Robert Spencer & Pamela Geller Oppose Interfaith Activities

by Sheila Musaji

This past week, New York Mayor Bloomberg held his annual interfaith breakfast.  Fourteen Muslim leaders declined his invitation, and sent a letter to the Mayor explaining why.  The letter was also signed by many interfaith leaders from other religious groups including rabbis, a Roman Catholic nun and Protestant pastors.

Here is the full text of that letter (emphasis mine):

As Muslim religious, civic, and lay leaders in the city of New York, we have received the invitation to your 2011 annual year-end interfaith breakfast. We recognize from our experience over the years that such events can be a very good opportunity for the city’s leaders to come together for the betterment of our society, in the spirit of interfaith cooperation. We strongly value the civic and interfaith relationships celebrated at this event. However, this year we have decided to respectfully decline your invitation.

We believe with heartfelt conviction that during times when a community’s rights are being flagrantly violated its leaders cannot in good conscience appear at a public gathering with the government official who is ultimately responsible and smile for the cameras as if all is well, when we know full well that it is not.

Last year, we appreciated your principled position in defense of Park51 and American Muslims as we endured attacks from hate groups and opportunistic politicians who promoted un-American, divisive rhetoric. We also appreciated your compassion and responsiveness when two horrific fires in the Bronx resulted in the perishing of many members of a Muslim family and the destruction of a Mosque.

However, despite these welcome and positive actions, very disturbing revelations have come to light regarding the City’s treatment of Muslim New Yorkers. This past August, the Associated Press released a series of investigative reports that detailed how, over the past decade since 9/11, the NYPD has been monitoring and profiling virtually every layer of NYC Muslim public life, often with no suspicion of wrongdoing. These reports were based in large part on leaked NYPD documents and interviews with unidentified former and current NYPD officials. According to the investigation, the police department monitored and collected information on New Yorkers at about 250 mosques, schools, and businesses throughout the city, simply because of their religion and not because they exhibited suspicious behavior.

Mayor Bloomberg, the extent of these civil rights violations is astonishing, yet instead of calling for accountability and the rule of law, you have thus far defended the NYPD’s misconduct. We, on the other hand, believe that such measures threaten the rights of all Americans, and deepen mistrust between our communities and law enforcement. We are not alone in our belief. Many New Yorkers continue to express a variety of concerns centered on a lack of law enforcement accountability in our city, from stop and frisk procedures in African American and Spanish-speaking communities, to the tactics used in the evacuation of Zuccotti Park.

At least 34 members of the U.S. Congress, including a ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee and eight Members of the House Judiciary Committee, have expressed similar concerns about the NYPD and called for the House Judiciary Committee and the Department Of Justice to investigate the surveillance program.

We believe it is unequivocally wrong and fundamentally misguided to invest law enforcement resources in religious or racial profiling, rather than investigating suspicious activity. We wholeheartedly agree with the words of Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), who said:

“I know that public safety must be of the utmost concern to enforcement agencies. I also know that we must not single out a group based solely upon their ethnicity or religion, especially when such actions undermine the sanctity of the Constitution and the security of our homeland.”

We are deeply disturbed that to date we have only heard your words of strong support for these troubling policies and violations of our rights. We are equally disturbed by Commissioner Kelly’s denials of what we know to be true as verified by the leaked documents. We echo the public statement of Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY):

“It is the mayor’s job, I might point out, to ensure that the Police Department, under his command, obeys the laws and respects the rights of all New Yorkers.”

Muslims comprise no less than 10% of the city’s population. As New Yorkers we call on you to safeguard our freedoms through robust and independent oversight of police activities. We seek your clear, unambiguous, public support for the rights and privacy of all New Yorkers, including Muslims; and a condemnation of all policies that profile and target communities and community groups solely based on their religion or the color of their skin. We desire equality and safety for ourselves and our children. Like many other New Yorkers, we are confident that our city would benefit from increased transparency in government, and greater police accountability. We request a meeting at the earliest possible date between yourself and a delegation that we will form to discuss these issues.

As we await your response regarding these issues, we pray that the New Year will usher in a more just and healthy chapter in our relationship with both you and the New York City Police Department.

This seems like a very reasonable letter requesting serious consideration of a civil rights issue that ultimately affects all Americans. 

Nevertheless, Robert Spencer sees this letter as Muslim leaders attempting “to strongarm Bloomberg into dropping anti-terror efforts”, and a “a naked attempt to intimidate the already compliant Bloomberg into dropping the last vestiges of anti-terror efforts in New York City.”

Spencer took exception to a statement by Rabbi Michael Weisser quoted in a BBC article

Rabbi Michael Weisser, however, said beforehand that he would attend the breakfast after Muslim friends urged him to use the opportunity to raise their concerns with the mayor.  Rabbi Weisser told the Associated Press he had no problem with the police department following leads, but objected to any official targeting of Muslim organisations. “From a Jewish perspective, it reminded me of things that were going on in the 1930s in Germany,” Rabbi Weisser said.

  For Spencer, this statement of concern by Rabbi Weisser is “monstrous, both for its trivialization of the suffering of Jews in Nazi Germany, and for its libelous slur against the NYPD.”

This is the second time this month that Spencer has attacked interfaith leaders.  As Jacob M. Hausner reported

It is no surprise that extremist right-wing anti-Muslim polemicist Robert Spencer is on the prowl, targeting peacemakers and interfaith leaders. In a recent blogpost Spencer targets Roman Catholic Archbishop Emeritus of Washington D.C., Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and ISNA president Imam Mohamed Magid.

He begrudges the fact that Cardinal McCarrick “respects Imam Mohamed Magid”.  Spencer rehashes his favorite method of attack; smear and libel. He claims the Imam has ties to the “Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.” 

What does Spencer cite to prove his claims about the Imam? The ubiquitously termed “February 2008 report.” By not naming the report or its authors Spencer hopes the reader will lazily trust that it is a credible source. The fact is the so-called “report” is nothing except more Islamophobic yarn spun by the anti-Islam industry.

The report was put together by the Mapping Sharia Project led by David Yerushalmi, David Gaubatz and Frank Gaffney under the auspicious of SANE (Society of American National Existence). You may remember David Gaubatz as the co-author of Muslim Mafia which asserted that Muslim spy interns had infiltrated the government; Newsweek labeled this one of the top ten wackiest conspiracy theories of 2009. SANE is well known as a racist organization, and the Mapping Sharia Project has been discredited for its indulgence in conspiracy myths and shoddy methodology.

Amongst the main myths forwarded in the “report” is the false claim that 3 out of 4 mosques in the United States “preach anti-Western Jihadist hate,” including the ADAMS Center. The truth it turns out is that this report has never been made public,  the link that Spencer provides is to a World Net Daily article from 2008 claiming to report the findings of an “undercover survey.”

Spencer’s other attempt at tying Imam Magid to the “Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas” is to claim that ISNA has “admitted” ties to both organizations. To do so he doesn’t rely on statements by ISNA or its members (i.e. Facts), but again returns to the anti-Islam echo chamber to gather “information.” Spencer cites pseudo-journalist turned “terror expert” Steven Emerson. Steven Emerson’s terror expertise led him in the past to respond to the Oklahoma City Bombing by claiming it showed “a Middle Eastern trait. It goes without saying that ISNA has never claimed to endorse, support or be in any way associated with either the “Muslim Brotherhood” or “Hamas.”

Spencer seeks to give Cardinal McCarrick the “Lowe’s treatment,” trying to intimidate him into repudiating Imam Magid through falsities covered by a thinly disguised undercurrent of bigotry. It must be said that such defamation of real peacemakers and freedom fighters is projection on the part of Spencer and his allies.

The real threat and subversion in this country is being carried out by Spencer and his allies in the radical right-wing. They are the ones attacking freedom of religion by lobbying for so-called anti-Sharia’ legislation whose real intent is to ban Islam, protesting the construction of Mosques and furthering the idea that all Muslim leaders and organizations are “fifth columns.”

Hussein Rashid, who did attend the breakfast, also expressed his concerns about the surveillance, and gave his reasons for attending

The Mayor is hosting his annual Interfaith Breakfast on Friday, December 30, and the New York Times is reporting that Muslim leaders will be boycotting the event. I do know that the request for a boycott was initiated by Muslim leaders, but was sent to leaders from several faith communities. I was invited to the breakfast and to participate in the boycott. Based on what we know, I find the spying program deplorable and the interfaith boycott important, but I will attend the breakfast.

Earlier this year, when the story about NYPD spying broke, one of the people they were spying on was someone who was invited by the Mayor to an Eid dinner. The dark joke many of had been making—that even though we worked with local and federal agencies because we loved this country and we are as much at threat as anyone else, we were suspect—had been proven a reality. Simply by virtue of our heritage, we are not afforded the same rights as Americans.

This boycott makes it obvious that while the NYPD is targeting Muslims, they are violating the rights of Americans. The issue is not a Muslim one, but an American one. My goal in going to make sure my compatriots from other faith traditions understand how serious this threat is. If I am suspect, and based on what we know of the NYPD’s scattershot approach I have no reason to believe I am not, then anyone I associate with is suspect. I intend to meet as many faith leaders as I can tomorrow and ask them how they feel about spied upon by the NYPD.

I am not speaking hypothetically. We have seen this encroachment of extraordinary circumstances into daily life already. Juan Cole talks about how the NYPD and Department of Homeland Security worked with the FBI against the Occupy Wall Street group, with the approval of Mayor Bloomberg. What the NYPD is doing is not surveillance, with probable cause and warrants. This is spying and infiltrating our lives. The are coming after Muslims and no one is saying anything. They are coming after social justice activists and no one is saying anything.

I am going to the breakfast to make people realize this is not my issue, but our issue. I want to make as many suspects as possible, because we are all suspects now.

Robert Spencer and his partner Pamela Geller, seem determined to constantly look for ways to marginalize and demonize Muslims and Islam, to paint all Muslims with a broad brush.  Discouraging interfaith efforts appears to be their new cause celebre. 

Earlier this year, Geller was outraged that the ADL had formed an Interfaith Coalition on Mosques to work to counter the anti-mosque hysteria.  Geller wrote an article Foxman must go in which she called this coalition Foxman’s latest dhimmi-Jew stunt in which he was kowtowing to the Islamic jihad.  She also called Muslim participation in such interfaith projects “inter-faith” war tactics of the Islamic supremacists 

Geller was also opposed to the interfaith “mosque-synagogue twinning” project.  She said that the Jews participating in the project were guilty of “Jewpidity” and were “Jewicidal”.  Spencer must have also agreed with Geller as he reposted her article.

As always, the bigoted ranting of these Islamophobes agitates their readers into a state of blind and mindless anti-Muslim bigotry.

Here are a few of the comments below Spencer’s article on Bloomberg’s prayer breakfast:

— As with the Nazis, no matter how much you appease the Muslims, it’s never enough. Kapo Bloomberg should stop grovelling and develop some harbitude, before he gets turned into a lampshade. — I know that Islam is of the devil, and like the works of Satan, are planned in darkness, so that Islam ‘s nefarious activities must be keep from the light lest they be exposed for what they really are. — Mayor Bloomberg is a Jewish traitor. He spits on the graves of the innocent three thousand murdered on 9/11. Nothing this man does surprises me. He would have betrayed his own people during the Holocaust. We have a name for that kind of treason. “Kapo.” Look what this man has already done to appease our enemies. — Muslims are not compatible with civilization. —  don’t know what the Rabbis and ministers are doing at the interfaith dinners anyway.  An interfaith event implies that there is a common ground between the attending faiths. What does Judaism or Christianity have in common with Islam? Islam’s Allah has no relationship to the god of either the Old Testament or New Testament. The figure of Jesus is completely different. The core teachings are completely different.  Muslim organizations use the interfaith events to garner respectability. — Rabbi Weisser might be operating under the mistaken notion that picking up a frozeen rattlesnake and cuddling it back to activity might make him feel he is expressing the innate love and sense of justice and compassion of his “pintele Yid,” but he needs to realize that most rattlesnakes do indeed have a hard bite. — The New York lawyers need to file suit agaisnt mosques, CAIR and white-washers of Islam, such as Bloomberg and prove in court that Islam itself is incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it is a HATE speech, which is against US Constitution. Sue them and thus have them to defend themselves rather then attacking our values — Thank God for the likes of Robert Spencer, a defender of freedom, and for all the excellent commenters at Jihad Watch who help us all focus on the truth that is the putrid odor of Islam, and the vile evil the garbage of Islam represents.

In Spencer’s article, he goes through a list of actual restrictions and state-sanctioned persecutions carried out against the Jewish community in Germany leading up to the holocaust, and says that this is not now happening in the United States.  And, therefore, Rabbi Weisser is wrong to compare in any way the anti-Semitism in Germany, and the Islamophobia in America. 

It seems impossible for any reasonable person not to see that the open bigotry and hatred expressed in these comments is startlingly similar to that expressed against Jews previously, and that such bigotry was the first step in what led to the possibility of citizens accepting those restrictions, violations of rights, and ultimately a “final solution” as reasonable.

I pray that interfaith activities continue, and that people of goodwill can come together and find ways to counter bigotry and live together in peace.

SEE ALSO

Muslim Boycott of Bloomberg’s Interfaith Breakfast, Hussein Rashid http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/husseinrashid/5539/muslim_boycott_of_bloomberg%E2%80%99s_interfaith_breakfast/

NYC mayor doesn’t address Muslim boycott of event http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/12/30/nyc-mayor-doesnt-address-muslim-boycott-of-event/

New York Muslims to snub Bloomberg breakfast in surveillance protest http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/12/29/new-york-muslims-to-snub-bloomberg-breakfast-in-surveillance-protest/