Hooper and Media Fanning Flames

Maybe Obama can amend his abuse report to the UN Commission on Human Rights and condemn America for abuses that haven't yet happened to Muslims on 9/11/10. Might as well, according to CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. Here he is on CNN:

"There's a whole cottage industry of Muslim bashers now who would seize on that," he said. "Unfortunately, these are the times we live in."...

CAIR's Hooper said that some mosques fear attacks because of Eid and the 9/11 anniversary next weekend. He said his group is encouraging mosques to request stepped-up patrols from local police and to review security procedures.

..on ABC News:

"The issue I can sense brewing on hate sites on the Internet is, 'These Muslims are celebrating on September 11,'" Hooper told The Associated Press. "It's getting really scary out there."

And in the New York Times:

“Victims are reluctant to go public with these kinds of hate incidents because they fear further harassment or attack,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They’re hoping all this will just blow over.”

Some Muslims said their situation felt more precarious now — under a president who is perceived as not only friendly to Muslims but is wrongly believed by many Americans to be Muslim himself — than it was under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Patel explained, “After Sept. 11, we had a Republican president who had the confidence and trust of red America, who went to a mosque and said, ‘Islam means peace,’ and who said ‘Muslims are our neighbors and friends,’ and who distinguished between terrorism and Islam.”

Red America? Interesting description. Meanwhile, CBS News was running a story about Afghan response to the nutbar 'pastor' who wants to burn Qurans on 9/11:

Hundreds of Afghans railed against the United States and called for President Barack Obama's death at a rally in the capital Monday to denounce a Florida church's plans to burn the Islamic holy book on 9/11.

The crowd in Kabul, numbering as many as 500, chanted "Long live Islam" and "Death to America" as they listened to fiery speeches from members of parliament, provincial council deputies, and Islamic clerics who criticized the U.S. and demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.

Perhaps Obama could make a quick trip to a mosque over there and explain that our media is simply trumping up a non-story from a nut, and that's not really what Jesus would do.

Anyway, the Florida Quran-burning story can be spun in a variety of ways; lefties will say it's now fair to associate it with Christianity in general since red America has erroneously associated bin Laden and AQ with Islam; righties might point out that even if that association is made despite the paltry number of followers this guy has, at least the nutbar Christians have never called for mass murder in return.

But the likely real reason this flame is being fanned by so many in the big media (while ignoring stories like this one) is to paint anyone with a natural sense of suspicion of their peaceful Muslim neighbor who may one day explode in the shopping mall not as legitimate Americans reacting to a war, but intolerant racist Islamophobes. This gives them license to then subtly pin the hate on the Tea Party in general, which slops over onto anyone who votes right.

The idea is to get the fence-sitting moderates who will sway the mid-term elections uncomfortable about hitching their wagons to the right, assuring victory for their party in November. And yes, it's their party--they helped elect them. Shameless, really.

OF MOSQUES AND MEN 9/6/10

Speaking of Cordova (yes, actually it's Cordoba) .. it's a suburb of Memphis where a new Islamic Center/mosque is being built--mentioned in the link above. The new imam is Sheikh Yasir Qadhi. This video will introduce you to him, should you care to view his passionate defense of his faith spurred by the show "Undercover Mosques" that aired on Britain's Channel 4 a few years ago.

He seems a rather pleasant fellow, making a point to clarify that it's not only Wahhabist Muslims who denounce homosexuality, but all Muslims. That includes pre-marital sex and adultery, just like Christians and Jews. But around the 11 minute mark of the linked tape he seems to dip his toe into Jews vs Palestinians squabble, which should really have nothing to do with American Muslims. Perhaps only a coincidence, but a number of years ago he was convinced the Holocaust was faked. He later apologized and moved on.

The linked site with Qahdi's message also includes a tape from Bilal Phillips, a Canadian-born convert who was supposedly once a teacher of Ali al-Timimi, now serving a life sentence for sedition. You read that correctly--sedition. When is the last time someone was successfully prosecuted for sedition in America? Interestingly, Mr. Timimi was studying computational biology at George Mason University in 2001, allegedly in the same proximity as a former director of USAMRIID and former Soviet bio-weapons guru (and defector) Ken Alibek, when he stirred his small band of followers thusly:

"(he) stated that the attacks may not be Islamically permissible, but that they were not a tragedy, because they were brought on by American foreign policy."

How is that much different that what Imam Rauf said in Australia and on 60 Minutes, or what bin Laden used for his 1998 fatwa? Or what Saddam Hussein said after 9/11, or what Reverend Wright and others have said--that somehow America invited the attack (can we blame Bill Clinton?).

So there you go.