Interfaith Group Blasts Horowitz' Islamophobia Promotion Week

AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2007.

The authoritarian mindset promoted by Horowitz and his gang of touring bigots is the real fascistic threat facing America today.

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Editor's note: the following is a statement released by Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.

Under the leadership of David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Rick Santorum, and their neoconservative colleagues "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" is taking place October 22-26 on many campuses across America, including USC and UCLA. We believe that this is a calculated strategy to inflame fear of Muslims and ultimately to soften up the American public to support the next assault in the "War on Terror:" war against Iran. The audience is not so much the young people and their professors on campus but the unsuspecting public – you and us.

Several days after the attacks of September 11, 2001 Ann Coulter asserted: "We should invade their [Muslim's] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Last week she told Donny Deutsch: "… we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians." Now she is scheduled to take her message to academic institutions, to challenge their practices of freedom of inquiry and speech. The targets are Muslims, participants in Women's Studies Centers and academics who do not espouse the neoconservative litany. But the ultimate victim of these hate-fests will be America's reputation for fair play, civility, tolerance and liberty.

Like their distant cousins, "The Marching Seasons" in Northern Ireland and the Oktoberfest of Nazi Germany, the week-long "educational programs" called "Islamo-Fascism Week" are centrally planned in off-campus propaganda "institutes." Talk-radio and Fox-television "personalities" will spend a week on a spree with Horowitz and Coulter in the lead -- vilifying Muslims, women's aspirations, and the life of the mind. Most Americans have already been urged to be suspicious of Muslims, educated women, and "pointy-headed" intellectuals. Horowitz and Coulter will fan the hate, masquerading as people seeking "open discussion" while delivering "dire warnings."

These are the sentiments of haters. Coulter's remarks, barely noticed when they were directed toward Muslims, now target Jews. In Coulter's imaginings a perfect America has only Christians – everyone else is here on sufferance until they are "perfected." According to Coulter's God, they must cease to be who they are since Coulter's religious truth is singularly correct. We recall the brave words of Pastor Martin Neimoller in Nazi Germany:

They came for the Communists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Communist;

They came for the Socialists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Socialist;

They came for the labor leaders, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a labor leader;

They came for the Jews, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Jew;

Then they came for me - And there was no one left to object.

One of America's greatest achievements used to be our highly trained college graduates -- visitors from other countries, immigrants and native-born -- who were inspired by the life and learning that they experienced on campus to work for liberty and justice. Now we are teaching them a different set of values. Mr. Horowitz is creating scapegoats -- in effect creating "new enemies" -- who must be silenced in the run-up to the war against Iran.

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Anyone who listens to .. [Report this comment] Posted by: donl51 on Oct 24, 2007 1:41 PM Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] Ann Coulter or follows her rhetoric,cannot him/or herself be taken seriously,that women is a war monger and should be in uniform carrying a weapon, she is part of what makes us all look bad in the eyes of others,she's wasted intelligence ,she is witty,but she preys on those she knows she can get over!Put her up against someone w/equal wit her arguements become slush. Then there's M.MAlkin need I go on? [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] The Article [Report this comment] Posted by: donl51 on Oct 24, 2007 1:48 PM Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] Itself is very well researched and written [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] Judeo-Christian Fascism [Report this comment] Posted by: wawa on Oct 24, 2007 2:27 PM Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] "This is a time when there seems to be a particular need for men of philosophical persuasion-that is to say, friends of WISDOM and TRUTH-to join together...We Jews should be, and remain, the carriers and patrons of spiritual values. But we should also be aware of the fact that these spiritual values are and always have been the common goal of mankind."-Einstein It's NOT just me, but 21st Century Rabbi's challenging Judeo-Christian Fascism and reminding the world of Micah 6:8: “You have been told, O mortal, what is good and what the Eternal requires of you: only to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk modestly with your God.” Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President Union for Reform Judaism said: "There exists in this country among all Americans — whether Jews, Christians, or non-believers — a huge and profound ignorance about Islam. It is not that stories about Islam are missing from our media; there is no shortage of voices prepared to tell us that fanaticism and intolerance are fundamental to Islamic religion, and that violence and even suicide bombing have deep Koranic roots. There is no lack of so-called experts who are eager to seize on any troubling statement by any Muslim thinker and pin it on Islam as a whole. Thus, it has been far too easy to spread the image of Islam as enemy, as terrorist, as the frightening unknown. "How did this happen? "How did it happen that Christian fundamentalists, such as Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham, make vicious and public attacks against your religious tradition? "How did it happen that when a Muslim congressman takes his oath of office while holding the Koran, Dennis Prager suggests that the congressman is more dangerous to America than the terrorists of 9/11? "How did it happen that a member of Congress, Tom Tancredo, now running for President, calls for the bombing of Mecca and Medina? "Even more important, how did it happen that law-abiding Muslims in this country can find themselves condemned for dual-loyalty and blamed for the crimes of terrorists they abhor? "And how did it happen that in the name of security, Muslim detainees and inmates are exposed to abusive and discriminatory treatment that violates the most fundamental principles of our constitution? "One reason that all of this happens is profound ignorance..." The Rest: October 23, 2007 WAWA BLOG: http://www.wearewideawake.org [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] FACTS [Report this comment] Posted by: wawa on Oct 24, 2007 2:33 PM Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] The attack on free speech, deep thought, eye witness accounts from occupied Palestinian territory and "intellectual freedom in the US that has grown more aggressive in recent months…Over the past few years, Israel's US defenders have stepped up their campaign by establishing a network of institutions (such as Campus Watch, Stand With Us, the David Project, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and the disingenuously named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East) dedicated to the task of monitoring our campuses and bringing pressure to bear on those critical of Israeli policies. By orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning campaigns, falsely raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often grossly distorted media coverage and recruiting local and national politicians to their cause, they have severely disrupted academic processes, the free function of which once made American universities the envy of the world. "When professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer drafted an essay critical of the effect of Israel's lobbying organizations on US foreign policy, they had to publish it in the London Review of Books because their original American publisher declined to take it on. With the original article expanded into a book that has now been released, their invitation to speak at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was retracted because of outside pressure… "When President Carter published Palestine: Peace not Apartheid last year, he was attacked for having dared to use the word "apartheid" to describe Israel's manifestly discriminatory policies in the West Bank." http://www.electronicintifada.net/v2/article9051.shtml A few weeks ago, the University of St. Thomas' president Father Dennis Dease, after pressure from a few local Jewish leaders, canceled a scheduled presentation by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. After over 2,700 emails were sent to the University by concerned citizens defending freedom of speech, Father Dease issued the following statement on October 10, 2007: "One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds. Therefore, I feel both humbled and proud to extend an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the University of St. Thomas. I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation, and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do." Dear American reader, you should have the facts too! And they are on the WAWA Blog: http://www.wearewideawake.org/ October 24, 2007: Censoring Gravitas, Blowing Out Doors and Tearing Down Walls [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] » I agree we are in danger of fascism. I hate censorship too and view haters like Horowitz as evil. Posted by: yellow The Left's Response to Coulter [Report this comment] Posted by: wawa on Oct 24, 2007 2:37 PM Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] I don't pay a dime for the ad my editors at Peoples Voice run half way down the right margin that has my face and website link and state's: The Left's Response to Coulter http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/ [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] There is nothing wrong with telling the truth! [Report this comment] Posted by: DrColes on Oct 26, 2007 4:37 PM Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] Islamic Fascism declared war against the U.S. and all non-Islamic nations. The truth is the truth. Why would any free human what to suppress this? http://tinyurl.com/2znnvl [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] I am quite concerned about the growth of HATE in US Society as it enters the mainstream. [Report this comment] Posted by: yellow on Oct 29, 2007 10:53 AM Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] The growth of hate is very disturbing in the US today. The trend toward scapegoating Muslims is frightening. All that is left is to intern them as was done to the Japanese in California during WWII. Haters like Malkin, Coulter and others are openly advocating mass internment without trial or due process. These people are the real Un-Americans because they advocate disgusting, racist practices alien to democratic beliefs. There is enough hate in the mainstream media. Please don't allow it on the Alternet. [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5] Islamic Fascism declared war against the U.S. [Report this comment] Posted by: turkeybut on Oct 31, 2007 1:43 PM Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent] This is all bull sh#t, the only islamic fascism is the neocon's. Bush is blood to bin laden financially and kisses arabs all the time. It's all about oil and control over the world. as for Ann Coulter she is a neocon pretenting to be a christian. The only ones she has fooled are christians because they are all brainwashed and believe Bush is a born again christian. Bush is the born again satan and the stupid christians worship the anti-christ. Bush wants christians to start wars with other religions to hide what he is really doing to America. [« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

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» I agree we are in danger of fascism. I hate censorship too and view haters like Horowitz as evil. Posted by: yellow