Not everyone in America hates Muslims, and many people are standing up for their right to have a community center near the ETC site. There’s Mayor Bloomberg, of course, and even Ron Paul. Just as important though are religious and secular people like these who support real American ideals of fairness, tolerance and equality as embodied in our fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution:
[T]he newly formed New York Neighbors for American Values made up of more than 40 religious and civic groups said the debate was creating fear and division and that it would fight for U.S. constitutional freedoms to be upheld.
“We were not attacked by the Muslim world,” said Donna O’Connor, spokeswoman for September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose pregnant daughter was killed in the World Trade Center attacks. “We 100 percent fully support the Islamic cultural center in New York City.”
The debate turned national ahead of November elections — as Republicans seek to wrest control of Congress from Democrats — and in New York the city’s many Muslim taxi drivers linked the controversy to an attack on a colleague.
I’m proud to be a citizen of New York today, and I honor the courage and compassion of Donna O’Connor who sees through the lies and recognizes that it was a gang of criminals who killed her daughter, criminals committing a hate crime, and not the “Muslim world.”
Sadly too many people, riled up by the fake outrage of the Republicans who have attempted to make this “community center” a cause celebre and a distraction in order to generate votes for their candidates this November by promoting hate, have acted in a cowardly and bigoted fashion toward Muslims and even people they perceive as Muslims.
The GOP has long employed a strategy to attack and instigate hatred against LGBT and Hispanic communities as “not real Americans.” This political strategy of “spreading the hate” has resulted in numerous murders and physical assaults based on hatred against LGBT and Hispanic individuals.
Indeed the links I’ve provide are only a few of the many, many incidents of hate crimes committed since Republicans and right wing news organizations have ramped up their rhetoric against these two groups of Americans. They aren’t hard to find.
(cont.)
The same pattern is now being repeated with this new Republican outcry against our fellow Americans who practice the Islamic faith (from a story in May of this year).
Recent weeks have witnessed a dramatic increase in violent acts against Arab and Muslim Americans. These incidents involve acts of domestic terrorism, vandalism, intimidation, and discriminatory campaign tactics.
A pipe bomb explodes outside the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, during the Isha/evening prayers (1).
The Islamic Association of Michigan (Masjid Umar-bin-Khattab) in Brownstown, Michigan, is vandalized twice this month (2).
An art exhibit by a Muslim graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is defaced and vandalized (3).
An 18 year-old male is brutally beaten by officers from an Illinois Police Station in retaliation for his mother’s attempt to file a complaint against the way her son had been treated (4).
In San Diego, a white man uses racial slurs during assault on Afghan-American taxi driver(5).
This is no coincidence. Republicans and Tea Party candidates and the right wing mouthpieces on talk radio and Fox News have all made the public promotion of hatred and bigotry against Muslims part of their daily routine.
For example:
Interestingly, a week before the bomb attack on the Florida mosque, Florida Republican congressional candidate Dan Fanelli ran ads openly endorsing racial and religious profiling using blatantly racist and offensive messages in his campaign commercials.
Here’s the ad in question:
Here’s another example of conservatives whipping up anger and fear against Muslims:
On September 12, at least sixteen Gainesville area pastors will read from the Quran as a response to the Gainesville church that has designated September 11 as “Burn a Koran Day”.
Or how about demagoguery from Newt Gingrich, supposedly a “moderate Republican voice:
According to Gingrich, Park51 is “an assertion of Islamist triumphalism,” part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”
Of course, it should come as no surprise that 20% of Americans now believe our President is a secret Muslim, up from 10% a year ago. Gee, I wonder how that could happen, considering the stunning lack of evidence that Obama has ever practiced the Islamic faith?
Among those who say Obama is a Muslim, 60 percent say they learned about his religion from the media, suggesting that their opinions are fueled by misinformation. […]
More than a third of conservative Republicans now say Obama is a Muslim, nearly double the percentage saying so early last year. Independents, too, are now more apt to see the president as a Muslim: Among independents, 18 percent say he is a Muslim, up eight percentage points.
What news media do these people watch and listen to? Fox News’ host of “opinion makers” and Rush Limbaugh. And who promotes anti-Muslim news the most? Take a good guess:
Debra Burlingame’s main claim to fame is that she is the founder of “9-11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.” But she is also a right wing partisan with the creds to prove it. She and Liz Cheney co-founded “Keep America Safe.” She is a member of an extremist anti-immigrant group, “9-11 Families for a Secure America” which is a nativist group launched by SPLC designated “hate group” Federation for Immigration Reform” and whose board member, Peter Gadiel, has made the rounds of Fox “opinion” shows in which he has articulated his anti-immigrant sentiments and accused Obama of being a liar. Burlingame, who is the sister of a pilot killed on 9-11, also made the rounds on Fox when she opposed plans for the establishment of the International Freedom Center at “Ground Zero” because it was too multi-cultural and not sufficiently anti Islamic terrorist. (After a segment on “the Factor,” she got into a bizarre conflict with a defender of the Center and had to be comforted by Brian Kilmeade when she started crying.) So it’s no surprise that Fox “News” would feature her on “Hannity” and “America Live” this week – ostensibly to discuss the lower Manhattan Islamic cultural center, but in reality to discuss her dislike of Obama and her fear of creeping Sharia. In addition to her TV appearances, Fox “News” also played the entire “Keep America Safe” commercial in the “context” of doing “news” about mosque opposition. This morning she appeared on Fox & Friends to do more Fox News Muslim bashing. Although she doesn’t speak for all 9-11 families, Fox “News” obviously doesn’t care. “News” anchor, Shannon Bream, actually said that Burlingame “has the authority” to speak out against the mosque thereby granting Burlingame an undeserved legitimacy and creating a false narrative. “Fair & Balanced” indeed!
Here’s the Keep America Safe ad referred to above which Fox aired as “news.” You decide if it deserves that label, or the one I prefer: Hate speech based on disinformation:
And how Fox covered it as “News:”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is part of a coordinated strategy to demonize yet another minority group in order to scare and enrage Americans into ignoring the fundamental principles embodied in the Constitution in order to turn out the Hate Vote for Republicans this year. I respect the people who lost family and friends in the WTC attacks. I personally knew individuals who died that day.
But I respect much more the individuals who are speaking out against this ginned up unadulterated hate fest. People such as the members of New York Neighbors for American Values. They haven’t given into hate. On the contrary they have taken a strong stand to defend the right of all Americans and not accept the twisted and demonizing rhetoric of right wing political opportunists as a valid response to what happened on 9/11.
New York Neighbors for American Values rallied for the first time at a municipal building near ground zero.
“I lost a 23-year-old son, a paramedic who gave his life saving Americans and their values,” Talat Hamdani said, and supporting the Islamic center and mosque “has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with standing up for our human rights, including freedom of religion.” […]
The new coalition was started by members of 40 civic and religious organizations that “spontaneously called each other, because we had the feeling that something very negative was happening,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of the New York office of the watchdog group Common Cause.
“This is not just about Muslims; this is about who we are as Americans,” said Lerner, adding that to oppose the Islamic center is “a slippery slope. There will always be people who are offended standing next to people who are different from others.” […]
Yes, there will always be those people, people who can be made to fear and hate those who are different from them. Different in religious faith, in race or ethnicity, in sexual orientation. The Republicans and conservatives have chosen to go down this dark path in order to frighten our fellow Americans into voting based on fear and hatred of those who may be different from them. It is up to the rest of us to stand up and make our voices heard, in the public square and at the ballot box that hatred is not a proper basis as to who to elect to positions of national power.
There is a reluctance to mention Nazis in relation to these types of discussions but in this case the point is valid, and all the moreso because Republicans like Newt Gingrich have used the spectre of Nazism as a justification to deny Americans their rights:
“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” Gingrich insisted, speaking of the museum where just a year ago a guard was killed by a white supremacist trying to enter the building with a gun.
Gingrich then went on to claim that “we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.”
“There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center,” he said.
Well, Mr Gingrich and all you purveyors of hatred on the right and in the Republican party, it the Nazis who deliberately demonized a minority in their midst to help them obtain obtain political power. How is that different from the demonization of Gays, Latinos and now Muslims that Republicans have undertaken as a tactic to win back seats in the Senate and the House? Isn’t that what your party has chosen to promote: fear and hatred against minorities? Isn’t that precisely what Republicans are doing: promoting hatred against those who are different from some of us in order to encourage people to vote for Republicans?
At what point do we say stop? Stop you vile hate mongers! Enough is enough! Stop dividing American against American, based not on political policy differences but on sheer bigotry, prejudice, fear and hate!
New York Neighbors for American Values has given us the answer: the time is now. Go to the link I just provided and sign their Coalition Statement. And then post it on your blogs and email it to ABC BNews, CBS News, NBC News, CNN and MsNBC.
Here’s their statement:
As Americans and as New Yorkers we are stronger when we work together. New York Neighbors for American Values embraces the American constitutional values of religious freedom, diversity, and equality. We stand together and rebuff the crude stereotypes meant to frighten and divide us.
New York Neighbors for American Values is proud to include Muslim-American community members and institutions in our community, as we do all communities working to strengthen the fabric of our vibrant city. We reject the idea that any neighborhood in our great City is off-limits to any particular community. We welcome the effort of Muslim New Yorkers to build institutions that serve their communities and our diverse City.
That’s not too much to ask is it?
