Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca makes an appearance at a press conference held at the Muslim Public Affairs Council to support a united interfaith opposition to anti-Muslim hate DVD.
Rabbi Steven Jacobs of the Progressive Faith Foundation confronted Greg Ross of the Clarion Fund and Aish Hatorah on the sidewalk over Ross's allegations that MPAC somehow supports or associates with Hamas and Hezbollah.
From the Muslim Public Affairs Council: Sheriff Lee Baca, actor Mike Farrell and nearly 20 members of the newly formed Coalition for Renewing American Democracy held a press conference earlier today to voice their unified opposition to an anti-Muslim DVD called "Obsession."
Since mid-September, roughly 28 million copies of a DVD called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" have been distributed as advertising inserts in 70 newspapers in 12 key election swing states. While the DVD begins with a statement that most Muslims do not support terrorism, it immediately sets to work undermining this idea. "Obsession" is anti-Muslim propaganda which aims to produce anxiety, mistrust, and deep unease in the average American viewer about the presence, activities and attitudes of millions of their fellow Muslim American citizens.
"This is no longer a discussion about Muslims," said Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, co-founder of JewsOnFirst.org. "This whole enterprise becomes the responsibilites of Christians and Jews and other religious people to stand in their pulpits to educate and refute these claims. I think that this distribution will have echoes in this society for a very, very long time. We will for a very long time be involved in rebutting, correcting the record, and defending those people who are being defamed."
Rabbi Allen Freehling, Executive Director of the Los Angeles City Commission on Human Relations, added: "We are here as a group of diverse individuals representing all kinds of communities to indicate to those people who, for their own self-serving purposes, created this DVD to let them know that they will not succeed. They may have started something that they may resent in the long run. After all, they were hoping for destruction and violence, they were hoping to divide us. The fact of the matter, this has brought us closer together to communicate to the community at large to indicate that those who spew hate will not succeed."
At the press conference, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca also stressed the role of law enforcement in protecting people of all backgrounds.
"Hate crime is something that concerns all Americans, since civil rights and human rights are constitutional guarantees," Baca said. "The proposition put forth by some who are extremists, who want not only to defame a religion but incite other people to discredit them and therefore act out in a violent way toward people of that relgion, is a totally unacceptable practice that cannot in any way be condoned. Law enforcement is vigilent to protect people and their right to practice their religion."
Dr. Maher Hathout, Senior Advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, added: "Democracy becomes healthy when citizens are aware and when they ask questions. I believe the current hurricane of hate we are fighting will ultimately dissipate because the very fabric and the very core of the American people is good and they will eventually resent this vulgarity in dealing with serious issues. The makers of 'Obsession' have the right to speak and we have the obligation to respond. They speak hate and we will speak love. They will speak division and we will speak unity."
Other speakers at the press conference included actor Mike Farrell, Rabbi Steven Jacobs (Progressive Faith Foundation), and Dr. Xandra Kayden (UCLA professor).
The coalition also released a statement, signed by more than two dozen religious, civic and law enforcement officials, voicing their "deep concern over the recent distribution of a deeply divisive and anger-provoking DVD" which undermines "our common and cherished beliefs by inciting fear and furthering ignorant stereotypes."
The 'Obsession' movie was about the Muslim menace 'over there.' 'The Third Jihad' will be about the invisible Muslim juggernaut here in the US, right now, crawling up your back porch and slipping in through the downstairs window you left open, bwahahahaha...
Richard Silverstein writes at Tikun Olam: Radical Islam wants you...and America
Yes, you read me right. Those crazy imams and ayatollahs want to destroy our American way of life and institute Sharia here in the U.S. of A. They plan on dismantling the Constitution and creating an Islamic state in place of our beloved republic. How do I know? Third Jihad tells me so. What's Third Jihad? Brought to you by the Clarion Fund, the same folks who brought you Obsession. Their new film debuts October 5th. And not a moment too soon I might add, since those radical jihadis are burrowing into the American heartland as I write these words.
As reader Robin wrote, Third Jihad is "Obsession on steroids." Right from the opening scene displaying the World Trade Center in ruins as ominous Arabic sounding music plays on the soundtrack, this film hammers you with one message and one message alone: radical Islam wants what you love and will do anything to get it.
For those of us who lived through the 1950s and remember the horrible TV shows and movies (i.e. I Married a Communist, I Was a Communist for the FBI, etc.) depicting American Communists insinuating themselves into the very fabric of American life in order to subvert and destroy it-Third Jihad will give you a sense of deja vu all over again (to quote Yogi Berra allegedly). Something there is in a human being which loves a bogeyman, someone to fear, someone who represents almost pure evil. I don't quite understand this primeval urge that lurks within us. But it is there.
One of the MOs of the producers of Obsession and Third Jihad is to feature a "good," moderate Muslim informant to "educate" their audience about the evils of radical Islam. In Obsession, those roles are played by faux PLO-terrorist Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish and Kahleel Mohammed (who has angrily disavowed the film and his participation in it).
In the new film, the "good" Muslim is played to the hilt by its "star," one M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He is a "devout practicing Muslim" (and he won't let you forget that to distinguish himself from Christian-Arab Muslim haters, Shoebat and Darwish), former Navy Lieutenant Colonel, physician, and wannabe political thinker. He seems to have no special qualifications for taking on the role of analyst of political Islam, but assume it he does and with a vengeance.
To put it plain and simple, Jasser is a Muslim neocon. It's a strange animal considering how hostile the Republican right is to Islam and Muslims. But if Jasser didn't exist then the neocons would have to invent him (which is pretty much what they did in the case of Shoebat-or I should say that the latter re-invented himself to ingratiate himself with his neocon sponsors).
If you read Jasser carefully, he reminds me of the Log Cabin Republicans, American gays who believe that a Republican Party with no gay members is a Party that will treat gay interests even more shabbily than it does already. In other words, Jasser seems to have chosen to become a staunch Republican in order to, in his eyes, advance the Muslim agenda through the ranks of the Republican Party.
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