Earlier this year, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that Muslim Brotherhood agents had penetrated the Obama administration, which she claimed was attempting to “enforce Islamic speech codes.” While Bachmann was roundly mocked and criticized for the baseless remarks, they were a hit in conspiratorial right-wing circles. Bachmann took her crusade against the supposed Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the government to Jan Markell’s radio show this weekend, where she again claimed that Obama is “aiding and abetting” radical Islamist groups.
Markell is an End Times broadcaster and a close ally of Bachmann, who attended her “Understanding the Times” conference this year. She has previously claimed that Mattel’s Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo doll is promoting Islam to children, demanded the government begin monitoring mosques and in 2007 predicted a terrorist attack as a result of a Hindu prayer in the U.S. Senate. Markell has also suggested that a tornado in Minnesota was a “warning from God” meant to punish the Lutheran Church for affirming gay pastors and alleged that the deadly 2011 earthquake in Japan was divine judgment.
Markell charged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and Barger said that the supposed rise of Sharia law in the U.S. is proof that the Antichrist is coming.
Markell: Hillary, she’s a woman from Arkansas who used to be an attorney and rose to the White House, why would somebody like Hillary Clinton let herself get embroiled in things that are so Islamic? I’ve done entire programs on her assistant Huma Abedin connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Why do you think someone like Hillary is getting so enmeshed in all things Muslim Brotherhood that this is absolutely a danger to the nation at this point because of the intricate nature of Muslim Brotherhood, Washington D.C., homeland security, national security, the State Department and the rabbit trails just keep going, and everybody is wondering who has looked into these kinds of issues, what is in the mind of somebody like Hillary Clinton that she is willing to sacrifice the safety of the nation by getting so embroiled in Muslim Brotherhood?
Barger: Jan, it is simply baffling to me. To be honest with you, I’ve thought about that so much and I’ve been living with this research now for several weeks that we’re using on the air. Somebody has her ear, obviously; maybe she is convinced that she can be a catalyst for world peace. You know, if you understand Islam at all you understand that the goal is not world peace, this is world domination, they have said it over and over; it’s in the Koran.
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Barger: Can you imagine Sunday sermons across our land soon being scrutinized by a panel by religious examiners to see if the words used pass the left-wing litmus test or the Muslim litmus test or however it’s viewed, to see if they become hate crimes or to see who would be called a renegade preacher is really just inciting his people? That’s where we’re going and eventually that’s the case Antichrist will make against people who disagree with him and who would stand against him and stand against everything that he will stand for. The thought police have now moved to the mouth and I think we need to see that and understand it. How soon will our legal ability to witness and defend the faith and preach the unadulterated Gospel be hampered or stopped? This is the important question, you see.
During the interview, Bachmann warned that Israel and the American people are in grave danger due to President Obama’s purported support of radical Islamists: “President Obama, if you look at nearly every decision he has made about this issue, it is to lift up the Islamists and to take down Israel.”
She also claimed that the Obama administration’s supposed “Islamic speech codes” could be “deadly for the American people.”
Bachmann also told Barger that everyone who is not an Islamist will “lose their right of speech and expression” as there is “no tolerance for dissent or disagreeing in any way with the goals or the beliefs of the Islamists.”
Bachmann: Not just verbal speech, but written, a cartoon, a painting, whatever it is, if it is in any way construed as being against Islam that is where the confrontation comes from the Islamist world and they want to stop anyone in the world from saying anything negative about Islam. Which means there is only one free speech right and that would belong to the Islamists. Everyone else would lose their right of speech and expression.
The reason why this is important is because this is the whole game, it is game over if we who are in the non-Islamist world lose the right to criticize what the Islamist does, because the Islamist tries to advocate Islamic Sharia law and so anything that we would say in the future, once you criminalized anti-Islamic speech, anything that we would say that would be critical in any way of anything Islam does would be considered criminalized. That’s why I say it is game over; the Islamists will have won everything. That’s why they are willing to put ten years into achieving this objective of silencing any form of dissent to Islam.
Barger: That goes right along with the idea that in Islam you are either a member of the house of peace or the house of war, there is no live and let live or peaceful coexistence.
Bachmann: There is no tolerance. There is no tolerance for dissent or disagreeing in any way with the goals or the beliefs of the Islamists, there is only one way.
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Bachmann: Once you take away people’s ability to be able to speak, this is not a small right, this is everything, it is game over because then all of the power and authority has been given over to the Islamist. The Islamist is the only one who gets to dictate what we can say and what we can do, and what we can print and what we not print, and who can assembly and how they can assemble, because at that point Sharia Islamic law in effect becomes the law of the land because the Islamist gets to have the authority, not anyone who opposes Islam. This is a very, very important issue.
She accused the Obama administration of supporting the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s advocacy of blasphemy laws, which the U.S. unambiguously opposed. Bachmann said that Americans must study Islamic materials in the same way people studied Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf during WWII and alleged that a letter from Muslim-American groups [PDF] regarding anti-Muslim instructional material is “proof positive” that the Obama administration wants to introduce Sharia law to the U.S.
Bachmann: That’s what I spent my whole year doing was talking about this issue of what the OIC was trying to do with their ten year plan and all of these efforts in the Obama administration. The only conclusion you could make is that they are embracing the ten year plan and are supporting it and that’s why this October 19 document is so important because that is proof positive that every piece that is put into place is leading to one direction, this isn’t deviating it’s leading to one direction, and that ultimate goal it seems to be is to allow for mandating, following, every demand of the Islamist and we know what their ultimate demand is.
Barger: Sharia law.
Bachmann: That’s right. That’s why we need to know what their belief system is; we need to know what they truly believe. That’s why the most important thing a person could do in WWII was to read the book that the leader of Germany wrote.
Barger: Mein Kampf.
Bachmann: Because he laid out very clearly what his intention was, he wasn’t hiding it, the Islamist does the same thing. They do not hide it, they lay it out very clearly. But what we’ve never seen before is the United States aiding and abetting that goal.
Bachmann concluded by making the absurd claim that Obama and Clinton are going to do away with people’s First Amendment rights and “take away the free speech rights of the American people.”
Barger: We know that our Constitution certainly doesn’t match what the OIC and the Muslim Brotherhood want, nor what the United Nations seems to be doing with Resolution 16/18 and with some other things that are going on there. How much should we worry about executive orders and how they might become, instead of the legislation that should be passed through Congress, might become the law of the land that way?
Bachmann: We’ve already seen that President Obama has given himself a very free hand at writing any executive order that he wants because he said it himself that if the United States Congress won’t agree with him, he’ll just take matters into his own hand and he’ll become his own Congress and he’ll sign his own executive order and thereby put into practical effect a law that he wants to see passed. This is completely against our Constitution.
But even more importantly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton she helped to formulate and write and pass UN Resolution 16/18, which calls for the criminalization—anti-free speech measures. This is very concerning that she went down that road. It doesn’t specifically say Islam, it talks about religious speech, but let’s face it there is only one religion that the OIC—the Organization of Islamic Cooperative [sic]—cares about and that’s Islam. Hillary Clinton was involved from the very beginning in writing this resolution. She’s already signed this. While a UN resolution doesn’t bind United States law, how in the world could the President allow the Secretary of State to sign a resolution that indicates that we are willing to take away the free speech rights of the American people?
This is game over, as I’ve said before, because when you limit the right to dissent from the American people, the Founders made this the First Amendment because they understood this is our most sacred right, our right to speak, our right to practice our faith the way that we want to, the right to publish what we want to publish, the right to assemble and talk about whatever we want to talk about. That’s freedom, that’s the essence of freedom, that’s the First Amendment, and that is what UN Resolution 16/18 which Hillary Clinton signed, presumably with the affirmation of President Obama, and that’s the first step in a big step for taking away from you and me and all of your listeners our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press but even more importantly, it will empower the Islamist to use that against us.
Either Bachmann never read UN Resolution 16/18 or is simply misrepresenting it, as the resolution [PDF] actually defends the freedom of religion while at the same time expressing “deep concern” over religious intolerance, discrimination and violence.
Human Rights First also debunks the assertion that the resolution somehow curtails freedom of speech:
Myth 1: The U.N. resolution opens the door to limiting freedom of speech.
Wrong. The resolution acknowledges the language of article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), notably that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” It calls on states to take measures “consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents.”
The United States has a reservation to that provision, to the extent that it violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so it is not bound by the obligation. In fact, the U.S. has the highest threshold of free speech in the world, and the U.S. government has expressed no intention of lowering those standards. However, that does not exempt all other states from their legal obligations to fight “incitement, hostility or violence” according to article 20 of the ICCPR. After all, that is what they signed up to, so they have an obligation by law to honor their commitment.
In all respects though, the implementation of Article 20 must not infringe Article 19, which reasserts everyone’s right to freedom of expression. Rather than imposing new restrictions on freedom of speech, which it does not, the new consensus resolution opens the door to an action-oriented approach to fighting religious intolerance. That is very consistent with the U.S. policies and practices – combat violence, discrimination and hatred without restricting freedom of speech. Resolution 16/18 urges states to train government officials to address religious tensions, to harmonize actions at local and national level, to raise awareness of negative stereotyping of persons, to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue, to foster religious freedom and to speak out against intolerance (among other recommendations. The only limitation on speech that is in the operative part of the resolution is incitement to “imminent violence”, which is in accordance with US law.
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