Bartholomew's Notes

As has been widely reported, Mosab Hassan Yousef is facing the possibility of deportation from the USA; Yousef is the son of a senior Hamas figure, and he gained some media attention in 2008 for moving to America and announcing his conversion to Christianity (I blogged on this at the time). He subsequently revealed that he had worked with Israeli security services to undermine Hamas terrorist operations, and his memoir, Son of Hamas, has garnered consderable interest. He gives an account on Facebook:

It began when I arrived in America January 2, 2007. I walked into the airport like anyone else on a tourist visa. Seven months later, I went to the Homeland Security office, knocked on their door and told them, “Hey, guys, I am the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, my father is involved in a terrorist organization, and I would like political asylum in your country.”

They were shocked. They didn’t expect it. I told them, hey, you didn’t discover me. You didn’t catch me. I came to you and told you who I am to wake you up. I wanted them to see that they have huge gaps in their security and their understanding of terrorism and make changes before it’s too late.

I filed an application for political asylum. Not surprisingly, on February 23, 2009, they told me that I was “barred from a grant of asylum because there were reasonable grounds for believing [I] was a danger to the security of the United States and because [I] engaged in terrorist activity.”

More hearings followed. When they demanded evidence to support my claim that I was not a terrorist or a security threat, I filed a draft of my book, Son of Hamas. Surely this would make everything perfectly clear…

Recently, I received a document in which Homeland Security senior attorney Kerri Calcador claimed that, “In the book, the respondent discusses his extensive involvement with Hamas in great detail. For example, in one portion of the book, a member of Shin Bet shows the respondent a list of suspects implicated in a March 2001 suicide bombing and asks the respondent whether he knows the individuals. The respondent indicates that he does know five of the people on the list and states that he previously drove them to safe houses.”

On page 5, Calcador concluded that, “At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent’s transport of Hamas members to safe houses—discussed above in the Statement of the Case as but one example of the respondent’s involvement with Hamas—indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization.”

Is she kidding? Either Homeland Security’s chief attorney has zero reading comprehension, or else she intentionally took the passage out of context. And I am not sure which is worse.

Even a child reading the book can see that, during that time, I was working as a secret agent for the Shin Bet (Israeli’s internal security service, comparable to our FBI)…

Various conservative groups have taken up the cause, some inevitably suggesting this is some sort of Islamic conspiracy by the US government.

I have sympathy for Yousef’s predicament, as he tells it: some may regard his spying for Israel as a betrayal, but those who support Palestinian rights (and that includes me) should recognise that the responsibility lies with Hamas, whose terrorism and religious extremism clearly alienates thoughtful Palestinians and puts some, like Yousef, in impossible situations. As I blogged recently, Yousef is against the Israel occupation, and his co-author in Son of Hamas is very critical of Israel. Yousef has also posted an article from Haaretz to his website which contains the following from his former Shin Bet handler:

“I handled no few agents who had ideological motives, who did not want to see more killings. Many were critical of Israel and Mosab is no Zionist. From his point of view, the War of Independence was the Nakba…”

And although he has converted to Christianity, he has said that he doesn’t wish to be seen as a “spiritual trophy”. However, there is one unencouraging sign on this front; Christian Zionist author Joel C. Rosenberg (background here and here) writes on his blog that:

Mosab Hasan Yousef, author of the New York Times best-selling non-fiction book, Son of Hamas, will be speaking by videotape at the 2010 Epicenter Conference next week.

That puts Yousef in depressing company: the 2010 Epicenter Conference includes the like of Tony Perkins, Kay Arthur, and William Boykin. Is this to be Yousef’s future, to be wheeled out at these rallies evermore to make our flesh creep with awful disclosures about the evils of Islam, like Walid Shoebat? Of course, Yousef probably feels indebted to those who have supported him in the USA, but one hoped for something better. I blogged on the 2008 Epicenter Conference here.

There’s also a bit of humbug from Rosenberg on the subject:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security may soon deport Mosab back to the West Bank where he very well could be assassinated.

But Rosenberg regards the West Bank as being part of Israel – and although the deportation threat does seem on the face of it to be excessively bureaucratic, surely the primary responsibility for looking after Yousef should be with Israel, rather than the USA?

Yousef has a court hearing on 30 June. Of special interest to me, the judge has the excellent name of Rico Bartolomei.

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The One Law for All “No Sharia Campaign” has produced a report, entitled Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All & Equal Rights. I gave my general views on the campaign in November here; this report suffers from the same limitations which I identified then. Most of it is simply polemic, drawing unsystematically on a variety of news reports and statements on Muslims websites: we read of Islamic penalties doled out in places such as Iran; inequitable decisions and unenlightened attititudes emanating from sharia judges in the UK; and instances of individuals submitting to “voluntary” shariah decisions either as the result of bullying or without informed consent. There is no attempt to quantify or differentiate; for example, we’re told that “A Sharia court in Britain has even issued a death sentence against a writer in 1999”; although the authors give a reference to a newspaper report, they don’t mention that this was a stunt by the now-banned Al-Muhajiroun.

However, despite these problems the last two pages of the report includes some useful specific recommendations about what should be done to ensure that everyone has equal access to justice:

1) We recommend that a Human Rights case be initiated to challenge Muslim Arbitration Tribunals and/or Sharia Councils.

Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 prohibits public authorities from acting in any manner contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Section 6(3) defines what is meant by a “public authority” and this expressly includes courts and tribunals, but the extent to which Sharia Councils and MATs are so classified has not yet been tested in court.

Article 6(1) of the ECHR states that everyone is: “entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal.” As has been amply demonstrated in this report, Sharia Councils and MATs are not impartial, as they discriminate against women in particular, and are unfair for the same reason. As a result of case law, the definition of “public bodies” also includes charities and semi-charitable organisations because of the effect their services have on the general public, therefore we aim to establish that Sharia Councils are also bound by the Human Rights Act even though they are not officially labelled as tribunals.

The Human Rights Act describes an eligible claimant under the Act as a person who “is (or would be) a victim of the unlawful act.” Therefore, to challenge Sharia Councils or MATs, a claimant needs to be found who is suffering or might suffer because of the decisions of these bodies, and who is willing to proceed on the aforementioned grounds.

2) We recommend an amendment to the Arbitration Act under which the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals operate in a similar way to which the Canadian Arbitration Act was amended, to exclude religious arbitration.

In 2006, the Canadian Arbitration Act was amended to state that family arbitration which was not conducted exclusively in accordance with Canadian secular law did not constitute family arbitration, and would not have any legal effect. This was applicable both to Sharia courts and also the Jewish Beth Din equivalent. It is our recommendation that the same be done in the United Kingdom. The wording of the amendment to the Act we propose would specifically prohibit arbitration tribunals from hearing family law cases and exclude all religious tribunals from the Arbitration Act…

3) Because of the many difficulties related to people lacking awareness of their rights in the UK and being unduly in the thrall of family or community pressure, we recommend launching a major and nationwide helpline and information campaign to inform people of their rights under British law. The campaign should be conducted in partnership with women’s groups and with family law organisations.

4) It is also possible under the EU Citizens Rights Initiative to propose legislation that would apply across the European Union. Given that Sharia law is a concern in a number of EU states, we recommend this course of action as a means of addressing the issue EU-wide.

5) Additionally, we recommend the strengthening of secularism and the separation of religion from the state, the judicial system and education in order to more fully protect citizenship rights.

This seems to me to be a measured and sensible approach; it shows confidence in the strength of our legal traditions to meet the challenge, in contrast to authoritarian calls for suppression. However, as regards the 1996 Arbitration Act I would prefer an amendment simply affirming that civil courts will not enforce or recognise decisions where there is evidence of gender bias; this would be a better expression of secular principles, as singling out a religious motivation is simply an inversion of giving religion special treatment.

Of course the abuses and retrograde attitudes highlighted by the report should be called out and challenged, although, as I’ve written before, it would be unhelpful if “sharia” were to become simply a synonym for “legally-sanctioned religious oppression”, the way “fatwa” has come to be understood as meaning “death sentence”. In the US, unremarkable niche financial products for Muslim customers who wish to arrange their finances in accordance with sharia principles have provoked ridiculous howls of outrage, and there is an effort underway to paint any Muslim who does not repudiate his or her religion’s legal traditions in toto as being an extremist (see here and here).

(H/T: Edmund Standing)

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Ignited Church is a neo-Pentecostal mega-church in Lakeland, Florida, pastored by Stephen Strader. The church came to prominence in 2008 when it hosted Todd Bentley and the “Lakeland Revival” – an event which various neo-Pentecostal leaders promised would herald a new dawn, but which instead ended in fiasco and sexual scandal for Bentley. Strader’s church still enjoys a high profile within neo-Pentecostalism; a newsletter that was posted to InJesus (now in Google cache) advertises some “Special Events”, including

1. April 14  Bishop NE Moses

Bishop Moses is a high-profile Nigerian evangelist, and he featured on this blog in February when I noted his consecration of Helen Ukpabio as an “Apostle” the previous August. Ukpabio, as I have blogged numerous times, teaches that personal misfortune can be caused by “child witches” who need to undergo “deliverance”; the idea of “child witches” has caused a great deal of misery in Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria, and in other parts of Africa. International exposure of the situation has had some positive results, with state governor Godswill Akpabio promising laws against witchcraft accusations and recognition for Sam Ikpe-Itauma, who runs a hostel for children stigmatised as witches. Ukpabio, however, has fought back: she warned Akpabio to “remember what happened to Saddam Hussein”, and set her lawyers and police on Ikpe-Itauma, whom she accuses of being a “wizard”. Members of her church also invaded a conference on subject organised by the Nigerian sceptic Leo Igwe.

Bishop Moses praised the attack on Leo’s conference in his ranting speech at Ukpabio’s “Apostolic” consecration:

You did the right thing. Listen, you did the right thing. We shall not run and get into our bedrooms. We shall not allow the enemy to take over. Do you understand what I’m saying?… The enemy is attacking! Witches attacking! Wizards attacking! Atheists attacking!

Bishop Moses’ visit to Lakeland is not his only association with Strader; in 2003, Strader reported to supporters (also in Google cache, but not directly accessible) that

We are in Lagos, Nigeria doing a “Spiritual Release” Conference for Pastors & Lay Leaders… Our hosts, Bishop N.E. Moses is so WONDERFUL! He and his wife are catering our meals to our hotel room to ensure that we get safe, home cooked African meals!

Of course, I’m sure that Strader does not share Bishop Moses’ enthusiam for Ukpabio, and that he is just as appalled as most other people by the plight of children accused of witchcraft. However, neo-Pentecostalism is a transnational movement, and it is natural that American neo-Pentecostal leaders will want to avoid public controversies that might damage international unity or give the impression that Africans are not equal partners. Clearly, there are also bonds of personal friendship.

At the same time, though, neo-Pentecostalism claims to be a movement which is guided by God, often in very specific ways, and the mantle of “Apostle” is meant to signify particular spiritual authority; Strader himself is an “Apostle”, and a member of Peter Wagner’s International Coalition of Apostles (ICA). Ukpabio is not an ICA “Apostle”, but her Apostolic endorsement by a man who has links to someone who is an ICA member does not give a particularly good impression. And it’s not the only unfortunate association with “child-witches”; in 2006 I noted links between a Wagner associate named Gwen Shaw and Combat Spirituel in Congo.

ICA “Apostles” are not shy when it comes to explaining how God is working through them as leaders to achieve various goals; surely, therefore, they should be up to the task of challenging a distortion of neo-Pentecostal Christianity which is responsible for widespread tragic consequences?

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In 2004, Pastor Ken Hutcherson organised a “Mayday for Marriage“, to defend “traditional” marriage against homosexuality; in 2007, the Daily Telegraph described him as

An advocate of a “biblical stance” against divorce and homosexuality.

According to this site, meanwhile:

Hutcherson said that in the past year [2004], he’d censured five members of the church, including some for ending marriages without just cause.

However, he’s prepared to take a rather more relaxed view when it comes to powerful conservative ideologues with whom he is friendly; Joe Lambiet notes:

The preacher who signed [Rush] Limbaugh’s and wife Kathryn Rogers‘ marriage license, Washington State-based mega-church boss Ken Hutcherson, is an internationally known critic of the gay rights who believes that many of the world’s ills stem from homosexuality.

Limbaugh bragged about his fourth wedding as he returned to his show today, calling the nuptials a perfect moment in the best weekend of his life.

The certificate also shows that one of the witnesses was his brother David, who is more closely associated with the Christian Right.

A guide to Limbaugh’s previous marriages can be seen here. It appears that his first two marriages were ended by his wives, while his third wife had been married previously; perhaps, therefore, there is some fundamentalist legalism which allows Hutcherson to officiate without offending against his strict “Biblical stance” in favour of traditional marriage. Limbaugh’s previous traditional marriage had been officiated over by Clarence Thomas.

I blogged on Hutcherson previously here; in 2007 he visited Latvia with anti-gay activist Scott Lively, where they made links with a militant anti-gay pastor named Alexei Ledyaev (Lively has also been active in Uganda). Hutcherson is known for making statements on homosexuality in which – for some reason we can can only speculate on – he feels the need to assert aggressively his own masculinity; one sermon quote is particularly well-known:

On a Sunday…Hutcherson was preaching on gender roles. During his sermon, Hutcherson stated, “God hates soft men” and “God hates effeminate men.” Hutcherson went on to say, “If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”

Somewhat bizarrely, Limbaugh’s wedding ceremony with Hutcherson was followed by a reception at which Elton John was the hired performer; the singer has since come under criticism for agreeing to take part.

(Hat tip: RightWingWatch)

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Lou Engle on the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill, as reported in the Christian Post:

The head of a Kansas City, Mo.-based ministry on Thursday issued a formal apology after discovering that the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill was promoted during his prayer event in Uganda.

“After returning home, I was told that the Bill had been clearly promoted after I left the meeting,” said Lou Engle of TheCall. “I apologize that this took place and that my stated purpose of not promoting the Bill was compromised. I take responsibility for what was done on the stage of TheCall, even in my absence.”

…According to his statement Thursday, Engle explained that he met with Christian leaders in Uganda and found “not one” of them to be “carrying even an ounce of hatred for homosexuals.”

“They actually desired to influence the lawmakers in Uganda to lessen the penalties,” he said. “However, they were committed to raise up a principled stand to protect their people and their children from an unwelcome intrusion of homosexual ideology into an 83 percent Christian nation.”

“I appealed to them that in all their labor and their stand they express the mercy of Christ to broken people, but I also stood with them in their desire to not succumb to the political ideological pressures of the West and many of the voices of the Western Church that have come strongly against them,” he added.

I blogged on Engle’s prayer event here;  Michael Wilkerson at Religion Dispatches was present and his report prompted Engle’s statement.

Lou Engle on the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill, as reported by Bishop Julius Oyet and David Bahati in conversation with Jeff Sharlet:

Both Oyet and Bahati told me that Engle had explicitly expressed his support for the bill, telling them that he had to lie to the Western media because gays control it. They said he said one thing to the BBC and then walked over to Bahati and said that he really supported the bill. Either Engle isn’t telling the whole truth, or Oyet and Bahati aren’t. I tend to believe Bahati here, since Engle didn’t mean anything to him until he met him that day. He hadn’t heard of him and decided to attend the rally only after I’d told him a few things about Engle. In other words, he left the rally thrilled with Engle based on that encounter with Engle alone. Clearly, Engle did something to please him.

Also:

…Here’s Oyet on the death penalty: “There is not the death penalty at the end for everybody. There is the death penalty at the end for aggravated homosexuality.” He explained that the death penalty already applies for four crimes in Uganda (child rape, treason, murder, and causing death by female genital mutilation) “So I want the world to understand,” Oyet continued “that homosexuality is not the first death penalty in Uganda. I think that U.S. journalists should make that known. It is not the first one, it is going to be the fifth one.”

…”If the Bible supports the death penalty which is true and then you call yourself a Christian nation, listen. If I would be killed because I am dying scripturally I can repent to God before I am killed but [if] I am [eliminated] from the Earth that’s ok… if the victim confesses or repents, we can waive it off. Something like that…. In my view, homosexuals should be grateful. But instead they are not. Why I’m saying they should be grateful is because in Ugandan culture if you go and rob someone, if you go and rape a child and people find you, they will kill you.”

For more background on Oyet, see here. Oyet is correct that “aggravated homosexuality” refers to repeat “offences” between consenting adults, although the Bill’s supporters have usually sought to downplay this point, which becomes apparent only when several passages in the Bill are cross-referenced.

Engle’s claim that he could not find a pastor with “even an ounce of hatred for homosexuals” is risible; many people have now seen the video of Martin Ssempa’s notorious presentation on the subject in a church in February, in which he deliberately conflated homosexuality with coprophilia (the video has since formed the basis for a number of satirical music remixes).

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Pamela Geller has posted a warning to the Washington Post, in response to a critical article by Michelle Boorstein entitled “How Influential will Anti-Muslim Groups Become?“:

I am not anti-Muslim.
I love Muslims. I am pro-freedom and anti-islamic supremacism.
Stop the slander and defamation. It’s an incitement to violence.
Do it again and I am going to sue you.
Yours in liberty,
Pamela Geller
Atlas Shrugs
SIOA
FDI

I’d like to see how that would play out in court. It’s true that her associate Robert Spencer talks of “Muslims of conscience” (albeit while simultaneously sneering at the idea of moderate Muslims by sarcastically calling extremists “misunderstanders of Islam”), and that she has promoted an organisation called “Muslims Against Shariah”. It’s also the case that the groups with which she is involved tend to support reformists in Iran, which disgusts those further to the right; Debbie Schlussel, for instance, recently attacked Geller on this point as part of a denunciation of HBO for a documentary about Neda Agha-Soltan (“I don’t mourn her one bit”, sniffed Schlussel, refering to the murdered Iranian).

However, while Geller’s complaints against the “Ground Zero mosque” referenced the supposed secret extremism of those behind the project, her rhetoric has made it quite clear that any sort of mosque close to the site would be unacceptable, on account of the character of Islam per se – not because of “Islamic supremicism”:

“The only Muslim center that should be built in the shadow of the World Trade Center is one that is devoted to expunging the Quran and all Islamic teachings of the violent jihad that they prescribe, as well as all hateful texts and incitement to violence”.

As I noted a few days ago, this isn’t a statement made in good faith: a Muslim center with an “expunged” Quran makes about as much sense as a church with the anti-Jewish parts of the New Testament expunged or a synagogue with the more sanguinary passages of the Torah expunged – ancient religious texts may be re-interpreted or contextualised in ways that make them more amenable to the modern world, but they are seldom repudiated by adherents. And Geller didn’t write “Islamic center” – she wrote “Muslim center”.

And as for the whine about “incitement to violence”, this shows Geller to be someone who can dish out the most inflammatory abusive but not take any of the same treatment. In Geller’s world, critics of Israel are (inevitably) Nazis, and anyone who raises concerns about the Rifqa Bary media circus must be in favour of honour-killings.

(Correction: I originally wrote that Boorstein was with Newsweek rather than the Washington Post)

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Walid Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies announces a new event for November: the Fort Hood Memorial Convention:

The one-day convention will be held in Killeen just a mile or so from the Ft Hood base. It will comprise of former Military leaders, experts in the field of Islamic terror and two former terrorists including Walid Shoebat.

…You can purchase tickets which are only $25.00 each by calling 1 877 832 7200. For those that can sell or purchase to resell 50 tickets… they will receive a free dinner in which they will personally meet all the speakers who include Lt General William Gerry Boykin Retired., former head of Military intelligence and commander of Delta Force, Major Stephen Coughlin former analyst with the Pentagon and expert on Islam who was fired for telling the truth, Robert Spencer best selling author and expert on Islam, Walid Shoebat former Islamic terrorist best selling author and pro Israel/America activist and Kamal Saleem former Islamic terrorist best selling author and activist.

Further:

In July we have lined up meetings with 56 churches in the Killeen area who have all expressed an interest as well as at least 6 churches who have already volunteered to be actively helping us with the event – both within their church and in the community. The combined attendance of the 6 churches is over 4000 people and of the 56 churches their membership is over 20,000.

…Tickets are only $25.00 and VIP tickets which include a buffet dinner, preferred seating as well as meeting the speakers personally are $100 per VIP ticket. All purchases are regarded as donations and are tax deductible. If you purchase 50 tickets you will receive 48 tickets and two VIP tickets; You will only pay regular price of $25 for the VIP tickets.

….Our organization is determined to speak the truth loud and clear in our nation. You can help us by attending, or if you cannot then a donation will be greatly appreciated as we expect to run over budget by at least $15,000 without extra donations. We have made the tickets as cheap as possible so everyone including lower income people can attend who wish to.

The event is being organised by the Forum for Middle East Understanding, which describes Shoebat – risibly – as a “world-reknown [sic] speaker”. I provided some background to the forum here; it was set up as a non-profit for donations to the Walid Shoebat Foundation.

Shoebat, as I have written about on numerous occasions, has three shticks: (1) going on about his supposed past as Jew-hating Palestinian terrorist and Islamic extremist (one would have thought this had been milked to death by now); (2) using his past to pose as an expert on all things Muslim (such as his Obama conspiracy-mongering here); and (3) using his Arabic background to promote a bizarre re-interpretation of the Book of Revelation which purports to prove that the Bible predicts a Muslim Anti-Christ (a subject I looked at here).

Boykin, meanwhile, is well-known for the controversy around the intersection between his public role and his religious beliefs. He is now a regular speaker at this kind if event, and  in 2008 I noted his presence at a Christian Zionist conference in Jerusalem where he plugged an old apocalyptic paperback called Armageddon, Oil, and Terror.

As for Coughlin, Fox reported in early 2008 that:

Stephen Coughlin was fired after a confrontation with one of the deputy defense secretary’s aides, which ended with Coughlin being called, “a Christian zealot with a pen.”

Apparently sharing a platform with someone who promotes the theory of a “Muslim Anti-Christ” is good way to correct that misapprehension.

It is doubtful that Robert Spencer believes such nonsense, but he sees Christian fundamentalists as useful allies, and he has endorsed a  book promoting the “Muslim Anti-Christ” theory.

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Patrick Mercer MP in The Sun:

TALIBAN fighters are burying dirty needles with their bombs in a bid to infect British troops with HIV, The Sun can reveal.

Hypodermic syringes are hidden below the surface pointing upwards to prick bomb squad experts as they hunt for devices.

…The tactic, used in the Afghan badlands of Helmand, was exposed by Tory MP and ex-Army officer Patrick Mercer.

Senior backbencher Mr Mercer said yesterday: “Are there no depths to which these people will stoop? This is the definition of a dirty war.”

Patrick Mercer MP talking to Stars and Stripes’ “Rumor Doctor” Jeff Schogol, in the wake of the above (emphasis added):

Mercer said he learned about these devices from British bomb disposal technicians training ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. The technicians have been issued Kevlar gloves to counter the threat.

He could not say for certain whether the Taliban have used these devices.

“That wasn’t a question I asked directly, but I got the impression that these are certainly being employed by the Taliban, al-Qaida, etc.,” he said. “I’m not aware of any injuries that have been caused by it so far.”

Schogol adds that neither the International Security Forces-Afghanistan nor the Joint IED Defeat Organization have heard anything about it, and he concludes that it

Sounds more like an enemy propaganda campaign than a widespread new tactic.

I doubt it’s even that. More likely, Kevlar gloves are being issued as a general precaution, someone at Mercer’s office noticed that such gloves are advertised as giving “the wearer the added protection from infected hypodermic needles, knife and razorblade wounds”, and this was seen as a chance to publicise a Mercer soundbite.

The Daily Mail has also reported Mercer’s “exposure”, adding a quote from someone on the front-line:

Lieutenant Colonel David Southall, Commanding Officer of the Counter-IED Task Force said: ‘Improvised explosive devices remain a tactic of desperation and last resort.

‘The Taliban know they can’t take us on and win in a conventional toe-to-toe fight – whilst they resort to some pretty despicable IED emplacement tactics, my IED operators, now drawn from all across the three services, are well equipped and up for the fight.’

Presumably Southall was unable to confirm any instances of needles being planted – otherwise he would surely have given the details.

Back in February, Mercer endorsed a “bombs in breast implants” story, which again was not supported by an actual evidence and which appeared to have begun life as a columnist’s conjecture. And before that, of course, he regularly passed material provided by self-styled “terror-expert” Glen Jenvey to tabloids, even after a Jenvey-sourced story was found to have been bogus. Mercer also promoted the  now-defunct “VIGIL Network”, which was run by Dominic Wightman, and with which the cyber-bully Charlie Flowers was also involved.

There’s no argument about how awful the Taliban are, and the needle story may indeed be true (although unlikely to be effective in spreading HIV) – but given the many instances of unsourced scare-stories turning out to have been untrue, we really need more than just one person’s word for it. Especially when that person is Patrick Mercer, who, although I am sure is a honest person, appears to be completely lacking in discernment – and unwilling to take full responsbility for the consequences of his poor judgement.

(H/T: The Sun – Tabloid Lies)

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Right Wing News has an article about the two Egpytian Christian journalists who were mistaken for Muslims and abused at Sunday’s anti-mosque protest in New York; the author spoke to one of the two men, Joseph Nassralla:

Right off the bat, I asked him if the description of the incident given by North Jersey.com was accurate.

Regrettably, he said that it was. He said that they were talking to people back at the studio in Arabic, some people in the crowd overheard, thought they were Muslim infiltrators who were there to disrupt the event, and became increasingly hostile despite their attempts to explain. At one point, Joseph Nassralla told me he was shoved and his camera was knocked out of his hand. He said he was worried that things might have really gotten out of hand if the police hadn’t escorted him and Karam El Masry away.

However:

Mr. Nassralla seemed mainly to be chagrinned that there had been such a misunderstanding. He also noted that after hearing about the incident, Robert Spencer personally phoned him to apologize for what had happened.

…[Pamela Geller] told me that she was surprised that there had been problem and noted that there were other Coptic Christians at the rally and even a few Muslims and none of them had any problems.

…I also informed Pamela about my conversation with Joseph Nassralla and his affirmative response to my question about speaking at the next rally against the Ground Zero mosque. Her response?

“I would absolutely love to have him speak at the next protest.”

There are also a couple of videos, showing the police intervention and impromptu speeches by Nassralla and other Coptic Christians. They complain bitterly of persecution in Egypt, and warn that Muslims in the USA are planning to take over the country. Nassralla also denounces Obama and the government because they “want God out”, and he calls on Muslims to accept Jesus. He also tells us that he spent three months in prison in Egypt, that he came to the USA the day before 9/11, and that there is a $2 million price on his neck.

It should always be remembered that however distasteful, corrosive, and obviously self-serving that Geller and co’s hate-mongering might be, it wouldn’t get much of a hearing without the very real represssion that currently exists across the Muslim world.

Nassralla’s “The Way” satellite channel has a website here;  its schedule includes Coptic Orthodox programmes, but also shows featuring ex-Muslim converts to Christianity, who are more likely to be Protestant (those featured include the polemicist Nonie Darwish, whom I blogged in passing here). It seems that the “The Way” is part of a wider organisation run by Nasralla, called “Media for Christ“. There is also a YouTube channel here, and a Facebook page here.

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Apparently this was said with a straight face at Sunday’s anti-mosque protest in New York:

“We’re not here today to condemn Muslims or Islam” said Pamela Geller, executive director of ‘Stop the Islamization of America’, “but we are here today to condemn the kind of mosque that will teach the very same radical ideology that gave birth to the 9/11 attacks…”

As has been widely reported, Geller was speaking at a protest against plans to build a mosque and Muslim community centre a couple of blocks away from the site of World Trade Center. A few days before, Geller had thundered that

“The only Muslim center that should be built in the shadow of the World Trade Center is one that is devoted to expunging the Quran and all Islamic teachings of the violent jihad that they prescribe, as well as all hateful texts and incitement to violence”

Of course, this isn’t a statement made in good faith: a Muslim center with an “expunged” Quran makes about as much sense as a church with the anti-Jewish parts of the New Testament expunged or a synagogue with the more sanguinary passages of the Torah expunged – ancient religious texts may be re-interpreted or contextualised in ways that make them more amenable to the modern world, but they are seldom repudiated by adherents.

Some background to the Cordoba House Muslim centre project was provided by the WSJ‘s Metropolis blog in May:

The project is driven in part by the needs of a growing Muslim population in Lower Manhattan. The nearest existing Islamic prayer space, the Tribeca Mosque, has been holding three evening prayer services on Fridays to keep up with demand.

“New immigrants coming to the area — you see a lot of people coming to Canal Street, a lot of street vendors and laborers,” says Daisy Kahn, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement. “But also a lot of people in the financial community coming to prayers as well.”

When Kahn’s organization found a vacant property on Park Place, the former site of a Burlington Coat Factory that had been damaged by airplane debris on September 11, 2001, the potent symbolism of the site also became a compelling rationale for the project. “We decided we wanted to look at the legacy of 9/11 and do something positive,” she explained in an interview. Her group represents moderate Muslims who want “to reverse to trend of extremism and the kind of ideology that the extremists are spreading.”

For Geller and her Stop Islamization of America organization (currently on a roll following the “Leaving Islam?” bus-ad controversy), this is all a ruse – the purpose of the mosque is to gloat over the site of the World Trade Center and to establish Muslim supremacy over America; as reported by the London Times:

“What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Centre buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack?” said Pamela Geller, the group’s director. “Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn’t dream of such an insult. It’s a stab in the eye of America.”

Ms Geller’s group said that Islam had a history of building mosques on top of the holy places of other religions as a symbol of Muslim dominance. It cited al-Aqsa Mosque on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Ayasofya Mosque in the former Hagia Sophia basilica in Istanbul, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus atop what was once the Church of St John the Baptist.

The Times refered to an “anti-Muslim backlash”, which Geller objected to as a “lie” (Geller’s ally Robert Spencer does occasionally refer positively to “Muslims of conscience”, but how exactly they are to be defined is unclear).

Khan’s quote – slightly re-edited – has also been turned against her in a press release:

Daisy Khan has trivialized and insulted the memories of the victims of the 9/11 jihad attacks by saying that the mosque is intended to “make something positive out of 9/11.”

We’re also told that

…Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is an open proponent of Sharia, Islamic law, a system that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law.

Abdul Rauf has said that “an Islamic state can be established in more then just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Shariah that are required to govern.” Thus it is clear that this mosque will teach Sharia, Islamic supremacism, and the denial of basic rights.

Abdul Rauf and other mosque organizers have been inconsistent and deceptive about whether their planned Islamic Center at Ground Zero will contain a mosque; ultimately they have admitted that it will. Belying his claim that this mosque will become a place for interreligious harmony, he has told the Arabic press: “I don’t believe in religious dialogue.”

This information was provided by Walid Shoebat (who was not at the protest himself);  it seems he’s realised that he needs to come up with some new material if he’s going to keep his profile up. However, even Shoebat’s article puts the “religious dialogue” comment into some context; in his translation, it refers to:

Religious dialogue as customarily understood is a set of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing.

From the Google translation of Shoebat’s source, it appears that Rauf goes on to praise American diversity and to criticise Egypt. But whether Rauf is secretly an extremist is hardly the main point – it is clear that SIOA objects to any mosque in principle.

The protest itself brought together the usual “anti-jihad” activists, along with a few 9/11 rescue workers and bereaved family members – Geller has posted a number of speeches. The event also gave a politician named Jay Townsend an opportunity to grandstand, and there was an attack on Obama from a certain Bev Carlson, who insisted that America is a “Christian nation”.

The size of the rally has been disputed; a journalist named Mike Kelly puts the figure at 500, Geller herself has declared there were 8,000, while WorldNetDaily rounds the number up to 10,000. Sentiments expressed on some of the protest signs made further mockery of Geller’s claim that “we are not here today to condemn Muslims or Islam”, and Kelly notes one telling incident:

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

“Go home,” several shouted from the crowd.

“Get out,” others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called “The Way.” Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

“I’m a Christian,” Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

“I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here,” a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.

[UPDATE: More on this incident here]

Ahead of the protest, there were various objections, ranging from some Muslim criticisms of the project through to the most vitriolic spewing. As was widely reported, a Texas radio host named Michael Berry expressed the hope that the mosque would be bombed, and his excess was matched by the Tea Party leader Mark Williams, who denounced the Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, as “a Jewish Uncle Tom who would have turned rat on Anne Frank” because he supports the project. Across the Atlantic, atheist comedian Pat Condell fired off another of his hectoring (and curiously joke-free) rants, insisting (I paraphrase) that the mosque was obviously being built to celebrate 9/11 and as part of a strategy to take over the USA, that Islam ought to be suppressed as a political ideology akin to Nazism, and that anyone who can’t see this is a fool (Condell objects to religion in general as being authoritarian and supported by people who are self-righteous).

The Forward carried a thoughtful editorial on the subject a few weeks ago. While backing the project, it notes that

Some families of those who perished on September 11, 2001, have displayed great courage by supporting the proposal to create a 13-story hub for Muslim religious and cultural life, two blocks north of where the twin towers stood. But other families have not and — unlike some of the bigots who oppose the project for unjustifiable reasons — their qualms and resistance need to be respected.

But with so much overheated rhetoric on the subject, it is difficult to see how the project organisers could make any revisions to their plans without opponents trumpeting alterations as climb-downs that supposedly prove extremist intent.

Meanwhile, Geller’s motives have been derided by her equally-unpleasant rival “anti-jihadist” Debbie Schlussel; she dismisses the protest as “a cleverly designed PR vehicle”, and claims that Geller is expressing

…faux-outrage in a “battle” that we already know won’t be won.  It’s already lost.  They have the property.  Move on to something we can win, not a… attention-whore trick, just weeks before her book is about to be released and needs to earn back a bloated advance.  If you think it’s anything other than this, you are a malleable tool, easily manipulated and not of much substance.

Schlussel, who has been in a feud with Geller for some time, also makes reference to the p0lice investigation into Geller’s ex-husband’s business affairs (I noted Geller’s book – which has a Foreword by John Bolton – here).

(Some links H/T Loonwatch)

UPDATE: Ed Brayton has some fun with one detail:

Geller added, “There is a large piece of an airplane in that building. That is a war memorial”… That’s funny, there were pieces of airplane and debris in pretty much every building for many blocks in every direction after 9/11. And yet the only one she demands be made into a museum is the one owned by Muslims.

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