Atlas Exclusive: Robert Spencer: Hamas-linked CAIR, UPI whine about fictional “anti-Muslim” media bias
Hamas-linked
CAIR, UPI whine about fictional “anti-Muslim” media bias
By Robert Spencer
UPI last
week published one of the most outstanding examples ever of mainstream media
denial and obfuscation of the nature and magnitude of the global jihad, and its
eagerness to carry water for Islamic supremacists: “Study:
News stories aid anti-Muslim groups.” By Robert Spencer
Anti-Muslim fringe groups became more mainstream and got funding after Sept. 11, 2001, in part because of U.S. news coverage, a study published Thursday says.“Anti-Muslim”: UPI apes its Islamic supremacist masters in equating our work to defend the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights of all people with being against Muslims. In reality, it is pro-Muslim, and pro-human in general, to stand for these rights and freedoms. Those who oppose us in our work to defend them are the ones who want Muslims and others to live under oppression and tyranny.
And if any “news coverage” allowed “anti-Muslim fringe groups” to “become more mainstream,” it certainly wasn’t because of some “Islamophobic” bias in the media, as this ridiculous study appears to be contending. In reality, ever since 2001 the Society of Professional Journalists has had guidelines directing reporters to whitewash Islam and ignore, deny, and downplay any Islamic element in Islamic jihad terror attacks. If “news coverage” led to the rise of “anti-Muslim fringe groups,” it was because there were so many jihad terror attacks that even the most whitewashed and vanilla news coverage couldn’t keep the truth from getting to the public.
The extremist groups represented a tiny sector of non-governmental organizations but captivated the media with their news releases, leading to major news coverage, which in turn legitimized the groups, attracted donations and connected the groups to powerful conservative think tanks, “The Fringe Effect” study appearing in the December issue of the American Sociological Review said.If anyone ever “captivated the media,” it was the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose Hamas links and unindicted co-conspirator status are never mentioned in articles like these.
“I’m not saying the media had a direct role in facilitating these connections,” such as overlapping boards of directors, in which two or more groups share the same directors, sociologist Christopher Bail, author of the study, told United Press International.Funny he should mention about overlapping boards of directors, since that is common practice among the ever-proliferating number of Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S.
But newspaper and television coverage of fringe groups with messages seeking to inspire Muslim and Islamic fear and anger gave the groups “increased visibility and created the misperception they were mainstream organizations, and this perception enabled them to secure funding and build social networks that they may not been able to do otherwise,” said Bail, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assistant sociology professor.No “fringe groups” inspired “Muslim and Islamic fear and anger,” by which this moronic piece apparently means “fear and anger toward Muslims and Islam.” Some of the people who inspired “Muslim and Islamic fear and anger” were Amine Mohamed El-Khalifi, the would-be jihad/martyrdom suicide bomber at the U.S. Capitol; Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; or the many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of Islam and are motivated by its texts and teachings, all in the U.S. in the last few years.
By contrast, moderate groups making up the vast majority of civil society organizations hardly made the news, Bail’s peer-reviewed study found.An odd list. The New York Times but not the Washington Post? This clown is claiming that the New York Times, USA Today and CNN were all “anti-Muslim”? Search the archives here at Jihad Watch for mentions of all three and see how true that is.
Bail used plagiarism-detection software to compare 1,084 news releases about Muslims from 120 non-governmental organizations with more than 50,000 TV news transcripts and newspaper articles produced from 2001 to 2008.
The software detected similarities between the news releases and news stories reported by The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Times, CBS News, CNN and Fox News Channel.
The software did not distinguish between stories originated by the news organizations and those generated by news agencies such as UPI. Bail told UPI this was a shortcoming but did not change the study’s findings.This clown appears not to grasp the elementary point that a man who sits at home drinking tea is not news, but a man who goes out and robs a bank is news. The job of news organizations, contrary to ever-growing popular belief, is not to make Muslims and Islam look good, but to report on news events. When Muslims riot and kill in the name of Islam, that is news. When Muslims sit at home drinking tea, it is not news, any more than it is when Jews or Christians or Hindus or Buddhists do so.
“Anti-Muslim fringe organizations dominated the mass media via displays of fear and anger,” while mainstream non-profit groups depicting Muslims as peaceful, contributing members of U.S. society got little coverage, Bail writes in the study.
“As a result, public condemnations of terrorism by Muslims have received little media attention, but organizations spreading negative messages continue to stoke public fears that Muslims are secretly plotting to overthrow the U.S. government,” Bail said in a separate statement.Chief among those “organizations spreading negative messages” is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.”
And the idea the “public condemnations of terrorism by Muslims have received little media attention” is utterly risible. Every time a Muslim is arrested for a jihad terror plot, the news stories duly quote the local imam and/or the local Hamas-linked CAIR rep saying how shocked he is, and that he doesn’t know the guy, or that he tried to talk the guy out of his “extremism.” The idea that any Muslim doesn’t condemn “terrorism” is what hardly ever gets any play in the mainstream media.
“Institutional amplification of this emotional energy ... created a gravitational pull or ‘fringe effect’ that realigned inter-organizational networks and altered the contours of mainstream discourse itself,” he writes in the study, subtitled “Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks.”Note that UPI says nothing -- of course -- about how the Council on American-Islamic
When asked by UPI if his research indicated whether the fringe was moving toward the mainstream or the mainstream was moving toward the fringe, he said, “The mainstream appears to be moving toward the fringe.”
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, told UPI his advocacy group has “seen anti-Muslim extremists and anti-Muslim hate groups moving toward the mainstream, and they’re receiving tremendous funding.”
Relations is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed posters telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. But none of this is fit to print.
....”By the time the Koran burning came along, the groups had amassed tens of millions of dollars and had considerable political influence,” he said....said the well-heeled, Saudi-funded Islamic supremacist. Honest Ibe should come clean and compare Hamas-linked CAIR’s budget with AFDI’s, and his Rolodex with ours, we will see who has “amassed tens of millions of dollars” and “considerable political influence.” But it is in his interests to portray himself and his allies as victims of a big bad “Islamophobic” machine, despite the fact that it is he who has the money and the well-oiled smear machine. For UPI to print this shows how deeply compromised they are.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist?.
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