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Militant Islam Monitor > Satire > OSCE conference equates anti semitism with the hoax of 'Islamophobia' - Muslims blame Israel for anti semitism

OSCE conference equates anti semitism with the hoax of 'Islamophobia' - Muslims blame Israel for anti semitism

The fallacy of Islamophobia : Muslims came to Europe of their own volition and are given funding to return home
June 19, 2005

Kamal Nawash - Fearless Leader of the FMAT addresses an invisible crowd of Free Muslims Against Terror

MIM: This from The Augusta Free Press "... As reported to me by a friend who attended (family matters had me doing other things), there were approximately 60 in attendance - and that number even included reporters and journalists, who were there to witness the turnout even more so than actually report on the subject matter of the protest..." http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$34339

MIM: Kamal Nawash - the head of the Free Muslims Against Terror front barely got 10 Muslims to his much heralded Million Muslim March Against Terrorism in Washington. Nevertheless he has been crowned the "Muslim Messiah" by people desperate to buy into the myth of moderate Islam . Nawash himself has boasted of being compared to Martin Luther and that people believe 'he was sent by God".

Nawash was appointed as a delegate to the Organisation of Cooperation and Security in Europe conference - Nawash took a swipe and the Bush administration for not doing enough for Muslims and then cynically preceded to praise the Wahhabist funded 'outreach efforts of the ADC and MPAC' for their outreach efforts to law enforcement'. The ADC (Nawash's former employer) is now suing the JTTF and the FBI for scrutinising them in connection with a terrorism investigations. At the conference Nawash megalomanically proclaimed : "I am here as the representative of the 6 million Muslims and 3 million Arab Americans in America". http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/684

MIM: By equating anti semitism with Islamophobia delegates at the recent OSCE conference in Spain have played into a hoax which is akin to that perpetrated by the Nazis about the existence of an Aryan race. Just as the 'Aryan' race is defined as and has nothing to do with blonde or blue eyed Germanic peoples ( did anyone ever note that fact Hitler was short, squat, and had dark hair?) and never existed the myth continues to day. Now 'the world' has bought into the historically fraudulent claim of a Palestinian people, when 60 years before the only Palestinians were Jews who lived in Palestine .Not only did the OSCE conference play into the hands of Muslims by implying a false victimhood and persecution, those present aided and abetted Muslims who are using the phony claim of Islamophobia to portray themselves as the 'new Jews of Europe'.

Muslims came to Europe of their own volition to seek an easier life and were not born or raised in the countries where they complain of being discriminated against .Muslims can also go back to their countries whenever they want. In many cases they will get funding to do so from their host countries! Any comparision to an upcoming Holocaust or rhetoric about being the new Jews of Europe is an insult to people's intelligence and allows Muslims and their ignorant supporters to pervert the killing of 6 million Jews by allowing the Islamo facists (who were supporters of Hitler) to finish where he left off and Islamise Europe in the guise of 'tolerance' and 'multiculturalism'.

It is a statisically proven fact that , many Muslims came to Europe to take advantage of the welfare systems, and are using the host countries legal and social systems against them. (The case of Abu Hamza Al Masri, and Omar Bakri Mohammed are two examples. Both continue to advocate the destruction of the West and started terrorist linked groups in the UK, (Al Muhajiroun and Hizb ut Tahrir) while receiving thousands in state benefits for themselves and their families. In the case of Abu Hamza Al Masri, the now jailed cleric who is being held on terrorism charges- is suing the state for back benefits and just received a new protheses and medical care in jail costing British taxpayers (whose society he has worked to destroy) thousands of pounds. Al Masri's trial costs are expected to be above a million pounds.

The Muslims in the American delegation to the OSCE were Kamal Nawash,who is a former terrorist lawyer,member of the terrorist supporting ADC, and now boasts that people believe he was 'sent by God' to show the face of moderate Islam. Americans are so desperate to believe in the advent of a moderate Muslim Messiah that they backing Nawash despite evidence that he is back with his old buddies from the ADC- the Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee and still attends a Wahhabist mosque which was deemed the most dangerous in America. One of the delegates to the conference was Kareem Shoura, the legal advisor to the Wahhabist funded ADC. Jewish delegates ot to the OSCE lamely complained that the Muslim speakers have injected the 'Palestinian Israel conflict' into the proceeds and that stated that the conflict was the reason for anti semitism. At the same time, the Muslims were allowed to gratuitously equate of Islamophobia (which does not exist), with anti Semitism,and propagate the obscene travesty that 'Muslims were the new Jews of Europe'.

It appears that no one dares to state the fact that there is no such thing as Islamphobia, and that the same may hold true for moderate Muslims.

The non existant 'Free Muslims Against Terror' march - and FMAT leader Kamal Nawash's recent appearence at an event where the Saudi prince announced aid to the ADC, CAIR and MPAC, shows that he is a political opportunist who will use his newly found status a Muslim 'prince of peace' to push his Islamist friends through the doors he opens.

The delegates to the OSCE conference failed to challenge the definition of Islamophobia, or it's insidious comparision to anti semitism. . The accusation of Islamophobia is being used to hinder law enforcement and social efforts to halt the Islamisation of society. By endorsing the Muslim hoax and conspiracy theory of Islamophobia the delegates and countries who attended the OSCE meeting are effectively aiding and abetting the Islamo facists to finish where Hitler left off. The myth of the Aryan race has now been replaced by that of the Palestinian people and the obscene travesty is that the spectre of the Holocaust is now being evoked by Islamists as means of getting the West to sucumb to Islamist totalitarianism under the guise of tolerance and multi culturalism .

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MIM: After writing the above MIM discovered an article about how now delegates to the OSCE tolerance conference (who concluded without finding a definition of antisemitism), were "shocked" when they crossed the street from their interfaith lovefest to discover the existence of the Roger Garaudy Foundation ! Garaudy was the notorious Holocaust denier who converted to Islam and was fined $50,000 for one of his books denying that 6 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazis.

MIM:The fallacy of interfaith and the connection between the hoax of Islamophobia and Holocaust denial could not have been better illustrated then by the existence of the Garaudy Foundation and the words of the mayor at the hastily called press conference .The city of Cordoba which was touted as an example of interfaith harmony between Christians, Muslims and Jews, both the Mayor and the vice president of the Foundation Balbino Povedano stressed that the Foundation was about 'religious harmony'.

"...(Mayor) Ocana said the Roger Garaudy Foundation receives a small subsidy from town hall and he defended the foundation's goals - encouraging harmony among religions - as legitimate and longstanding..."

MIM:Povedano also stated that he would bring up the idea of changing the name of the Foundation at the next meeting, whichs begs the question as to if it will be renamed the "Holocaust Outreach Foundation" and if they will institute a "Love a Jew to death' program.

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See complete article below:

http://www.jewishottawa.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=154778

Praise for Steps Taken at OSCE Meeting, Though Hopes Remain for More Serious Progress

By Jerome Socolovsky

CORDOBA, Spain, June 9 (JTA) -- At first the challenge was to get people talking about the problem. Then it was to turn words into actions.

This year, the effort at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference was on maintaining the focus on anti-Semitism.

Ever since the OSCE began dealing with the challenge of anti-Semitism in the world today, Jewish organizations have faced an uphill battle.

This year's meeting in Cordoba -- which drew delegations from 55 governments -- was the third sponsored by the OSCE.

The first gathering, in Vienna, set the precedent of a conference devoted to anti-Semitism. Last year, in the German capital, delegates issued a "Berlin Declaration" calling for concrete action.

But this year's meeting was different: As its title makes clear, the Conference on Antisemitism and Other Forms of Intolerance included other types of discrimination, though the precedence given to anti-Semitism was more than implicit.

Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.), who headed the U.S. delegation, considered it "a positive step" to include categories such as discrimination against Muslims, Christians, Gypsies and other groups.

"But we cannot lose the fact that the whole concept of this conference began as an effort to elevate public awareness, governmental awareness in response and to eradicate anti-Semitism. That still has to be the primary focus," Pataki told JTA.

"To me it's quite obvious that anti-Semitism, not just currently, is frightening and damaging and horrific," the governor said. "When you look at its history, we've never seen the inhumanity to man that we saw during the course of the Holocaust."

Representatives of Jewish groups said one of the greatest challenges at the Cordoba meeting was to acknowledge the suffering of others, while reminding Europeans that their continent has a particular duty to focus on anti-Semitism because of the Holocaust.

"It is not our intention to prove that anti-Semitism comes first in some hierarchy of oppression," said Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee. "But one has to be blind not to recognize that anti-Muslim sentiments are prevalent in Europe today."

Still, striking the right balance was no easy task.

"Islamophobia has replaced anti-Semitism as the new, sharp end of racism in the world, wherever you go," Abduljalil Sajid, an imam and adviser to the Commission on British Muslims, declared from the podium.

Another difficult issue was keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict separate from the anti-Semitism discussions.

Gert Weisskirchen, the OSCE's special representative for combating anti-Semitism, said hatred toward Jews in Europe is "nourished by pictures that are not fair" about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Reasonable criticism of Israel is fine as long as it doesn't cross a red line, as it has a number of times in European press and political debate, Weisskirchen said.

"If you, for instance, compare the actions of what the Israeli army is doing, or if you compare Sharon with Hitler, than this red line is crossed," he said.

Ed Morgan, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, objected to an assertion by an Arab speaker that anti-Semitism will disappear only when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

"If I were to say that hatred of Arabs won't end until Arab countries come to terms with the State of Israel, that would be a racist statement," he said.

Some other non-Jewish organizations groups presented moderate stances.

"We can't make this a competition of who's more a victim. That's childish," said Yusuf Fernandez of the Spanish Federation of Religious Islamic Entities. "If Muslims had lived in Europe at the time of the Holocaust, then both Jews and Muslims would have ended up in the gas chambers."

Many participants felt that having members of different groups at the conference was an opportunity.

"I have tremendous hope from the fact that we are sitting in the same building, and some of us in the same room, as Muslim organizations," said Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress.

He recalled Jewish-Catholic relations just a few decades ago, "when we were like that famous Michelangelo painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling -- almost touching, almost touching with the hands reaching out to each other, and the synapse not being made.

"The Catholics today are our closest allies from having been our greatest enemies over 2,000 years," he added.

Delegates discussed new national programs to raise Holocaust awareness and collect data on racist organizations.

The OSCE cited the FBI's cooperation with German police in investigating German-language Web sites registered with American Internet addresses. France also was mentioned because its judges can sentence perpetrators of hate crimes to racism-awareness education.

But the chairman of the conference, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, criticized many countries for not implementing the Berlin recommendations.

"Unfortunately the findings fall short of expectations, as only 29 out of the 55 OSCE states provided statistical information relevant to hate-motivated crimes," Rupel said.

"We hope states leave here with resolve to implement and institutionalize the mechanisms they agree are essential to counter anti-Semitism and hate crime," Stacy Burdett, the Anti-Defamation League's associate director of government affairs and an adviser to the U.S. delegation, said in a statement.

"We welcome the focus and support demonstrated at this meeting," she said. "But in the end, no meeting or statement can be a substitute for national governments, one by one, taking action that can improve the safety and security of Jews and other minorities seeking to live in security and dignity."

The OSCE noted that only a few countries have appropriate mechanisms in place to respond to anti-Semitism.

And in those countries where statistical information has been gathered, the trends remain disturbing. The ADL presented findings of a 12-nation survey, which found that "Europeans continue to question the loyalty of their Jewish citizens."

It also found "alarmingly high levels" of the belief that Jews are too influential. Fifty-five percent of Hungarians and 45 percent of Spaniards polled more or less agreed with the statement that "Jews have too much power in the business world."

Weisskirchen said he was most concerned about "the growing tide of anti-Semitism and incidents" in Russia, which remind him of his native Germany during the Nazi era.

Behind the scenes, some countries expressed reservations about continuing the annual OSCE meetings.

Pataki said there was "a greater reluctance among some countries than I expected."

"It's shocking to even have to raise the possibility that there are those who would even look the other way," he said.

Delegates also were at odds over complaints that Weisskirchen has not been given a strong mandate. Some countries wanted to combine his position with that of two other officials dealing with other forms of racism.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center warned that merging the jobs "would send the wrong message at the wrong time."

"It will only diminish the focus on anti-Semitism, and effectively remove it from the world's policymakers," Hier said.

Still, many Jewish leaders were satisfied that what had been achieved at the previous meetings at least was not rolled back this year.

"Last year we hit such a high point that it was hard to repeat it," Singer said. "What we were hoping to do was maintain the level."

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Anti-Semitism conference ends amid flap over museum linked to Holocaust revisionist

By DANIEL WOOLLS

http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=706
Associated Press
06/09/2005

http://www.cjp.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=154757

Moderate Muslims Seek Foothold in U.S.

June 16, 2005

By Daniel Treiman
Forward Magazine

Thursday, June 16, 2005
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What happens when you call a mass demonstration and only a few dozen people show up? That's more or less what happened when Free Muslims Against Terrorism organized a Washington rally last month.

The group's founder, Bethlehem-born Kamal Nawash, had hoped that the May 14 rally would send "a very clear message to the Arab and Muslim world that we don't support this madness, we don't support the use of terror." But, according to The Washington Times, the rally only drew about 50 people.

Nawash's outfit is just one group in an increasingly crowded field of new American Muslim organizations that call themselves "moderate," "pluralist" or "progressive." A number have sprung up since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — many in the past year — and are now working to find a foothold on the American Muslim scene. Some are stressing the need to condemn terrorism, while others are more focused on pressing internal religious reforms. Several of the new groups are reaching out to the Jewish community, a development that stands in stark relief against the backdrop of long-standing hostility between established American Jewish and Muslim organizations.

Leaders of the new groups bill them as alternatives to the established national Muslim organizations, to which they give various criticisms such as out of touch, overly conservative and even extremist. Some echo the criticisms made by Jewish organizations, which often have had a hostile relationship to the existing Muslim groups, accusing them of being cozy with anti-Israel extremists or of failing to condemn Palestinian terrorism.

While their rhetoric is impassioned, it remains to be seen how large a constituency any of these new groups represents — or whether they have any grass-roots appeal whatsoever. None yet have the capacity, nor necessarily the ambition, to take on the work that more established groups, such as the widely criticized Council on American-Islamic Relations, do on public policy, civil liberties and anti-defamation issues — work that observers say has won the established groups respect in the larger American Muslim community. And while these new Muslim groups share a professed commitment to pluralism, moderation and communal critique, some of their leaders are sniping at each other already.

The Progressive Muslim Union of North America, started last fall by several veteran community activists, is already causing a stir with its liberal religious and political orientation. But it still has no paid staff. That lack of organizational infrastructure is about the only thing it has in common with the Washington-based Center for Islamic Pluralism, launched in March by Stephen Schwartz, a journalist who writes on Islamic extremism for conservative media outlets such as The Weekly Standard. Schwartz, the author of "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terror," is set to address next week's Washington gathering of the Zionist Organization of America, a group that fiercely opposes Israeli concessions to the Palestinians (see accompanying story).

Schwartz, who embraced the mystical Sufi stream of Islam while working as a journalist in war-torn Bosnia during the 1990s, is an outspoken critic of what he describes as the domination of American Muslim institutions by the Saudi-supported Wahhabi stream of Islam.

Schwartz and Free Muslims Against Terrorism's Nawash already have come under attack by the the PMU's pugnacious vice-chair, Hussein Ibish, who called them "malevolent figures" in a recent article he penned for a Muslim Web site.

Ibish told the Forward that, unlike Schwartz's and Nawash's groups, the PMU is "an authentic grass-roots effort." He also criticized Schwartz's relationship to scholar Daniel Pipes, a hawkish Jewish scholar whom Muslim groups have accused of being anti-Islam. Pipes has insisted he is a critic of extremism and not of Islam in general.

"The so-called Center for Islamic Pluralism is basically a creature of Daniel Pipes," Ibish said.

Schwartz was equally eager to attack Ibish, who previously worked as the communications director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "No organization that has Hussein Ibish involved in it at all could be called progressive or Muslim," Schwartz said. He said that Pipes's Middle East Forum had agreed to allow his center to use its nonprofit certification while its own was pending but that ultimately no money was raised though the forum. And Schwartz vehemently rejected Ibish's assertion that Pipes was responsible for his center's founding. "It was conceived by me alone, and all of the organizational work has been done by me alone," he said.

Ahmed al-Rahim, a founder of the Boston-based American Islamic Congress, attributed the infighting to the different political orientations of the new organizations, as well as to the greater willingness of some to speak out against the established Muslim groups. Still, he said, "any group that condemns violence, that is trying to be part of the American mainstream — forget Muslim American, just being American — I think is a good thing."

Started by a handful of Muslim intellectuals after the September 11 attacks, the American Islamic Congress has maintained a low domestic profile after an initial burst of publicity. The group, with several Iraqi American leaders, shifted its focus after the American invasion of Iraq to education and women's empowerment projects in that country. Now, however, the congress is beginning to turn its attention back to domestic issues with initiatives on hate crimes.

The Iraqi Shiite head of the American Islamic Congress, Zainab Al-Suwaij, was a vocal supporter of the Iraq War and spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention. In contrast, the PMU's leaders include fierce critics of U.S. foreign policy and American support for Israel.

The new groups also differ in the nature of their critiques of the established Muslim community. Schwartz, Nawash and al-Rahim have been full throated in their respective criticisms of established Muslim groups. In a November 2003 lecture, al-Rahim accused established Muslim groups of promoting hate against America, Jews, Christians and Hindus.

The PMU, for its part, is arguably the ground-breaking of the new groups in its religious and social stances. Last month it co-sponsored a historic woman-led Islamic Friday prayer session, an event that sparked debate throughout the Muslim world and drew harsh condemnations from some overseas clerics. It recently launched a new initiative to encourage more women-led prayer sessions. But some of its leaders — while eager to attack Schwartz — are more restrained in their criticisms of established Muslim groups.

"At PMU we want to challenge the mainstream groups, and we want to provide an alternative to their discourse," Ibish said. "We have a different, much less conservative take on religion and society, but we're not going to gain advantage, lie and say that the mainstream groups are supporters of terrorism when we know, and they know, and I dare say pretty well everyone knows that really they're not."

Presented with the example of the American Muslim Council's founder, Abdurahman Alamoudi, a self-declared supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who was sentenced in 2004 to 23 years in prison in connection with a terrorism-financing case, Ibish backtracked. "Obviously there are a lot of people in the community who have come to realize that some of the attitudes that existed in the leadership and the groups that were established in the early 1990s is not sufficient and sometimes, as in the case of Alamoudi, it could be disastrous," he said.

While they disagree with each other on several fronts, the new groups seem to be of one mind in their willingness to work with Jewish organizations.

The American Islamic Congress's statement of principles calls for a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and specifically extends a "hand of friendship" to the Jewish community. The congress seems to echo many supporters of Israel when it calls for "a proportional focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the greater context of problems that Muslims and Arabs face in their individual countries." The group joined the Anti-Defamation League in co-sponsoring a 2003 memorial service for slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and now the two organizations are working on an initiative to improve hate-crimes reporting in Massachusetts.

Even the PMU, despite having a board that includes outspoken critics of Israel, has demonstrated an eagerness to engage Jews.

On a Web site he edits, the PMU's executive director, Ahmed Nassef, inaugurated a regular feature called "Hug a Jew" as a rejoinder to antisemitism. Some skeptics have noted that the list of honorees consists largely of fierce foes of Israel, such as far-left scholars Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein. But Nassef also has reached out to mainstream elements of the Jewish community.

Nassef was criticized by some Muslims for speaking at a policy conference sponsored by Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. In response to critics, he wrote that Muslims cannot rule out talking with the "99.5% of American Jews" who support Israel's existence.

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