Posted on 01/15/2005 8:55:12 AM PST by Land_of_Lincoln_John
WASHINGTON, January 14 (IslamOnline.net) - The largest US Muslim civil liberties called on the State Department to issue a report on Islamophobia across the world, as American Muslims have complained of more anti-Islam TV rants.
The proposal was made when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and several other Muslim and Arab-American groups met Thursday, January 13, with top State Department officials to discuss a number of issues related to American foreign policy, according to CAIR’s Web site.
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad presented in the meeting -- attended by Assistant Secretary Patricia de Stacy Harrison, Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher and Ambassador William Burns -- a proposal for cooperative efforts to challenge both Islamophobia and anti-Americanism.
The proposal includes such measures as producing a report on the growing phenomenon of Islamophobia, conferences in this country and in the Muslim world to discuss both Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism and domestic and international “goodwill ambassadors” who can speak about both topics.
“By challenging anti-Muslim bigotry, we can help reduce anti-American attitudes in the Islamic world.
“And by having American Muslims speak out in support of their nation's values, while at the same time maintaining essential credibility on issues of importance to Muslims worldwide, we undercut growing Islamophobic views in our society,” read the report, carried by the group in a press release Thursday.
Awad described the meeting as “open and forward-looking.”
Anti-Semitism
The meeting came after the State Department released its first report on global anti-Semitism January 5, taking a country-by-country survey of anti-Semitism worldwide from July 2003, to December 15, 2004.
The report was mandated by the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, which was approved by US President George W. Bush in October.
Influential Jewish leaders applauded the move, saying the very fact that Congress enacted legislation requiring the State Department to issue annual reports is “extremely important and highly significant.”
CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, having 30 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada.
Pro-Islam Spots
CAIR said in earlier reports and surveys that attacks against Muslims have been on the rise in the United States since the 9/11/2001 deadly attacks.
The recent slur against Muslims was carried in the Fox TV hit show “24”, which featured an upper-middle class Muslim family operating as a sleeper “terrorist cell”.
In the drama, premiered Monday, January 9, the Muslim mother poisons her son's non-Muslim girlfriend because it was feared the girl could jeopardize the terrorists' plan.
The Fox television network said it would provide its stations with TV spots that portray Muslims in a favorable way after it received complaints for featuring followers of Islam as terrorists on the television show.
A Fox spokesman was quoted by Reuters Friday, January 14, as saying it would provide public service announcements sponsored by CAIR to its affiliate stations.
The move was in response to the Islamic council's complaints about the show.
“What we are hoping to do is to try and mitigate the damages of the stereotypes because it can bring real-life consequences on American Muslims and their lives here,” said Rabiah Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Islamic group.
Citing a public opinion survey conducted by Cornell University last year, Ahmed said television influences viewers' perceptions of Muslims.
“There aren't any positive or even neutral portrayals of Muslims on TV; whenever Muslims or Arabs are portrayed it is always in a stereotypical way,” she said.
“What we are hoping to do is to try and mitigate the damages of the stereotypes because it can bring real-life consequences on American Muslims and their lives here,” said Ahmed.
“When average Americans don't have any personal interaction with Muslims, whether it be at work or at school, they base their perception of Islam and Muslims from what they see on TV,” she added.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan opened in December a seminar on combating Islamophobia through education, inclusion and example.
Annan also warned in an earlier black-tie dinner at the UN headquarters in January that Islamophobia poses a challenge to the spirit that he said unites peoples across the globe.
He said that since the 9/11 attacks “many Muslims, particularly in the West, have found themselves the objects of suspicion, harassment and discrimination.”
“Too many people see Islam as a monolith and as intrinsically opposed to the West. Caricature remains widespread and the gulf of ignorance is dangerously deep.”
PS, to me, the ACLU and islamofacist are one and the same. The ACLU is doing their fighting for them in our courts.
You are correct, sir...it's a frikken comin.
Truth and Light rules...
...Yasser drools.
I think we may be getting to them. I just posted this from the lastest edition of Arab News.
Grand Mufti Hits Out at Critics of Islam
Busy posting day.
Ludicrous. Why would a secular organization favoring a severing of religion from the public square be secretly plotting for Islamic domination?
I'm getting really tired of those people.
Do you believe in God?
Char
LOL!!!
Cicero, the Roman orator, told a story about a Greek King of Syracuse in Sicily named Dionysius (432-367 BC). He was rich and had the best of everything. He also had the usual retinue of court flatterers, one of whom was named Damocles.
Tired of hearing from Damocles how happy he, Dionysius, should be, the king offered to exchange places with Damocles for a day. The young man was deliriously happy to be wearing costly robes, eating the finest foods, imbibing the best wine, attended to by beautiful women – until he noticed a sword, suspended above him and hanging by a single horsehair. Should the hair snap, the huge sword would fall and pierce him to death.
Too terrified to move, he called out to Dionysius, who replied that the sword was there to teach Damocles a lesson: that the happiness of kings was an illusion, that there was always such a sword hanging above the life of any king, who at any moment could lose his kingdom or even his head.
One lesson we can draw from Cicero’s tale is the importance of identifying the particular Swords of Damocles hanging above the heads of your country’s enemies. There’s always at least one. The trick is figuring out what specific sword is hanging over what particular enemy.
Israel, for example, recognizes that the Aswan Dam is Egypt’s Damoclean Sword. There is no possibility whatever of Egypt’s winning a war with Israel, for if Aswan is blown, all of inhabited Egypt is under 20 feet of water. Once the Israelis made this clear to the Egyptians, the possibility of any future Egyptian attack on Israel like that of 1948, 1967, and 1972 is gone.
There has been a rumor floating in the Washington ether for some time now that George Bush has figured out what Sword of Damocles is suspended over Osama Bin Laden’s head. It’s whispered among Capitol Hill staffers on the intel and armed services committees; White House NSC (National Security Council)>/b> members clam up tight if you begin to hint at it; and State Department neo-cons love to give their liberal counterparts cardiac arrhythmia by elliptically conversing about it in their presence.
The whispers and hints and ellipses are getting louder now because the rumor explains the inexplicable: Why hasn’t there been a repeat of 9-11? How can it be that after this unimaginable tragedy and Osama’s constant threats of another, we have gone over three years without a single terrorist attack on American soil?
The proximate reasons aren’t sufficient: that we have taken the fight to the enemy in Iraq, drawing their attention and energy away from America; that the intel and law-enforcement folks have caught and prevented a number of planned attacks. These are good reasons why there haven’t been more attacks – but they don’t explain why there haven’t been any.
For over 40 years, America and the Soviet Union fought a “Cold” war that never got hot because each had a nuclear Damoclean Sword over the other. After 9-11, George Bush went after Osama’s Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and began systematically hunting down and either killing or capturing scores of Al Qaeda agents around the world. But he also thought: “Is there some threat so horrible to Osama and these Wahhabi fundamentalists that they would refrain from attacking us again? We can fight this war with them elsewhere, in Afghanistan or Iraq, but how can we make America off limits? That’s the kind of threat we need.”
There’s only one threat that would deter Osama from repeating a 9-11 type terrorist attack on America: a threat to nuke Mecca.
Completely obliterating the terrorists’ holiest of holies, rendering what is for them the world’s most sacred spot a radioactive hole in the ground is retribution of Biblical proportions – and those are the only proportions that will do the job.
Osama would have laughed off such a threat, given his view that Americans are wussies who cut and run after a few losses, such as Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Part of Bush’s rationale for invading Afghanistan and Iraq – obviously never expressed publicly – was to convince Osama that his threat to nuke Mecca was real. Osama hates America just as much as ever, but he is laughing no more.
He is not laughing because he knows that he is playing poker with a Texas cowboy holding the nuclear aces, that there is nothing his Al Qaeda could do terroristically to America that could come remotely close to the permanent obliteration of Mecca. So far, Osama has decided not to see if GW is bluffing. Smart move.
For one version of the rumor is – as discussed in Mad in Mecca – is that there already is a W-80 nuclear warhead undetectably buried in Mecca that can be triggered by a satellite signal.
This is why Osama is going after the Saudi Royal Family rather than going after America. It’s also why he is going desperately crazy. GW cleaned his clock in Afghanistan, the Royals are doing the same in Saudi, so now he is embarked on persuading Sunni Arabs in Iraq to immolate themselves on his behalf.
These folks are outnumbered four-to-one by the Shias and Kurds and would get wiped out in the civil war Osama and Zarqawi are trying to instigate. Persuading an entire people to commit auto-genocide (as opposed to getting a few of them to blow themselves up individually) is a tough sell.
The success of the January 30 Iraq elections is the beginning of the end for Osama and his Al Qaeda. He is a Moslem Damocles with GW’s terrible swift Sword of Doom above him that he dare not let fall.
I'm a near Atheist to answer your question. But having answered your question, it strikes me as irrelevant to what we were discussing.
Excellent article.
Season 2 started w/ Muslims trying to set off a Nucear Weapon in LA for ALLAH, but they were duped by an evil corporate type w/ his own Mmercenaries who wanted to start a war for the PROFITS.
Season 3 was the Psychotic Colombian drug dealers, Eastern European (Ukrainian)mercenaries and an insane rogue English agent releasing an Ebola-like virus around the US for MONEY and REVENGE.
Jack killed them all, no matter who they were or where or when they worshipped: Enemies of the US are Enemies.
Those were OK with CAIR?
This year they are showing the actions of a group of fanatics, tactics that we have become very familiar with, ie. Kidnapping, assault, torture and indiscriminate murder, by people that the actors seem to represent, ie. Islamofascist terrorists.
DEAL WITH IT!
It's ONLY a TV show for crying out loud!
Are they still worried if Gilligan and friends will be rescued, too?
Ludicrous. Why would a secular organization favoring a severing of religion from the public square be secretly plotting for Islamic domination?
When one form of religion is removed, another will replace it. The ACLU is doing the Islamist bidding in trying to remove Christianity from the forefront of our country.
The ACLU is ran by leftist, communists, and any other 'ist' that suits your fancy and is a detriment to American society.
You need only look to Europe as an example of what not to do...become secularist.
Even in the concentration camps during WW2, there were Jews that did the Germans bidding to survive.
The ACLU is trying to destroy what made them. If they are successful, they will be out of a job. Islam does not believe in equal rights.
Looks like they're taking a page right out of the Lib's playbook. Make it a hate crime.
Maybe you want to revise and extend your remarks, and adopt my little term: "useful idiots." While I still think it is all nonsense, it might make your posts a bit more persuasive and coherent. I am just trying to help you out.
GREAT point! Well said.
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