New York Islamophobe murders Hindu

This video from the USA says about itself:

The Sikh faith is the fifth-largest religion in the world, and there are as many as half a million members in the United States. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Sikh Americans faced many of the same discriminatory conditions as Muslims and Arab Americans. Because of their distinct appearance, they were visible targets of violence and harassment. Democracy Now!’s Jaisal Noor filed this report, produced with Free Speech Radio News.

Post-2001 there is a wave of Islamophobia; basically: xenophobia.

It killed Sikhs, murdered by far Right extremists who know so much about Islam that they ignore the difference between Islam and Sikhism.

It meant a surge in prejudice against Italian Americans, many of whom have dark eyes and dark hair like Muslims supposedly have.

It meant a surge in prejudice against Sephardic Jewish immigrants in the USA.

It meant a surge in prejudice against the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, who had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist atrocities and who rejected them.

A non-Muslim Indian Dutch journalist got in trouble with United States police, as part of a witch hunt against what US extreme Rightist Ann Coulter called “swarthy males”.

And now, from the New York Times in the USA:

Woman Accused of Hate-Crime Murder in Subway Push

By MARC SANTORA

Published: December 29, 2012

A 31-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime in connection with the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in Queens and crushed by an oncoming train.

The woman, Erika Menendez, selected her victim because she believed him to be a Muslim or a Hindu, Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said.

“The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter’s nightmare: Being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train,” Mr. Brown said in an interview.

In a statement, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, “in sum and substance,” as having told the police: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said.

The victim, Sunando Sen, was born in India and, according to a roommate, was raised Hindu.

Mr. Sen “was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself,” Mr. Brown said. “Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant’s actions should never be tolerated by a civilized society.” …

Mr. Sen, after years of saving money, had opened a small copying business on the Upper West Side this year.

Ar Suman, a Muslim, and one of three roommates who shared a small first-floor apartment with Mr. Sen in Elmhurst, said he and Mr. Sen often discussed religion.

Though they were of different faiths, Mr. Suman said, he admired the respect that Mr. Sen showed for those who saw the world differently than he did. Mr. Suman said he once asked Mr. Sen why he was not more active in his faith and it resulted in a long philosophical discussion.

“He was so gentle,” Mr. Suman said. “He said in this world a lot of people are dying, killing over religious things.”

Related articles

• I pushed a Muslim, says NY woman who shoved to death an Indian (vancouverdesi.com)
• After Islamophobic hate crime in New York City, mayor wants public to ‘keep death in perspective’ (mondoweiss.net)
• CAIR: NY Man Pushed to His Death Because Killer Thought He was Muslim (prnewswire.com)
• US subway death: Sunando Sen was victim of hate crime – Firstpost (firstpost.com)
• 7 train psycho laughs maniacally as she’s charged with pushing Indian … (nydailynews.com)
• Woman charged with ‘hate crime’ in US over Indian’s killing (thehindu.com)

Bahrain human rights woman interviewed

This video is called Huge anti-governmental march during F1 in Bahrain.

From Deutsche Welle in Germany:

21.12.2012

Author Reese Erlich, Manama / cg …

Jihan Kazerooni sits down on a comfortable chair in her large living room in an upscale neighborhood of Manama, the capital of Bahrain. She explains how she got involved in her country‘s Arab Spring uprising.

“When the revolution started on February 14 last year, I wasn’t a participant,” she says. “I was a government supporter, because I didn’t know we had poor people in Bahrain.”

Kazerooni was an investment banker who drove a Lexus and came from an elite family. She is a Shiite Muslim. Most Shiites in Bahrain supported the Arab Spring opposition movement. But Kazerooni’s class background played a much more important role in her initial reaction to the pro-democracy protests than her religious affiliation.

“I believed Bahrain TV that the demonstrators had weapons and they took blood bags from the hospital and poured it on themselves as propaganda,” she said. “One day I took it upon myself to discover what’s going on.”

She visited Pearl Square, the center of protest. It was packed with tens of thousands of Bahrainis – Shiite and Sunni.

“When I reached [Pearl Square], I saw something I would remember for the rest of my life,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep for three days. I saw the police attacking the protestors, unarmed people.”

Within days Kazerooni went from arranging corporate financing to promoting human rights. She became a researcher at the Bahrain Center on Human Rights, the country’s leading human rights organization.

Divide-and-rule tactics?

Kazerooni recalls the solidarity of Sunni and Shiite in those early demonstrations. But since then, she says, the government has worked hard to divide the country along sectarian lines in order to weaken the opposition.

Many Sunnis know the government is a corrupt dictatorship but fear a Shiite takeover even more, according to Farida Ghulam, a leader in Waad, a center-left opposition party. The government has convinced them that the Shiites are determined to create an Iranian-style religious state.

Farida Ghulam Ghulam compares the situation in Bahrain today to the US in the 1950s.

Ghulam said the government has fostered an atmosphere in which Sunnis don’t trust even their old, Shiite friends. “They forgot they were neighbors,” she said, “and denounced them for supporting the opposition. It’s like McCarthyism in the US.”

Ali Salman, head of Al Wefaq Islamic Society, the largest opposition group in Bahrain, acknowledges prejudices on both sides. He blames the monarchy for using clever, divide-and-rule tactics.

“The government told us to hate the Sunnis,” he said, “especially the Moslem Brotherhood and the Salafis,” groups with sharply conservative views on politics and religion. “Meanwhile the government tells the secular opposition that Al Wefaq is hopelessly backward.”

With each group distrusting the other, said Salman, “their only connection can be with the royal family.” …

But Wefaq leader Salman doesn’t consider the current Iranian government a model for Bahrain. He said Iran’s system is far from perfect.

“My opinion is that more freedom would be better in Iran,” he said. …

Newly minted human rights activist Jihan Kazerooni does what she can to bridge the Sunni-Shiite divide. She helped found BRAVO, the Bahrain Rehabilitation and Anti-Violence Organization.

“We concentrate now on rehabilitating torture victims, physically and psycholog[icall]y,” she said.

BRAVO treats Sunni and Shiite without discrimination. Helping such victims is Kazerooni’s way of overcoming religious divisions and building a new, non-sectarian Bahrain.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provided a grant for Reese Erlich’s coverage of Bahrain.

Related articles

• Bahrain regime detains United States journalist (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Shiite protesters demand Bahrain PM’s ouster (dailystar.com.lb)
• Bahrain opposition seeks UK support (bbc.co.uk)
• Bahrain human rights activist jailed (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bahrain bans anti-Gaza war protests (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bahrain: Sunni leadership strips 31 Shiite lawyers, activists of citizenship (timesofisrael.com)

Medieval Iraqi joke book discovery

This video says about itself:

HA 251 Introduction to Islamic Art and Architecture

Islamic art is famous for its varied approaches to the written word and repeated geometric ornament. Islamic cultures also have a rich tradition of representational art, particularly in secular books. In this video Marcus Milwright discusses the text and illustrations of a famous Medieval Arabic manuscript.

From Discovery News:

1,000-Year-Old Muslim Joke Book Found

by Jennifer Viegas

Tue Nov 27, 2012 10:27 AM ET

An 11th-century book by a revered Baghdad Muslim scholar turns out to be a tongue-in-cheek guide for party crashers, according to the researcher who translated the book into English.

The tome was originally authored by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, a well known scholar of the Prophet Mohammed‘s teachings.

According to Emily Selove of the University of Manchester, who did the translation, he wrote the book to remind readers “that every serious minded person needs to take a break.”

She continued, “This book, which contains flirtation, profanity, and even a little drunkenness, is a lot of fun and offers a rather different perspective to the austere image Islam has from that period. The reality is that the Baghdad of 1,000 years ago was actually rather Bohemian — it wasn’t perfect by any means — but not the violent and repressive society you might imagine it was.”

“Such ignorance is probably down to the fact that so little of the huge body of literature produced at that time has been translated into English. There’s so much more to do.”

Selove, however, added, “Though it’s light and really quite an enjoyable read, there are serious messages too. The book is about generosity and encouraging individuals to express themselves eloquently and clearly.”

“It also suggests that turning a hungry person away from a place laden with food was cruel — as food was sometimes in short supply to the poor. It castigated those who turned gate crashers away from parties as misers. You do not turn people away if they are hungry.”

Humor, though, is peppered through the book. It even contains a piece of satire: a fictional document commissioned by a Caliph on the creation of a “Government office for Gatecrashing.”

Jokes

Here are some of the jokes:

Once a man crashed another man’s party. “Who are you?” the host asked him. “I’m the one who saved you the trouble of sending an invitation!” he replied.

A party-crasher walked into a gathering, and they said to him, “Nobody invited you!” “But if you didn’t invite me and I didn’t come,” he replied, “think how lonely that would be!”

Once a party-crasher walked in the house of a man who had invited a gathering of people. “Hey, you!” the man said. “Did I say you could come?” “Did you say I couldn’t come?” the party-crasher replied.

Someone asked a party-crasher, “What’s four times four?” “Sixteen loaves of bread,” he said. “What is two times two?” “Four loaves of bread,” he replied. And another time he said, “I waited the amount of time it takes someone to eat a loaf of bread.”

Bunan (a popular rogue at the time that Selove likens to a cross between Falstaff and Robin Hood) had eaten and eaten well, and someone said to him, “Slow down! You’ll kill yourself!” “If it is time to die,” Bunan replied, “I want to go well fed and well watered, not parched and hungry.”

A party-crasher took up with a man while traveling. One day the man said to him, ““Go and buy some meat for us.” “No, by God, I don’t have the means,” said the party-crasher. So the man went and bought the meat. Then he said, “Get up and cook it.” “I’m no good at cooking,” said the party-crasher. So the man cooked the meat. Then he said, “Get up and sop the bread,” and the party-crasher replied, “By God, I feel exhausted.” So the man sopped the bread. Then he said, “Get up and ladle the stew.” “I’m afraid I’ll spill it on my robe,” said the party-crasher, so the man ladled the stew. “Get up and eat,” he said. “By God,” said the party-crasher, “I’ve been feeling bad for refusing you so many times,” and he came forward and ate.

Advice

The book also contains advice:

A man said to Bunan, “Counsel me!”

“Don’t fraternize,” he replied, “but if you can’t avoid it, pick someone who won’t pester you. Don’t go for greens, gorge on chicken skin, stuff yourself with goat kidneys, gulp bird gizzards, snatch fish innards, or concern yourself with the eyeballs if a head is served. And pay no attention to skinny poultry. Think of naught but what is in your plate, nor glance upon the plates of the others. And if the roast goat when passed to you has little meat left on it, pity not the weakness of the aged guests, nor the greed of the young. Eat, and don’t bother yourself with the host’s family, and don’t waste time inquiring after their health.”

Also, according to the book, the 12 features of meal-time which Muslims should learn:

Four obligatory points to invoke God: before eating to know which food is forbidden, take pleasure in it, and thank God for it.
Four customs of the prophet: to sit on one’s left foot while eating, not to reach across the table, eat with three fingers, and lick the fingers when finished.
Four matters of good manners: wash your hands, take little bites, chew thoroughly, and do not stare at friends.

The book, called “The Art of Party Crashing,” is published by Syracuse University Press.

Related articles

• Day 279 – Party Crasher (neophytephotographer.wordpress.com)

Bahrain teenager killed by regime persecution

This video is called Bahraini mercenary forces brutally suppress peaceful demonstrators 17-12-2011.

From RT:

Bahraini police kill teen headed to Friday prayers – activists

09 November, 2012, 20:02

Authorities in Bahrain are being blamed for the death of a 16-year-old boy, as opposition supporters and human rights activists said police prevented people from attending Friday prayers by setting up checkpoints and firing tear gas at the crowds.

­Ali Radhi reportedly tried to break through police barricades to get to a mosque, and was then chased onto a highway where he was struck by a car and killed. According to activists, the boy’s family blamed the officers and the police barricades for their son’s death.

The security measures kept many people from attending the Friday prayers of Sheik Isa Qassim, who denounced Bahrain’s move earlier this week to revoke the citizenship of 31 Shiite activists and lawyers.

“The revoking of citizenship from honorable people is aimed at punishing those who have opposition views,” he told worshippers who managed to reach his mosque in the Diraz village. The town is a Shiite district outside the capital of Manama.

According to Bahraini human rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja, worshippers prayed on the streets after they realized they won’t be able to enter the mosque. Several people attempted to scale the walls in order to avoid the security blockade.

Bahrain Live: 16 year old killed, youth shot in head by teargas canister, but protests continue: here.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) strongly denounces the latest decision by the Ministry of Interior to revoke the Bahraini nationality from 31 political opponents, including former Members of Parliament from Al Wefaq Shia movement, and religious clerics: here.

Bahrain’s opposition al-Wefaq group said today it had “little hope” of a breakthrough in talks with the autocratic government: here.

Nearly five months after being acquitted of crimes related to Bahrain’s anti-government uprising, some Shi’ite medics remain suspended from work and fear they may never practice medicine in the country again: here.

Bahrain brothers describe shock at losing nationality: here.

American, British Weapons Still Pour Into Bahrain: here.

Related articles

• Bahrain Security Boosted Around Opposition Mosque (world.time.com)
• HRW urges Bahrain to restore citizenship to activists (dailystar.com.lb)
• Free Bahraini human rights activist (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bahrain dictatorship against migrant workers (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bahrain: Free Human Rights Defender, Says HRW (eurasiareview.com)

Saudi Arabia bans women Muslim pilgrims

This video is about a Saudi writer, arrested for Twitter messages.

From AFP news agency:

Saudi denies entry to some 1,000 Nigerian women for Hajj

Wed, 26/09/2012 – 21:50

Saudi Arabia has denied entry to some 1,000 Nigerian woman seeking to visit for Hajj because they were not accompanied by men, with most stuck at the Jeddah airport, Nigerian officials said Wednesday.

The women, who began arriving Sunday at the airport in Jeddah, in western Saudi Arabia, were facing possible deportations by Saudi authorities, said a report compiled by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, which oversees Nigerian participation in the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.

“Upon enquiries by the reception team officials of the National Hajj Commission in the airport, they were told that the pilgrims were held back because of lack of mahram (lawful male accompanying pilgrim),” said the report, which was submitted to the Nigerian House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

About 171 of the women returned home to Nigeria on a flight Wednesday, an official said.

“These women were not deported. They were returned based on the decision by the National Hajj Commission because the embarrassment from the Saudi authorities was becoming unbearable,” commission spokesman Umar Bala told AFP.

Bilateral talks were ongoing between officials of the two countries to resolve the issue, he added. He said that about 1,000 women were still blocked at the Jeddah airport.

According to the report, Nigerian pilgrims’ welfare boards have in the past acted as “mahrams” and visas have been granted on that basis.

The report said that officials observed that flights which arrived at the Medina airport were not subjected to such treatment.

“Only those in Jeddah were affected. Checks at the Jeddah airport revealed that only Nigerian pilgrims were subjected to such treatment,” the report said.

Last year, nearly three million Muslim pilgrims performed the Hajj, which represents one of the five pillars of Islam and must be performed at least once in a lifetime by all Muslims who are able to do so.

Roughly half of Nigeria’s 160 million people are Muslim. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation.

Two killed as Saudi security forces try to arrest Shi’ite man: here.

Saudi sheikh claiming Shia boil Sunni babies & serve them on dish for eating. (min 2:20) Disgusting religious hate: here.

French Islamophobes smear mosque with excrement

This video says about itself:

Jean-Marie Le Pen, MEP and leader of France’s far-right Front National, outraged assembled members of the European Parliament by repeating his assertion that the Nazi gas chambers were “a mere detail” in the history of the Second World War.

From Associated Press:

French Mosque Smeared With Excrement In Limoges

09/12/12 02:57 PM ET

PARIS — The outside of a mosque in a French city has been smeared with excrement, the latest in a series of vandalism incidents involving Muslim places of worship in the country.

The Interior Ministry said Wednesday that police are seeking the culprit or culprits, adding in a statement that “to attack a religion is to attack the (French) Republic.”

The Limoges mosque in central France was vandalized in July with Nazi symbols scrawled on its doors. In the latest incident, excrement was smeared on the doors and elsewhere before dawn.

In August, two pigs heads were hung on two pillars outside a mosque in the southwestern town of Montauban.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith asked the faithful for calm vigilance in the face of what it says is rising Islamophobia.

Hijab ruling exposes Islamophobia in French politics—on right and left: here.

Related articles

• French neonazi fuehrer at Cambridge university (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Pork-Filled Envelopes Sent to Mosques Across France in Past Few Weeks (loonwatch.com)
• Mosque in Provins Desecrated by Fascists (loonwatch.com)
• Fourth mosque targeted in France last weekend (loonwatch.com)
• Former Dutch Islamophobe Arnoud Van Doorn converts to Islam Story :: Interview (islamgreatreligion.wordpress.com)

French Pussy Riot solidarity oppressed under Islamophobic law

This video is called Pussy Riot release new single Putin Lights Up the Fires.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Pussy Riot protesters arrested in Marseille

French police detain Pussy Riot protesters for wearing balaclavas amid crackdown on face-coverings

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

Sunday 19 August 2012 17.52 BST

Several people protesting peacefully in Marseille against the trial of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were detained by police for wearing balaclavas, under France’s controversial law that bans Muslim niqabs and all face-coverings from public places.

About 30 demonstrators gathered outside the Russian consulate in the southern French city on Friday to protest against the trial of members of the feminist group famous for wearing bright dresses and colourful balaclavas.

But police swooped on about seven wearing multicoloured face-masks in solidarity with the band, reported La Provence. Asked why the police had stopped the demonstrators who had been standing peacefully behind a banner about the power of poetry, a senior officer told the newspaper: “They are wearing balaclavas in a public space. It’s illegal.” He said the demonstrators would be questioned and a report written.

In April 2011, Nicolas Sarkozy’s government introduced a law banning women from wearing the niqab, or full face-veil, in public places. To circumvent accusations that the law singled out Muslims, the bill was officially called the law against covering one’s face in public places.

Special exemptions were created for motorcycle helmets or sports equipment such as fencing masks. There are also exemptions for people appearing in parades, celebrations or places of worship.

The Marseille protesters – including poets, a book editor, and a former culture official – who had removed their masks at police request, were put in a riot van and driven to the nearest police station amid cries of “Absurd!” and “Ridiculous!”. They were released that afternoon. Under the law, the case can be referred to a local judge who can hand down a €150 fine, a citizenship course or both.

“We came here to defend freedom of expression in Russia and we find ourselves stopped by French police,” one pensioner at the rally told the paper.

When three members of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism on Friday, France said the sentence was “disproportionate”.

Police persecution of Pussy Riot supporters in Cologne, Germany: here.

United States Islamophobes murder Sikhs

This video from the USA says about itself:

‘Skinhead’ Believed Behind Sikh Massacre in Wisconsin

7 Dead at Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wis.; Officials Believe ‘White Supremacist’ Behind ‘Domestic Terrorism’: here.

By Niles Williamson in the USA:

At least seven dead in shooting at Sikh temple in Wisconsin

6 August 2012

At least seven people were killed on Sunday in a mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, a suburb of the city of Milwaukee.

The first officer to respond to the scene was wounded in a shootout in which the shooter was killed. Three men are in critical condition and are being treated at a nearby hospital. Witnesses described the shooter as a white male in his mid-30s.

The shooter’s motivations are not yet clear. However, Kanwardeep Singh Kaleka, a member of the temple who witnessed the shooting, reported that the shooter had a 9/11 tattoo and “obviously has some animosity about those incidents.”

While the number of casualties, killed and wounded is reported to be around 10, the exact number is not known at this time.

A neighborhood in the Milwaukee suburb of Cudahy was evacuated Sunday afternoon as police searched the suspected shooter’s home.

The president of the temple, Satwant Kaleka, who was shot in the back, was among those killed. In a statement to the media Ven Bobba Ri, a temple committee member, called the shooting a “hate crime” and characterized it as the work of someone from outside the Sikh community.

Oak Creek police are treating the incident as an act of “domestic terrorism.” The FBI will lead the criminal investigation.

In response to the Oak Creek shooting, security has been increased at a nearby Sikh temple in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield. In New York City and Chicago, security has been stepped up at Sikh temples, though there are no specific indications that they are targets.

The Oak Creek temple was opened in 2007 to better serve the Milwaukee metropolitan area’s Sikh community. The temple currently maintains a congregation of 400 members. There are approximately 3,000 Sikh families in southeastern Wisconsin.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion which was founded in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century. It is currently the fifth largest religion in the world, with over 30 million adherents.

Though they are not Muslim, Sikhs in America are often mistaken as such due to their head coverings and long beards. Due to this they have borne a significant share of the post-9/11 anti-Muslim sentiment.

Since September 11, 2001, there have been hundreds of incidents throughout the country where Sikhs were threatened, assaulted, or killed. In the weeks following September 11 in Milwaukee, two Sikh-owned taxis were vandalized and two Sikh men were assaulted.

Last year two Sikh men, Surindur Singh and Gurmej Atwal, were gunned down in Elk Grove, California. In 2003 Dalvir Sangah, a postal carrier in West Sacramento, California, was shot by a high powered air rifle while delivering mail. Four days after September 11, 2001, Balbir Sodhir was murdered in front of his Mesa, Arizona gas station while planting flowers.

The shooting in Oak Creek comes a little more than two weeks after the killing of 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

The shooting is the fifth mass murder in the state of Wisconsin since 2004. In 2004 Chai Soua Vang, a truck driver from Minnesota, killed eight people while deer hunting in northern Wisconsin. In 2005, Terry Michael Ratzmann killed seven people and committed suicide at a church service in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield. In 2007, Forest County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Tyler James Peterson killed six people and committed suicide in the northeastern Wisconsin city of Crandon, and in the same year Ambrosio Analco killed five people in Delevan before committing suicide.

Wisconsin Shooting: 7 People Killed At Sikh Temple, Including Shooter (LIVE UPDATES): here.

As A Sikh-American I Refuse To Live In Fear And Negativity: here.

Wisconsin Temple Fatalities: Targeted For Looking Different? Here.

United States military homicidal Islamophobia

This video is called Just What Is The Pentagon Teaching American Soldiers?

Nuclear Anders Behring Breiviks at the Pentagon …

By Tom Eley in the USA:

US military college prepared senior officers for “Hiroshima” tactics against Muslims

12 May 2012

Senior officers at a top US war college have been instructed to prepare for “total war” against Muslims, including “taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary … the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki being applicable,” according to leaked documents from course curriculum.

The material was taught to officers at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, by Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley. That anti-Muslim curriculum was being taught at the school first came to light in March. Until this week, when the documents were obtained by reporters for the blog Danger Room, the extremely violent character of the curriculum was not known.

In late April, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey ordered the class, “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” suspended. He did not suspend Dooley, who continues to work at the college. The “perspectives” course has been taught since 2004; Dooley has been at the school since 2010.

The college at first defended the course, stating that it was popular with the officers enrolled. Responses have been “mostly positive, usually around the 90 percent range,” Steven Williams, a spokesman for the college, told Danger Room. And he further stated, “Students generally appreciate thought-provoking discussion and the freedom to consider critical perspectives.”

The comments on Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki come from Dooley’s presentation entitled “A Counter-Jihad Op Design Model.” The lecture makes specific mention of targeting the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia, for “total war.”

In World War II Dresden and Tokyo were fire bombed by the British and US air forces. The attacks intentionally targeted civilian populations, killing hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands more were killed as a result of the US atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dooley’s reference to “total war” also harkens to WWII. It is a concept chiefly associated with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and German plans for creating lebensraum in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union through the wholesale destruction of the local populations.

In a July 2011 lecture Dooley declared, “We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam.’

a standard viewpoint among Islamophobes, from Geert Wilders to Anders Behring Breivik

It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”

Elsewhere, Dooley discusses “actions offered for consideration here [that] will not be seen as ‘politically correct,’” before listing “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation, Mecca and Medina destroyed, Islam reduced to cult status.” The Danger Room article lists several anti-Muslim guest lecturers who came to the college in the past year.

That fascistic figures like Dooley train top level officers is a telling indictment of the US military and an exposure of the claims that it is defending “freedom” in the wars in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.

The crimes committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan—the homicidal rampages, the desecrations of corpses, the burning of Korans—are not the random acts of “bad apples,” as the Obama administration and the media claim. They flow inexorably from the imperialist aims drawn up in Washington and justified in messianic terms by military and counter-terrorism strategists like Dooley. His course was taught to senior officers including “captains, commanders, lieutenant colonels and colonels from across all four armed services,” according to Danger Room. It is these officers who command rank-and-file soldiers in counter-insurgency campaigns.

Dooley has himself been deployed repeatedly in Muslim areas. A 1994 West Point graduate, he has been stationed in Bosnia and Kuwait, and was part of the brutal US military occupation of Iraq. According to the Associated Press, Dooley has won “numerous awards including a Bronze Star Medal, the fourth-highest military award for bravery, heroism or meritorious service.”

Last year a similar scandal came to light when it emerged that FBI training material was rife with anti-Muslim sentiment. An internal review of FBI curriculum found 876 “offensive or inaccurate pages” that had been used in 392 separate presentations, “including a PowerPoint slide that said the bureau can sometimes bend or suspend the law in counterterror investigations,” according to the Associated Press.

The focus of the Danger Room report is on the anti-Muslim character of Dooley’s teaching. Yet it is at least as revealing for its naked assertion that the so-called war on terror renders the Geneva Convention of 1949 “no longer relevant,” which in turn “leave[s] open the possibility of taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary.” It is in relationship to this claim of immunity from war crimes that Dooley then lists the “historical precedents” of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

The lecture also “reiterates” the removal of Geneva Convention protections for “those who are caught fighting/operating out of uniform.” The category of those “operating outside of uniform” includes virtually the earth’s entire human population.

This assertion, that the US military can target anyone it chooses for killing, is in fact entirely within the fold of official American policy.

See also here. And here.

Abu Ghraib and Hiroshima by PowerPoint and Lectern: here.

Evidence Mounts That Afghan Massacre Was Linked to Special Operations Forces’ Response to Improvised Explosive Device. Gareth Porter and Shah Nouri, Truthout: “Interviews with survivors, relatives of the civilians massacred in Panjwai on March 11 … add new evidence suggesting that the massacre was linked to the response by the US Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit to a roadside bomb that had blown up a US troop carrier three days earlier. The brother of one of those killed said that the victim had been warned by a US soldier at a checkpoint near the Special Forces camp that the Americans knew his vineyard was very close to where the improvised explosive device (IED) exploded”: here.

Muslim-Basher Geller Dropped from Jewish Speaking Engagement: here.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) demanded on Thursday that those responsible for a series of recent attacks on mosques and Muslims are found and punished: here.

Terrorism in Europe not Islamic

Earlier, when Norwegian extreme Rightist Islamophobe Anders Behring Breivik murdered so many people, mainly children, this blog pointed out that just 0.4% of terrorism in Europe was by Muslims, according to police figures. Many people estimate that Muslims are about 5% of people in Europe. Islamophobes estimate that they are many more than 5%.

So, let us suppose that the Islamophobes’ population statistics are correct. That would make Muslims much much more peaceful people than the European average.

The blog of the Anti-Fascist Front (AFF) in Belgium reports today on more recent police figures on terrorism. They are about the year 2011.

Europol, the police in Europe, say that about two-thirds of terrorism in Europe then was by separatist nationalists. Like Islamophobic Flemish nationalists who want to separate Flanders from Belgium, as the AFF blog points out.

This video is called The Real Terror: Germany’s Tolerated & Supported Next Nazi Generations.

Europol warns about extreme Right violence.

Police say that in 2011, there was no religiously inspired terrorist violence. That, then, includes Muslim religiously inspired terrorist violence; about which there is often so much hysteria and so little level-headedness.

A note: Breivik calls himself a “Christian conservative”, so arguably his mass murders were “religiously inspired”. It is sometimes difficult to say where the border between religion and politics is.

USA: Minnesota Neo-Nazis Indicted After Undercover Terror Investigation: here.

The United States Military … a Crusader Force? Michael L. Weinstein, Truthout: “Countless armed forces members have reached out to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to express their dire concern regarding the proliferation of literature, imagery, insignia, and much more which indicates that, indeed, some do see themselves as the Christian extremist counterparts of their Islamic fundamentalist, Salafi-Jihadist foes. This extremely dangerous Islamophobia, inextricably intertwined into the very fabric of the US armed forces, has reached such a dire level of toxicity that it caused America’s highest-ranking soldier to actually DO something about it just last week”: here.

US Military Taught Officers: Use “Hiroshima” Tactics for “Total War” on Islam: here.