UST BEFORE HEARINGS, KING WILL APPEAR ON ANTI-MUSLIM GROUP'S TV SHOW -TOP
Rachel Slajda, TPM, 1/20/11

Just before he holds hearings on the "radicalization" of Muslims in America, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will appear on the new TV show for a group that believes Muslims are the enemies of America.

In early February, King, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, will appear on the debut episode of a TV show produced by the group Act! For America. The group's founder, Brigitte Gabriel, believes that Muslims can't be trusted to serve in the U.S. armed forces; that "tens of thousands of Islamic militants now reside in America ... attending our colleges and universities, even infiltrating our government;" and that Americans must unite to "defeat radical Islam."

Who counts as a radical Muslim to Gabriel?

"Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim," she says.

King will be the first guest on Gabriel's new cable show, according to a press release. Gabriel will be the host. (More)

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BACKGROUNDER: BRIGITTE GABRIEL AND ACT! FOR AMERICA - TOP

ACT! for America leader Brigitte Gabriel claims an American Muslim "cannot be a loyal citizen" and that Islam is the "real enemy." She once told the Australian Jewish News: "Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim." She also claimed that "Islamo-fascism is a politically-correct word ... it's the vehicle for Islam ... Islam is the problem."

When asked whether Americans should "resist Muslims who want to seek political office in this nation," Gabriel said: "Absolutely. If a Muslim who has -- who is -- a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day -- this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America."

Gabriel stated: "America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam."

SEE: Islam's March Against the West

Along with her stated desire to have Muslims barred from public office, Gabriel has also claimed that Arabs "have no soul" and that Muslims worship "something they call 'Allah,' which is very different from the God we believe [in]."

SEE: A Case Study in Sincere Hypocrisy: Brigitte Gabriel
Video: Brigitte Gabriel Says Arabs Have No Souls

A person staffing an ACT! for America information table in Florida was caught on videobragging that he desecrated the Quran, Islam's revealed text, and urinates in the washing stations Muslims use to perform their ritual ablutions (wudu) for prayer.

That person states: "Their foot baths, I love pissing in them ... The Quran makes worthless toilet paper. It just kind of scratches my a** a little bit ... To me, I like desecrating their [Muslims'] holy stuff."

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MUSLIM 'RADICALIZATION' HEARINGS ARE WRONG AND MISGUIDED - TOP
Joshua Stanton, Huffington Post, 1/20/11

Socially and professionally, we as American Jews have often felt as though we were being 'put on the stand' for our beliefs. Sometimes our beliefs even seemed to be on trial nationally -- notably during the 'Red Scares' leading up to and during the Cold War, when a disproportionate number of Jews were blacklisted.

But seldom has our religion actually been put on the stand. No organ of the federal government has, to my knowledge, held hearings to investigate American Jewry for disloyalty or radicalization. We may have feared such public humiliation -- but it has not yet materialized.

By contrast, an effort is currently underway to single out American Muslims. Representative Peter King (R-NY), Chair of the Homeland Security Committee of the House of Representatives, has declared his intention to hold a public hearing in Congress on the "radicalization" of Muslim Americans. (More)

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SELF-STYLED ' EXPERT' FURIOUS HE WON'T BE WITNESS AT 'RADICALIZATION' HEARINGS - TOP
Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News, 1/19/11

Steven Emerson is executive director of the nonprofit research group the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which has labeled some American Muslim leaders as radicals. And he's furious now at being excluded as a witness in upcoming congressional hearings on the "radicalization" of American Muslims.

New York GOP Rep. Peter King, who is organizing the hearings, says he never told Emerson he was going to be a witness, according to Politico's copy of the angry correspondence between the two men.

"That you have caved in to the demands of radical Islamists in removing me as a witness, in light of the fact that no one in this country has done more empirical investigations about the attitudes and statements of the established Muslim leadership, shows me, to my utter horror, that McCarthyism is still alive today," Emerson wrote in a letter to King. (More)

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CAIR-CHICAGO: RELIGIOUS LEADERS URGE APPROVAL OF DUPAGE MOSQUE - TOP
Serena Maria Daniels and Joe Ruzich, Chicago Tribune, 1/19/11

Muslim leaders and representatives of other faiths are urging DuPage County officials to reject the recommendation of the county's Zoning Board and allow construction of a mosque near Willowbrook.

Proponents of the plan said Wednesday that they were troubled that a factor cited during the Zoning Board's discussion of the mosque was that it would add to an oversaturation of religious institutions in the area.

"How many mosques constitute an oversaturation in DuPage County or the unincorporated area of DuPage County, according to the DuPage County Zoning Board of Appeals?" asked Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, at a news conference. "The answer would be one. One would be one too many apparently, and that's very disconcerting to us." (More)

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CAIR: BASKETBALL PLAYER SIDELINED FOR WEARING RELIGIOUS HEADSCARF - TOP
Referee Ruled the Middle School Girl's Hijab Was a Safety Hazard
Amy Bingham, ABC News, 1/19/11

A middle school girl was kept out of the first half of a basketball game Saturday because a referee ruled her religious headscarf, called a hijab, was a safety hazard.

Thirteen-year-old Maheen Haq of Hagerstown, Md. was sidelined until Lou Bachtell, the Mid-Maryland Girls Basketball League regional director, arrived to the court at halftime, called league President Jim Shannon and got an exemption approved ...

Haq began wearing the hijab in fourth grade as a sign of modesty and dignity, Mrs. Haq said. Her mother began wearing a headscarf as well to show support for her daughter. ...

"It's really not something you can just choose to take off for a game," said Amina Rubin, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "When someone has chosen to wear it, it's an essential part of who they are when they go out in public." (More)

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NYPD'S MUSLIM HORROR FLICK SPARKS OUTCRY - TOP
Tom Robbins, Village Voice, 1/20/11

A major city Islamic organization is putting a few tough questions to the NYPD about how a loony Muslim-bashing movie came to be shown to city cops, as reported in this week's Voice.

"Our nation's battle against terrorism is only made more difficult whenever security officers are taught to view all Muslims, and the faith of Islam itself, with suspicion," said Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York Board President Zead Ramadan. "We call on Commissioner Kelly to order an internal probe of how this propaganda film came to be used and to put policies in place to ensure that NYPD training is not biased by agenda-driven materials -- or trainers -- targeting any religious or minority community."

Ramadan said he has asked for a meeting with NYPD officials to find out how cops came to view "The Third Jihad" -- a blood-splattered 72-minute feature suggesting that even moderate Muslims are engaged in a conspiracy to put America under radical Islamic rule. The Voice asked police officials the same question after a cop complained that he and others undergoing anti-terror training were made to sit through the film this month at a police training facility in Coney Island. (More)

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CAIR-NY: NYPD DRAWS IRE FOR ANTI-MUSLIM FILM - TOP
Arun Venugopal, WNYC, 1/19/11

Tom Robbins at the Village Voice reported the NYPD screened an anti-Muslim film "The Third Jihad" to police earlier this month at a required counter-terrorism training.

Police spokesman Paul Browne told us the film "was not screened or used for cadets. It was reviewed by instructors at our counter-terrorism bureau and rejected." But the Voice quotes Browne saying it was shown "a couple of times when officers were filling out paperwork before the actual coursework began."

Chair of the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Zead Ramadan said he brought the screening to the attention of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last September after a police cadet had attended a viewing of the film. Ramadan said he approached Kelly during an Eid celebration at Gracie Mansion. The commissioner, said Ramadan, was surprised to hear about the movie. (More)

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CAIR-NY: NYPD OFFICERS SHOWN MUSLIM-BASHING FILM IN COUNTER-TERROR TRAINING - TOP
By Daniel Tencer, Raw Story, 1/19/11

New York Police Department officers who showed up for mandatory counter-terrorism training were shown a "spectacularly offensive" anti-Muslim film claiming that American Muslims are secretly plotting to take over the country, a news report alleged Wednesday.

The news is further evidence that US law enforcement agencies are turning to extremist anti-Islamic "consultants" to provide training for terrorism investigations. ...

The news comes as reports accumulate that US law enforcement agencies are using the services of anti-Muslim extremists who have fashioned themselves as counter-terrorism "experts."

At a counter-terror conference in Las Vegas last fall, consultant Walid Shoebat declared that the solution to militant Islamists is "to kill them, including the children" -- an assertion that reportedly got a positive reception from many in the audience. (More)

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CAIR-NY: NYPD GINS UP COPS WITH ANTI-MUSLIM TRAINING VIDEO - TOP
New York's finest were shown a conspiracy-mongering film that hypes the threat from American Muslims
By Justin Elliott, Salon, 1/19/11

Tom Robbins reports that New York police were shown a lurid, conspiracy-mongering movie called "The Third Jihad" as part of their counter-terrorism training this month. The movie claims that American Muslims are secretly trying to undermine and destroy Western civilization from within. Robbins reports:

It is 72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs. All of this is sandwiched between a collection of somber talking heads informing us that, while we were sleeping, the international Islamist Jihad that wrought these horrors has set up shop here and is quietly going about its deadly business. This is the final drive in a 1,400-year-old bid for Muslim world domination, we're informed. And while we may think there are some perfectly reasonable Muslim leaders and organizations here in the U.S., that is just more sucker bait sent our way.

"Americans are being told that most of the mainstream Muslim groups are moderate," says the narrator, "when in fact if you look a little closer you'll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception."

"The Third Jihad" was produced by the Clarion Fund, the shadowy group that mailed out millions of DVDs of its first movie, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" to swing-state voters in 2008. (I explored the mystery of who paid for those DVDs in this piece.) The Clarion Fund has strong links to the right-wing Israeli organization Aish HaTorah.

Responding to inquires from Robbins, the NYPD acknowledged that The Third Jihad is "wacky" and was "inappropriate" for counterterrorism training. It's still not clear whose idea it was to show the film. (More)

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NYPD USED ANTI-ISLAM FILM 'THIRD JIHAD' TO TRAIN OFFICERS - TOP
Rachel Slajda, Talking Points Memo, 1/19/11

The New York Police Department has used a movie that portrays Muslim-Americans as jihadis hell-bent on destroying the United States from within in its counter-terrorism training for officers.

The Village Voice reports today that the NYPD has shown "The Third Jihad" to officers taking their mandatory counter-terrorism courses. ...

"The Third Jihad" is a straight-to-DVD movie by the Clarion Fund about the threat of Islam to the U.S. from within -- the so-called "stealth jihad" we hear about from people like Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney. The Clarion Fund is the nonprofit which, in 2008, received a multi-million-dollar anonymous donation to send 30 million copies of their film "Obsession" to swing state voters at the height of the presidential election.

That movie -- which, like "The Third Jihad" is made up of clips of anti-America rallies in the Middle East, Muslim men holding assault rifles and neocons discussing the threat of Islam, all over ominous music -- partially fueled the anti-mosque, anti-Muslim fervor that exploded this summer. (More)