Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports our universal human rights of freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of worship for ALL people — without exception. We reject protests against houses of worship. We reject violence and attacks on houses of worship.
But across America today, an anti-Islam movement of intolerance continues to grow against Muslim mosques. Coast-to-coast, north and south, this movement is growing across the nation. In California, in Tennessee, in Florida, in Wisconsin, and in New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island), groups of people are being organized to protest the building and expansion of Muslim mosques. In New York City, thousands have turned out for calls against the freedom of worship to build a mosque. In Tennessee, 600 have turned out in opposition to a mosques’ expansion, and Tennesseans have started marching in the street against a Muslim mosque in Murfreesboro. More opposition to mosques is growing in Chicago, Antioch, Tennessee, and other parts of America.
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- Photos of Recent Mosque Protests Across America: 1. Manhattan, 2. Tennessee, 3. Staten Island (center), 4. Florida – “Islam is the Devil”, 5. Brooklyn, 6. California, 7. Wisconsin. (Photos: 1. YouTube, 2. John A. Gillis/DNJ, 3. NYT, 4. Facebook, 5. Picasa, 6. KABC, 7. Sheyboygan Press )
In some cases, some anti-Islam activists seek to do more than protest. In May 2010, a Jacksonville, Florida mosque was the target of a pipe-bomb and gasoline attack. In Tennessee, mosques and mosque signs are being repeatedly vandalized, and others have been convicted of arson attacks against mosques. In Michigan, a mosque has been repeatedly vandalized. In Washington state, a mosque van was smeared with feces. Not long after protests against a Wisconsin mosque, it too was vandalized with bricks.
- Attacks on Mosque Property in America: 1. Jacksonville, FL Pipe Bomber in May 2010 (FBI), 2. Tennesee Mosque Vandal in February 2010 (Tennessean), 3. Center – March 2010 Conviction of Racist Arsonist in Mosque Attack in 2008, 4. June 2010 – Murfreesboro, TN Mosque Damaged (for Second Time) (DNJ), 5. June 2010 – Washington State Muslim Van Smeared with Feces (YouTube)
In the reader comments of the New York Post, readers call for blowing up mosques and killing Muslims, while the New York Post refuses (and we have repeatedly contacted them on this) to remove such comments from their web site that have been on there since May. On KPRC-950 AM, radio show host Michael Berry has hoped that “somebody blows up” the Park Place site in NYC where Muslims have been praying since December 2009. Another mosque protester in Brooklyn told the Brooklyn Paper press that: “If they build a mosque there, I’m going to bomb the mosque.. I will give them a lot of trouble… They’re not going to stay here alive..”
This new, coast-to-coast, anti-Islam movement is not centered on challenging Islamic “extremists,” political Islamism, or religious supremacist views, or challenging those that promote violent jihad.
This new, coast-to-coast, anti-Islam movement seeks to deny freedom of religion and freedom of worship to Muslims by protesting against efforts to build or expand new mosques. This new movement seeks to deny freedom of worship based on targeting Islam itself.
The wave of mosque protests been free from support from politicians across the country. Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams has stated that Muslims worship a “monkey-God.” The Wilson County Tennessee Tea Party is supporting Congressional Candidate Lou Ann Zelenik in her calls to stop a Murfreesboro, TN mosque from being built on the basis that it would “fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee.” In California, the Southwest Riverside County (SWRC) Tea Party is leading a protest against a mosque in Temecula, California. Brooklyn, NY Tea Party Leader and “culturist” John Press has been seeking to get Brooklyn activists to protest a planned mosque in Brooklyn as well as protest the Park Place mosque in Manhattan.
Nor have such politicians been limited to minor political players. New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio has called for investigations into the planned Park Place Manhattan mosque (where prayer services have been ongoing since December 2009.) Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has stated that the Park Place mosque in Manhattan is “a provocation.” Former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich has also joined those who seek to prevent the expansion of the Park Place Manhattan mosque – two New York City blocks from Ground Zero. FOX News Chicago reported that “Gingrich, who has been tipped as a possible Republican presidential candidate for 2012, joined a number of other high-profile GOP figures in condemning the mosque… Gingrich, writing on his blog, said there should be no house of worship for Muslims near Ground Zero in New York ‘so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.’”
The burgeoning anti-Islam movement has not been limited to protests against mosques around America, violence against mosques, and political organizations coordinated efforts to challenge the building of mosques.
Some have also called for burning Qur’ans. The Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center has sought to create an “International Burn a Koran Day,” and has gotten over 600 supporters around the country via their Facebook and web site that plan to burn Qur’ans. The Dove World Outreach Center posts signs and wears shirts that read “Islam is of the Devil,” and they led the July 4, 2010 mosque protest in Florida.
The Dove World Outreach Center planned “Burn a Koran Day” and the Dove World Outreach Center group itself has also been promoted by supporters of one of the primary national mosque protest groups, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), whose leaders have appeared in rallies with the Dove group, and whose supporters have sought to raise funds for the Dove World Outreach Center.
The SIOA and SIOE Groups: Islamophobia United
A major leader in the coast-to-coast mosque protest movement is the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) group, founded by a European group Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE) that focuses on protests against mosques in UK and Europe. SIOE has been criticized by moderate, pro-freedom groups such as British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD). In May 2010, the SIOE protests against a mosque in Denmark attracted Neo-Nazi supporters, until photographs were taken of a Danish group’s Nazi swastika banner and the SIOE sought to pull the swastika flag down and dismissed them from the protest. The motto of the European group SIOE is that “Islamophobia is the height of common sense.”
It was this European SIOE group that created the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) group and in September 2009, the SIOA group sought to protest a Muslim public prayer session on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. In September 2009, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) challenged the SIOA group and condemned their plans for disrupting the Muslim prayer session and the SIOA organization’s support of “Islamophobia.” International news media also reported on the SIOA’s plans to disrupt the prayer session with SIOA’s view that “Islamic prayer is nullified if a dog, a woman, or a donkey are present.”
The SIOA efforts were faltering until April 2010, when the European SIOE persuaded new leaders to take on the role of guiding the Stop Islamization of America group: Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
- April 2010: European Group SIOE Convinces Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer to Lead Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) Chapter (Photo: SIOE Website)
The European group created a Facebook page for the SIOA leaders to build followers via the Internet, and the SIOE has continued to develop a trans-Atlantic joint efforts to promote “Islamophobia” and to protest mosques. SIOE leaders joined in the Park Place Mosque protests in NYC on June 6, 2010.
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- Islamophobia United: Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE) – right and Stop Islamization of America – left – Unite in Protest against Park Place Mosque in NYC
While the American SIOA movement seeks to be portrayed in the media as merely “conservative,” the SIOA supporters have recently called for the “criminalization of Islam,” as well as promoting the “Burn A Koran Day.” The SIOA Facebook website is replete with vulgar and obscene images and cartoons of calls for nuclear bombs on Mecca, urination on the Qur’an, and most vulgar images possible of Muhammad. SIOA supporters have called for violence and promote hatred. SIOA supporters have made vulgar and obscene comments against specific Muslims, which the SIOA supporters defend tolerating as their defense of “free expression.”
On Sunday, July 18, 2010, SIOA Executive Director Pamela Geller made yet another appeal for support for the violent extremist group “English Defence League” (EDL) which has been involved in multiple riots, and whose members were recently arrested after throwing bricks at riot police officers during their protest of a potential mosque in Dudley (that had already been canceled.) One of the SIOA supporters has darkly claimed that a group like the violent “English Defence League” is being created in America today!
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- This is the English Defence League Promoted by the SIOA’s Pamela Geller – in April 2010 – EDL Protesters Breaking Through Riot Police Barriers (Photo: Daily Mail/PA Wire – David Jones)
The transatlantic effort of “Islamophobia united” is only bringing an organized effort to channel and fan the flames of hate and violence that Europe has been seeing against mosques and Muslims here now to America.
A Voice of Reason from a Muslim for Freedom and Democracy
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, leader of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, is a conservative activist that seeks to challenge the extreme views of “political Islam.” Dr. Jasser believes that a patriotic, pro-America approach to challenging religious extremism is essential.
Dr. Jasser disagreed with Imam Rauf over the style and the form of the planned Park Place mosque in Manhattan, and wrote an article on this for the New York Post. Sadly and ironically, some of the web readers of the NY Post column used the “reader comments” part of the column to call for bombing the mosque and killing Muslims.
But Dr. Jasser has an inclusive message for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Here are some of his comments from March 2010, “Religious tolerance starts at home” in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, in response to a group that sought to protest a mosque in Wisconsin. They are a voice of reason that we must use in facing this coast-to-coast anti-Islam movement that seeks to deny freedom of religion and freedom of worship.
“About 1981, my parents and a few other Muslim families built the first mosque in northeastern Wisconsin. It was in that mosque and as a student at Neenah High School that I learned the values of Americanism and pluralism and their synergy with my faith of Islam. It was there that I learned about the value of the separation of mosque and state.”
“I do not believe that my love of country and the love of my faith need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, one strengthens the other. Those values led me to serve as a medical officer for 11 years in the U.S. Navy.”
“Columnist Thomas L. Friedman astutely pointed out recently in The New York Times that one of the obvious reasons the threats from radical Islam have seen an exponential rise in 2009 is due to our inability to effectively counter the narrative. That narrative is the one that tells the story of America to young Muslims as a nation that is against Muslims, and against Islam. That narrative has served as a major rallying cry for jihadists.”
“The only effective counter to this narrative will come from American Muslims who can testify to a very different reality.”
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“When my family sought to build the small mosque in the Town of Menasha, many local residents in the Neenah-Menasha area presented a vocal opposition protesting the zoning request. That was a long time before Sept. 11, but it had a significant amount of media attention and controversy much like what is happening in Sheboygan now. Thankfully, reason prevailed, and our community moved into our new small mosque in the Town of Menasha. The opposition missed the boat on the meaning of religious freedom in the United States.”
“I was blessed with parents who taught me that religious freedom in the U.S. is unrivaled anywhere in the world. I was taught that I could be more Muslim in Neenah, with just our few families and a mosque, than anywhere else in the world.”
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“Certainly, as with any organization in the U.S., their ideas matter and there should be a public dialogue about where they stand with regards to political Islam, sharia, the Muslim Brotherhood and their own sense of responsibility for reform. But that is after they have the right to a mosque, not before.”
“I have spent my life arguing with many Muslim leaders about the deleterious effects of political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood and all of its offshoots upon our spiritual path to God. This debate should occur in American mosques. But that debate will be won by modern liberal Muslims only if we have the space to do so.”
“We will lose the support of liberty-minded Muslims if we block the free Muslim expression of faith through our own houses of worship.”
Why Freedom of Religion Matters for Muslim Mosques in America
We have a right to believe and to worship however we see fit. In America, Amendment 1 to our Constitution is designed to protect freedom of religion. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 18 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Everyone.
Despite the anger of those in anti-Islam, anti-mosque movement, in America, we have freedom of religion and freedom of worship. To those who seek to harass those seeking to exercise their legitimate right to freedom of worship, and to those who threaten and commit violence against mosques, you need to read the Constitution of this country which defends our human rights, which since the beginning of America have been a “declaration,” not a question. Our inalienable human rights are the basis of America’s Declaration of Independence, which defines what it means to be an “American.”
The audacity of some to believe that they have the power to defy freedom of religion and freedom worship, something that ultimately is between you and the higher power you believe in, is astounding. To those who believe that they can defy such immutable human rights, who do you think you are? No matter what you do, others will find another way to worship – even if they end up praying in the street.
Those who seek to spread hate and terror really want us to abandon such support for freedom of religion and worship – so that they can drag us down to their level. It is important that we understand that in the larger, historical sense this is not as much about them as it is about the rest of us who are responsible for equality and liberty. The question is whether or not we will stand steadfast to our support for basic human freedoms and human rights when it is not easy or when it is unpopular to do so. That is the real challenge for this generation.
Who do you think wins if Americans reject the universal human rights of freedom of religion and freedom of worship for all?
As for me, I know where I stand.
I will consistently remain Responsible for Equality And Liberty.
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We urge those who promote hate and intolerance to unburden the hate from their hearts.
We urge all to Choose Love, Not Hate. Love Wins.
