In a review of my Hometown Jihad article published last month by FrontPage Magazine, the Columbus Dispatch, our hometown liberal fish-wrapper, this past Friday (Muslim Milestone: Islamic school marks 10 years of progress, but suspicions endure) likened me to a Neo-Nazi and devoted significant space on the front page of its weekly "Faith and Values" section to promote an open house sponsored by the local Muslim school I identified in that article, Sunrise Academy, which has direct ties to Islamic terrorism, and defending them from the points I raised in that article.
The Dispatch goes out of its way to infer that I'm a Neo-Nazi. Rather than go to the trouble of actually finding something I said that could be construed as racist hate speech, the reporter, Felix Hoover, cherry-picked a quote from an unrelated article published elsewhere on the FrontPage site and authored by someone I've never met or communicated to level the charge.
Here's what the Dispatch article said:
FrontPageMag.com is edited by conservative activist David Horowitz, known for his campaign against perceived liberal bias on college campuses. Another article in the April 3 edition said U.S. immigration policy should be shaped by the nation's "overwhelmingly Christian" and "overwhelmingly white"' heritage.
Did you read that? "Christian" "white" "heritage"? What else could he mean but that FrontPage Magazine is a White-Power front, and that I am, by implication, a Neo-Nazi?
But is that what the article he cites actually says? In fact, it doesn't. Here's what Lawrence Auster wrote in his April 3rd article, "Are We Really a Nation of Immigrants ":
But is that what the article he cites actually says? In fact, it doesn't. Here's what Lawrence Auster wrote in his April 3rd article, "Are We Really a Nation of Immigrants ":
It is also blatantly unfair to make the factoid that "we are all descended from immigrants" our sole guide to national policy, when there are so many other important and true facts about America that could also serve as guides. For example, throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization—in religion overwhelmingly Christian (and mainly Protestant Christian), in race (until the post-1965 immigration) overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn't those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we're all "descended from immigrants?"
Auster never claims that "U.S. immigration policy should be shaped by the nation's 'overwhelmingly Christian' and 'overwhelmingly white' heritage," as Hoover alleges, but I guess that doesn't matter when you're manufacturing bias or making me the object of a game of "Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler". It was close enough to make it seem like he was saying something suspicious enough to tie it to me and to discredit my article. Admittedly, that was a lot easier than dealing with the substance of my article.
But who said that the mainstream media was biased?
After the Dispatch article was published I emailed Mr. Hoover and asked him how he arrived at his interpretation of Auster's comments, and what if anything they actually had to do with my article, but as of yet, no word. Should I be surprised?
I should note that when Hometown Jihad was first published, I contacted the Local News desk at the Dispatch to see if they had any interest in a follow-up. I was told categorically that they were not. And yet, when Sunrise Academy contacted the paper two weeks later, the matter was put on the front-burner, though Mr. Hoover did withhold his article for several weeks until the day before Sunrise Academy's open house, which his article vigorously promoted as if his article was intended as a public service announcement. Might this all just be just coincidence?
I should note that when Hometown Jihad was first published, I contacted the Local News desk at the Dispatch to see if they had any interest in a follow-up. I was told categorically that they were not. And yet, when Sunrise Academy contacted the paper two weeks later, the matter was put on the front-burner, though Mr. Hoover did withhold his article for several weeks until the day before Sunrise Academy's open house, which his article vigorously promoted as if his article was intended as a public service announcement. Might this all just be just coincidence?
As I mentioned in Hometown Jihad, each month at Sunrise Academy a local resident, international terror apologist and raging anti-Semite, Salah Sultan, delivers lectures at the school. Even according to the Dispatch, he previously served as the religious director there. Sultan is a close associate of Muslim Brotherhood cleric and notorious terror apologist Youssef Qaradawi, who the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith recently identified as a "Theologian of Terror" (note: Salah Sultan is one of the few individuals apart from Qaradawi named in the ADL report). His terror connections notwithstanding, Sultan hired him as faculty for the Islamic-American University, which Sultan founded, despite the fact that Qaradawi has been banned from entering the US because of his outspoken advocacy of Islamist terrorism.
Sultan sits on Qaradawi's European Council for Fatwa and Research, which has issued rulings justifying suicide bombings against Israel, and he issues "live fatwas" for Qaradawi's Islamonline.net website. As I note in Hometown Jihad, in 2003 Qaradawi issued a fatwa authorizing suicide bombings, declaring such acts as "martyrdom", and that they did not fall under the Qur'anic prohibition against suicide. In 2004, Qaradawi and 92 other extremist leaders authorized the killing and abduction of American civilians working in Iraq, identifying them as "invaders".
I think I can be forgiven for confusing these as "active connections" between Sunrise Academy and Sultan.
In a follow-up email to Mr. Hoover after our face-to-face interview, I provided him with information and source documentation that Salah Sultan shared the podium at a 2003 Muslim American Society (the US front group for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) event in Philadelphia with notorious Neo-Nazi William Baker, the once-chairman of the Populist Party, which under his tenure pushed for the revival of segregation-era laws and later would nominate David Duke for President. None of this was addressed in the Dispatch article. Of course, if I had any of these open connections to Neo-Nazis it would have been mentioned in the first line of this story (Wait! Didn't they make the inference anyways?), but the Columbus Dispatch gave Salah Sultan a pass.
The real kicker never mentioned in the Dispatch article is that a local group of liberal usual suspects, the Interfaith Alliance of Central Ohio, began circulating emails (one of which was sent to FrontPage managing editor, Jamie Glazov) alleging that my Hometown Jihad article was "inciting violence against the children of the school" and that I was engaging in "hate speech". In the email, which included an open letter from one of the teachers at Sunrise Academy, the school denied any association with the Muslim American Society, as I alleged in my article. And yet just last month MAS held a youth conference here in Central Ohio. And who was listed among the sponsors of the event? That's right: Sunrise Academy. They were even listed as sponsors on the official flier for the event. Would you think that the Dispatch pointed out this flagrant misrepresentation in their article? I didn't think so.
In their vigorous defense of Salah Sultan and Sunrise Academy, no mention was made by the Interfaith Alliance of what these "interfaith" leaders thought of Sultan's recorded anti-Semitic tirades, quotes of which I provided in Hometown Jihad. Or how about his "interfaith" fatwa published on his own website, which prohibits Palestinians from selling land to Jews in Israel:
I also wonder how the members of the Interfaith Alliance, a number of members of whom are women clergy in mainstream Protestant denominations, would respond to Sultan's statements on marriage, family and women's rights, like his recent fatwa ruling that women are not allowed to go to the store without the husband's permission (4th fatwa), or his ruling telling an American woman who married a Muslim man who later got married to a second wife that if she objects to the second marriage and wants to keep her marriage she better get pregnant soon (3rd fatwa)?
Yes, that Salah Sultan is a real feminist on top of being an "interfaith" activist.
As I said in my previous article, what concerns me most about Salah Sultan is that he is my neighbor; and as a result of his well-known terror ties, he poses a standing threat to the community I was raised in and recently moved back to. He not only resides here, but freely spreads his message of hate and violence in our community. Just is troubling is that a local Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, while claiming to be run by peace-loving, moderate Muslims, unapologetically hosts an individual like Salah Sultan. I must admit that I wasn't surprised that the mainstream media in Columbus and the liberal interfaith "usual suspects" were so eager to serve as useful idiots and rose to the occasion to help defend Sultan and Sunrise Academy from the negative publicity that resulted from my article.
If anything, my experience should serve as a warning to America, because there are probably hundreds or possibly thousands of communities across the country just like Hilliard, Ohio, which unbeknownst to most residents harbor would-be jihadists. At present, these individuals and groups plead moderation and sign statements opposing terrorism, but they nurture hatred for America and defend hatred and violence when they think no one is looking. This faux moderation is a deliberate part of their strategy, as Salah Sultan made clear in a speech he gave in April 2004 for the New York chapter of MAS, where he said:
According to Sunrise Academy, they have no active connection with Salah Sultan. This despite the fact that:
1) Sultan delivers lectures at the Sunrise Academy facility once a month;
2) Sultan directs the Islamic Education & Fatwa Center, which is sponsored by the same parent organization as Sunrise Academy, the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus;
3) Sultan spoke in conjunction Sunrise Academy's annual Iftar fundraiser last October;
4) Sultan's website is promoted and linked to on Sunrise Academy's own website.
I think I can be forgiven for confusing these as "active connections" between Sunrise Academy and Sultan.
In a follow-up email to Mr. Hoover after our face-to-face interview, I provided him with information and source documentation that Salah Sultan shared the podium at a 2003 Muslim American Society (the US front group for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) event in Philadelphia with notorious Neo-Nazi William Baker, the once-chairman of the Populist Party, which under his tenure pushed for the revival of segregation-era laws and later would nominate David Duke for President. None of this was addressed in the Dispatch article. Of course, if I had any of these open connections to Neo-Nazis it would have been mentioned in the first line of this story (Wait! Didn't they make the inference anyways?), but the Columbus Dispatch gave Salah Sultan a pass.
The real kicker never mentioned in the Dispatch article is that a local group of liberal usual suspects, the Interfaith Alliance of Central Ohio, began circulating emails (one of which was sent to FrontPage managing editor, Jamie Glazov) alleging that my Hometown Jihad article was "inciting violence against the children of the school" and that I was engaging in "hate speech". In the email, which included an open letter from one of the teachers at Sunrise Academy, the school denied any association with the Muslim American Society, as I alleged in my article. And yet just last month MAS held a youth conference here in Central Ohio. And who was listed among the sponsors of the event? That's right: Sunrise Academy. They were even listed as sponsors on the official flier for the event. Would you think that the Dispatch pointed out this flagrant misrepresentation in their article? I didn't think so.
In their vigorous defense of Salah Sultan and Sunrise Academy, no mention was made by the Interfaith Alliance of what these "interfaith" leaders thought of Sultan's recorded anti-Semitic tirades, quotes of which I provided in Hometown Jihad. Or how about his "interfaith" fatwa published on his own website, which prohibits Palestinians from selling land to Jews in Israel:
...There is no doubt about the fact that the Jews usurped the Holy Lands of Palestine and it is not permitted to bargain with them over anything except the means of their departure from the lands that they usurped by means of violent force and through the killing of hundreds of thousands of people.How much "interfaith" can you get than that? Salah Sultan - bridge-builder between Muslims and the Jewish community in Israel. I mentioned this to Mr. Hoover of the Dispatch, but it was apparently not worth following up on.
I also wonder how the members of the Interfaith Alliance, a number of members of whom are women clergy in mainstream Protestant denominations, would respond to Sultan's statements on marriage, family and women's rights, like his recent fatwa ruling that women are not allowed to go to the store without the husband's permission (4th fatwa), or his ruling telling an American woman who married a Muslim man who later got married to a second wife that if she objects to the second marriage and wants to keep her marriage she better get pregnant soon (3rd fatwa)?
Yes, that Salah Sultan is a real feminist on top of being an "interfaith" activist.
As I said in my previous article, what concerns me most about Salah Sultan is that he is my neighbor; and as a result of his well-known terror ties, he poses a standing threat to the community I was raised in and recently moved back to. He not only resides here, but freely spreads his message of hate and violence in our community. Just is troubling is that a local Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, while claiming to be run by peace-loving, moderate Muslims, unapologetically hosts an individual like Salah Sultan. I must admit that I wasn't surprised that the mainstream media in Columbus and the liberal interfaith "usual suspects" were so eager to serve as useful idiots and rose to the occasion to help defend Sultan and Sunrise Academy from the negative publicity that resulted from my article.
If anything, my experience should serve as a warning to America, because there are probably hundreds or possibly thousands of communities across the country just like Hilliard, Ohio, which unbeknownst to most residents harbor would-be jihadists. At present, these individuals and groups plead moderation and sign statements opposing terrorism, but they nurture hatred for America and defend hatred and violence when they think no one is looking. This faux moderation is a deliberate part of their strategy, as Salah Sultan made clear in a speech he gave in April 2004 for the New York chapter of MAS, where he said:
"Da'wah [conversion] work can never succeed unless Muslims embed themselves within the very marrow of American society"Salah Sultan has embedded himself into American society here in Hilliard, Ohio, making good on his threat and serving as an example for those like him. If the blackening of my name by the Columbus Dispatch by likening me to a Neo-Nazi is the price I have to pay to warn my community about who is living amongst us and the potential threat they pose, I will gladly pay it.
4 comments:
Your community is lucky to have you. No one connected to reality who reads this posting can have any doubt of that.
I just wrote a post about this.
Wow, this is pretty crazy. Keep fighting the fight on this, Patrick.
Thanks to all for the encouragement.
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