Category Archives: Islamophobia

Al-Qaeda, Europe, Islamic History, Islamophobia, Jews, Terrorism

Cultures: Willful Arrogant Europeans, Insecure Islamists, Surviving Banu Quraydha……

February 16, 2015 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

So a bunch of willful arrogant French journalists and other European cartoonists draw insulting childish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Probably knowing exactly what it would provoke, maybe with an eye toward circulation and/or publicity or some public accolades among their literati peers. Art of the kind they probably wouldn’t dare do of, say, the Queen of Denmark or Queen Elizabeth, or even Charles de Gaulle. The queen’s head on the body of a dog, for example. Such re the creative inspirations of the Euro-artistes.
They have the right to do it. And they have the right to assert that right by doing it. Even if les arabes don’t have the same right to wear the attire they want on the streets of Paris. Even knowing that les arabes on the fringes of their society would be up in arms. Responsibility is a personal choice.

Then there are the Islamists who could and should just shrug it off as one of the unpleasant facts of living in Europe, along with other distasteful things like free speech, wine, music, and casual sex. Hayat Boumedienne and her tiny bikini photos notwithstanding, of course. But some of them, a small minority, don’t shrug it off. So they kill a bunch of people they deem responsible.

But that is not the end of it. To go back fifteen centuries they need their illusory Khaybar or al-Khandaq. So they seek some Jews or Jewish targets, people who have nothing to do with the blasphemous cartoons, to hit. There is no need: Banu Qurayza (Bani Quraydha) are long gone from Madinah, beheaded and enslaved and expelled. Obviously those in Europe are not populating the settlements on the West Bank or bombing Gaza (but maybe now they will). Which means they are doing (with Jews) exactly as some of the European racists would do with them (with Arabs and Muslims): target them. Using them as convenient targets and scapegoats. But scapegoats for what?
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Culture, Islamophobia, Nobel Prize, Uncategorized

Fools Names and Fools Faces: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Awards Netanyahu Her Celebrity Nobel Prize………

August 5, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Fools names, like fools faces, are often seen in public places” Not me

“During an interview published on Friday by Israel HaYom, the Sheldon Adelson-backed Israeli daily, public intellectual and author Ayan Hirsi Ali claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for waging the ongoing military campaign by the IDF against Hamas militants in Gaza. Asked whom she admired, Ali — who once called Islam a “nihilistic cult of death” — included Netanyahu on a list featuring her husband, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Princeton professor Bernard Lewis. Ali said she admired Netanyahu “[b]ecause he is under so much pressure, from so many sources, and yet he does what is best for the people of Israel, he does his duty.” “I really think he should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” Ali added. “In a fair world he would get it.”……………”

Someone had written on a ‘public place’ I once used: “Fools names, like fools faces, are often seen in public places”.

This lady’s claim to fame now is that she is “a critic of Islam”, as the media often mention. Some call her an “activist“, as in “actively self-serving“. More like an “active celebrity“, an older Kim Kardashian, feted by American media from right and left. Nominating Benyamin Netanyhau for a Nobel Prize was supposed to be another “bold” statement, but it was a slip she probably already regrets.

No more comment needed.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Islamophobia, Muslims, Terrorism, Uncategorized

Anti-Terrorist Frankensteins and their Trapped Creations: Love of Shwarma, Falafel, and Biryani………..

July 26, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have targeted American Muslims in abusive counterterrorism “sting operations” based on religious and ethnic identity, Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released today. Many of the more than 500 terrorism-related cases prosecuted in US federal courts since September 11, 2001, have alienated the very communities that can help prevent terrorist crimes…………..“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the US,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report. “But take a closer look and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”………………”

This has been suspected for some years: we have all posted on it, from the hapless young Afghanis and Jordanians to the highly improbable ‘Iranian-Texan plot’ with the Mexican Drug Cartels to assassinate the unimportant yes-man who is the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

This report is, however, more damning because of the staggering details and sources it provides. Many of these eager agents are probably like many other bureaucrats, seeking a track record of success against terrorism and possibly promotion. Not just federal agents, but federal prosecutors, especially in the Northeast area of the U.S. I suspected, flippantly, in one of my older posts that some of them like to hang around shwarma and falafel joints just for the food. Even the New York Police got into the act and started hounding Muslims and Arabs , not only within their jurisdictions, but in other parts of the state and possibly in other parts of the Eastern Seaboard. As if the streets of New York are quite safe enough at night.

Some, many of them could not tell a terrorist from the proverbial hole in the ground, that is why they were tempted to create their own “terrorists”. Sort of like the monster of Frenkenstein.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Africa, Apartheid, Islamophobia, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

The Pitfalls of Boycotting Apartheid South Africa, Communist Cuba, Theocratic Iran, and Communist China………

December 11, 2013 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Video:
A Kenny G Holiday

“In 1988, the Wyoming Senate candidate said economic engagement would end apartheid faster than boycotts. Conservatives used the same argument with Jim Crow—and they still don’t get it. Liz Cheney doesn’t just share her father’s neoconservative politics. As a young woman, she also shared his support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. In a 1988 editorial for her college newspaper, Cheney—now running a losing primary bid against Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)—condemned anti-apartheid activists at Colorado College. “The real problem with divestment,” wrote Cheney, attacking a prominent strategy of apartheid opponents, “is that it won’t work. Like most moral statements, it accomplishes nothing tangible.”……………..”

The Cheneys have had an unusual mixed almost bi-polar relationship with the Al Saud princes. They loved the princes and their money even as they waged a media war on their religion. Liz Cheney particularly has a website (Keep America Safe) that for years focused on being Islamophobic even as the Cheneys remained close to the Saudis. That silly fear-mongering website, which also encouraged banning mosques, is now reportedly closed.

Of course there was and still is much hypocrisy in the right-wing position regarding apartheid South Africa. While they extolled the benefits of “engagement” in reducing Apartheid (not that they cared about it), they have also extolled the virtues of keeping the blockade against Cuba, and tightening the blockade against Iran. Apparently ‘engagement’ works with China and apartheid South Africa but not with Cuba, Iran and a few other places. Of course many Democrats are at the forefront of keeping the blockade on Cuba and tightening the blockade on Iran rather than “engaging” these countries. It all depends on upcoming elections, the Cuban exile lobby, and the potent Israeli lobby (including the Christian Zionists).

Cheers
mhg

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Islamophobia, Nazism, Racism, U.S. Politics

New Improved GOP? American-German Bund Revival………

October 15, 2013 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“In a day of provocations and incendiary language at Tea Party-type protests Saturday in Washington D.C., WorldNetDaily.com author and Birther attorney Larry Klayman stands out. “I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town,” said Klayman, a founder of the conservative Freedom Watch political advocacy group. Before a crowd at the “Million Vets March on the Memorials” Klayman demanded that President Barack Obama “… get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.”…………..”

He is a lawyer and he sounds somewhat like Josef Goebbels in his approach to people of other faiths. Which makes me wonder, whatever happened to that famed female Israeli-Russian-American lawyer-dentist-entertainer and birther? Maybe the Canadian-Texan Ted Cruz is looking for a running mate, his own Sarah Palin, to share the electoral fires with.

The Republican Party, an important segment of it, has taken the mantle of racism well beyond Nixon’s original Southern Strategy. They have made it international, dabbling in anti-Muslim wars abroad and crass open racism at home. Like the good old fashioned European fascists of the last century, this newest version of the GOP German-American Bund is true to form. They always end up focusing on a minority. It used to be the Jews in the last century. Now it is cooler to target Muslims directly and “others” not so directly.
Cheers
mhg

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Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

U.S. Elections: Self-Hating Arabs, Self-Hating Muslims………

September 6, 2012 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Neck of the woods

I was thinking about the U.S. elections, with all the convention circus going on for the second week.
I wonder if any Muslims will vote Republican this year? And what do we call them? What do we call an Arab or a Muslim who votes for the party that has been vilifying and threatening them for the past few years? The party of Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Peter King, et al, who vilified Muslims and Islam every day for months this past year. And Romney who is threatening to wage a new war in our homelands and virtually to make Israel an actual 51st state. A party that threatens to treat the Arabs, in their own region, like past victims of racism in the old American Southwest, the Apaches and Comanches and others, to be terrorized and displaced as so many wild savage animals.
Benjamin Netanyahu has a name for American Jews and other Jews who oppose his policies: he calls them “self-hating Jews“. Ironically a very Hitler-ite way of vilifying your opponent, an irony he probably misses.
How many self-hating Muslims and Arabs are out there?

(FYI: there is such a thing as the lesser of two………)
Cheers
mhg
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Europe, France, Islamophobia, Turkey

Blond Turks, Iranian Issues, and the New European Maginot: Ils ne Passeront Pas………….

April 17, 2012 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“In the past, Turkey defended what it called Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program and even voted against U.N. sanctions on Iran two years ago. But Turkey’s relationship with Iran has changed, as it began aligning itself with its Western allies on a series of issues. Richard Howitt is a member of the European Parliament’s committee on Turkey. “Turkey has come back into line on Iran. Turkey really lost some trust on the Iran issue and suffered in public relations terms by its opposition to sanctions, which frankly we worked very hard for at the U.N. and EU,” he said.
A factor in Turkey’s changing role is Syria, an important regional ally of Tehran…………”

The Turks can all dye their hair blond and adopt German or French as their national language. They still will not be admitted into the European Union. The Turks fought with the West faithfully for more than sixty years, from Korea to being the southern bulwark of NATO during the Cold War. They supplied the labor that post-war Germany needed to revive its economy. Yet the old enemies of the former Warsaw Pact are being quickly admitted into the EU, but not the Turks. Eastern European gangs that deal in drugs, human trafficking, and murder are more welcome than the Turks. They are not considered a threat to Europe’s “culture”, but Turkish mosques are.
Now the Turks are being accommodating again, on the Iranian issues, hoping for some morsels from the European table, hoping for approval “There is a good Muslim boy”. They still won’t allow them in. As the Maginot Line said: Ils ne Passeront Pas.
Of course the old Maginot Line did not work as it was supposed to: it forgot about Belgium.
(Q: Do the Turks need to be in the European Union?)
Cheers
mhg

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Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics

America in Danger of an Arab and Muslim Takeover……….

April 16, 2012 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Yet Wasserman Schultz decided to abruptly pull out of speaking at EMERGE’s annual dinner last week. “We never agreed to do a fundraiser, nor an event,” claimed Wasserman Schultz spokesman Jonathan Beeton. Yet EMERGE had previously widely advertised Wasserman Schultz’s participation at the fundraising dinner without apparent complaint from the congresswoman’s staff. “We were interfacing with congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s people for about a year to try to get something together,” said Siddiqui. “So when she agreed to the banquet, we were elated.” There’s a much more likely explanation for her abrupt refusal to attend the event than a simple miscommunication. For months, Islamophobic websites and a far-right congressional candidate waged a smear campaign against EMERGE, pressuring Wasserman Schultz to back out of the event. With her withdrawal, it appears that they won. The smears can be traced back to an article in right-wing McCarthyist David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine. In a February article, Joe Kaufman – who is vying in a Republican primary to challenge Wasserman Schultz for her seat in Congress – teamed up with Militant Islam Monitor’s Beila Rabinowitz to claim that EMERGE was part of a “nefarious agenda of placing Islamists into positions of American power and influence.”……..”

Speaking of “placing Islamists into positions of American power and influence”. Come on now, I hate to be “ethnic” oriented but, just to show the absurdity of that point: Wasserman Schultz (an excellent person, probably better than most Muslims that I know or possibly even those I don’t know), David Horowitz, Beila Rabinowitz, Joe Kaufman, Joe Lieberman, Edelstone, Abe Foxman, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Michael Bloomberg, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Eric Cantor (poor lonely guy)? Most of the elected ones among those listed are excellent public servants (with the exception of Lieberman and Cantor). The bloggers and opinion-ators among them are just the usual racist idiots that come in all shapes, colors, and faiths. Not to mention all the Christian (real or nominal) ones. I haven’t even got to the Vegans yet. And these guys worry about “Arabs or Muslims” in positions of power?
I am tempted to type exactly the sound that I just expressed to the consternation of my best friend: hahahahaha.
Cheers
mhg

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France, Islamophobia, Racism

French Elections: Sarkozy Grows a Little Mustache, Halal Meat and Kosher Salt………..

March 16, 2012 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Much of the press attention here has been focused on Sarkozy’s utterly shameless courtship of France’s xenophobic voters, most of them followers of the far-right National Front. In the debate with Fabius, Sarkozy said that France has too many foreigners, and repeated a proposal he had made to cut the annual number of legal immigrants almost in half. After National Front leader Marine Le Pen made the absurd suggestion that all meat in the Paris region was being slaughtered according to Islamic rules, known as halal, Sarkozy declared, with a straight face, that “the biggest concern of French people is halal meat.”…..…”

Francois Hollande is the Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency. He has been leading Sarkozy (Le Weasel) in most polls until recently. The right-wing are pushing him to make some appropriate anti-immigrant statements.
Nicholas Sarkozy (Le Weasel) has been moving to the right for about two years now. He started early with his own final mini solution for the European gypsies, deporting them en masse. Then he quickly targeted the naturalized French citizens, creating new laws that would punish them in ways different than what other French citizens face. He knows, of course, that most of these would not vote for his right-wing party. Now he is accelerating his shift. His ministers have been making statements about which segment of the population do not represent French ‘culture’, and you don’t have to be Geert Wilders to guess that one.
Now he is rumored by my unreliable source to be planning a printemps surprise on the French electorate: he will show up sporting a new little mustache. A mustache of the kind they haven’t seen in Europe for 67 years.
Cheers
mhg

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Anti-Semitism, Europe, Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism

European Racism: New Ghettos, Same Old Bierhalle Mentality……………..

February 22, 2012 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

BFF

“The victimization of Muslims in Europe is all too real. During the Bosnian Genocide and Kosovo War in the 1990s, over 200,000 Muslims were massacred, 50,000 Muslim women were raped and 2.2 million Muslims were forced to flee their homes, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. These brutal actions were taken in part of an “ethnic cleansing campaign.” In a 2009 referendum, Swiss voters approved a ban on new minarets on Muslim mosques. Minarets neither pose a threat to the national security of Switzerland nor disrupt the pristine beauty of the Swiss Alps. The ban is narrowly targeted towards Muslim places of worship. The tower-like shikara of Hindu temples or the dome of the Sikh Gurudwaras are exempted from this ban. As a person of Hindu heritage, I do not find any solace in this exemption. This past April, France implemented their ban on the niqab, a full face-covering veil. In a study titled, “Are French Muslims Discriminated Against in Their Own Country?”, it was found that in the work force, Muslims have only a 2.5 percent chance of receiving a job interview compared to others. These prejudices are also harbored by minorities. In a private conversation, an Indian restaurant owner in Southern France related, “In India, like in France, most of the problems are because of these Muslims.”……..”

This writer is saying nothing really new, nothing that we didn’t know; but she is citing some interesting examples, also some quite interesting, nay shocking, data.
Everybody who is sober knows that racism is openly rampant in Europe now, that it is mainly aimed at Muslims and Arabs these days. It has always been there, but not so virulent, not so openly accepted, not so legitimized. That is especially true on the “continent”.
Racism and xenophobia have always been a European trait. Sometimes they are submerged for various reasons. That racism is becoming almost institutionalized in the New Europe, with right wing parties from France to Holland and Austria winning elections based on their own un-compiled little “Mein Kampfs“. It is becoming “halal” now in much of Europe to be openly anti-Muslim, just like it used to be “kosher” to be antisemitic, in fact still is in some quarters.

Cheers
mhg

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Arabia Deserta: MENA Focus