Posted on 06/22/2005 3:59:50 PM PDT by aculeus
On the evening of July 11, 2004, Kristine Withers walked down 37th Avenue, a main drag in Jackson Heights, Queens, and passed what had become a familiar sight: a group of tables set up on the sidewalk by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a local group of militant Islamists. On the tables, copies of the Koran and books espousing the group’s strict religious beliefs shared space with tracts on Zionism, pamphlets on the dangers of homosexuality, and signs bearing messages like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes."
Ms. Withers, who identifies herself as a lesbian and a political conservative, was offended by the group’s message. The Islamic Thinkers Society had become a regular feature at local gay-pride parades, where they’ve called for the castration and death of gay men, according to several witnesses who spoke to The Observer. But Ms. Withers said it was as much the anti-American messages as the anti-gay ones that riled her up.
"To me, it’s synonymous with the Nazis recruiting on 42nd Street during World War II," she said of her antagonists.
So, in another installment of the then-yearlong series of hostile exchanges between her and the group, she decided to do something. At one point in the exchange, she told the dozen or so bearded young men who make up the group that the prophet Muhammad was a pedophile. They called her a "Christian b****," by her account. Then she knocked over a sign and stepped on it. Two young bearded men, members of the group, pulled the sign out from under her, sending her flying to the ground.
Soon, police arrived and took a statement from Mohamed Bahi, a student at Queens College who told The Observer that he is not a member of the group. Ms. Withers was charged with incitement to riot and four other counts. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown assigned the case to the unit of his office that handles bias crimes, though Ms. Withers argued that the Queens District Attorney was going after the wrong person for bias.
The Islamic Thinkers Society wouldn’t answer questions about the confrontation, but members of the group relived their confrontations with Ms. Withers on their password-protected Web site, hundreds of pages of which were provided to The Observer by the SITE Institute in Washington, which monitors online extremist groups. In their discussions, group members referred to Ms. Withers as "it" and a "dirty she-male."
"When ‘it’ came back with fists up and ready for action, it got what it asked for," wrote the site’s administrator, who goes by the name "Islamic Revival" and was apparently among the people on the scene. He described "a couple of slaps and snuffs in the face and a few other hits by a brother NOT from us but a brother who sells Islamic Books near us."
"They said what they said," explained Patrick Clark, a spokesman for Mr. Brown, of the Islamic Thinkers’ anti-gay statements. "But there’s also evidence to indicate that there was a crime that occurred, and that the defendant stomped on merchandise and religious artifacts and interrupted the prayer service and shouted epithets."
The case has since been resolved: Ms. Withers pled guilty this year and enrolled in anger-management classes, she told The Observer, to avoid the expense of a lawyer.
The dispute between an irascible lesbian conservative from Queens and a militant new group well on the fringes of the city’s Muslim community might appear to be a marginal conflict. But to New York’s gays and to some of its Muslim leaders, the scene in Jackson Heights bears a worrying similarity to communal conflicts that are challenging the idea of tolerance across Europe, with particular flashpoints in Holland and Scandinavia. There, young immigrants and the children of immigrants have been drawn to a more radical Islamic ideology than that of their parents. On the extreme fringes, these young men have committed acts of violence against Jews and gays, and in a case that shocked Europe, one young Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street.
"It’s almost a cliché to define it like this, but in the end it’s a question of whether you can tolerate intolerance," said Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist who has written on the Van Gogh murder. "We are defending the openness, the diversity of this society against tendencies from other cultures, in which this kind of openness which we celebrate is being regarded as a threat."
In this conflict, gays have become canaries in the ideological coal mine. Western liberals have tended to cut Muslim groups slack on their ideological pronouncements, in part out of sympathy with some of their causes—the insurgencies in Chechnya and the Middle East, for example—and in part out of a sense that anti-Muslim sentiment in the West is a more pressing problem than anything Muslims themselves might do.
But the rise of gay bashing on European streets has pushed the question of tolerance a step further and led some to question their reflexive defense of a put-upon minority. It has also opened up a heated debate within the gay community, and among liberals in general, over whether the proliferation of intolerant strains of Islam requires liberals in the West to take a harder line on issues like immigration and assimilation.
For some conservative intellectuals, rising anti-gay violence on the streets of Amsterdam, for example, comes as a kind of vindication.
"For liberals, the violent anti-gay hostility of their fundamentalist Muslim allies may be the first thing that really makes them realize they’re not on the same page," said the conservative gay writer Bruce Bawer, who lives in Oslo, and who is writing a book entitled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within.
Others argue that the rise of conservative Islam in Europe is, in part, a reaction to Europe’s inability to integrate its immigrant populations. By this argument, America is different, given its openness to newcomers and its different set of Muslim immigrants.
"American Muslims are far better educated and far richer than average," said Muqtedar Khan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, who dismissed the Islamic Thinkers and their ilk as "small pockets of angry youth."
But here in New York, perhaps the most European of American cities in its traditional tolerance, some disturbing signs have emerged on the line between gay and Muslim communities. The Islamic Thinkers’ Web site is full of suggestions of anti-gay violence: "Man I can’t stop thinking: shoot the qawm of Lut," wrote one of the site’s moderators on May 20, using a Koranic reference to the story of Lot and Sodom.
In an apparently unrelated incident at Staten Island’s first Pride Parade this summer, a 22-year-old man, John Alla, was arrested and charged with a bias crime after knocking the hats off musicians’ heads while shouting anti-gay slurs that reportedly included references to the Koran. (Mr. Alla didn’t respond to repeated telephone calls seeking his version of the incident.)
More broadly, the city’s large gay and Muslim communities have virtually no relationship. The head of the state’s gay lobbying group, the Empire State Pride Agenda, told The Observer that he counts no Islamic leaders among the 410 members of the clergy that have signed on to the group’s "Pride in My Pulpit" program.
The campaign’s organizers "have hit a brick wall when it comes to finding support for our issues in the Muslim-faith community," said the executive director of the Pride Agenda, Alan Van Capelle.
The Victim Card
In the United States, the issue is complicated by a national politics in which religious condemnations of gay marriage have become ritual and conservative religious groups a powerful lobby, as well as a local politics in which gay groups routinely make common cause with other minorities, including Muslims. The Islamic Thinkers, meanwhile, are not too new to American politics to play another familiar card: victimhood.
The group declined to respond to requests from a reporter to discuss their beliefs and their conflict with Ms. Withers. Instead, the group posted to its Web site (www.islamicthinkers.com) an e-mail from The Observer and warned that "an article would be published to deliberately misrepresent Islamic Thinkers Society and its views."
Later, the group posted a similar response to a forthcoming New York Times article: "Again and again, the Muslims of Islamic Thinkers Society have denied any interviews to the media," the Web site read. "Due to the unavailability of any direct source of information, even the reputable media outlets have turned into tabloids. The goal of the media is to suppress Muslims who stand up for injustice is vindicated even more now."
Even members of the Muslim community who have had limited interactions with the Islamic Thinkers are unsure of their origins or their size. The regular group, which spends weekend afternoons on that Jackson Heights street corner, is composed of about a dozen young Muslims, most of them men, some in traditional dress. Some of the group’s members are apparently American-born, and some are converts to Islam.
The Islamic Thinkers gained national notoriety earlier this year when they posted a video on the Internet—titled "Operation Desecrate American Flag"—that depicted them stomping an American flag into the curb and shouting that the "flag represents the Crusader war on Islam headed by the United State government."
The group has also become a fixture at Queens gay events, holding signs with messages like "Allah Will Destroy Nations That Allow Homosexuality" and "Today: Homosexuality; Tomorrow: Pedophilia; What’s Next? Bestiality?" at the borough’s Pride Parade, which runs through Jackson Heights. Last year, screaming matches erupted between the two sides; this year, police kept them apart.
"Somebody in the crowd started shouting ‘Go back to Osama bin Laden!’ or whatever, and these guys started shouting back," recalled Ayaz Ahmed, a gay Pakistani Muslim who attended this year’s parade. "I was like, ‘Oh, my God—what’s happening here?’"
But even some American Muslim groups who maintain that Islam forbids homosexuality have little time for the Islamic Thinkers. The executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Wissam Nasr, said the group’s style and the destruction of an American flag have caused "dismay" in the city’s Muslim community. The draft of a letter to the Islamic Thinkers, he added, is circulating among religious and communal leaders, and it tells the group: "You really have to know the disapproval that you’re meeting in the Muslim community."
(There are also signs that the group is already aware of that disapproval. Members have complained that local mosques don’t welcome their protests, and that the neighborhood’s "freakin’ Bengalis" show little interest in their preaching.)
Other community groups were less willing to distance themselves from the Islamic Thinkers.
Adem Carroll of the Queens-based Islamic Circle of North America, for instance, said that the group was "not my cup of tea," but described it as "a sign of the alienation and anger that’s in the community, adding: "I think the approach of the Bush administration does not help.
"If you’re quoting me, I would hope that whatever I say doesn’t sound like I’m condemning them," Mr. Carroll concluded.
On American Islam’s liberal edge, however, feelings about the Islamic Thinkers Society are far less ambiguous. For example, the Thinkers have protested a liberal Muslim group associated with the Progressive Muslims Union, which arranged for a woman to lead prayers. ("Mixed-Gender Prayer Today, Hellfire Tomorrow," read one of their signs, according to a picture on the Islamic Thinkers’ Web site.)
"There have been a number of organizations that have come out with pretty serious and substantial critiques of issues like ‘Can women lead prayer or not?’—that sort of thing. And if it’s something along those lines, then you know we tend to engage it," said Omid Safi, a co-chair of the Progressive Muslims Union. "If it’s just somebody who has signs that say ‘You’re all going to hell in a hand-basket,’ then, you know, I kind of just figure, ‘Let them be. Let them say what they’re going to say’—and please don’t kill us."
There’s no evidence that members of the group have engaged in or are capable of violence, other than in the conflict with Ms. Withers. Their Web site prominently states that the site’s moderators are not responsible for all the postings on the site, and that group’s "struggle is always political and non-violent."
Guns and Poses
But inside the site, that commitment to nonviolence seems to be something less than serious. The main moderator, "Islamic Revival," offers images of masked, armed and marching Islamists over the heading "Support Our Troops" and animations of exploding military vehicles.
The group’s informal spokesman and the site’s most prolific poster, who goes by the name Mohammed Nussrah, has a personal page in which the group’s anti-violence motto was placed directly beneath a picture of the Koran beside an automatic weapon.
After The Observer contacted the group, Mr. Nussrah’s picture of the Koran and the gun disappeared, as did the image of Osama bin Laden elsewhere on the site.
Mr. Nussrah, who is identified on the group’s videos as a tall, light-skinned man, has been identified by the Associated Press as a Brooklyn native, but could not be located under that name.
Mr. Nussrah’s profile on the Islamic Thinkers site also links to a personal art site. There, at www.islamicpics.tk, are images of dead and grieving American soldiers with the caption: "Say to those who disbelieve, ‘You will be defeated and gathered together in Hell …. ’" The site also features a map of North America with two guns crossed beneath it and, for good measure, an image with the caption "Shias Are Toilets." (The Islamic Thinkers are, according to discussions on their site, faithful to a strict Sunni tradition, said Michael Kern, an analyst at the SITE Institute.)
One image is a mock advertisement for an imaginary video game, "Mujahideen Strike II," which features an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center and an ax slicing the Statue of Liberty in half. (For good measure, the statue is placed atop a Star of David.)
Another image depicts a sword over a favorite quote: "When you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them."
But while prosecutors determined that Ms. Withers crossed the legal line in her confrontation with the Islamic Thinkers, the group’s activities are covered by constitutional protections on free speech. On their discussion board, members of the Islamic Thinkers noted that they tore up the American flag rather than burning it, because a fire would not have been within their permit.
Asked about the group, the spokesman for the F.B.I.’s New York office, Special Agent Jim Margolin, said: "We recognize the distinction between constitutionally protected activity and criminal conduct. We’re interested in the latter and mindful of people’s First Amendment rights."
The confrontation last July between Ms. Withers and the Islamic Thinkers was not the first between the two, and not the last. Before the July 11 incident, another encounter between Ms. Withers and the group was captured on an edited video posted to the Islamic Thinkers’ Web site. In the video clip, Ms. Withers swings at a member of the group and misses. As she tries to walk away, she is dragged to the ground by a group of men and, it appears, kicked. The beginning of the incident isn’t shown on the video.
After the group posted its description of her as a "she-male" to a public section of their Web site this month, she returned to confront them. In the altercation, which the group taped, Ms. Withers told a member of the group: "You want to say I’m a lesbian? That’s O.K., [but] if you don’t f***ing take down what you defamed me with, I’ll kill you." The tape abruptly ends at that point.
"I didn’t say it like I was going to do anything," Ms. Withers said later. "It was in the heat of the moment. What would you do if someone called you that?"
You may reach Ben Smith and Jessica Bruder via email at: bensmith@observer.com and jbruder@observer.com. back to top
This column ran on page 1 in the 6/27/2005 edition of The New York Observer.
Was she a Lesbian for Bush??
We'll see more of this. The Muzzies hate feminism, homosexuality, atheism, and general promiscuity -- all deeply-held tenets of the Leftist Faith.
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Buy that young lady a beer!
One of my buddies who is a teacher was at some kind of workshop last year.
Another teacher from a school in california told him that her school had had some kind of "celebrate diversity"/"tolerance day" and had several muslims students give speeches.
She said it all seemed to go so well in confronting american racism against muslims until the gay speakers came up and the muslim students started cursing at them and threatening them....almost inciting a riot.
I did remember reading a blurb on it too, I'm not sure if it was the same school but to be honest with you, I was cracking up when he told me the story.
She also told that despite all their "hard work for tolerance" in that school, there were problems with all, from hispanics and african americans, to gays and muslims, from feminists (both lesbian and non lesbian) with male homosexuals, etc.
Blaming whitey only goes so far.
Couldn't they just both lose?
The NY Times would never run this story.
The NY Times has an unofficial policy of not putting anything that would make gays look bad.
That said, she is a conservative, so they would naturally take the side of the muslims, if they could leave out the lesbian orientation part, then they might run it.
I doubt it though, even the former ombudsman said they cheerlead for gays, so this story would get spiked.
Celebrate Diversity
Thanks...you made my case about the quandary! As you'll note, I didn't mention what the outcome might be. (grin)
Lenny, you prescient humorist, "I never met a dike, I didn't like".
We'll see more of this. The Muzzies hate feminism, homosexuality, atheism, and general promiscuity -- all deeply-held tenets of the Leftist Faith.
Agree. At some point the Left will need to choose between supporting Muslims and their traditional base (gays, Jews, etc). I strongly suspect that will break in favor of the Muslims sometime after 2020 to their sheer numbers.
We'll see more of this. The Muzzies hate feminism, homosexuality, atheism, and general promiscuity -- all deeply-held tenets of the Leftist Faith.
Agree. At some point the Left will need to choose between supporting Muslims and their traditional base (gays, Jews, etc). I strongly suspect they will break in favor of the Muslims sometime after 2020 due to their sheer numbers.
The elephant in the room's a bit too big to ignore.
"If you’re quoting me, I would hope that whatever I say doesn’t sound like I’m condemning them," Mr. Carroll concluded.
Translation: "I want to live."
Anyone else find this group's name an oxymoron?
A "lesbian conservative"? There is no such thing, as much as the media would like us to believe.
Once it's been made clear to any and every group that their identities are sacrosanct and deserving of protection from 'offense' of any sort, the door is opened to the politics of hurt feelings. And in the mêlée that inevitably ensues, the intolerant will always have the advantage, because they don't care one whit about the feelings of any of the other groups.
Excellent story. This should be publicized widely by Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt, and everyone else.
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