mariahussain:Obsession is Boring

My wife Karin Friedemann wrote a review of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, which can be read here on her mariahussain blog. Sphere: Related Content

But the Globe Doesn't Clarify

 

To the Editor and to Robert Preer:

In re: A Muslim Leader Reaches Out.

I thought the article about the imam who started leading prayers at Sharon mosque was pretty good in terms of its tone, except the frequent use of "Islamic extremism" without any DEFINITION made the article as meaningless as a Cascade commercial. 

Within the neocon media newsspeak, I have yet to find any definition of "extremism" other than someone who believes that Jews should have no more special privileges than anywhere else, whether in America or Israel. In other words, they don't think a racist apartheid state based on genocide is worthy of US tax funding.

As such, nearly any decent person qualifies as an "extremist." Anyone who believes in democracy with open clean elections is a "Hamas supporter" or "Islamofascist." 

A non-extremist, according to the standard definition, is someone who supports and applauds when soldiers remove families from their homes at gunpoint in order to bulldoze them and sell condos built illegally on the land at artificially low interest rates to American Jews so they too can participate in genocide.

Sick. Do you honestly believe that any American, including this good imam, seriously believes Jews have a right to kill and plunder non-Jews with impunity? Do you really believe this good imam has no respect for democracy?

If contempt for clean democracy and loyalty to Israel is not your exact definition of non-extremism, what is?

Karin Friedemann
Boston

 

A Muslim leader reaches out

A goal to build ties, fight extremism, find Sharon an imam

By Robert Preer, Boston Globe Correspondent  |  May 18, 2008

Imam Khalid Nasr, head of the Islamic Center of New England, has been doing double duty since the imam of the center's Sharon mosque was arrested on immigration charges a year and a half ago.

Nasr, a 37-year-old Egyptian native, has been going back and forth between Sharon and the center's other mosque, in Quincy, conducting services in both places and delegating duties to trained lay people when schedules conflict.

"We can say I am officially the imam of both centers until we can find a new imam," said Nasr, spiritual leader of more than 1,000 Muslims in the south suburbs. "It's a hard situation until we find out the final word from the court."

Nasr, a US resident since 2000, is trying to guide the region's Muslim community through a difficult period. In November 2006, Imam Muhammad Masood, a native of Pakistan, was arrested by federal agents on charges he had falsified immigration papers. On Feb. 28 this year, Masood pleaded guilty and now awaits sentencing. Deportation or jail time are possibilities for the religious leader, known locally for trying to build bridges to non-Muslims before his arrest. Several clergy leaders in Sharon rallied around Masood and circulated a petition on his behalf.

The publicity surrounding Massood's arrest has been a source of distress for the area's Muslim community, already coping with unease that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It was a shock for the community to see their imam arrested," said Nasr.

A replacement for Masood will be sought once the legal case is over, according to Nasr.

"A big mosque like Sharon cannot be left without an imam," he said.

Federal authorities indicated that Masood's immigration issues were unrelated to anti-terrorism investigations.

Nasr lives in a house on the grounds of the Islamic Center in Quincy Point with his wife and two children, ages 5 and 6. Before coming here in 2005 to head the organization, Nasr and his family had lived in North Carolina. Nasr's children attend Quincy's Clifford Marshall Elementary School. He plans to apply for US citizenship next year. An outspoken foe of Islamic extremism, Nasr has made outreach to Christians and other non-Muslims a trademark of his leadership. He meets regularly with the heads of area Christian congregations and several times a month welcomes school groups to tour the Quincy mosque. He also has gone to local churches, where he participates in prayer services then speaks briefly to the congregations about Islam.

"He really wants to present the American Muslim as an integral part of the whole community," said Ghazwan Ghaza of Canton, a member of the board of directors of the New England Islamic Center. "He is building on the connections."

Said Nasr: "We are not strangers anymore. This is our home. Our intention is to stay here and be part of this community."

Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in America. In the south suburbs, official membership in the Islamic Center has not grown significantly in recent years - perhaps because immigration has slowed since Sept. 11, 2001 - but participation in weekly services and celebrations is up sharply, according to Nasr. The regular Friday services at the Quincy mosque now draw about 500 people, up from 300 three years ago, according to Nasr. The growth in participation appears to be largely due to new generations of Muslims coming to services.

The Islamic Center in Quincy was founded in 1963 by a group of Lebanese families who gathered together to worship. Over the next several decades, the organization grew steadily, and in the 1990s, the center acquired property in Sharon and built its second mosque.

Nasr estimates that 45 percent of the members of the Islamic Center are from Arab countries, 45 percent from India and Pakistan, and 10 percent from other parts of the world.

Nasr, who has bachelor's and master's degrees from universities in Egypt, is working toward his doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Cairo. He said he would like to obtain another graduate degree from Harvard or another Boston-area university.

Combating extremism is an important goal of Nasr's. He said Sept. 11 was a wakeup call for Muslim leaders. Before the terrorist attacks, leaders were not paying attention to the threat that extremists posed, according to Nasr.

"The only protection you can have is from the religious leaders," he said. "They are the only people capable of stopping the extremism."

Robert Preer can be reached at preer@globe.com. 

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Neuwirth loses lawsuit against Silverstein

Richard Silverstein describes his victory via anti-SLAPP motion in Rachel Neuwirth's libel lawsuit against him at http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/11/28/neuwirth-loses-libel-case-against-tikun-olam/ 

 

Silverstein states the following.

We won the case with an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) motion under which the defendant must prove that his speech was made in a public arena and furthered a public good and that the plaintiff was a public figure. Rachel's key defense was that she is a private figure (she argued that she was merely a real estate agent) and the my blog was a private forum (because I "controlled" it), all of which are patently false since she herself calls herself an "internationally respected journalist" in her online bio. That my blog is a public forum is also patently obvious as 250,000 unique visitors each year indicate. And I no more 'control' the 6,000 comments published on my blog than I control the entire web.

Here is Neuwirth's biographical description from Rachel Neuwirth - Guest Contributor to OpEds.com.

Rachel Neuwirth

Rachel Neuwirth, an internationally recognized, political commentator and analyst. She specializes in Middle Eastern Affairs with particular emphasis on Militant Islam and Israeli foreign policy. She has been published in prominent news papers of Europe, Asia and the US. She is frequently quoted by reputable Media. Conversant in Arabic and French.

rachterry@sbcglobal.net

From IsraPundit we learn the following.

Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles-based analyst associated with the American Jewish Congress and Stand With Us.

She seems to be a public figure to me.

The organizations with which she is associated are active and powerful political players.

From http://www.forward.com/forward-50/

Charles Jacobs and Roz Rothstein

 

When it comes to defending Israel in the media, on campus and in the streets, America's long-established Jewish groups no longer have a monopoly. Increasingly, the agenda is set by scrappy startups like Boston's The David Project and the Los Angeles-based StandWithUs ― often dragging the rest of the community along behind them. StandWithUs was founded in 2001 by a group of activists assembled by Roz Rothstein, a family therapist driven by what she saw as the larger community's anemic response to growing anti-Israel activism. The David Project was launched the following year by Charles Jacobs, co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, which targeted slavery in Sudan. Neither Rothstein, 55, nor Jacobs, 63, shies from confrontation. The David Project captured headlines in 2003 with a documentary alleging faculty intimidation of pro-Israel students at Columbia University. More recently, it waged a high-profile legal and media battle with the Islamic Society of Boston over its controversial associates and its plans for a new mosque. This summer, StandWithUs took the lead in responding to a planned pro-Palestinian rally in Washington. While the D.C. Jewish Community Relations Council opted to ignore the demonstration (which was a dud in the end), StandWithUs organized a counter-protest and answered pro-Palestinian ads on Washington's subway system with ads of its own. Both groups have focused on campus activism, multimedia projects, leadership training and curriculum development. The courses Rothstein and Jacobs charted have proven popular with action-hungry donors: Their two startups already boast multimillion-dollar budgets and sizable staffs.

The true name of StandWithUs is the Israel Emergency Alliance, which is LA based. Its FIN is 01-566033, and its public filings are available on line at GuideStar - Search Results - Report Page - ISRAEL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE and probably at other web locations as well.

 

Richard Silverstein states:

[Rachel Neuwirth] sued me for libel in Los Angeles Superior Court because I called her a "Kahanist swine." Her claim was that this was the same as claiming she was a Jewish terrorist since Kahane Chai, Meir Kahane's Israeli political party, is designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist organization.

Neuwirth used to correspond with my wife Karin until I told Karin that the discussion was pointless mostly because I had exactly the same impression of Neuwirth as Richard Silverstein has.

 

I am not sure what the description of her as "conversant with Arabic" really means. During the exchange of emails, I was not impressed by Neuwirth's command of Arabic, and I am the first to admit that my Arabic is rather poor.

 

Even though Silverstein hopes Neuwirth will have to dip into her savings to pay both his and her legal expenses, I doubt that Neuwirth will bear the cost of this particular legal escapade. Israel advocacy organizations have adopted an old tactic of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits both to silence critics of Zionism, the State of Israel and the Israel Lobby and also to disenfranchise Muslim and Arab Americans. These organizations and their financial backers are providing the funding for lawsuits by people like James Policastro in Boston and probably by people like Rachel Neuwirth in LA.

 

My wife discusses the Policastro lawsuit in Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: A Mosque Rises in Boston and in Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: Emails show pro-Israel anti-Mosque Campaign in Boston. In the defamation and conspiracy lawsuit that the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) filed in response to the Policastro lawsuit, Floyd Abrams, who was the high-priced attorney for several very wealthy individual defendants, filed a motion for dismissal of the ISB complaint under the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute. The court rejected this motion.

Almontaser Must Rescind False and Defamatory Accusations « Stop The Madrassa: Protecting Our Public Schools from Islamist Cur.. provides a NY example of a threat of yet another frivolous legal action but this time against former principal Debbie al-Montaser for accusing the Stop-the-Madrassa Community Coalition of stalking her as part of the campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy of NY City.

 

As far as I can tell from published news reports, Stop-the-Madrassa has been stalking her in the commonly accepted popular usage if not in the legal sense just as I have been stalked on the Internet (including in Richard Silverstein's public forum) ever since I had a change of heart about the conflict over Palestine even if I only know of two cases where Israel Advocacy groups actually had someone follow me around Boston. Such behavior is nothing new for Jewish organizations. The ADL has a long history of invasion of privacy and defamation.

 

In my article Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: Updating "The AJC attacks", I give a reference to the German Jewish use of lawsuits against groups and individuals believed to be enemies of German Jews.

The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany by R. S. Levy describes in detail how German Jewish advocacy organizations like the Zentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) used the legal system

• to force perceived enemies into bankruptcy,
• to attack members of the academic community believed unfriendly,
• to ban books or
• to force publishers to change offending passages.

Like Rosenfeld and Reinharz, Levy often tends to conflate possibly legitimate criticism with anti-Semitism.

Likewise Rachel Neuwirth conflates a reasonable if heated description of her politics with an accusation that she is a terrorist. So far the record of this type of lawsuit has not shown as much success in the USA as such lawsuits did in Wilhelmian Germany, but organizations like the David Project, the AJCongress, the AJCommittee, the ADL, and StandWithUs, which are just as likely to engage in defamation* as to sue for defamation, are nothing if not well funded, stubborn and tenacious.

 

* See Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: Zionism, Penisism, and Joseph Massad.

 

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