Anti-Muslim Bigotry Intensifies in U.S.
Anti-Muslim Statements
Posted: August 27, 2010
Anti-Muslim bigotry has surfaced in a variety of public forums. These sentiments have been exploited by some, including public figures, to further demonize Muslims and Islam. The following is a sampling of incidents.
February 13, 2011: A protest was held outside of an Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Relief event in Yorba Linda, California. Protestors chanted and yelled offensive insults at individuals and families as they entered the event, including "Mohammad was a child molester! Mohammad was a pervert!" and "We don't want you here…You are terrorists! Go home! Go home! Go home! No Sharia. You beat up your wife too? Are you a molester?" Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly addressed protestors at the event, saying: "Let me tell you what's going on over there right now, make no bones about it, that is pure unadulterated evil. I don't even care if you think I'm crazy anymore…I know quite a few marines who will happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise." Congressman Ed Royce and Congressman Gary Miller also spoke at the protest. Representative Miller told demonstrators, "I am proud of you. I am proud of what you're doing."
September 29, 2010: At a Tea Party rally in Mesquite, Nevada, U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle alleged that Islamic law has already been implemented in some U.S. cities: "My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States," she said. "It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States."
September 17, 2010: During the Values Voter Summit in Washington DC, Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, said: "The cause of the violence is an Islamic culture that keeps hundreds of millions of people right on the edge or murder and mayhem 24 hours a day!"
August 28, 2010: Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo published a commentary titled, "Wake-up Call at the Ground Zero Mosque" in which he wrote: "…it is nevertheless breathtaking to watch our entire political establishment commit hara-kari to defend the rights of jihadists to celebrate the mass murder of 3,000 Americans at Ground Zero." Tancredo described those supporting the proposed Islamic Center as "the enemy within" and added, "Would we have a national debate if the American Nazi Party purchased land and petitioned for a permit to build a 200-foot statute of Adolf Hitler next door to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is about 500 yards from the Washington Monument?"
August 18, 2010: Rev. Franklin Graham told Time magazine, "The goal of Islam is world domination. That's the goal. Wherever you plant a mosque, the people who attend the mosque walk to that mosque. They have to be able to get there by foot. The entire area they walk by foot they claim is Islamic territory. They will claim now that the World Trade Center property [and] everything within that area is now Islamic land, just like they claimed Israel as Islamic land. Saudi Arabia - Christians and Jews lived there hundreds of years before Islam, thousands of years. And there's not a Christian left, there is not a Jew left. They have all been destroyed."
August 16, 2010: During an interview on FOX News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington. 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."
August 16, 2010: Ron McNeil, a Congressional candidate in Florida, reportedly told local high school and middle school students in the Panama City, Florida, that Islam is "against everything America stands for" and that the Islamic Center near Ground Zero should be build underground "so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians."
August 10, 2010: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (AFA), a Christian conservative group that operates more than 200 radio stations across the country, has posted anti-Muslim comments on the AFA Web site. He wrote: "Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero…This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government." Another AFA writer, Elijah Friedeman, wrote that every mosque "is a potential jihadist recruitment and training center" and that because of Islam's "subversive ideology, Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment."
July 21, 2010: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich issued a statement on his Web site saying, "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could. No mosque. No self deception. No surrender. The time to take a stand is now - at this site on this issue."
July 14, 2010: At an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey said, "You could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion or is it a nationality, way of life or cult, whatever you want to call it…So I've been trying to learn about Sharia law, trying to learn what it is."
July 2010: Internet Evangelist Bill Keller of St. Petersburg, Florida, announced his plan to create a "9-11 Christian Center" within blocks from Ground Zero in New York in response to the proposed Islamic Center. In his announcement of the project, Keller wrote, "If the Muslims have the audacity to build a $110 million mosque just blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, I can go to that same hallowed ground where MUSLIMS terrorized this nation and killed 3,000 innocent people and give people the only Truth there is, God's Word, and the only hope there is, faith in Jesus Christ!"
June 24, 2010: Lou Ann Zelenik, a candidate for Congress in Tennessee, reportedly called the proposed expansion of the Islamic Center in Murfreesboro "an Islamic training center." She said the center is part of a political scheme "designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee." Zelenik organized the first Tea Party in the area.
June 2010: Members of the New York City Community Board 1, who led the public hearing on the plan to build an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, said they received threatening calls after the board backed the plan. One caller said, "You should die a miserable death."
June 12, 2010: Pat Robertson made the following statement on the 700 Club: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have to recognize that Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law." He also said Muslims "want to take over and [they] want to impose Sharia on you. And before long, ladies are going to be dressed in burqas and whatever garments they would put on them, and next thing you know, men are going to be allowed to have wife-beating and you'll be beheading adulterers and so on and so forth."
May 26, 2010: Michael Berry, a Houston talk show host on KPRC-950 AM, said the following about the proposed mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan: "I'll tell you this - if you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up." Berry added: "I hope the mosque isn't built, and if it is, I hope it's blown up, and I mean that."
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