Reuters reports: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday likened refugees fleeing violence in Syria to “rabid dogs,” and said that allowing them into the United States would put Americans at risk.
“If there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog,” Carson, a front-runner in some opinion polls, said Thursday at a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama.
“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” the retired neurosurgeon said, criticizing President Barack Obama’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees within a year. [Continue reading…]
Dean Obeidallah writes: “We have no earthly way to know who they are,” exclaimed Republican Congressman Michael Burgess while speaking about the Syrian refugees on MSNBC Monday night. “The FBI doesn’t even have a database.”
But there’s one man who can sort it all out. A special dude from Texas, by way of Canada, who has the ability to decide which refugees are good and which are bad. And that person is Ted Cruz: The Muslim Hunter.
With that aside, Cruz’s plan raises a few questions. For example, how do you accurately determine a refugee’s religion? I would imagine many would be willing to claim they are Christian in order to save their families and start a new life in America.
Have no fear because The Muslim Hunter undoubtedly will come up with some tests to sniff out those stealth Muslims. Maybe the refugees will be required to eat a bacon cheeseburger while drinking Jagermeister. Or perhaps each refugee will be shown a photo of Bill Maher—if they reflexively recoil, it’s no USA for them. Possibly Cruz will employ a subtler test like asking them which way is Mecca? If the refugee quickly points in the right direction, he’s got ’em! [Continue reading…]
The Associated Press reports: Muslims around the US are facing backlash following the deadly attacks in Paris, including vandalism to mosques and Islamic centres, hate- filled phone and online messages and threats of violence.
Advocacy leaders say they have come to expect some anti-Muslim sentiment following such attacks, but they now see a spike that seems notable, stirred by anti-Muslim sentiment in the media.
“The picture is getting increasingly bleak,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “There’s been an accumulation of anti—Islamic rhetoric in our lives and that I think has triggered these overt acts of violence and vandalism.” [Continue reading…]
Yahoo News reports: After Paris, Trump said “security is going to rule” in the United States, in order to take on what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism.” America has currently agreed to take in 10,000 refugees from the ISIS stronghold in Syria. However, if he is elected, Trump said he would deport any Syrian refugees allowed to enter this country under President Obama.
“They’re going to be gone. They will go back. … I’ve said it before, in fact, and everyone hears what I say, including them, believe it or not,” Trump said of the refugees. “But if they’re here, they have to go back, because we cannot take a chance. You look at the migration, it’s young, strong men. We cannot take a chance that the people coming over here are going to be ISIS-affiliated.”
Yahoo News has reported that about half of the approximately 2,000 refugees from Syria who have come to the U.S. so far have been children. Another quarter are more than 60 years old. The Obama administration has maintained that the extensive screening process for these refugees makes the program safe to maintain — not to mention a reflection of America’s core values.
But Trump doesn’t buy it. He also has concerns about the larger Muslim community here in the U.S., he said.
Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.” [Continue reading…]
There is a vile current of hostility that has existed in America throughout its history. It resulted in the extermination and internment of the indigenous population of this continent. It cradled the capture, enslavement, and oppression of many generations of Africans and their descendants.
Festering American fear and hatred has caught in its gaze, Irish, German, Chinese, and Latino immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Japanese Americans, homosexuals, Communists, and all people of color.
Nowadays it lingers in the last domain where animosity towards others can freely be expressed with relatively little risk of public censure: by voicing fear of Islam and Muslims.
Well-tutored by the codes of political correctness, the haters understand that their enmity must be delivered through ostensibly impersonal vehicles. Their critique is of the doctrine, not its adherents. A nod of respect is made towards America’s tradition of religious tolerance, but simultaneously dismissed by claiming that Islam is not a religion.
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No one is a bigot in their own eyes and no ones bigotry gets dislodged simply by pointing out its offensiveness.
Hatred is born out of fear rooted in ignorance.
Let’s, for a moment, indulge the fears of those Americans who currently want to exclude Syrian refugees from entering this country and acknowledge that it is possible that in spite of the careful vetting process which all refugees must pass through, a few individuals with ties to ISIS could use this as a route for entering the U.S. and once here launch a terrorist attack. Even if candidates were further limited by only allowing Christians, it’s conceivable that a member of ISIS could claim to be a Christian. There is as far as I know, no blood test or scanning device that is able to differentiate between Christians and non-Christians.
So, would blocking the entry of all Syrian refugees significantly guard against this risk posed by ISIS?
No. Why?
Several reasons:
Although ISIS, with ridiculous ease, was able to dupe many in the West into imagining that the Paris attacks were tied to Syrian refugees — seriously, folks, consider for a few seconds what would motivate someone to take their passport on a suicide mission — we need to remember that ISIS is rooted in the Sunni provinces of Iraq.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was previously the Islamic State of Iraq and before that it was al-Qaeda in Iraq.
So, if the U.S. wants to implement a discriminatory refugee policy and pander to fears surrounding the risk of an ISIS attack, then blocking the entry of 10,000 Syrians would definitely be too little, too late.
In the three years prior to 2015, the U.S. has accepted 51,107 Iraqi refugees.
If the U.S. wants to be systematic and comprehensive in formulating its anti-ISIS refugee policy, it will also need to prevent refugees entering this country from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
But that won’t be enough. In ISIS’s ranks there are passport holders from Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine whose citizens can enter this country with a visa.
And then there are ISIS passport holders from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, all of whom can come here without a visa as tourists.
It looks like fortress America doesn’t just need a wall — it can’t even afford the risk of having any entry points.
Would that make America safe?
Not if the Paris attacks serve as a model for an ISIS attack in the U.S.
In such an event we will not be attacked by Frenchmen. Instead, ISIS will reveal its American face.
Does that mean we should now be afraid of an enemy within?
Robert F. Dees, a retired Army officer who describes himself as “an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ,” and who serves as a foreign policy adviser to GOP presidential hopeful, Ben Carson, says “we’ve been infiltrated.” He sees all Muslims inside and outside America — almost a quarter of the world’s population — as potential terrorists.
This is McCarthyism on steroids.
Those who foment these fears are not simply promoting irrational thinking but they are also playing a fundamentally divisive role in American society.
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National traumas have healing power when they open opportunities for people to stand together and set aside their differences.
This doesn’t mean finding camaraderie through a shared hatred.
It means having the courage to show that love is more powerful than hate.
When English and French football supporters all sang La Marseillaise in Wembley stadium in London last night, this was more than an act of defiance — a refusal to give in to terrorism.
It was an opportunity for ordinary people to show they care about each other and know that life as precious.
CNN reports: Two of the country’s largest and most influential religious groups, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals, are urging the United States not to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees after the deadly terrorist attack in Paris last Friday.
“Of course we want to keep terrorists out of our country, but let’s not punish the victims of ISIS for the sins of ISIS,” Leith Anderson, NAE president, said on Tuesday.
Jamelle Bouie writes: On Monday, at the same time that Republican lawmakers and leaders urged the country to close its doors to Syrian refugees, President Obama called for compassion. People, he said during a press conference in Turkey after the G20 summit, should “remember that many of these refugees are the victims of terrorism themselves.”
“That’s what they’re fleeing,” he continued. “Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values. Our nations can welcome refugees who are desperately seeking safety and ensure our own security. We can and must do both.”
Obama’s remarks on the refugees are in stark contrast to what’s driving the national conversation. “Refugees from Syria are now pouring into our great country. Who knows who they are—some could be ISIS. Is our president insane?” asked real estate mogul Donald Trump, who leads the Republican race for president. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said basically the same, using more colorful phrasing. “If you bought a 5-pound bag of peanuts and you knew that in the 5-pound bag of peanuts there were about 10 peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids? The answer is no.”
For many liberals at least, it’s tempting to embrace the former as “American values” and dismiss the latter as all-too-typical pandering to our fears and public opinion. When 52 percent of Americans believe Syrian refugees will make the country less safe, it’s easy to demagogue against their entry. But this is self-deception, albeit a well-meaning one. If our history shows anything, it’s this: The United States is a nation that fears immigrants and refugees as much as it’s a nation of immigrants and refugees. [Continue reading…]
Al Jazeera reports: Several mosques have been vandalised and a number of suspected hate crimes targeting Muslims carried out after dozens of United States governors announced they would not accept Syrian refugees in their states.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights organisation, said on Monday that it has documented recent “vandalism, threats and hate [incidents]” in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Ohio and New York, among other states.
The wave of incidents follows declarations by at least 27 state governors – 26 from the right-wing Republican party and a Democrat – saying they will block Syrian refugees, citing last Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris, claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. [Continue reading…]
Shadi Hamid writes: Every time the Islamic State commits yet another attack or atrocity, Muslims, particularly Western Muslims, shudder. Attacks like the ones in Paris mean another round of demands that Muslims condemn the acts, as if we should presume guilt, or perhaps some indirect taint.
The impulse to separate Islam from the sins and crimes of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is understandable, and it often includes statements such as ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam” or that ISIS is merely “using Islam” as a pretext. The sentiment is usually well-intentioned. We live in an age of growing anti-Muslim bigotry, where mainstream politicians now feellicense to say things that might have once been unimaginable.
To protect Islam – and, by extension, Muslims – from any association with extremists and extremism is a worthy cause.
But saying something for the right reasons doesn’t necessarily make it right. An overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose ISIS and its ideology. But that’s not quite the same as saying that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, when it very clearly has something to do with it.
If you actually look at ISIS’s approach to governance, it would be difficult – impossible, really – to conclude that it is just making things up as it goes along and then giving it an Islamic luster only after the fact. [Continue reading…]
Harleen Gambhir writes: Last week, President Obama said that the Islamic State is “contained” in Iraq and Syria, but the group’s attacks in Paris soon afterward showed that it poses a greater threat to the West than ever. The Islamic State is executing a global strategy to defend its territory in Iraq and Syria, foster affiliates in other Muslim-majority areas, and encourage and direct terrorist attacks in the wider world. It has exported its brutality and military methods to groups in Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now it is using tactical skills acquired on Middle Eastern battlefields to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that will generate even more recruits within Western societies. The United States and its allies must respond quickly to this threat.
The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign. Since January, European citizens fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have provided online and material support to lethal operations in Paris, Copenhagen and near Lyon, France, as well as attempted attacks in London, Barcelona and near Brussels. Islamic State fighters are likely responsible for destroying the Russian airliner over the Sinai. These attacks are not random, nor are they aimed primarily at affecting Western policy in the Middle East. They are, rather, part of a militarily capable organization’s campaign to mobilize extremist actors already in Europe and to recruit new ones.
The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.” The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West.
Unfortunately, elements of European society are reacting as the Islamic State desires. Far-right parties have gained strength in many European countries. France’s National Front is expected to dominate local elections in northern France this winter; on Saturday, Marine Le Pen, its leader, declared “those who maintain links with Islamism” to be “France’s enemies.” The Danish People’s Party gained 21 percent of the vote in national elections in June on a nationalist, anti-Islamic platform. The anti-foreigner Sweden Democrats is steadily growing in popularity. [Continue reading…]
The Daily Beast reports: One of the Paris attackers was supposedly found with a Syrian passport—leading Republican governors here in America to vow to block Syrian refugees from entering their states.
But that passport was a fake, French officials toldThe Wall Street Journal, which means the governors’ freakout over refugees was likely based on a lie.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, a former member of ISIS emphasized that Syrian passports, like the one found on that Paris terrorist, can be bought from the Syrian regime.
“There are people who go back and forth to Aleppo or Hama or Latakia or Tartus—you give them $1,000 and a nice photograph, and they’ll print you a good passport,” Abu Khaled, a former member the Islamic State’s internal security service, Amn al-Dawleh, said Monday.
“The guys with the regime are corrupt; they’ll give you whatever you want for money,” he added.
That’s not the only way, though. A reporter for the London Daily Mailpurchased an identical passport online for $2,000. German customs agents in September seized a shipment of fake Syrian passports being sold to asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. (Syrians get automatic refugee status in the European Union.) Many of the forgeries are suspected to come from Turkey.
French officials told the Journal that Ahmad al-Mohammed, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France, was carrying a counterfeit Syrian passport made for him. Al-Mohammed’s fingerprints matched those on the passport found near his body, the French added.
Greek officials said the information on Al-Mohammed’s passport was run against police databases after he landed in Leros on Oct. 3 and nothing was found. Another man carrying a passport with identical information, but a different photograph, was being used by a man in Serbia who was arrested on Monday.
Anna Sauerbrey writes: in Germany as across Europe, Islamophobia is picking up speed. On Saturday, Heiko Maas, Germany’s minister of justice and a Social Democrat, wrote online, “We won’t recede. Freedom and democracy are stronger than terror.” The answer from anti-immigrant commenters was quick, brutal and expletive-laced. “Your boundless idiocy and freedom are making this possible,” was a typical reply.
Germany has, until now, been a political and geographic linchpin in maintaining European adherence to the Schengen agreement, which guarantees open borders across much of the Continent. It will now come under extreme pressure: France, the Netherlands and Spain had tightened border controls by Saturday afternoon, around the same time that Poland announced that it would reduce the number of refugees it had agreed to take.
Whatever we may learn about the actual lives and origins of the perpetrators, whether one or several of them really came to Europe just recently, hidden among hundreds of thousands of refugees, it doesn’t really matter. In the current climate in Germany, facts are fiction and vice versa. Pegida, Alternative für Deutschland and the rest of the right wing have long made it their mantra that the government and mainstream media are lying to the German population — and many agree.
Germany has grown increasingly anxious and angry for some months. Reason might now decide to leave the room, replaced by the politics of fear. And where Germany goes, the rest of Europe will follow. [Continue reading…]
The Daily Beast reports: Marine Le Pen, France’s answer to Donald Trump, lost no time cementing her growing power base as leader of the country’s far-right National Front just hours after the Paris attacks when she called for the “annihilation” of Islamist radicals.
Le Pen, whose stump speeches in the depressed cities of northern France include dire warnings of the “giant migratory wave,” told reporters in Paris on Saturday that the country had to clamp down on Islamist fundamentalism, shut down mosques and expel dangerous “foreigners” and “illegal migrants.”
Populist leaders around Europe moved quickly to call for an end to allowing the steady stream of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
The Netherlands’ increasingly popular anti-Islamic far-right leader Geert Wilders demanded Dutch authorities close the borders immediately, accusing them of refusing to face reality about the connection between immigrants and terrorism. Poland’s Europe minister Konrad Szymanski said he would no longer agree to accept un-vetted migrants and refugees. [Continue reading…]
The attacks that took place at a series of venues in Paris on November 13 are already the deadliest on French soil since 1945. At least 127 people have been killed in six different places. Reports say that another 100 are in “absolute” critical condition. Police have reported that eight people believed to have carried out the attacks are also dead – seven by blowing themselves up.
It was not as though France had not prepared itself to face such a tragedy. Anti-terrorist measures have been at their highest level in Paris since January, when two brothers attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12.
This was obvious to any bystander over the past few months. Armed soldiers have become part of the Paris experience. Yet the government’s security plan, the plan vigipirate, was not enough to stop what is so far believed to be the most organised and coordinated attack Islamic State has perpetrated outside its territory. Details are still thin on the ground, but IS has claimed responsibility. President François Hollande has blamed the group and made it clear that he sees this as an act of war.
As scenes that were indeed reminiscent of war spread across the centre of Paris, Hollande declared a state of emergency. He announced a series of radical measures such as re-establishing border controls. Schools and universities have been closed.
Meanwhile, there was the blizzard of unconfirmed information that’s to be expected in such a situation. The climate of fear was reinforced by the 24-hour news media’s tendency to not only relate the facts – as messy and incomplete as they are – but to encourage speculation.
Even as the attacks were still underway, commentators could be heard discussing what could happen next and what type of attacks we could, or indeed should, expect. The sense of panic only intensified with the proliferation of amateur videos on social media.
James Bamford writes: When it comes to foreign policy, it’s tempting to grade Carson on a curve. A retired neurosurgeon with no political experience, Carson has promised that, as president, he would be as ready “as anybody else when foreign-policy questions come up” by surrounding himself with experts who would help him craft and, eventually implement, foreign policy.
But Carson’s foreign-policy experts are likely part of his problem. The candidate’s most outrageous statements on national security — including his shocking declaration in September that he believes Muslims are unfit to serve as president — aren’t merely a collection of ill-informed gaffes. They are a reflection of the troubling worldview of the people he has turned to for advice. Chief among them is Robert F. Dees, a retired Army officer who has indulged in anti-Muslim bigotry and advocated for a national security strategy centered on Christian evangelism.
Carson is said to have first met Dees at church last February. A four-hour dinner, and regular “study sessions,” followed that initial encounter. Carson has since called Dees “one of my most regular people” when it comes to foreign-policy briefings, and his campaign manager, Barry Bennett, has said that Carson’s national security team is headed by Dees. Dees, for his part, describes his current job title on LinkedIn as defense and national security advisor for Carson America.
It’s impossible to know the precise content of Dees’s advice to Carson. But Dees’s professional background doesn’t provide much reassurance. In 2013, he told a gathering at Wildfire Weekend, an all-male religious retreat, “My greatest pleasure has been being a private in the Lord’s army.” He also recounted being introduced to Jesus Christ by a math instructor at West Point not long after he enrolled there as a student in 1968. “Then I went off in the military,” he said, “as an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ.” Dees spent most of his career in the infantry and in staff positions in the United States, Germany, and Korea, eventually becoming deputy commander of the V Corps in Europe. His resume does not appear to list any combat assignments.
Dees has cited the 9/11 attacks as a personal and professional turning point. Speaking at Wildfire Weekend, Dees described visiting an intelligence center in Virginia sometime after the attacks. “I looked up on the wall … and there were cell-phone calls coming from certain places, and you could see where they would go into other places, and all of a sudden I saw Kandahar, Afghanistan, to Nashville, Tennessee; Dearborn, Michigan; Greensboro, South Carolina,” Dees told the gathering, describing the links between people in Afghanistan, where America was about to go to war, and residents of the United States.
Dees claimed to have an epiphany: When it comes to terrorism, all Muslims — some 23.4 percent of the world’s population — are equally worthy of suspicion. “It’s not about these guys who came from way out, knocked down some buildings, and then have left,” Dees explained at Wildfire Weekend. “We have a serious internal issue. We’ve been infiltrated.” [Continue reading…]
“You’re as big of an asshole as that idiot Ralf Stegner,” a certain Birgit M. recently wrote in a letter to Thomas Kutschaty, justice minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was a referrence to the deputy party leader of state chapter of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who recently said the organizers of the weekly Pegida marches in Dresden and elsewhere should be investigated by intelligence services. “You should all be put in a sack and have a hammer taken to you,” Birgit M. wrote in her tirade.
Then there was the man who called Dorothea Moesch, a local SPD politician in Dortmund, late in the evening on June 30. “We’re going to get you,” he threatened. “We’re at your door.”
Another local SPD politician in Hesse, district administrator Erich Pipa, has been similarly threatened. “We can have you taken out at any time,” he was informed in a letter.
And in Bernau in the eastern state of Brandenburg, graffiti scrawled on the wall of a warehouse namechecking the local mayor reads, “First Henriette Reker (the mayoral candidate stabbed in Cologne last weekend), next André Stahl.”
These are but a few examples — four politicians who have taken a stand, and, if the threats are to be taken seriously, may now need to fear for their lives. Kutschaty fell into the crosshairs for saying, “Pegida is not about protecting the Western world, it’s about its demise.” Moesch, for her part, attracted ire because she organized a protest against right-wing extremism. Pipa became the target of hatred because he was recently awarded a Federal Cross of Merit, Germany’s highest civilian honor, for his longtime lobbying work on behalf of refugees. Finally, Stahl was the subject of denigration because of his public declaration that he wants refugees to feel welcome in his city. [Continue reading…]
Rafia Zakaria writes: On Oct. 9, Zunaira Ishaq, an immigrant from Pakistan, finally took her citizenship oath and became a Canadian. Her refusal to take the oath without niqab, or a face veil, has been a subject of legal battle between Canada’s courts and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.
This controversy has become a backdrop for Canada’s parliamentary elections today. Having lost legal challenges that would have prevented Ishaq from taking the oath while veiled, Harper’s Conservative Party is now vowing to pursue a niqab ban during citizenship ceremonies and to consider a wider ban for all public employees if re-elected. His opponents, the Liberal Party’s Justin Trudeau and the New Democratic Party’s Thomas Mulcair, have dismissed the niqab issue as a distraction and oppose such bans.
Harper’s fear-mongering reflects Canada’s growing distance from the “respect for multiculturalism” and “freedom of religion” enshrined in its own Charter of Canadian Rights and Freedoms. A Conservative victory in today’s polls would express an endorsement of Islamophobia and a xenophobic fear of the immigrant “other.” It will also show that the country’s commitment to women’s right to choose does not extend to Muslims who wear the face veil. [Continue reading…]
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