Islam

UPDATE: It appears that Calvin College will no longer be hosting the event.

The American Decency Association plans to host Kamal Saleem, who claims to be a former terrorist, at Calvin College as part of a tour of Michigan. Saleem’s story of working as a terrorist all over the globe has been thoroughly debunked, but he continues to be an idol of Religious Right groups. He even spoke at last year’s Values Voter Summit following Paul Ryan where he warned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to “shut down” churches and synagogues.

Saleem has argued that President Obama is a Muslim who is using Roe v. Wade “to bring Sharia law” to the U.S. He maintains that Obama wants to make sure that “Sharia law will be supreme in America” by working with “Hamas to import Muslim people to the United States” and “legalizing terrorism.” Saleem even claims that “there are many generals who swore to destroy the United States of America are generals in the United States [military]” and that an Islamic shadow government is secretly running the U.S. through the Obama family babysitter.

He spoke at Calvin College in 2007, where he met Professor Doug Howard, who went on to write an article for Christianity Today on the “bizarre” and fantastical claims that Saleem makes in his book, The Blood of Lambs.

Because Howard, like others, raised serious doubts about Saleem’s story, Saleem has accused him of working for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast reports that “Saleem told me that Howard is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood” and in an interview with Tim Murphy of Mother Jones, Saleem asserted that Howard supports radical Islam:

But Saleem didn't flinch. "He's related to a special group called the Muslim Brotherhood, and he works with them, he went to DC, he was with CAIR," he said.

I mentioned that Howard is a Christian, which makes him an odd fit for the Brotherhood.

"So? He's a professor of history. Islamic history professor, and he's writing on what? On Islamic history glory. So the group he's with, there are different groups. He rallied with them in DC, and he invited an Iranian radical to Calvin University. They spoke right there." That Iranian radical, it turns out, was Reza Aslan, who in addition to being an American citizen raised in the Bay Area, is famous mostly for suggesting that democracy is a useful weapon against terrorism.

("I don't know what to say! Maybe I should add that to my faculty web page," joked Howard in an email, adding that as part of his semester in DC, he took students to meet with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, AIPAC, the Mennonites Central Committee, and, yes, one trip to a mosque.)

But now, Saleem is once again set to speak at a college which he believes is employing a Muslim Brotherhood agent who is part of an alliance between professors and terrorists.

On the New Years Eve episode of Generations Radio, Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner offered up their review of 2012 and their predictions for 2013. As Brian wrote yesterday, they were not fans of 2012 – the year that President Obama won reelection, which “solidified our doom” and guaranteed the election of “a bunch of softy-wofty, weeny socialists for years to come.”

Their predictions for 2013 are not any more cheery.

Swanson forsees “the Muslims and the liberal Presbyterians getting together to form Chrislam,” which actually might not be a big deal because “chances are, at the end of the day they’re all Muslims anyway”:

Swanson: There will be a merger of PCUSA [Presbyterian Church (USA)], a liberal Christian organization, denomination, there will be a merger of PCUSA and a Muslim sect to form the first Mustererian denomination. How do you say that? Musterian denomination.

Buenher: Chrislam.

Swanson: So the Muslims and the liberal Presbyterians get together to form Chrislam. There’s just synthesis going on, so I’m just waiting for that mix. Now, chances are Dave, that at the end of the day they’re all Muslims anyway.

Swanson further predicts that Time magazine will “turn into the Daily Dragon or maybe the Daily Harlot…and then maybe Barack Obama rides on the Harlot or the Beast.” Further, Chief Justice John Roberts will declare the “confiscation of assault weapons” a “tax” and that Joe Biden will “come back with a recommendation to make school shootings illegal.” Buehner adds his own prediction that Colorado will pass a civil union bill allowing human-pet and human-cell phone marriage.

Swanson: You know Newsweek became the Daily Beast? Have you  ever seen that? I went online about a week ago trying to find a Newsweek article and I ended up on the Daily Beast site. What is that? Well, Dave, they were out of money, they couldn’t publish it anymore, so now they’ve got the DailyBeast.com. Well, here’s the prediction for 2013, to maintain the general apocalyptic theme here, Time magazine will turn into the Daily Dragon or maybe the Daily Harlot.

Buehner: I think the latter is probably more appropriate.

Swanson: And then maybe Barack Obama rides on the Harlot or the Beast. I don’t know how that works. But it’s in Revelation, check it out, it’s in Revelation. Ok, John Roberts declares the confiscation of assault weapons not a violation of the Second Amendment but a tax under the Interstate Commerce Clause. That wouldn’t surprise me. I mean we’ve got the precedent, and the precedents come from the top, top dog, the top ,top court of the land. Ok, and Joe Biden comes back with a recommendation to make school shootings illegal. That would be helpful. No, I think it would just inspire more school shootings.

Buehner: Well, you really don’t want to give legal cover to those who want to shoot in schools. I mean, that would make sense. Kevin, here’s one. You know that now that Colorado  has a Democrat in the governor and both houses and the courts are controlled by Democrats, I think Colorado is going to pass the first-in-the-nation civil union bill where somebody, a human, and their pet, can be recognized in a full civil union, full benefits and…

Swanson: What about a human and a cell phone?

Buehner: Well, that’s only a two-year contract. And then you get to change it after two years and get a new plan.

Finally, Swanson and Buehner get to natural disasters and war. While they point out that liberal bastions San Francisco and New York have already been hit by the“natural disasters” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Bloomberg, God’s judgement is still incomplete. Buehner boldly predicts that “somewhere in  the world we see hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, disease, and one more, and it’s a man-made calamaty, I will predict that somewhere, I’m going to say that in the Middle East, there’s violence that’s going to happen in  2013.”  

Swanson: More predictions for 2013. The fiscal cliff will become the fiscal chasm. And Dave, maybe a calamity for New Orleans. No, we already had one there. New York? No. San Francisco. Have we had one there? Not since, wasn’t there like an earthquake there many years ago?

Buehner: Well, there are all kinds of calamities. New York had their calamity, Mayor Bloomberg. I mean, that’s a calamity. They got drenched with less than 16 ounces of drink over a hurricane.

Swanson: Yeah, they did.

Buehner: And San Francisco has their calamity, they have Nancy Pelosi.

Swanson: We’ll see what happens. I have a feeling there is a God and America has not repented yet. Follow my logic here, Dave. Ok, there is a God, that’s proposition A.  Proposition B, Premise B, America has not repented. Premise C, God has sent these kind of calamities before. So here’s the conclusion: there will be more. Ok, follow me? Follow the logic there?

Buehner: Yeah. I’m thinking that somewhere in  the world we see hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, disease, and one more, and it’s a man-made calamaty, I will predict that somewhere, I’m going to say that in the Middle East, there’s violence that’s going to happen in 2013.
 

WorldNetDaily is pushing a story about supposed Islamic indoctrination in Texas based on a chain email literally days after a review of the curriculum by the Irving Independent School District found nothing of the sort. The school district launched the review because of the chain email set off rumors that schools were trying to convert students to Islam with overt and subliminal messages and the Boston Tea Party was portrayed as an act of terrorism. The review found that “Christianity got twice as much attention in the curriculum as any other religion” and that “The Red Crescent and Boston Tea Party reference mentioned in the email were nowhere in CSCOPE’s curriculum.”

But WorldNetDaily, as you’d expect, decided to cite the chain email as a credible source and completely ignored reports about the study debunking its claims.

In the 70 percent of Texas public schools where a private curriculum has been installed, students are learning the “fact” that “Allah is the Almighty God,” charge critics of a new online curriculum that already is facing condemnation for its secrecy and restrictions on oversight.

The program, called CSCOPE, is a private venture operating under the umbrella of the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, whose incorporation documents state its independence from the State Board of Education of the Texas Education Agency.

Other reports previously have raised alarm over the curriculum’s depiction of the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist act on par with the 9/11 attack.

According to documentation that has leaked out, the program describes the Boston Tea Party this way: “A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.”

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Now come concerns about what critics describe as a definitively pro-Islam bias.

The critics say the studies border on proselytizing.

• Several dozen Religious Right and conservatives leaders have signed on to a letter telling House Republicans never to compromise with Democrats because "you have a mandate to fight for conservative principles that is arguably much broader than the one that narrowly reelected President Barack Obama claims to have for his leftist agenda."
• John McCain's gift to the world just keeps on giving.
• Sen. Rand Paul is pushing national "personhood" legislation called "The Life at Conception Act."
• Mat Staver says Islam is not a religion and therefore should not be allowed to "use the same kind of laws for an advancement of a political ideology that you would for religious liberty."
• Finally, Bryan Fischer explains that "our Second Amendment is rooted in the teaching of Jesus Christ":

The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney dedicated Wednesday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio to discussing the Benghazi attack and the resignation of Gen. David Petreaus with leaders of the anti-Muslim Right. He spoke first with conservative columnist Diana West, who in October claimed that the Benghazi attack was a “fortunate event” because it brought attention to the Obama administration’s “supporting jihad.”

West – who explored similar ground in a WorldNetDaily column yesterday -- told Gaffney that Petreaus’ extramarital affair was “apiece” with the entire philosophy behind the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, claiming that American troops are now being ordered to “revere the Koran” and “look the other way” at “polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs.”

“I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives,” she said.

West: In a sense, we live in a COIN [counterinsurgency] world, because I think the doctrine that Christopher Stevens and the Bush administration and of course the Obama administration was pushing was this notion, if you do enough to please the Islamic world you can work with them. But in that process, you become part of the submission. You adopt so much of the Islamic worldview that you lose your own. And I think the counterinsurgency doctrine exemplifies this with guns. It’s a matter of appeasing Islamic masters, of satisfying Islamic norms in order, the idea is to win them over to your side. But you no longer have a side once you’ve given over freedom of speech, which the military essentially gave over in ordering men to revere the Koran and never speak ill of it, once you give over the notion of outrage over polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs, which the military institutionalizes in forcing our men to look the other way at these behaviors, which are norms in Afghanistan. You have given away yourself, you no longer have yourself, and as these men come home when these attitudes towards corruption – everything in Afghanistan is done with money, you know jizya, the amounts of, your persuading people to do things not because you’re right or according to the law, but because you pay them, these things are going to seep back into our society. And this tolerance of polygamy, pederasty, etc. is going to seep back in. These are dangerous things, we’re no longer ourselves.
…

West: The notion of protecting the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which is at the heart of COIN, over protecting American forces in the field, I believe is an immoral doctrine. And I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives. I don’t think it’s far afield, I think it’s all apiece of a larger philosophy.

Gaffney: Symptomatic of a larger problem, one I think that those of us who revere the military and its place in our society as our defenders must take very much to heart.

Elsewhere in the program, Gaffney spoke with author Andy Bostom, who claimed that President Obama has adopted what he sees as the West’s “cultural self-loathing.” Gaffney agreed, adding that “it really speaks to the psychology of this guy… this hostility to the United States.”

Bostom: I think we’re coming to a phase in the West where this sort of cultural self-loathing. Our engagement now in these wars, the way we’ve conducted them, may be the apotheosis of this trend, this completely self-destructive self-loathing. And our president seems to have totally bought into this mentality that somehow, you know, all the ills of the world are due to western attacks, to hegemony and colonial…and this is all the detritus of the colonial empire, and we are a guilty people, we are a guilty civilization, and he is actualizing policies, it seems to me, based on this mindset. And al Qaeda’s a great example. On the one hand, they aren’t even Muslims, according to our president and his advisors, they’re some sort of vague manifestation of extremism that has nothing to do with Islam, that has nothing to do with Muslims, that’s a sui generis phenomenon or something, but we are incalculably wrong in almost everything we do.

Gaffney: That’s such a telling insight, Andy Bostom. It really speaks to the psychology of this guy, and we’ll be speaking momentarily with Dr. Paul Kengor about his sort of upbringing and influences that may have helped shape this hostility to the United States. But to the extent that it really is translating now into fundamentally misunderstanding the danger that’s being posed to us and therefore making absolutely impossible our success in contending with it, it really is a disaster of the first order and something that I pray we will have members of Congress addressing in the course of these hearings starting this week.

On Friday's radio program, Bryan Fischer reiterated his call to ban immigration to the United States from Muslim-majority nations because "while there are moderate Muslims, no one has yet developed a error-free way to tell the difference between the Muslims we have to worry about and the ones we don’t. Until that day comes, we must be cautious about them all."

While discussing this point on his program, Fischer warned his listeners that the United Nations, with the help of the US government, was systematically importing Muslims into America and "deliberately seeding them" all throughout the South: 

We are importing Muslims from Muslim-majority countries hand-over-fist. We have delegated to the UN the choice of those that come to the Untied States as refugees; we have said to the UN "you pick 'em and we'll take 'em in." So what the UN is doing, they are just flooding the United States with Muslims as refugees and they're distributing all throughout the South. Why are they building that huge mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee? I mean, most of them have never even heard of Murfreesboro, Tennessee? What are they even doing there? Well that's the United States government importing these Muslim immigrants at the behest of the UN and dropping them in these communities all over the South, deliberately seeding them all throughout the United States.

WorldNetDaily’s intrepid birther Jerome Corsi is out with a new report today, in which he uncovers that President Obama’s wedding band is actually inscribed with the Arabic for “There is no god except Allah.”

Corsi’s source for this revelation? None other than all-purpose anti-Obama conspiracy theorist Joel Gilbert. Gilbert has recently achieved some success with his film “Dreams From My Real Father,” in which he claims that the president’s real father was labor activist and communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis. The film is currently being sent to households around Ohio, with the help of an undisclosed source of funding, and recently received the enthusiastic endorsement of the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. Gilbert, apparently, believes that Obama is not only a hard-core Marxist, but also a secret Muslim:

"Dreams from My Real Father” producer Joel Gilbert, an Arabic speaker and an expert on the Middle East, was the first to conclude that Obama’s ring, reportedly from Indonesia, bore an Islamic inscription

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Filmmaker Joel Gilbert, an expert on Islamic history, noted Obama wore the ring during his high-profile speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, in the first months of his presidency.

“Now we have a new context for what Obama meant when he told the Islamic audience in Cairo that he has ‘known Islam on three continents,” Gilbert said. “He also told the Cairo audience that he considered it part of his responsibility as president of the United States ‘to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.’ All religious Muslims are by definition required to defend Islam.”

Before he turned his attention to the president’s supposed Communist genetics, Gilbert directed a number of Bob Dylan documentaries and “Atomic Jihad,” a film accusing President Obama of appeasing Iran.

Corsi has previously speculated that the same ring, which the president has been pictured wearing before his marriage to Michelle Obama, is proof that he was once married to his male Pakistani roommate.

 We know that when Michele Bachmann speaks, even fact-checkers can’t fully cover all of her dubious and debunked claims in just a single article. Now that Bachmann is completely engrossed in promoting her latest conspiracy theory focusing on the supposed Muslim Brotherhood “penetration” of the US government, she took to The Janet Mefferd Show to misrepresent President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly to claim that Obama is not only refusing to defend the freedom of speech but may be even actively backing the curtailment of speech rights in favor of Sharia law.

The congresswoman told Mefferd that Islamic countries may be using “riots and terrorism” to ensure that “Sharia law will dominated over our United States Constitution.” “Our president either doesn’t know what’s happening or he’s playing along with what their goal is,” Bachmann said. “Either option is very dangerous for the free speech rights and the protection and safety of the American people.”

She also failed to mention that when Obama criticized “those who slander the prophet of Islam” it was part of a larger chastisement of religious bigotry, including against desecration of images of Jesus Christ, the destruction of churches and Holocaust denial.

Bachmann: We have just had four Americans killed, including two marines and an ambassador, and our President says to the UN the future does not belong to those who speak against the prophet? We need to remember that the fifty-seven Muslim governments across the world have what they call a ten year plan, it began in 2005 and their goal by 2015 is to criminalize any speech anywhere in the world that speaks against Islam or against the Prophet Mohammad. This is their plan. So their pretext is to find something they can point to and then have riots and terrorism and then force the rest of us to give up our free speech rights so that then that means their law, Sharia law, will dominate over our United States Constitution. That’s really what’s happening. Our president either doesn’t know what’s happening or he’s playing along with what their goal is. Either option is very dangerous for the free speech rights and the protection and safety of the American people.

Bachmann also maintained that Obama was simultaneously fashioning himself to be “‘Emperor of the World,’ telling the world what to do,” while also catering to the wishes of Muslim countries. She said that the President refused to make clear that “under no circumstances will the United States ever subvert the Constitution to Sharia law” and did not “articulate American values” against the coming global Islamic caliphate.

Bachmann: It almost sounds like he’s trying to speak as “‘Emperor of the World,’ telling the world what to do, as opposed to being the President of the United States who should be adamant and say it’s outrageous that these Islamist countries should be calling on the United States to take away the constitutional protections of the American people. This is very important to think that the United States would restrict speech of Americans. Now the president did talk in his remarks about the fact that we do have a constitutional right to free speech but really the only focus of that speech should have been under no circumstances will the United States ever subvert the Constitution to Sharia law. We didn’t get that kind of a forceful statement from our President.

Mefferd: No and that goes back to the day right after the consulate attack I think Mitt Romney did so much better than the President himself and saying we’re Americans, we believe in free speech, this was unacceptable. From Obama, it was sort of a ‘Chris Stevens was a really great guy’ and that was about it.

Bachmann: It was; it was ridiculous. Here we’ve been attacked, these were acts of war, what happened to us in Cairo, what happened to us in Libya, these were acts of war. Again, don’t forget these fifty-seven Muslim governments have a ten year plan: their goal is to criminalize speech against Islam. Why? Because they intend to establish a Caliphate, an Islamic government, across the entire world so that it isn’t just our speech rights that we would give up, we would have to give up all rights eventually and we would have to conform to Sharia law, the Islamic law. As women know, this would be a disaster for women, for freedom, for free speech. We’re not an Islamic nation, people can believe whatever they want to believe here, but we’re not an Islamic nation, we believe in freedom and I only wish our President would articulate American values. That’s one thing we’re getting from Mitt Romney, we are not getting it from Barack Obama. I’ll say it again, I believe he is the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy and for that reason alone he must not have a second term.

Clearly, Bachmann missed the part in Obama’s speech (or all of it) where he forcefully defended the freedom of speech, expression, and religion as American values and unambiguously rejected violent extremism and discrimination against women and minorities.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As President of our country and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day -- (laughter) -- and I will always defend their right to do so.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech -- the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

Now, I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond?

And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There’s no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There’s no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.

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The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians in Egypt -- it must be claimed by those in Tahrir Square who chanted, “Muslims, Christians, we are one.” The future must not belong to those who bully women -- it must be shaped by girls who go to school, and those who stand for a world where our daughters can live their dreams just like our sons.

The future must not belong to those corrupt few who steal a country’s resources -- it must be won by the students and entrepreneurs, the workers and business owners who seek a broader prosperity for all people. Those are the women and men that America stands with; theirs is the vision we will support.

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims and Shiite pilgrims. It’s time to heed the words of Gandhi: “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” Together, we must work towards a world where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies, that’s the vision we will support.