Not Just Imus. American Media Hotbed for Islamophobes

On April 11, NBC News announced that it was dropping MSNBC’s simulcast of Imus in the Morning in the wake of the controversy that erupted over host Don Imus’ reference to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” The following day, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves announced that CBS — which owns both the radio station that broadcast Imus’ program and Westwood One, which syndicated the program — has fired Imus and would cease broadcasting his radio show. But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson.

Islamophobe Geert Wilders in new bid to ban burqas

Geert Wilders, eyes set on banning burqas

A Dutch right-wing anti-Islam politician on Thursday submitted new proposals for a law banning burqas after an earlier attempt stranded.

In letter to parliament Geert Wilders, who heads the Freedom Party which has nine of the 150 seats in the lower house, wrote that “the burqa and the niqab is a symbol of the oppression of women” and is “in defiance of the democratic constitutional state”.

The burqa is a veil covering the entire face and body and a mesh screen to see through, while the niqab is a veil covering the face but leaving the eye area clear. It is not known how many women in the Netherlands wear the face veils but estimates are a few dozen.

Nearly two years ago, in October 2005 a majority of the Dutch parliament voted in favour of a motion by Wilders to ban burqas in public places.

However, the then minister of integration, hardliner Rita Verdonk, never crafted a law for a burqa ban after an advisory committee said such a ban could be unconstitutional because it violated the right to equal treatment for all residents of the country.

Now Wilders, known for his harsh anti-Islam rhetoric, has submitted his own law proposal and hopes the parliament will agree. It is unlikely that he will get another majority as the elections of November 2006 put an end to a centre-right majority in parliament that backed the plans.

Wilders wants to ban specifically burqas and niqabs in public places including stations, stadiums, shops, restaurants, museums, hospitals, cars driving on the public roads and public transports. He proposes a maximum sentence of 12 days in jail or a fine of 3,350 euros (4,619 dollars).

If the law is passed it would be a world first. No national government has yet banned the use of face veils in public places.

Flashback:

Geert Wilders is the man who insulted prophet Muhammad  saying that had prophet Muhammad been living in Holland now, he would have chased him out of the country. He also insulted the Qur`an saying that it contains enough awful things and it should be torn apart and thrown away.

 He was also the man who called for closing all Islamic schools in Holland.

Ed Husain completely loses the plot

Ed Husain

So who’s responsible for comparing Hizb ut-Tahrir to the Nazis and issuing the hysterical warning that we must consider HT “a subversive fifth column in our midst, awaiting instructions from a coming caliph before they turn to mass suicide bombings”? Mad Melanie Phillips, perhaps? Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch? Nah, it’s Ed Husain, author of The Islamist, writing at Comment is Free. But what can you expect from a man who refers approvingly to British Channel 4’s The War on Britain’s Jews? as “Richard Littlejohn’s excellent television documentary”?

You might ask why Husain, a man who became an Islamist for a few brief years as a confused teenager during the early 1990s, hasn’t been active in any Islamist organisation since leaving HT around 1995, and spent most of this century living abroad, should suddenly be adopted as the media’s favourite self-styled expert on Islamism in Britain. Well, of course, it’s because he tells them what they want to hear. Echoing the arguments of Martin Bright and John Ware, Husain enthusiastically contributes to the prevailing Islamophobic discourse. And he seems to be building a successful career out of it.