam Hussein regular army units pretty quickly. Then, despite a huge military presence, the country fell apart. The Sunni insurgency lasted for years before it was finally beaten back. Then the Shiite government of Iraq decided that fealty to its Shia supporters was more important than uniting their country, and before long Anbar was in flames again, this time with ISIS leading the charge.

You want to take out ISIS? Me too. But if you want to do it fast in order to demonstrate how tough you are, it’s going to require 100,000 troops or more; it will cost hundreds or thousands of American lives; and the bill will run to tens of billions of dollars. Remember Fallujah? It took the better part of a year and nearly 15,000 troops to take a medium-sized city held by a few thousand poorly trained militants. Now multiply that by ten or so. And multiply the casualties by 10 or 20 or 30 too. This isn’t two armies facing off on the field of battle. It’s house-to-house fighting against local insurgents, which isn’t something we’re especially good at.

Still, we could do it. The problem is that President Obama is right: unless we leave a permanent occupying force there, it will just blow up yet again—especially if we take Ted Cruz’s advice and decide we don’t really care about civilian casualties. Having defeated Al-Qaeda 2.0, we’ll end up with Al-Qaeda 3.0. Aside from a permanent occupation, the only thing that can stop this is an Iraqi government that takes Sunni grievances seriously and is genuinely willing to govern in a non-sectarian way.

This isn’t just a guess. We went through this just a few years ago. But everyone seems to have forgotten it already. Just send in the troops and crush the bastards! That worked great against the Nazis. It doesn’t work so great in Iraq.

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We Need to Re-Learn the Lessons of the Iraq War

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Bobby Jindal Lashes Out at Father of Oregon Shooter: "He’s the Problem Here"

by ValentiKoss Posted on October 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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If, after last week’s shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, you held the gunman responsible, Bobby Jindal thinks you’ve missed the mark.

On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Jindal published a self-described “sermon” on his campaign website, addressing what he believes are the root causes of mass shootings. These causes include, but are not limited to, “cultural decay,” violent video games, absent fathers, and the general devaluing of human life.

“It’s the old computer axiom—garbage in, garbage out,” Jindal wrote. “We fill our culture with garbage, and we reap the result.”

Jindal also lashed out at the shooter’s father, who has called for gun control in the wake of his son’s rampage. “He’s a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public,” Jindal wrote. “He’s the problem here.

Jindal’s response to this instance of gun violence is similar to his reaction to a shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, in which three people (including the gunman) were killed. Shortly after that happened, Jindal offered condolences to the families, resisted discussing gun control reform in lieu of praying for the victims’ families, and even criticized President Barack Obama for “trying to score cheap political points.” However, after the shooting at an army recruiting station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just days later, the Louisiana governor reacted quite differently. Jindal was quick to politicize the issue by pinning the shooting on radical Islamic terrorism, a problem that he alleges the White House has largely ignored.

“This shooting underscores the grave reality of the threat posed to us by Radical Islamic terrorism every single day,” Jindal said in an official statement after the Chattanooga shooting. “It’s time for the White House to wake up and tell the truth…and that truth is that Radical Islam is at war with us, and we must start by being honest about that.”

In the spirit of honesty, it should also be noted that Jindal’s own state has the second-highest rate of deaths by firearm per 100,000 people, second only to Alaska.

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Bobby Jindal Lashes Out at Father of Oregon Shooter: "He’s the Problem Here"

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This Is What Osama bin Laden Liked to Read

by ArlethaUmberger Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, the Director of National Intelligence released a bunch of the documents US forces recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound during the raid in Abbottabad. The inventory of the declassified materials provides a glimpse into what were OBL’s reading habits. Were there novels of Nick Hornby and Ian McEwan? Maybe a dog-eared copy of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History? Or a marked up first edition of Julia Phillip’s infamous Hollywood tell-all You’ll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again?

No, you will be unsurprised to learn, there were not.

SPOILER ALERT: Bin Laden liked to read things about al-Qaeda. Things with such sexy sundry titles as “Prospects for al-Qaeda” and “Al-Qaeda and the Internet: The Dangers of ‘Cyberplanning’.”

Two fun ones though: Popular Science‘s “Best Innovations of the Year” and an article in TIME about AOL’s troubles, both of which sort of seem like the reading materials one might find in the waiting room to hell.

In the section titled “Documents probably used by other compound residents” we find some of the bin Laden children’s periodicals: art stuff, Guinness Book of World Records, video game instruction manuals, a sports nutrition guide, and a suicide prevention manual entitled “Is It the Heart You Are Asking? by Dr. Islam Sobhi al-Mazeny.

Pretty bleak!

Here’s the full list of “media articles” from Bin Laden’s bookshelf, courtesy of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. You should probably commit the names of some of them to memory so you’ll have something interesting to talk about at parties.

Business Week (19 Feb 2007 issue)

Doctrine: Journal of General Military Review, Issue 3

Foreign Policy in Focus, “Prospects for al-Qaeda” (24 Jan 2003)

Foreign Policy (Jan-Feb 2008)

Foreign Policy (March-Apr 2008)

Foreign Policy (May-June 2008)

Foreign Policy (Nov-Dec 2008)

Foreign Policy (Sept-Oct 2008)

Heft, “The Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Determination of Illegal Combatants,” Issue 4 (2002)

“The Impact of the War in Iraq on Islamist Groups and the Culture of Global Jihad,” by Reuven Paz, Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (2004)

International News, “Governments’ Successful Measures against Terrorism” (21 Aug 2009)

Journal of International Security Affairs, “Future Terrorism, Mutant Jihads” by Walid Phares

Los Angeles Times, “Is al-Qaeda Just Bush’s Boogeyman? (11 Jan 2005)

Middle East Policy, “Terrorist Recruitment and Radicalization in Saudi Arabia” (Winter 2006)

Military Review, “Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations” (Nov-Dec 2005)

Newsweek, part of an article on an attack within Israel

Newsweek, part of an article on President Bush’s business practices prior to his terms as President

Newsweek, part of an article on hawks and doves on Iraq within the Bush Administration

Newsweek, quotes column (unknown issue, but apparently from the years of the Bush Administration)

Osprey corporate advertisement featuring U.S. military troops rappelling from a helicopter

Parameters, “Al-Qaeda and the Internet: The Dangers of ‘Cyberplanning’,” Timothy L. Thomas (Spring 2003)

Parameters, “The Origins of al-Qaeda’s Ideology and Implications for U.S. Strategy,” by Christopher Henzel (Spring 2005)

Popular Science, “Best Innovations of the Year Issue” (Dec 2010)

“Pushing the Prize Up , A Few Notes on Al-Qaeda’s Reward Structure and the Choice of Casualties,” by Raul Caruso and Andrea Locatelli

“Studi Politico-Strategici: An Introduction to Unconventional Warfare,” by Joseph Gagliano

Time, part of an article on a dive of America Online’s stock

Tulsa World article on criminal charges against David Coleman Headley

U.S. News and World Report (fragment, issue unknown)

Washington Quarterly, “Counterterrorism after al-Qaeda” by Paul Pillar (Summer 2004)

Washington Quarterly, “The Post-Madrid Face of al-Qaeda,” by Rohan Gunaratna (Summer 2004)

Washingtonian Magazine profile of John Esposito (Jan 2005)

“Documents probably used by other compound residents”:

Art Education: The Journal of National Art Education Association, “Islamic Art as an Educational Tool about the Teaching of Islam” by Fayeq S. Oweiss (March 2002)

Arabic Calligraphy Workshop by Fayeq S. Oweiss

Published Work Sample from Fayeq S. Oweiss (2004)

Resume for Fayeq S. Oweiss, Ph.D. (2006)

Delta Force Extreme 2 Videogame Guide

Game Spot Videogame Guide

Grappler’s Guide to Sports Nutrition by John Berardi and Michael Fry

Guinness Book of World Records Children’s Edition 2008 (scans of several pages from)

Is It the Heart You Are Asking? by Dr. Islam Sobhi al-Mazeny (suicide prevention guide)

Silkscreening Instructions

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This Is What Osama bin Laden Liked to Read

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The American Public Is Becoming Ever More Rabid for War Against ISIS

by MerissaCpo Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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It sure isn’t hard to gin Americans into a war fever. President Obama isn’t even trying, but support for sending U.S. ground troops back into Iraq to fight ISIS continues to grow. According to a new CBS News poll, it now stands at 57 percent.

It’s not just conservatives, either. Democrats favor sending in ground troops by a margin of 50-43 percent. We’re only a few public beheadings away from two-thirds approval margins among all groups, which is something of a magic number. If we reach that point, President Obama and congressional Democrats might decide—reluctantly or otherwise—that they have to change course and send in a substantial ground force.

This would probably be a disaster. The most optimistic scenario is that Graeme Wood is right, and the ISIS folks are such nutters that they’d welcome a final, conventional showdown against the forces of the West:

The Islamic State has attached great importance to the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo….It is here, the Prophet reportedly said, that the armies of Rome will set up their camp. The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo or its Antietam.

….Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse….If the United States were to invade, the Islamic State’s obsession with battle at Dabiq suggests that it might send vast resources there, as if in a conventional battle. If the state musters at Dabiq in full force, only to be routed, it might never recover.

That’s a battle we could pretty easily win. But if it turns out the leadership of ISIS isn’t quite as daft and millenarian as Wood says, then the only way to defeat ISIS would be in grisly house-to-house fighting in Sunni strongholds like Mosul. We already know that U.S. troops can’t do that effectively, and neither can the predominantly Shia troops controlled by Iraq. It would be a long, grinding, disaster of a war.

But apparently the American public hasn’t quite internalized that yet. They’re becoming more and more enraged about ISIS, and they want to do something. That’s a bad combination.

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The American Public Is Becoming Ever More Rabid for War Against ISIS

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Defending Free Speech Doesn’t Require Solidarity With the Speech Itself

by MarcoVENAvjc Posted on January 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago, I had in mind a follow-up post about the point that defense of free speech doesn’t necessarily demand “solidarity” with the speech itself. This is obvious. If an extremist gay rights lunatic murdered a dozen members of the Westboro Baptist Church, would we all start showily plastering “God Hates Fags” on our websites? The question answers itself. There might a few photos showing WBC members sporting the phrase because there’s some news value in making it clear what sparked the attacks, but that would be it.

Anyway, I didn’t do it. The only way to make the point was to choose something deliberately and revoltingly offensive, so I backed off. But Glenn Greenwald didn’t:

This week’s defense of free speech rights was so spirited that it gave rise to a brand new principle: to defend free speech, one not only defends the right to disseminate the speech, but embraces the content of the speech itself. Numerous writers thus demanded: to show “solidarity” with the murdered cartoonists, one should not merely condemn the attacks and defend the right of the cartoonists to publish, but should publish and even celebrate those cartoons. “The best response to Charlie Hebdo attack,” announced Slate’s editor Jacob Weisberg, “is to escalate blasphemous satire.”

Some of the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo were not just offensive but bigoted, such as the one mocking the African sex slaves of Boko Haram as welfare queens….But no matter. Their cartoons were noble and should be celebrated — not just on free speech grounds but for their content. In a column entitled “The Blasphemy We Need,” The New York Times’ Ross Douthat argued that “the right to blaspheme (and otherwise give offense) is essential to the liberal order” and “that kind of blasphemy that provokes violence is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it’s the kind that clearly serves a free society’s greater good.” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait actually proclaimed that “one cannot defend the right to blaspheme without defending the practice.”

….It is self-evident that if a writer who specialized in overtly anti-black or anti-Semitic screeds had been murdered for their ideas, there would be no widespread calls to republish their trash in “solidarity” with their free speech rights….When we originally discussed publishing this article to make these points, our intention was to commission two or three cartoonists to create cartoons that mock Judaism and malign sacred figures to Jews the way Charlie Hebdo did to Muslims. But that idea was thwarted by the fact that no mainstream western cartoonist would dare put their name on an anti-Jewish cartoon, even if done for satire purposes, because doing so would instantly and permanently destroy their career, at least. Anti-Islam and anti-Muslim commentary (and cartoons) are a dime a dozen in western media outlets.

I don’t agree with everything Greenwald says in his post. In particular, I think he really does downplay the disparity in both the number and virulence of terrorist attacks by radical Islamic groups compared to other groups. Like it or not, that makes a difference. He also would have been well-served by reprinting more than just anti-Semitic cartoons. Nonetheless, he makes his point vigorously, as usual, including a refresher of the evidence that terrorist violence is hardly limited to radical Islamists.

I am, I confess, conflicted about this. There is value in solidarity in the face of such a hideous attack. Still, although refusing to publish out of fear is plainly wrong—this is hardly a controversial point—letting a terrorist attack provoke an overreaction is a dubious response as well. For this reason, Greenwald’s piece is worth reading in full even if, in the end, you think he’s wrong. Maybe even especially if you think he’s wrong.

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Defending Free Speech Doesn’t Require Solidarity With the Speech Itself

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What We Know So Far About the Newspaper Massacre in Paris

by FletcheBrandow Posted on January 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hooded gunmen carrying automatic weapons opened fire at the offices of French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people and seriously injuring 10. The Guardian is reporting that three attackers are still at large, after they were seen escaping in a car.

French President François Hollande said the shooting was “undoubtedly a terrorist attack.” France has since raised its terror alert to the highest level.

According to several news reports, the gunmen were heard shouting “we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad” as they stormed into the magazine’s offices armed with Kalashnikov rifles. Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper known for its caustic, no-holds-barred cartoons, has previously sparked ire from some Muslims for its satirical take on Islam, including several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. (The publication of the likeness of the prophet is forbidden under Islam). In 2011, the magazine was firebombed after publishing an issue “guest-edited” by the prophet.

President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have both condemned Wednesday’s attack.

Several prominent cartoonists, including Jean Cabut and the magazine’s editor in chief, Stephane Charbonnier, were among those killed.

Since news broke of the attack this morning, the hashtag #JesuisCharlie has been spreading on Twitter in support of the victims. The US Embassy in France also changed their Twitter profile photo to include the hashtag.

Cartoonists around the world have also shown their solidarity with Charlie Hebdo with powerful images:

We will update this post as we learn more about the attacks.

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What We Know So Far About the Newspaper Massacre in Paris

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