In a segment on "The Daily Show" last night titled "Extremist Makeover Homeland Edition," Jon Stewart addressed the Ground Zero mosque for the third time as of late, this time giving mosque critics FOX News a taste of their own medicine.
Incensed by Rampant Islamophobia, Muslim American Scholar Strikes Back
SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J., Aug. 19, 2010 — Incensed with how much the American public are lied to about Islam (the latest rampant Islamophobia regarding building the mosque near Ground Zero and the planned burning of the Holy Quran in a Florida church), well-known Muslim American scholar Moustafa Zayed struck back by releasing the anticipated book “The lies about Muhammad: An answer to the book "the truth about Muhammad"” in which he refuted, paragraph by paragraph, all false claims and allegations about Muhammad and Islam in the well-publicized Islam-bashing book “The Truth about Muhammad” by Robert Spencer. Zayed explains that, “My contention is that all misperceptions that the average American has about Islam (from what jihad truly is, to what women, minorities, and human rights are), are not just outright fallacious but, worse, are the total opposite of the truth!”
Aired today on CNN's American Morning and repeated throughout the day, the story features an anti-extremism video we produced last month called "Injustice Cannot Defeat Injustice," featuring bold messages by nine prominent and theologically diverse imams and shaykhs, as well as Shaykh Yassir Qadhi of the AlMaghrib Institute, and the online forum MuslimMatters.org
Angry Right-Wing Christian Protesters Descend on Mosque
BRIDGEPORT -- About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling "Islam is a lie," angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.
"Jesus hates Muslims," they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy week of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. "Murderers," he shouted.
Police arrived on the scene to separate the groups, but said no arrests were made.
Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, was yelling at the worshipers with a bullhorn.
"This is a war in America and we are taking it to the mosques around the country," he said.
Mustafa Salahuddin, an Ansonia police officer and parishioner at the mosque, calmly watched the protesters from the mosque's parking area.
"This is unfortunate, but it's a free country," he commented on the protest. "But I believe Jesus would have been appalled by this. We revere Jesus the same way they do."
After about an hour the protesters packed up their placards and fliers into a couple of vans and drove off.
Terrorism Against Jacksonville, Florida Islamic Community Goes Under-Reported
Hey, have you heard about all the terrorist attacks that have been going on down in the Jacksonville, Florida region? Probably not, actually, because the would-be victims of these attacks have been members of Florida's Islamic community, and I'm pretty sure they aren't deemed eligible by the media to be victims of terrorism. Which is too bad, because they are getting terrorized like the dickens!
Back in May, someone planted and detonated a pipe bomb at the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida while 60 people were inside. Fortunately nobody was hurt. But despite the fact that this bomber managed to do what Captain Crotchfire Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad couldn't do -- successfully explode a device -- the event failed to get as much media attention, for, you know, some reason.
Flashforward to this week, and we find that "a Florida Muslim leader named Joshua Evans was at the center of an anthrax scare, when he received a 'tissue stuffed inside with white powder' in the mail." As Amanda Terkel points out:
When I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.
Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.
“Yunus Muhammad” says in the interview that the Qur’an instructs Muslims to ‘terrorize the disbelievers.’ It does no such thing. The Qur’an instructs Muslims to live at peace with non-Muslims who are at peace with them.
The verse to which this individual referred was in the chapter of the Spoils (al-Anfal), 8:60:
Wa a`iddu lahum ma istata`tum min quwwatin wamin ribati ‘lkhayli turhibuna bihi `aduwwa Allahi wa`aduwwakum
Which means, “Prepare against them all the power, and all the war horses that you can, whereby to strike fear into the enemies of God and your enemies.”
” in which he refuted, paragraph by paragraph, all false claims and allegations about Muhammad and Islam in the well-publicized Islam-bashing book “The Truth about Muhammad” by Robert Spencer. Zayed explains that, “My contention is that all misperceptions that the average American has about Islam (from what jihad truly is, to what women, minorities, and human rights are), are not just outright fallacious but, worse, are the total opposite of the truth!”
