A Dam to Block the Islamocaust Wave

With all of the controversy surrounding Muslims today, I often find myself asking the question "What's taking the Islamocaust so long to take hold?" At first, I was under the impression that it actually HAS started, but with the access to information at its all-time high due to instant sharing, stories which were "news" ten years ago are no longer newsworthy. However, I don't think things are as morbid as they seem. For instance, at least for now, Muslims in the U.S. still enjoy their freedoms granted to them by God and guaranteed by the Constitution. If a Muslim woman is harassed, she has several organizations that will yell and throw tantrums until she gets her compensation and is allowed to don her Hijab.

This realization led me to the only other conclusion I could possibly think of, and that is that there are still sensible people around. When I do a post like this, I purposely don't mention Muslim efforts; this way we can eliminate all bias. You will recall the story I did on a Rabbi standing up for the New York multi-purpose center which has a prayer area in it. This time, I bring you a similar story, but from a Christian.

"Wait, a Christian?" one of my readers is likely to ask disapprovingly. Well, yes, and I want to stop you there. What you will read next is an Email from a good friend of mine. He is active in his church and is a strong believer in God. As Muslims, we are very quick to judge other faiths despite our religion demanding that we not do so (Quran 2:62.) Still, a lot of us are stuck on this idea that Muslims MUST hate Christians just because we are Muslims. I daresay that some schools go as far as to say that having friends from different faiths is unacceptable.

When I took an Islamic Studies course a while back at university, the majority of people there were Christian or Jewish--not Muslim. The reason a lot of them gave for taking the course is that there was a lot of misinformation going around about Islam and they wanted to find out the truth about the religion. Now let me ask you, O humble "pious" Muslim readers: How many of you would take a Bible studies course simply because you wanted to understand Christianity better? There is still a lot of unfounded hatred in our community for Jewish people as well, but what this has done is allowed us to ignore that Jews and Muslims are, in fact, very similar when it comes to traditions and practices. Ask a Jew about their marriages next time you get the chance, and you'll be thoroughly surprised.

When I met this man at a convention in 2012, he noticed a prayer rug sitting on my bed in my room. He pulled me aside and told me he had found it ("I noticed a prayer rug on your bed. Are you a Muslim?") My first reaction was "O no, I've lost a friend." But his next question caught me completely off guard. "Would you like me to let you know the phases of the day so you can pray on time?" We were in a different state, and adjusting to time differences is difficult, especially for a blind person since you can't see the changes in lighting well enough to determine accurately when it is time for prayers. I was amazed by this reaction to me being Muslim, and this is why I think the Islamocaust hasn't taken hold. Not everyone is brainwashed by the media and active government propaganda against us. He even approached me in such a way so that there was little chance of someone else eavesdropping on our conversation, since he understood that this might have been a sensitive subject and others would not necessarily take kindly to knowing I am Muslim.

Here is his Email. I have reproduced it with his permission.

Subject: from World War Two until now  
From: Bruce Radtke
To: Munawar Bijani

Dear Munawar, You are in my thoughts.  Yesterday at our public library I attended an event that publicized a community reading of a book about the Japanese-American experience during World War II.  It's a novel by Guterson called SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, set in our area of the nation.  Since you live in Florida, perhaps you have only a little familiarity with what happened to Japanese-Americans on the West Coast.  Soon after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, a Presidential Proclamation uprooted all Japanese-Americans, whether US citizens or not, who lived on the West Coast and required their "internment."  In reality, 120,000 women, children and men were placed in concentration camps until the end of the war.  Men who refused to sign the loyalty oaths were sent to federal prisons, but those who pledged allegiance only to the USA were placed in Japanese-American-only army troops that later were recognized for their bravery.  I'm of German descent, but no German-Americans or Italian-Americans were sent to concentration camps just because of their ethnicity.  It was a blatant example of national racism to place all Japanese-Americans in miserable concentration camps.  The Supreme Court upheld all these actions. 

Yesterday we listened to some panel members who lived through that experience and described its effects, mostly negative.  Several times these panel members from all over our state warned the audience that today we Americans are tempted to discriminate and abuse American residents and citizens who are Muslims, not because of their crimes, but because of their religion and sometimes only their ancestors' origin in the Middle East.  I live in a town with a university, so I was pleased to see the warm welcome these speakers received, but I know that drawing a parallel between how we treated the Japanese-Americans during World War Two and how we treat Muslims today might not be typical in many places in the USA. 

Guantanamo remains open, with some "detainees" or prisoners who have never been tried and should be released.  I recall seeing your anger displayed on Facebook over treatment of Muslims, and I encourage you to speak clearly about the bigotry you perceive.  There are many examples in our world of how silence can lead to disaster repeatedly, while truth-speaking has the potential for possible confrontation but ultimately a potential for healing and achieving belated justice.  I want to stand beside you. Your friend, Bruce

People who think along these lines are perhaps the only reason Muslims still enjoy their freedoms. As long as there are a few people like Bruce who can put faith differences aside and call things for what they are, I'm not worried about our situation. So thank you Bruce for being open-minded and not being afraid to voice your support despite the heavily anti-Islam public opinion. Your message is like a beacon of light among all the negativity and your efforts will go a long way. You've truly defined what it means to be brothers bound by common Abrahamic roots.

NYPD Conspires Against Muslims

The phrase "conspiracy theorist" is widely used in the U.S. today. Usually, people who are dubbed conspiracy theorists are seen as insane, "off the rocker," "thinking too much," or "making a big deal out of nothing." One of the big ones that comes to mind are the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

The 9/11 conspiracy theorists argue that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were spearheaded by the U.S. government to provide a populus justification for waging war on Iraq. They even go far enough to argue that Bush Junior carried out the 9/11 attacks under his father's direction so that his father can get revenge for and attain closure with Desert Storm.

These theories have been dismissed by quite a few people simply because they are just that--theories. Further, they have been disproved time and again by various credible sources including INDEPENDENT investigation teams.

Another theory that popped up after the attacks was mainly circulated among Muslims. This theory asserts that the government is plotting against Muslims because they fear Islam. At first, I scoffed at it. Recently, though, this has changed.

I was given an article by a friend of mine that talks about informants planted to purposely make Muslims say things that will get them flagged as threats. But wait, why not other people? Simply because this only works with Muslims. You can't take a White man who doesn't even remotely look Arab and get him talking about "violent jihad" and expect people to take him seriously.

This case deals with the NYPD (New York Police Department.)

A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

Before you start the "well anyone can say that" argument, let me point out that this is from the Associated Press, so it lends itself some credibility.

I appreciate that Rahman actually came forward and disclosed what he did. I have a lot of respect for him for doing that. It must have been nerve-wracking, to know that what is actually going on in the local government and that his life could be at stake for whistle blowing.

"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."

Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Yes, you read that correctly. They actually tasked him with "being one of THEM." The operation is so undercover that he is not even told the name of his "handler."

Informants ... are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques ... tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.

Let me break this down for you. Since September 11, 2001, NYPD (and probably other law-enforcement departments as well) are planting actors inside Muslim communities. These actors have a simple mission objective: to put these Muslims in a spot where they will say something that can potentially be viewed as a threat, or they will use words that will raise alarms. For instance, if I say "I'm going to commit radical jihad," it is different from "I don't like radical Arabs." However, to the NYPD they are one and the same. I used the word "radical" so I must be "one of THEM."

Further, the NYPD will be quick to deny these allegations (of course, "don't mess with our surveillance--we're 'keeping Americans safe.'") That's what disgusts me about this incident. In the name of security, the government is quite literally spying on us and finding any excuse to drag us away. I've often joked with my friends that I'm probably on a watch list for keeping this blog and being open about my religious identity. The article brings this to reality, to where it's no longer a laughing matter. Apparently, going to a Mosque or Islamic center is also an act of terrorism. Thank you Taliban and Hamas for storing your bases under Muslim places of worship, and thank you Americans for being so ignorant and uneducated that you think they represent all of us. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this how the roundup of Japanese-Americans started after Pearl Harbor?

Anti-Islam Ads

Gathering support for a lost cause is often a challenging task. Usually, people tend to be smart enough to recognize a lie when they see or hear it. Today, a lot of people understand that Islam is nothing like the violent, demonic religion propagandists have made it out to be in order to swing public opinion in support of the war effort. This is why people like Pamela Geller are now turning to more aggressive means of spreading their propaganda, as if to wave their hands in the air and say "Hey! Remember me? Remember me? I'm still here. Remember..."

The anti-Islam propaganda campaign has turned to buying advertisement space on subways in Washington D.C. Imagine that. People no longer believe the anti-Islam rhetoric, so Pam Geller will start pushing her ideas onto a new group of people.

An anti-jihad ad that has caused a stir in other cities now has another destination for its message: the subways of Washington.

The ad by the American Freedom Defense Initiative states, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

If this was an actual government organization, we'd be in the full swing of the Islamocaust by now. But of course this is an independent organization so no one can stop them.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is working with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace, knows it can’t get the ads removed. Instead, the groups want the D.C. transit officials to help reduce the negative impact of the posters.

“With respect to your response in this matter, it is not our desire that (the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority) disallow advertisements that contain any political speech,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement. “I do believe there are measures WMATA can take to mitigate the affect hate speech has on the community.”

These measures include working with organizations representing affected Muslim and Arab communities, placing disclaimers to show that the transit authority does not support the views of the ads, and providing free space for advertisements focused on promoting, understanding and tolerance, the Islamic group says.

I like CAIR's approach. They're actually working with other organizations to counter the ads, not shouting "Jihad!" and blowing people up. Ironically, anti-Islam propagandists will still point to the Middle East and use the Arab definition of Islam instead of CAIR's definition so that they can further their agenda of ethnic cleansing.

“The counter-ads are fine from a free speech standpoint,” Geller said. “But where were these groups countering ‘hate’ when the Fogel family was murdered in Israel? Or when the Chabad house was targeted for a bloody jihad attack in Mumbai? Or when Christians are persecuted on an increasingly frequent and violent basis in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere?”

Geller, where were you when Israel killed Rachel Corrie? Where were you when a non-Muslim plotted to blow up forty-eight churches in the United States? Where were you when Anders Breivik killed over seventy people because he hated Muslims? If you want to use that argument against us, I can bring a lot more evidence forward to show you that these same people you are supporting are guilty of acts of terrorism just as bad as Arab terrorist groups, so your argument actually has no ground.

Authorities in Oklahoma have arrested and charged a 23-year-old man who they say planned to blow up 48 area churches.

Gregory Arthur Weiler II was arrested last week at a motel in Miami, Oklahoma, according to Ben Loring, first assistant district attorney for Ottawa County.

Authorities were tipped off to the plot by workers at the motel about 90 miles northeast of Tulsa. One discovered a duffel bag full of Molotov cocktails near the outside trash, while a room service employee reported suspicious items in Weiler's room, said Loring.

How conveniently these people ignore these other incidents! Instead of the foiled plan to blow up FORTY-EIGHT churches, another terrorist in New York, who has an Arab name, gets all the media attention for attempting to blow up a government building with ONE bomb.

Federal authorities running a sting operation arrested a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man, who came to the U.S. on a student visa and was allegedly planning to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb, officials said.

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was detained Wednesday after an alleged attempt to detonate the device, which was inert and part of an elaborate investigation by federal authorities and NYPD detectives.

Prosecutors say Nafis was apparently motivated by al Qaeda and traveled to the United States in January under the pretext of attending college in Missouri in order [to] carry out "a terrorist attack on U.S. soil" and to recruit members to form a terrorist cell.

It's not clear whether Nafis maintained al Qaeda ties, but authorities say he apparently claimed that the plot was his own, and that it was his sole motivation for the U.S. trip.

Practically everyone has heard of this latest attempt to blow up a government building, but almost no one has heard of the other man's plot. Sound familiar? This is an example of the clear bias in media coverage as well as public opinion. Pam Geller will ever so elegantly turn a blind eye to the attempted church bombings and point at one single Arab to call Islam a terrorist's religion, when she's hesitant to call Israel's government terrorism as well for killing Corie and then disclaiming all accountability.

The good news is, it is becoming clear that Geller's message is starting to fall on deaf ears thanks to CAIR and Muslims in the United States no longer hiding behind shuttered blinds. If she has to go as far as posting ads on subways denouncing Islam, then her message is indeed in a very dire state.

The Islamocaust Continues

For a long time now, I've been using the word Islamocaust to describe the current state of affairs concerning Muslims. From the day a cab driver was stabbed in New York for being Muslim, to the Park 51 controversy, from Geert Wilders' assault on Muslims to Adam Hasner's Free Speech Summit, the evidence is mounting in favor of the Islamocaust.

This latest incident further confirms the idea that Muslims are headed towards a dangerous period in time, a danger which Al-Assad's murder of Syrian civilians during Ramadhan is doing nothing to prevent.

A mosque in Joplin, Missouri, was burned to the ground early Monday [August 6th, 2012], just over a month after an attempted arson at the Islamic center, officials said.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the latest fire. The mosque's security cameras were destroyed in the blaze, according to Sharon Rhine of the Jasper County Sheriff's Office.

We are all familiar with the Holocaust of the 1940's. In American History courses, the Holocaust is, often times, a central theme for the entire course. We are taught about the mass murder of Jews and what methods were used to kill them (with none of the graphical material held back, regardless of whether the class is early high school or upper-classman university.)

In these classes, one thing is repeated over and over. Jewish people were used as scapegoats, and because of the intolerance and frustration of Germans, the Holocaust was permitted to happen. The teachers and professors emphasize that we must prevent such an incident from happening again by learning to coexist, not exclusively exist.

Think back to your late middle school and early high school days when they were teaching you about the Holocaust. Can you still hear your teacher's voice? I can. Now, bring yourself back to today. I'll wait a moment...

As you read the excerpt below, ask yourself "Did I think this was possible [years] years ago when I was learning about the Holocaust? Did I think history could POSSIBLY repeat itself in TODAY's 'civilized' world?"

Though investigators haven't determined the cause, [Kimberly] Kester suspects it to be another incident of arson.

On July 4, surveillance video caught a man approaching the mosque and throwing "an ignited object" on the roof, causing minor exterior damage, according to the FBI.

The FBI was offering a combined reward of $15,000 for information leading to the suspect arsonist in that incident.

Kester said the mosque was a target of other acts of vandalism. In September of 2008, a sign at the mosque was set on fire and was also determined to be arson, according to CNN affiliate KODE.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for increased police protection at other places of worship in the wake of the fire and is offering a $10,000 reward for information on the latest incident.

Here, the article talks about another incident which occurred on July 4th at the same mosque. So, the mosque was burned on July 4th and then again on August 6th. I bring this point to your attention because this is not a one-shot, once-in-a-lifetime-occurring incident. It has happened before, and it will happen again.

From Geert Wilders, to Adam Hasner, to the cab driver stabbing, to the Quran burning, to mosque burning. Sound familiar?

Before some of you start shaking your heads and saying "but you are not scapegoats like the Jews were--this is all your fault anyway," I humbly correct you.

Remember why Muslims are hated. We are hated because a minority who claims to be Muslim (and whose ideology I have denounced strongly often times) flew planes into the World Trade Centers. These people had political motives, not religious ones, but yet people act as if we, all Muslims everywhere, had some or other part in it; whether it's that we follow the teachings of the Quran and Abrahamic faiths, or that we pray "just like the terrorists do, with your asses in the air to your fucking god Allah who has a machine gun and wants you people to kill us all." In this way, we all become scapegoats for something that wasn't our doing, and we would never even dream of doing.

Now the problem is becoming a lot more serious. We all know by now that the shooter who went on a shooting spree in a Sikh temple actually wanted to target Muslims, but lacked the brain capacity to know the difference between the two religions. So, it was misfire, but his intents were very clear. Consider that for a minute, even my Muslim readers who don't accept the reality of the Islamocaust. WHAT IF he hadn't misfired, and had ACTUALLY shot up a mosque?