Saturday, April 9, 2011

Critics Call Terrorism Hearing In Manhattan "Anti-Muslim"

From Jihad Watch:


Critics call terrorism hearing in Manhattan "anti-Muslim"







“None of us are condemning the hearings’ stated purpose,” Mr. Carroll said. Sure. The thing is that everyone who dares to speak the truth about how jihadis use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism is targeted as "biased against Islam" and too extreme for polite company. There is no terrorism hearing anywhere that would look at Islamic jihad terrorism in a realistic way that would be acceptable to these "critics."



More on this story. "Critics Call Terrorism Hearing in Manhattan Anti-Muslim," by Paul Vitello for the New York Times, April 6 (thanks to all who sent this in):



A state senator has scheduled a daylong hearing for Friday on terrorism preparedness in New York City, featuring an array of experts in law enforcement, emergency response and counterterrorism.

But his plan to take testimony in Manhattan about the threat from radical Islam is drawing sharp criticism from Muslim and interfaith groups that call the hearing anti-Muslim and incendiary — a local version of the contentious session held last month in Washington by Representative Peter T. King of Long Island.



In fact, the witness list includes Mr. King, a Republican who has promised more Congressional hearings on what he calls the radicalization of American Muslims.



The state senator, Gregory R. Ball, a Putnam County Republican who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs, said he did not intend his inquiry to focus unfairly on threats from any one group.



“But there are people who seek to hurt and destroy us,” Mr. Ball said. “We have to move beyond political correctness.”



Among the witnesses whose scheduled testimony has raised objections is Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born American who is president of a group called Former Muslims United. Mr. Ball said Ms. Darwish would testify about Shariah law and “being taught to hate Israelis and Americans” in Islamic schools she attended in Egypt.



Adem Carroll, a spokesman for the New York State Interfaith Network for Immigration Reform, one of the organizations protesting the hearing, said that by including witnesses like Ms. Darwish and Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official who has often criticized Islam, Mr. Ball was exploiting deep public concern about terrorism to incite fear of Muslims as a group.



“None of us are condemning the hearings’ stated purpose,” Mr. Carroll said. “The issue of terrorism is of concern to all Americans. But hate speech and defamation can and do perpetuate a cycle of violence.” He cited the killing of United Nations workers in Afghanistan recently after a Florida pastor burned a copy of the Koran....





Clearly Carroll is blaming the Florida pastor for those killings. Follow out that logic, and we can never do anything to resist jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism, because if we do, Muslims might react badly.



Eight Democrats in the State Senate have signed a letter of protest to Mr. Ball from State Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Democrat whose Brooklyn district includes one of the city’s largest populations of Pakistani immigrants, most of them Muslim.

“By including Islamic law as a topic of the hearing,” Mr. Parker wrote, “you conflate the religious observances and practices of a faith into a security matter. Some opportunists and political leaders have sought to create hostility against Muslims by raising the specter of the Shariah ‘bogeyman’ as a threat to America.”



He urged Mr. Ball not to follow that example, and suggested that he also call witnesses who are not biased against Islam.





That jihad terrorists cite Islamic law to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims doesn't matter one bit. To look at such things ourselves would be "Islamophobic." This is Sharia, self-enforced by unwitting dhimmis: just as in Malaysia, non-Muslims who quote the Qur'an now face arrest, so here. Jihadis can quote Islamic law all they want, but if he notice and start studying their motivations in line with what they say, we're being "biased against Islam."



Posted by Robert on April 8, 2011 12:44 PM



And this, related, also from Jihad Watch:


NY State Senator, brandishing Qur'an, accuses ex-Muslim human rights activist of "bringing hate and poison" into hearings on terrorism







Yet another circus of political correctness and claiming victim status for Muslims, without any honest discussion of how jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism. More on this story. "Hearing on Terror Includes Heated Debate on Islam," by Thomas Kaplan in the New York Times, April 8:



In a local reprise of a polarizing Congressional hearing last month on the question of Islam and terror, state lawmakers warned in grave terms on Friday of the threats facing the New York area, while other lawmakers and interfaith groups criticized the proceedings as anti-Muslim and incendiary.

The hearing, which was convened by the State Senate’s homeland security committee, was something of a spectacle: Security was ramped up at the office building in Lower Manhattan where state legislators have work space, and television cameramen easily outnumbered lawmakers.



Adding to the theatrics, the hearing began to great fanfare with testimony from the lawmaker who convened the Congressional hearing, Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican, who has promised further federal inquiries into what he describes as the radicalization of American Muslims.



Mr. King prefaced his comments by noting that “99 percent” of Muslims in the United States are “outstanding Americans” and not terrorists.





It would have been refreshing if King had spoken about stealth jihadists and Islamic supremacists, who are not terrorists, but he still apparently has only a rudimentary understanding of what we're really up against.



“But the fact is: The enemy, or those being recruited by Al Qaeda, live within the Muslim community, and that’s the reality we have to face,” Mr. King said. “This is not to put a broad brush over a community, but you go where the threat is coming from, and that’s the reality today.”

Mr. King testified at the invitation of Senator Gregory R. Ball, a Putnam County Republican who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs. Mr. Ball was criticized by Muslim and interfaith groups as well as a group of Senate Democrats for his inclusion of Islamic law as one of the hearing’s topics; they accused him of exploiting the threat of terrorism to incite a fear of Muslims among the broader public.



But on Friday, as reporters crammed into a low-ceilinged meeting room for the daylong hearing, Mr. Ball defended the scope of the committee’s inquiry, saying that he asked lawmakers to propose other witnesses but received very little input.



“There are some who are more concerned about the front-page press than today,” Mr. Ball said. “I understand politics. But we cannot allow our homeland security to become a political football.”



Among the witnesses whose scheduled testimony provoked the most criticism was Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born American who is president of a group called Former Muslims United, and Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official who has often criticized Islam.



Ms. Darwish testified on Friday that young people in the Arab world are taught as children to hate America and to look favorably on terrorism. “The education of Arab children is to make killing of certain groups of people not only good,” she said. “It’s holy. It becomes holy in our culture.”



Her testimony was met with an angry rebuke from Senator Eric Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat, who held up a Koran and said that Ms. Darwish was “bringing hate and poison” to the hearing. Mr. Ball tried to quiet Mr. Adams, and their back-and-forth descended into a shouting match, with Mr. Adams suggesting that Mr. Ball was condoning bigotry and Mr. Ball accusing him of pandering to the news media....





Note how Adams uses the familiar Islamic supremacist tactic of accusing that those who report on the hate and poison of jihadists and Islamic supremacists of spreading that hate and poison. He did not, and could not, refute what Nonie Darwish said about the education of Arab children, so he decided instead to shoot the messenger.



And as for a critic of Islam bringing hate and poison into the hearing, which Adams countered by waving around the Qur'an as a talisman, one wonders if he ever bothered to open the book even once. Adams is worried about hate and poison? How about this for starters:



"O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust." -- Qur'an 5:51



"Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans..." -- Qur'an 5:82



"The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!" -- Qur'an 9:30



"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." -- Qur'an 9:29



"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks. At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens." -- Qur'an 47:4



"Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the Polytheists, will be in Hell-Fire, to dwell therein (for aye). They are the worst of creatures." -- Qur'an 98:6



Posted by Robert on April 8, 2011 3:52 PM

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