Daily Kos bans writer for outing “terrorist spin control network”

From Creeping Sharia:

Daily Kos bans writer for outing “terrorist spin control network”

Posted on February 1, 2012 by creeping

via FrontPage Magazine, that linked to Jihad Watch’s Independent thought on jihad and Islam at the Daily Kos post.

Recently two extraordinary articles have appeared at the Daily Kos — extraordinary because, to the rage and dismay of many of that site’s commenters and regular readers — they depart from the standard Leftist line that Islamic jihad violence has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, even if jihadists invoke Islamic texts and teachings to justify that violence, and that only greasy Islamophobes think otherwise.

The articles are “Loonwatch.com and Radical Islam” and “How and Why Loonwatch.com is a Terrorist Spin Control Network,” both by Eric Allen Bell, who is so far from being a “right-wing Islamophobe” that he made a documentary about the “Islamophobia” supposedly being suffered by the proponents of a huge new mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee — and is far enough to the Left to get space to write at the Daily Kos.

Yet Bell had the intellectual honesty to make this entirely true observation about the hate and defamation site that is the subject of his pieces: “But for LoonWatch.com any criticism of the Koran or of violent Jihad – even those criticisms that might have some legitimacy to them – even of radical Islam, are branded as Islamophobia and anyone who dares to raise questions about the nearly constant acts of Jihad going on increasingly around the world today is labeled a ‘Loon’ – thus the title of their blog, LoonWatch.com.”

Since I [Robert Spencer] am the subject of obsessive attention at Loonwatch, I am mentioned in the original article as well as in the followup, which Bell wrote after Islamic supremacists and their Leftist tools rounded upon him with predictable and ludicrous charges that he is a right-wing anti-Muslim bigot.

…

I got this email back from Eric Allen Bell, and he has kindly allowed me to publish it here:

Mr. Spencer -Very good to hear from you. I made a short documentary called “Not Welcome” (http://www.NotWelcomeDocumentary.com) regarding the backlash against construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN. What inspired me to make that film was the same feeling I have now about what is going on in the greater Islamic world. It was my conscience – a sense of justice.

That said, in the process I absorbed a whole lot of information from traditionally liberal sources. I have only recently come around to a hopefully more expansive point of view. When I finally read one of your books for the first time, I kept waiting for the part where you would prove yourself to be a “Loon” so that I could stop reading, but that never happened :)

I watched the documentary, “Islam: What the West Needs to Know” and wanted so badly to prove wrong what I had seen and heard – but I could not. This was not only humbling but it has caused me to really rethink and rethink the possibility that perhaps the truth is not politically correct.

And more is still being revealed. When I made “Not Welcome” most of the arguments against Islam I heard among the people of Murfreesboro, TN were religiously motivated. People would actually say to me that “America is a Christian nation” and they believed it said this in the Bible. The leaders of the movement were Christian Zionists. It was ugly, and yet their concerns were not entirely unfounded.

So I decided to keep the focus of the film on America and look for ways to convey a message about what I perceive to be a real enemy at home. At that time I did not perceive a real threat to America in the way of “creeping Sharia” and so I left that alone.

But as I watch with great disappointment the developments that have followed the so-called “Arab Spring” I am very, very concerned. Islamism is clearly on the rise, they have weapons, they are not rational and I am concerned.

It means a lot to me to hear from you directly like this. I apologize if in fact I have mis-characterized where you are coming from. In my own defense, the anti-mosque crowd in Murfreesboro, TN were a very nasty bunch – and they love JihadWatch ;) So, perhaps I wrongly judged you by some of them, and if that is the case I am very sorry. I will continue to read your blog and continue to research.

I admire your courage and conviction in being one of the only truth tellers out there about the dangers of Islam, your willingness to use your name and put your picture on your blog, your fearlessness in posting the Mohammed cartoon.

Please feel free to contact me anytime. My sense is that this war of words with Loonwatch (who now have several Islamic websites backing them up and putting my name out on the street) has only just begun.

Peace,

Eric Allen Bell

As Robert Spencer notes, it doesn’t get any further left than Loonwatch, which runs much of the same info as terror-linked CAIR. Now that one of their own has acknowledged the threat of ‘creeping sharia’, they have put the proverbial fatwa on Mr. Bell.

You may be able to listen to an archive of the interview with Bell at this link: Fired For Islamophobia — on The Jamie Glazov Show