Posts Tagged ‘anti-muslim’
 
July 27, 2012 0

Conference the Latest Sign of Increased Anti-Immigrant Activity in North Carolina

On August 10–11, 2012, an anti-immigrant con­fer­ence will take place in Wilm­ing­ton, North Car­olina titled, “IIIm­pact – ille­gal immi­gra­tion and the cost to YOU!” The list of con­fer­ence speak­ers was announced on July 23 and brings together many of the main anti-immigrant voices in the state as well as some speak­ers known for their anti-Muslim state­ments and associations.

The con­fer­ence is the lat­est exam­ple of an increase in activ­ity by the anti-immigrant play­ers in North Car­olina. In 2011, the NC House cre­ated the House Select Com­mit­tee on the State’s Role in Immi­gra­tion Pol­icy. The Com­mit­tee has had numer­ous hear­ings through­out 2012 and has pro­vided a plat­form for anti-immigrant and immi­grant rights activists to voice their opin­ions. On June 13, 2012, for exam­ple, anti-immigrant lead­ers includ­ing William Gheen, James John­son and Ron Woodard met with Speaker of the House Thom Tillis (R-District 98) to dis­cuss immi­gra­tion issues. It is unclear at this time what the atten­dance of the con­fer­ence will be but anti-immigrant groups in North Car­olina have been encour­ag­ing peo­ple to go to the event for a num­ber of weeks.

Sched­uled speak­ers at the August event include:

William Gheen – Founder/head of the anti-immigrant group Amer­i­cans for Legal Immi­gra­tion PAC (ALIPAC). Gheen has a long his­tory of hate­ful rhetoric towards immi­grants.  ADL has a lengthy pro­file on Gheen which can be read here.

James John­son – Founder/head of the anti-immigrant group North Car­olini­ans for Immi­gra­tion Reform and Enforce­ment (NCIFRE). On his Face­book page, John­son has cir­cu­lated mate­r­ial from the racist Web site, VDARE.com and the white suprema­cist group, Amer­i­can Renais­sance. John­son has also attended FAIR’s “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event in the past. 

Ron Woodard – pres­i­dent of the anti-immigrant group, NC Lis­ten. NC Lis­ten is listed on the Web site of the extreme anti-immigrant group Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform’s (FAIR) as a local affil­i­ate for North Car­olina. NC Listen’s mis­sion state­ment says that it “part­ners” with FAIR. Woodard has also attended FAIR’s annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event in the past. 

Sher­iff Sam Page (R-Rockingham) will also be speak­ing. Page spoke to Con­gres­sional Lead­ers at an event put together by FAIR in May 2012.  In Octo­ber 2011, Page par­tic­i­pated in a panel titled, “Crime Chal­lenges from Ille­gal Immi­gra­tion” which was spon­sored and mod­er­ated by the anti-immigrant group Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies (CIS). 

Ilario Pan­tano – A for­mer can­di­date for the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2010 and 2012, Pan­tano has pro­moted anti-Muslim sen­ti­ment. Pan­tano spoke at both the 2010 and 2011 9/11 ral­lies in New York City put on by anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller. He has also writ­ten the fol­low­ing about the Islamic cen­ter close to ground zero: “It is about mark­ing reli­gious, ide­o­log­i­cal and ter­ri­to­r­ial con­quest.” He con­tin­ued by stat­ing, “This mosque is a martyr-marker hon­or­ing the ter­ror­ists who less than a decade ago killed thou­sands of us just two blocks away, and it must be stopped.”

Sue Myrick – retir­ing NC Con­gress­woman (R-District 9) who also has a his­tory of anti-Muslim sen­ti­ment – she has spo­ken at the national con­fer­ence of ACT! for Amer­ica, one of the largest anti-Muslim groups in the coun­try. She also wrote a for­ward for the book, Mus­lim Mafia: Inside the Secret Under­world that’s Con­spir­ing to Islamize Amer­ica.

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June 5, 2012 1

Anti-Muslim ACT! for America Urges Counterterrorism Program

Brigitte Gabriel, founder and pres­i­dent of ACT! for Amer­ica, an orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing the idea that Islam is a back­ward and sedi­tious polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy, has issued an appeal to sup­port­ers to enlist their help to con­front changes tak­ing place in law enforce­ment train­ing pro­grams across the nation.

Address­ing recent con­tro­ver­sies regard­ing the use of anti-Muslim mate­ri­als in coun­tert­er­ror­ism train­ing courses, Muslim-American civil rights orga­ni­za­tions have demanded that train­ing mate­ri­als be reviewed and expunged of offend­ing content.

To counter what Gabriel terms as “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness,” ACT! for Amer­ica has launched “The Thin Blue Line Project,” a project that will over­see the cre­ation of a web­site designed by and for law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Accord­ing to Gabriel, this project and web­site will eas­ily pro­vide the resources and infor­ma­tion law enforce­ment offi­cials need in order to com­bat the doc­trine of jihad, Islamic ter­ror­ism, and orga­ni­za­tions affil­i­ated with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in America.

“Those on the Thin Blue Line need to under­stand the ide­ol­ogy dri­ving the ter­ror­ism. They need to be able to con­nect the dots between what these jihadists believe…They need to under­stand the ‘threat doc­trine’,” Gabriel says in her appeal for support.

To make this project a real­ity, ACT! for Amer­ica is call­ing on con­cerned mem­bers, known as “Patriot Part­ners,” to donate $11 per month to make “The Thin Blue Line Project” possible.

In her writ­ings and pub­lic appear­ances, Gabriel often por­trays Islam as a threat. For exam­ple, in her book They Must Be Stopped; Why We Must Defeat Rad­i­cal Islam and How We Can Do It, Gabriel wrote, “It is not yet polit­i­cally cor­rect to talk about a reli­gious war. But this is exactly what we are fac­ing: a reli­gious war declared by devout Muslims….It’s not rad­i­cal Islam. It’s what Islam is at its core.”

Ear­lier this year, in a New Year’s mes­sage to ACT! mem­bers, Gabriel asked sup­port­ers to come together and sup­port the “Patriot Part­ner Cam­paign,” a cam­paign designed to intro­duce addi­tional anti-Shariah bills in U.S. states through­out the 2012 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. In a mes­sage pro­mot­ing the cam­paign, Gabriel said, “We are fac­ing an enemy in rad­i­cal Islam that’s using our laws, our open-mindedness, and our tol­er­ance against us.”

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May 11, 2012 0

Radical English Defence League Emerges in U.S.

The Eng­lish Defence League (EDL), a UK-based right-wing, anti-Islamic and self-described “Counter Jihad move­ment,” has launched a chap­ter in the United States.

The newly cre­ated United States of Amer­ica Defence League (USADL) claims to be “a human rights orga­ni­za­tion that was founded in the defense of our nation and to stand in uni­son with the EDL and other such orga­ni­za­tions, to halt the spread of Sharia law.”

The orga­ni­za­tion, which offi­cially launched its web­site on May 7, 2012, states that a cen­tral tenet of its mis­sion is pub­lic edu­ca­tion and the need to ensure that the pub­lic is pro­vided with a “more real­is­tic and less san­i­tized view of Islam…” While its mis­sion state­ment warns against assum­ing that all Mus­lims are guilty of com­mit­ting acts of ter­ror­ism, it goes on to say that “the Islamic book of wor­ship calls for all Mus­lims to par­tic­i­pate in Jihad, in one form or another.”

USADL’s National Direc­tor is Bill Turner, who is known for his anti-government and con­spir­a­to­r­ial writ­ings, which have been pub­lished on a num­ber of right-wing web­sites and dis­sem­i­nated through his Twit­ter han­dle, “JihadiHunter.”

Bill Turner

While anti-Muslim bias has been a pri­mary theme in his writ­ings as well, Turner’s role in launch­ing the USADL sug­gests that he is gear­ing up to advance a more con­spir­a­to­r­ial anti-Muslim agenda.

USADL’s web­site indi­cates that mem­ber­ship is open to all who “rec­og­nize the threat that Sharia Law poses to free peo­ple every­where.” Although it is still too early to con­firm the size and via­bil­ity of the new orga­ni­za­tion, it already claims to have approx­i­mately 60 members.

Ear­lier this year, EDL announced plans to form a new polit­i­cal party in the UK.

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