Bartholomew's Notes

Andrew Breitbart’s rehabilitation following his national disgrace is underway: later this month he will be speaking at an event in Florida (a “Transparency Summit“, no less), and after that he’ll be standing alongside the likes of Newt Gingrich and John Bolton at Pamela Geller’s 11 September anti-mosque rally in New York. Here’s the list of speakers, as published on her website (titles etc. from original):

911 WTC families
Ambassador John Bolton
Newt Gingrich
Geert Wilders, Dutch Parliamentarian
NY Senator Candidate Gary Berntsen
Jordan Sekulow (ACLJ)
Ginny Thomas (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife)
Pete King (invited)
Michael Grimm Staten Island House of Representatives, 911 First Responder
Andrew Breitbart

Geller is linked to Breitbart as a writer for his Big Government website, although perhaps not all her allies share her enthusiasm for him: another site commended by Geller, entitled Silent Majority, cites her list of speakers but leaves Breitbart’s name off.

Silent Majority promises “the largest Caravan in America coming cross-country to 9-11 Rally”.

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Back in April, a website called Hackney Hive published details of a literary festival in Stoke Newington involving Farah Damji, author of a memoir called Try Me. Among those who left comments was Charlie Flowers:

Farah has written a great book. You may not like her or even know her but read the book. I know this will be a terrific event. Back off her, Precious, Alex, we’re watching you.
-Black Eyed Girls

“Black Eyed Girls” is a reference to himself and some associates who call themselves “the Cheerleaders”. Flowers, as I’ve written previously, is a bully and cyber-stalker who hides behind a pretence of political activism, and he tries to deflect criticism of his behaviour by suggesting that critics must be in league with Islamic extremists. He has gathered a wider gang of supporters on Facebook, but it’s doubtful that most of them know what he’s really like.

Farah Damji has been at the centre of various controversies over the years; the media has dubbed her “London’s most dangerous woman”, and in January she was jailed for a short time for housing benefit fraud. She also regards a number of people as being her enemies, whom she subjects to abusive tirades. One of her targets – for reasons unknown –  is another author, named Precious Williams, and this is the woman whom Flowers is threatening in the comment above. Here’s a typical example of one of Damji’s tirades against her:

My views on Precious-the-cunt-Williams are not unknown to her. She is a headcase… Her book’s been dumped. Serves the little fame-fucking desperate saddo right.

(In fact, Williams’ memoir was recently published by Bloomsbury)

Similar comments have also appeared on Damji’s Twitter feed, although she has recently deleted some of these; in one, she expressed the wish that Williams (who is of Nigerian heritage) had died of malaria.

Damji also boasts that a harassment case brought against her by Williams was dropped by the CPS in May, supposedly due to lack of evidence. However, Williams gives her version of the background here, and suggests that cases are still pending. Also, around the same time as Damji made her boast, Flowers left a comment on his Facebook page that he “loves it when a plan comes together”, and in June he made a posting suggesting that he and Damji had been interviewed by the police:

just back from today’s three hours of CSI: London with Farah. We’re getting good at this LOL

Flowers’ association with Damji goes back to last year; she used to be listed as an “officer” of his “Cheerleadered” Facebook page, and in December a bookreading of Try Me was held at a pub in central London under the “Cheerleadered” name. However, she appears to have removed her name in recent weeks.

Flowers seems to have a need to threaten and harass people, but also to feel good about himself for doing so. He rationalised his harassment against Tim Ireland, for instance, by claiming that he was acting to protect Nadine Dorries MP. It seems to me that he has some sort of vigilante complex, although in the case of Williams his sole self-justification appears to be that he’s friends with Damji.

UPDATE: Not completely unexpectedly, and true to pathetic type, the “Cheerleaders'” response to the above was to create a fake Facebook account in my name supposedly showing me hassling an old lady for a date. A screenshot was then posted to the “Cheerleadered” Facebook page so that comments could be left calling me a “sex pest” and such. It seems that Flowers thought better of it after a few hours and deleted it all.

Also, Flowers is now raving about how I’m supposedly a Communist and in the SWP – not true on either count, although, as noted above, my political leanings are neither here nor there; whatever kind of person I may or may not be does not change the facts about what kind of a person he is.

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Back in January, I noted Nigerian sceptic Leo Igwe’s campaigning on behalf of Daberechi Anongam, a ten-year-old girl from his home village who has accused a powerful man from the same location of rape. Leo and his father have been harassed by the local police and accused of murder, and worse has now come:

Around midnight on Wednesday August  4 2010,two gunmen invaded my family house in Mbaise in Imo state in Southern Nigeria. They shot twice in the air and my mother fainted. They later descended on my aging father and started beating him. They blindfolded him with a piece of cloth and hit him several times with stones.

He later fainted and the hoodlums ransacked the whole house and made away with whatever they found valuable. My father  bled from the right eye, nose and mouth. He had bruises on his head, hands, legs and chest. After the attack, some neighbours came and rushed him to a nearby hospital. From there, I moved him to an eye hospital in Lagos where the doctor confirmed that he had extensive injuries in the right eye and recommended that it be removed. Yesterday, August 11, 2010, he underwent a surgery and the right eye was removed. He is currently recuperating at the hospital. I called the police to inform them, and they said I should send a formal petition.

… The police and judicial systems are corrupt, inept and ineffective. Police officers are only interested in making money from petitions, not in fighting or preventing crimes. And the court system is slow and expensive. So in Nigeria police and court actions are used by criminally minded people to harass and intimidate others, and block access to justice particularly for the poor and less privileged…

These issues must be raised with the Nigerian authorities at the highest level. They should be kept on the front burner of international relations and human rights advocacy until the Nigerian authorities take appropriate actions. The Nigerian government must be made to understand that the international community is aware of the facts of this case. And that the world is outraged at the way they are handling it. The human rights community should join hands with the IHEU in bringing this disturbing trend to the attention of the world.

Leo’s full statement can be seen on Butterflies and Wheels.

I’ve been following Leo’s activism for some time. Back in 2005 I noted his role in debunking a “man raised from the dead” tale that was being touted by WorldNetDaily and some neo-Pentecostal churches; more recently, Leo has taken on followers of Helen Ukpabio, who promotes the idea that children can become “witches” who then harm other people – a year ago, I was proud to host a guest post by him on the subject. An event he organised to highlight the grim consequences of Ukpabio’s teaching was invaded by her followers, and he was handled roughly; Ukpabio also tried to sue him on the grounds that attacking her beliefs amounts to an infringement of her rights. Leo also advocates an end to the persecution of gay men and lesbians in Africa, and Peter Tatchell describes him as “a voice for reason, justice and compassion”. An overview of his opinions can be seen here.

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Robert Spencer has a post discussing SIOA’s relationship to John Joseph Jay. He acknowledges that Jay is a “member of the SIOA board”, but tells us that

Jay is, contrary to the hysterical claims that are circulating now, not a founder or co-founder of SIOA. He has no role in the running of the organization. And he does not advocate carte blanche killing of one’s liberal relatives, nor of Muslims.

Spencer asserts that Jay has been “misrepresented”, and he links to a lengthy and semi-coherent response by Jay himself. I suppose on reflection it is inaccurate to call Jay a “co-founder” of SIOA, despite my previous post’s headline; Geller and Spencer actually inherited SIOA from Kendra Adams a few months ago, and the articles of agreement on which Jay’s signature appears are for the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which runs SIOA, rather than for SIOA itself. But, curiously, while complaining about “hysterical claims”, neither Spencer nor Jay explain the actual reason why Jay appears on the document. This leaves the impression that they are dodging the main point.

As for Jay’s complaint of “misrepresentation”, he simply asserts that his views amount to self-defence. He ends with a birther flourish, accusing “Daisy Cutter” – who noted his link to SIOA and brought his writings to wider attention – of working

for the very man who promulgated the fraud on barack obama’s birth certificate.

Presumably this is a reference to the fact that she’s a diarist for the Daily Kos, which published Obama’s short-form birth certificate in 2008.

UPDATE: Jay’s background is as an attorney, and Geller confirms in an American Thinker article that he gave her advice about Rifqa Bary:

Now that Rifqa has turned eighteen, one of her lawyers, Kort Gatterdam, has done an interview with Tom Trento, an activist with the Florida Security Council. Trento has in turn sent around an e-mail raising funds on the name of Rifqa Bary and excoriating “so many friendly ‘arm-chair’ lawyers and bloggers who so viciously attacked their own side.” By “arm-chair lawyers,” Trento means my associate, the attorney John Jay, and by bloggers, he means me.

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UPDATE: See this entry.

A diarist at Daily Kos using the name “Daisy Cutter” has had a look over the articles of agreement of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which runs SIOA (Stop Islamization of America).  As expected, we see the signatures of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Anders Gravers, but there is also a certain Richard Davis, and a certain John Joseph Jay.

“Daisy Cutter” notes John Joseph Jay’s Israel Insider reader page, which in turn leads us to his blog, Summer Patriot, Winter Soldier. The blog includes rambling and paranoid political diatribes, and murderous fantasies of political empowerment through violence:

if we are to excise the ruling class, it will be with violence.  they used violence to attain their privilege, they use it nakedly to attain their privilege, they use it nakedly in the form of the s.i.e.u. and black panther thugs in elective politics to maintain it, they contemplate relocation camps to preserve it, and they will violently resist and suppress any and all efforts to be removed from their privilege.

buy guns.  buy ammo.  be jealous of your liberties.  and, understand, you are going to have to kill folks, your uncles, your sons and daughters, to preserve those liberties.

And as for Muslims:

…every person in islam, from man to woman to child may be our executioner.

 … there is no innocence.  there are no innocent muslims.  islam is subject to killing on grounds of political expediency on the same basis as islam kills its victims, and islam cannot ethically and morally claim otherwise.

We can assume that Geller is fine with this, as his TypePad profile page shows he has expressed similar views in comments to her site; here’s a comment from 2008, following the Mumbai massacre:

 …islam has declared war on the west and its political and social institutions, and upon the two great religions which are the pillars of same… the left enables it, and indeed, encourages it as they see the declared aim of islm ot destroy the west congruent with their own goals.

…to me, the answer is simple.

they wage war on us, so we kill them, and we kill them in sufficient number and with sufficient purpose and zeal that it causes them to stop killing us, and then we should kill them a little bit more, just to drive the point home. by this i mean.–

our governments should not only declare war on “terrorism,” but on the states and societies that support it. we should declare war on iran, syria, egypt and saudi arabia, as well as libya and the sudan and somalia, and we should kill people by the scores. no science. no precision bombing. no shock and awe designed to “impress” and send “signals,” but old fashion war with wholesale slaughter including indiscriminate death of innocents and babes. down to the last muslim, if necessary.

in addition, private institutions and individuals should wage war on islamic terrorists. our domestic law should accord recognition to our inherent rights of self defense under natural law doctrines, those rights as recognized in the recent decision of the united states supreme court in upholding the individual’s right to keep and bear arms, and when a private individual feels justifiably threatened by a person reasonably identified as being a terrorist, or as aiding and abetting teh same by either fund raising or spouting pernicious silliness in support of terror, … , that private individual ought to be recognized under the law as exercising his rights under natural law in killing the same.

finally, our religious leaders, such as the pope, and the recognized spokesmen of the great religions and affiliations of the world, ought to lend their sanction and approval to both governmental and private killing of identified terrorists, or their aiders and abetters. this is not unprecedented in the religions of the world: during the crusades papal bulls were issued justifying the faithful of christianity in killing muslims or those who attacked the faith. the pope should issue such bulls, the leaders of the world religions should follow suit, and those who feel constrained by matters of faith to not kill should be released of religious duty, and authorized to defend themselves, their religions, and their civilization.

He also calls for the deportation of all “muslims/arabs” from the USA; presumably that was written in a comparatively liberal mood.

Richard Davis, meanwhile, is probably Rich Davis of the Chester County Victory Movement, which counter-protests anti-war protests and holds rallies.

A few months ago, SIOA diassociated itself from the Christian Action Network because of Martin Mawyer’s coarse anti-gay screeds (or more accurately, because his homophobia became widely reported and embarrassed Gert Wilders).

UPDATE: CAIR draws attention to a detail I overlooked, from Jay’s Israel Insider page: Jay describes “rabbi meir kahna” as one of his “heroes and inspirations in life”. This is an obvious reference to Meir Kahane, the late Israeli far-rightist who is regarded in Israel as having been a racist. Followers of Kahane have been involved in various terrorist acts and threats of violence, mostly against Palestinians but also against certain Jewish organisations and Israeli officials of whom they disapprove.

(Hat tips: Loonwatch; Spencer Watch)

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Jamal Jivanjee, one of the pastors close to Rifqa Bary in Ohio, has made a Facebook posting entitled “4 Vital & Hidden Truths that Rifqa Bary’s Situation Revealed“. Number 4 in this list is of particular interest, although tantalisingly vague (his weird spellings of “Islm” and “Muslms” appear to be deliberate):

4. Former Muslms who leave Islm need to be protected from being exploited from the corrupt ‘underbelly’ of the Right Wing political movement.

Several months ago, I was asked to look into some potential unethical behavior going on behind the scenes regarding Rifqa’s situation. Without getting into details at this point, I discovered some things that were absolutely unethical and needed to be addressed. (Note: I am not talking about what I perceived as bad motives, I am talking about clear and specific unethical behavior). I confronted the parties involved and nothing was settled. I did not speak openly about the specifics of these things, but I was clear to Rifqa’s inner circle what I found. Understandably, Rifqa was told not to speak to me anymore because I did not understand the case and was causing problems. What Rifqa’s case revealed in this situation however is the need for people in her situation to be protected from a highly charged political culture in which the specific types of unethical behavior that I discovered is unfortunately a way of life.

People who leave Islm to follow Jesus are enigmas in our western culture, and it is easy for them to be corrupted or used for personal gain in unethical ways. These allegations that I have made have been hurtful to many people and have caused much division. It has cost me relationally as well, and I’m sure will continue to do so. There may even be some legal ramifications for myself because of some of the things that I am asserting. At this point, I am prepared to stand behind what I am implying if need be. I am convinced that Rifqa’s life and her case have been used to reveal many hidden things, and this is certainly one of them. While there is nothing in me that takes pleasure in saying these things, I have learned that when the truth is silenced for the sake of keeping ‘peace’, lies prevail…

No names are given, although this could be a dig at John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council; Stemberger represented Bary in Florida, and in April he publicly cautioned that “Jamal Javanjee and Pamela Geller are not trusted or accurate sources of information on Rifqa Bary”. Geller’s blog carried information provided by Jivanjee in May, so it’s unlikely he means her – even though Geller and Robert Spencer are the members of “the Right Wing political movment” with whom he has been most closely associated.

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A few weeks ago I blogged on the dispute between Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and David Miller of Spinwatch. Meleagrou-Hitchens’ complaints about the site included reference to an Israeli terrorism researcher named Sagit Yehoshua:

I have recently spoken to the other individual mentioned in [David] Miller’s piece, Sagit Yehoshua, who earlier this year requested that her profile be removed from SpinProfiles. She informed me that as well as being riddled with inaccuracies about her associations, the original profile also made a very clear, and totally unfounded, suggestion that she is a member of Israeli intelligence. (The existing profile has been revised, but still makes an insinuating allusion.)

Miller has now responded to both elements of this objection, and he tells us that Yehoshua has been in contact with Spinwatch‘s ISP in an attempt to have the site about her removed. He also clarifies that the supposed “inaccuracies about her associations” concern her alleged links to a group called “the Cheerleaders”:

As we noted above, the correspondence with our ISP has involved both Sagit Yehoshua and her adviser, who introduced himself as representing Yehoshua as a ‘client’. This was someone signing himself ‘Matt’ from an organization called ‘P-Group’. We asked our ISP to ascertain whther P-Group were lawyers and to confirm with Sagit Yehoshua whether they, in fact, acted for her. She confirmed that P-Group are not lawyers, but do ‘internet security advice’. The email from the advisers had come from a hotmail account: p-group AT hotmail.co.uk and not from any business related domain name and ‘Matt’ did not give a surname.

So what are Sagit Yehoshua’s connections with the Cheerleaders? Although she had her name removed as an officer of the Facebook group in February 2010, Sagit Yehoshua remains (last checked 6 August) a member of the Cheerleadered group on Facebook. But the more compelling clue that she is connected to them is that she has confirmed that ‘P-Group’ are acting for her in her current complaint. ‘P-Group’, appears not to be a real entity either. However it does seem to have featured in the communications of the Cheerleaders in the past.

I’ve written about the “Cheerleaders” a number of times over the past 18 months or so: they are a group of cyber-vigilantes who purport to research and oppose Islamic extremists, although they are actually more interested in using fake on-line identities and sock-puppets to harass people. Most notably, last year they used Twitter to publicise thr blogger Tim Ireland’s home address and to send him a series of threatening messages – such as “machete to your throat” – in the stated hope that he would be forced to “go back to Australia”. This was prompted by Tim’s blog posts on how a man named Dominic Wightman had tried to manipulate him (and me) into writing blog posts attacking another man against whom Wightman has a grudge. However, Charlie Flowers, who heads the “Cheerleaders”, claims that this was simply coincidental, and that the attacks on Tim were undertaken because of Tim’s opposition to Nadine Dorries MP (see here). Wightman in turn has also disavowed any association, although Flowers did work with Wightman’s defunct “VIGIL Network”, along with Glen Jenvey.

A Facebook page for the “Cheerleaders” has around 500 members, but most of those are either casual invitees or people with whom Flowers has insinuated himself over the past few months. Those actively involved in the harassment created a plethora of on-line pseudonyms on Facebook and other sites, although most of these have been deleted or deactivated in the past few months. We know that Charlie Flowers is the prime mover, and that also involved is a man named Matthew Edwards and an unidentified woman, who made a taunting video. The core may be just those three; Flowers has actively attempted to give the impression that some his female friends are involved when they are not really.

The messages to Spinwatch from “Matt” appear to have come from Matthew Edwards: “P-Group” appears on the “Fighting Cocks” Myspace page as a supposed car hire firm called “P-Group Car Services”, with a mobile phone number but no address. The “p-group AT hotmail.co.uk” email address is also given as the contact address for the “Fighting Cocks” band. I’ve had several emails from “P-Group” myself, such as this:

From: matthew edwards XXXXXXXX@XXXXXXX.XX.XX

Date: 15 September 2009 22:38

Subject:

Dear Richard;
Seeing as I know all parties on our side, may I offer to mediate in a sit-down between yourself, Dominic and Matyi?…

Yours Sincerely
Mr Rivers
P-Group

“Matyi” is one of Flowers’ stage names, and Edwards has used the “Mr Rivers” name elsewhere. There was also a goading comment to my blog, received on 27 September 2009:

Barty.
Look here…

http://www.youtube.com/user/Pikeymassiv

Mr Rivers

This YouTube channel – since deleted – was created specifically to publicise Tim Ireland’s home address. Some of the messages received from Edwards came from an IP which matched the IP for messages from Charlie Flowers. In early October, I received a further message, mentioning “Charlie and Matt from P-Group”.

Tim also received the following email in January, in which Flowers, using his “Matyi” identity, uses “P-Group” to try to intimidate Tim into not writing about his associations:

I TOLD you not to contact these people. But your mental condition meant you had to, didn’t it? OK you are now officially in the crap, P-Group has found your web host, and they have been notified.
You have a choice:
1. Walk away and look away, and NEVER contact anyone involved with us again.
2. Keep it up, and reap the whirlwind.
3. This means and includes: anyone at Kooba or Redwire.

Matyi
TFC Cheerleaders

I received a similarly thuggish threat a couple of weeks later, that the Cheerleaders “laugh at legal and police business” and that they would “mess” me “up” if I continued to write about them.

Of course, I’m sure that Yehoshua knows nothing about any of this, or has been fobbed off with a bogus explanation: when it suits him, Flowers can come across as good humoured, and he is knowledgeable about various aspects of Islam and South Asian pop culture. Although he associates with elements of the English Defence League, he is not anti-Muslim. I have been given to understand that several people have disassociated themselves from him after discovering his on-line activities and his attempts to implicate them in his behaviour (this may explain why gigs involving his band have been cancelled).  He has also sought to play down his on-line harassment of Tim as he has built up new associations with groups such as British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and when challenged on the subject he’s not above an outright lie: when I last brought up the subject of one of the worst harassing pseudonyms (“Shooter Hadchiti”), he simply declared that I had made it all up.

If Spinwatch has misrepresented Yehoshua’s associations by mentioning the Cheerleaders, the fault lies with two men who have made a concerted effort to give the impression of a meaningful link: Charlie Flowers and Matthew Edwards.

UPDATE: I should add that several months ago I received a series of emails from someone calling himself “Kelvin”, who claimed to know all sorts of information about “P-Group”, including the supposed detail that it was founded by “ex-military and forensic-background people in 2006 to provide specialist intelligence for media”, and that “Matt Edwards” is a pseudonym for Ed Rivers rather than the other way around (a suggestion I know for certain is not true). “Kelvin”, of course, was an elusive character without a resolvable IP, and it was obvious that this was Edwards and Flowers trying to suck me into their Walter Mitty world for whatever reason. So, Yehoshua wants to insist on her independence from intelligence agencies, yet her “advisors” contact me with stupid messages under a fake name trying to convince me that “P-Group” is an intelligence outfit. If I were Yehoshua, I’d be asking Edwards and Flowers for an explanation.

UPDATE: Flowers has since boasted – in a characteristic bit of vicarious bravado – that Edwards is “ex-forces”. It seems to me likely that the name “P-Group” is probably meant to allude to the “15 (UK) Psychological Operations Group”, also known as the “15 PSYOPS Group“, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre in Chicksands. Perhaps Edwards really has had some association with this military organisation, but his antics are a poor thrill-seeking parody of what the 15 PSYOPS Group actually stands for. If I were a member of PSYOPS I’d be less than impressed with this foolish appropriation of the organisation’s name; and if I were Yehoshua, I’d be noting this as further evidence of manipulation and betrayal.

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Must be true, I saw it on teh interwebs.

And:

Plus from March last year:

At some point Fox amended  the top story to “Advocates of Anti-Shariah Measures Alarmed by Judge’s Ruling”. Kagan, of course, is also a Nazi, because she once quoted a 1905 book by a man who later became a Nazi.

(H/T to Little Green Footballs for Breitbart article)

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The latest from Pamela Geller:

Notice how [Daisy Khan] no longer calls it  “Cordoba Initiative” but park51 — now that we know that Cordoba is symbolic of Islamic conquest over the West… In the book Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present, Frederick Schweitzer and Marvin Perry point out that the rosy view of Muslim Spain has been used since 1948 as “an Arab-Islamist weapon in what is primarily an ideological and political struggle against Israel.” This misuse of history ignores “a catalog of lesser-known hatred and massacres,” including the pogroms in Cordoba in 1011 and Granada in 1066 — both perpetrated by Muslims.

“An Iberian and Roman city in ancient times, in the Middle Ages it was capital of the Islamic caliphate which conquered and occupied Spain for nearly 800 years. During this time Cordoba was one of the largest cities in the world whose name continues to represent a symbol of Islamic conquest to many faithful Muslims around the world.”

Clearly, Geller is implying that the indented quote has come from the Schweitzer and Perry book – but there’s no sign of it in the Amazon book search function, and it does not reflect the book’s main concern. The quote has, though, been spammed around various web-discussions in recent weeks, with several sites giving Wikipedia as the source.

Geller’s use of Schweitzer and Perry is also a vulgar misappropriation. Their discussion of Cordoba (p. 267) is derived from Bernard Lewis, who indeed suggests that Cordoba as a “golden age” of inter-religious harmony is a “myth” which has been used polemically in the context of modern Israel – but Lewis also tells us that this simplification was created by nineteenth-century Jewish historians as “a reproach to Christians”.

We know that the idea of “Cordoba” is used by Muslims to evoke the notion of a harmonious Islam – the fact that the ideal may not reflect the historical reality does not therefore indicate that the word is being used in bad faith. If there is any evidence of another meaning – a symbolic meaning of “Islamic conquest over the West” – then why doesn’t Geller point us to a proper source, rather than dressing up Wikipedia as scholarship? Are there any Arabic sayings which point to such a meaning? Literary references? Sermons? Of course,  Al-Qaeda and various Islamist groups sometimes mention “Al Andalus”, but there’s no indication that it is has a wider symbolic resonance.

Geller is shameless in her lies and misrepresentations – I recently noted her claim that Elena Kagan is actually a Nazi.

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According to Amazon, yesterday was the publication date of Islam is of the Devil, published by Creation House and written by Pastor Terry D. Jones of the Dove World Outrearch Center in Florida. As with Fred Phelps, Jones has a particular obsession with one subject, which he has distilled into a slogan to attract media interest: there have been various controversies over his “Islam is of the Devil” church sign and t-shirts (the t-shirts also appeared at a rally for Rifqa Bary), and Jones recently announced “International Burn a Koran Day” for 11 September; the Gainesville Sun notes that

Last week, the church’s senior pastor, Terry Jones, was interviewed by CNN’s Rick Sanchez, and news organizations across the world — from The Times of India to The Guardian in England — have made mention of Dove World’s plans.

A number of evangelical leaders have denounced the planned stunt; Richard Land of the Southern Baptists called it “appalling, disgusting, and brainless”.

However, while Phelps is confined to the fringes of fundamentalism, Jones is better-connected: Creation House is one of the biggest conservative Christian publishing houses in the USA, and it is an imprint of Strang Communications, which publishes Charisma magazine. Stephen Strang, who heads the company, has featured on this blog previously – I noted his links to John Hagee here. In 2005, Time named him as one of the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America”.

But is Creation House now embarrassed by the association with Jones? Mention of the book on the company’s website is confined to a small entry in a pdf catalogue, and an associated Creation  House Facebook page has recently deleted several messages from one of Jones’ fellow pastors at Dove, Wayne Sapp:

Wayne Sapp Islam is of the Devil, will show you: Why Islam is not a religion of peace, but of violence; How the political history of Islam can demonstrate what will happen in the future if it is allowed to flourish; MOST IMPORTANTLY, what you can do to take a stand for the truth and engage in spiritual battle to reclaim nations from the grips of Islam.

June 18 at 10:51am

Wayne Sapp Dove World Outreach Center, on Monday, July 5th, 2010 will protest the Islamic Center of Gainesville, Florida. For more information contact, info@doveworld.org.

June 16 at 9:17am

Wayne Sapp Creation House is releasing the book Islam is of the Devil, written by Dr. Terry Jones, on July 6!!!!! This book reveals the radical steps that are necessary to erradicate Islam! The book is available on Amazon, Christian Book Distributors, and Barnes & Noble

June 16 at 9:11am

Another Sapp has also posted a review of the book on Amazon:

Islam is of the devil!, July 24, 2010 By  Marvin Wayne Sapp

This review is from: Islam Is of the Devil (Hardcover)
Great book! I have read it several times already and will read it again and again. The truth about Islam is revealed in this book without all the hype.

(Wayne Sapp explains how to burn a Koran here)

Jones’ book also features a foreword by Jack Coe, son a prominent Pentecostal evangelist and faith-healer of the same name who was active in the 1950s.

Dove was profiled by the Gainesville Sun last July, including critical comments from ex-members (including Jones’ daughter) who claim the church is abusive:

…Entwined with the church’s message is a theme stressing obedience to senior pastors and work for the kingdom of God – a theme that persuaded one couple from Germany to work full time and uncompensated for Terry and Sylvia Jones’ business, TS and Company. The business sells vintage furniture on eBay.

Outside contact, even with family for weddings and funerals, is prohibited for students who attend the Dove World Outreach Academy in Gainesville. The academy members live on property owned by TS and Company, work in the selling, packing and shipping of furniture and are unpaid.

Terry Jones’ daughter, Emma Jones, who still lives in Cologne after breaking with her parents and the church, said TS and Company, which first was established in Germany in 2004 by Terry and Sylvia Jones, fed the private coffers of her father and stepmother in Cologne.

The paper has also made public the DWOC Academy’s authoritarian and semi-literate rulebook.

Jones and Sapp are not complete monomaniacs on Islam, though: the DWOC has also found time to organise a “No Homo Mayor” protest against Gainesville’s gay mayor, and Jones also rails against Obama, who is unqualified to be president and only got the job because he’s black.

In Germany, Jones founded the Christliche Gemeinde Köln (Colonge Christian Church, also known as the “Evangelical Christian Church”) in 1983; he became the leader of DWOC in 2007, although he had long-standing links with DWOC’s founder, Donald Northrup. According to a memoir by Northrup’s widow Dolores (who has a website here, and whose book is on Google Books), both Northrup and Jones were involved with Maranatha Ministries; this was a controversial Charismatic organisation which was accused of authoritarianism and abuse in the 1980s before eventually collapsing in 1989. Maranatha decided to establish its HQ in Gainesville, and Dolores writes that she and her husband came to the town at Maranatha’s request. Jones, meanwhile, was sent to Germany to create a Maranatha branch there. According to this report, Dolores (although she is named as “Elsie”) left the church in 2009, “over concerns about where the congregation was headed”.

I wrote several blog entries on Maranatha a few years ago, in particular in relation to a neo-Pentecostal grouping called Every Nation (e.g. here, here, and here). Also involved with Maranatha in the 1980s – and based in Gainesville – was Lee Grady, who is close to Stephen Strang and who edits his Charisma magazine.

A Ship of Fools “mystery worshipper” visited the German church in 2006 and gives some background:

Services are translated into several languages (English, French, Bulgarian, Russian and Portugese) and as a result the nations do come! The members hail from all over Köln. There are lots of young people, but also some oldies. They conduct a successful ministry to the poor, and quite a few beneficiaries of this ministry have joined the church. It is a cell church, with 39 cells (they call them apostolic teams) in Köln and the surrounding cities. With around 400 members, it is the largest non-Catholic church in the Köln/Bonn metropolitan area.

The church has been controversial in Germany; this CBN news report (no date given) claims it has suffered persecution, and in 1997 Jones sumitted a written statement to a “Hearing on Religious Intolerance in Europe Today”, held before the UC Congress Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (H/T Rachel Tabachnick). However, according to the 1999 U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom:

According to the Christian Community in Cologne (CCK), no incidents of harassment, discrimination, or death threats have been directed at CCK members since 1992, with the exception of occasional letters from a particular individual, whom they describe as harmless. CCK representatives claimed that the Church’s current tax difficulties were due to harassment by local tax authorities. However, they admitted that the Church’s tax problem was based on errors made by the Church, although they questioned the motivation of the authorities for scrutinizing the Church’s 1992 application for extension of tax-exempt status (which must be renewed every few years, depending on state law). The fact that the Church apparently violated tax law, and the authorities’ voluntary reduction of the Church’s tax liability, raise questions about the merit of the CCK’s allegations of harassment.

UPDATE: Details of DWOC’s joint protest with Phelp’s Westboro Baptist Church in April can be seen here.

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