When a “Washington Watch” caller on Friday told Perkins about no-go zones where Muslims are “doing military-type training in Virginia and New York,” which he “heard on Bryan Fischer[’s]” radio show, Perkins said that he had also heard rumors corroborating such allegations.
In France, Perkins said, “they have like 700 no-go zones where authorities have allowed Sharia law to be imposed. There are some areas in this country that in effect that has occurred. Dearborn, Michigan, is one of the places, there are some places in Minneapolis, I don’t think it’s as clear cut as what we’ve seen in Europe, it’s been more by the effect that that’s occurred.”
By Jay Parini Updated 12:48 PM ET, Tue January 20, 2015
Editor's Note: Jay Parini [ http://jayparini.com/ ], a poet and novelist, teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has just published "Jesus: The Human Face of God [ http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-The-Human-Face-Icons/dp/054402589X ]," a biography of Jesus. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)—Gov. Bobby Jindal has been speaking in London recently, and he startled quite a number of people in the House of Commons when he talked about "no-go zones" in Britain, places where Sharia law trumps British law.
He announced confidently [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/politics/jindal-no-go-zones-london/ ] to a group that included a number of British parliamentarians that the police in the United Kingdom don't dare to tread in these zones, where Sharia law is widely used. "Nonassimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home," he said.
This is the sort of ill-informed fantasy that plays well in certain right-wing circles. This probably works for Jindal back home in Louisiana.
Oddly enough, Fox News got into trouble recently [ http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/18/media/fox-apologizes-for-anti-islam-comments/index.html ] on the "no-go zone" nonsense, too, as when Steve Emerson, a so-called terrorism expert, explained to the American masses that Birmingham, a major British urban center, was populated entirely by Muslims and that "non-Muslims just simply don't go in."
Needless to say, there are places where a lot of Muslim immigrants live in close proximity, and outsiders might feel uncomfortable walking around. The same would be true for parts of America where you might feel uncomfortable walking around if you were, say, black or white -- it would depend on the neighborhood. (An African American colleague of mine recently told me that her sons, in their 20s, often feel threatened in white neighborhoods, and I don't doubt the truth of this.)
It's not unusual for socio-economic, even racial or ethnic, groups to cluster. My own grandparents came to the United States as immigrants in 1912, and they lived for some years in Italian ghettos in New York. Most immigrant groups start in ghettos somewhere, and many of them never get out.
But the question of Sharia law is interesting. Unofficial Sharia courts will be found in Europe, here and there. But these arbitration bodies don't trump the legal system of the country where they occur. An article in The Economist noted, in fact, that there have long been rabbinical courts in Jewish neighborhoods in Britain -- not a dissimilar sort of thing.
There are even places in the United States where Christians can work out their disputes in a kind of extrajudicial manner. Family law, for instance, is often the issue here, and there are cultural values that play into [ http://www.economist.com/node/17249634 ] the need for this kind of culturally inflected arbitration. That in some Muslim neighborhoods there might be an accommodation to Sharia law seems not surprising, and this doesn't mean that sooner or later we can expect adulterous women to be stoned to death in Birmingham or thieves to have their hands lopped off in East London.
Blasphemy will not soon lead to the gas chamber in Europe -- indeed, capital punishment is not legal in any European country (or any civilized country, for that matter, except for the USA).
Getting back to Gov. Jindal, one has to wonder what prompted his ignorant outburst. Was this a lame attempt to play into the broad public fears of radical Islam that have arisen in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings? If so, that's not good enough for a politician with any shred of integrity.
In my view, Jindal immediately disqualified himself from ever holding a national political office by making such a bizarre statement, though it hasn't stopped any number of American politicians with bizarre notions from winning major national offices in the past. Such behavior does, however, embarrass this country in the court of world opinion.
The British, and most European countries, have struggled to accommodate Muslim immigrants, but they have nevertheless welcomed them in large numbers. For the most part, these immigrants have behaved well, despite the fear of their traditions and beliefs that leads to crazy exaggerations by politicians such as Jindal.
There have been isolated and gruesome incidents of terrorism -- the murder of a British soldier, Lee Rigby, in the spring of 2013 comes to mind, or the vicious attacks in London of July 7, 2005, which left 52 dead and over 700 injured. The British have had to confront terror, and they've done so without vilifying large parts of their own population. Indeed, they've been forced to come to terms with what I would call British Exceptionalism -- the old imperial feeling that nobody who is not British can possibly lead a civilized way of life. (As Americans, of course, we struggle with our own feelings of exceptionalism, preferring to think that our ways are always the best and truest ways.)
Jindal was apparently on a 10-day "fact finding" mission [ http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/19/politics/jindal-no-go-zones-london/ ] designed to bolster his credentials for a possible run at the White House in 2016. He's not as stupid as he sounds, in fact. (Indeed, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he must have learned something.)
Let's hope that he is a quick study, and that he learns how not to say idiotic things in public that cause a good deal of offense, if not harm, to unsuspecting people, fueling hatred rather than coming to terms.
Geller, who has been warning of European “no-go zones” for years [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/how-no-go-zones-myth-traveled-anti-muslim-fringe-mouths-gop-politicians ], acknowledged that Emerson’s statement about Birmingham was wrong but was outraged that Fox had taken its retractions even further, agreeing with Kaufman that their opponents are winning “the propaganda war” and that Fox’s apologies were “egregious,” the result of a liberal ideology in which "Islam trumps gay."
“Look, any time anybody approaches this subject — you know and I know because we have suffered it for a decade — we are demonized, smeared and libeled,” she said.
“To be clear, there are absolutely no-go zones,” she said. “In parts of London, there are absolutely religious police that beat and wound and seriously attack anyone that doesn’t dress according to Islam.”
But Geller smelled a double-standard in the media: “Here we have the media, which is so pro-gay-issue it’s blinding, that you can’t turn on a television show or series or movie where there’s not some advancement of the gay agenda…and yet, Islam trumps gay.”
Kaufman, for her part, cited the killing of 13 people by ISIS in Syria [ http://nypost.com/2015/01/19/isis-executes-13-teens-for-watching-soccer/ ] as evidence of the existence of these no-go zones in Europe: “They killed 13 teenagers for watching a soccer match in Syria, obviously that’s a no-go zone.”
Invitation to tour non-existent Sharia Law 'no go zones' in Minneapolis
Rep. Keith Ellison @keithellison @tperkins: While there aren't any "Sharia no-go zones" in Minneapolis, I invite you to come and see for yourself. 1:43 PM - 21 Jan 2015 [ https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/558017030423449602 [with comments]
Posted: Jan 22, 2015 2:39 PM CST Updated: Jan 22, 2015 2:42 PM CST
MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison has sent an invitation to ultraconservative lobbyist Tony Perkins to visit Minneapolis, to debunk his claims the city is one of a few places in America with “no-go zones” where Sharia Law trumps state and federal laws.
Perkins is president of the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group Family Research Council -- a “Christian public policy ministry” with a pro-life and anti same-sex marriage agenda.
“There are some areas in this country that, in effect, that has occurred,” Perkins said, referring to the concept of "no-go zones," in an interview with [sic - as (first) reported by] watchdog website Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tony-perkins-dearborn-and-neighborhoods-minneapolis-are-muslim-no-go-zones (above)]. “Dearborn, Michigan is one of the places. There are some places in Minneapolis. I don't think it's as clear cut as what we've seen in Europe."
Rep. Ellison, whose 5th District covers Minneapolis, responded with an assurance that “this is not true,” and invited Perkins to visit the city and see that Minneapolis is “an inclusive and thriving city completely under the jurisdiction of local, state and federal laws.” Ellison offered to arrange meetings with local and federal law enforcement and community leaders to help Perkins take “an important step toward interfaith understanding.”
Bobby Jindal Warns of U.S. ‘No-Go Zones’ if We Don’t Force Muslims to Assimilate
by Matt Wilstein | 5:46 pm, January 21st, 2015
Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) doubled down on his controversial comments about so-called “no-go zones [ http://www.mediaite.com/print/gov-jindal-still-pushing-discredited-claim-of-no-go-zones/ ]” for non-Muslims in a big way during a Fox News interview Wednesday afternoon. He even suggested that if the U.S. doesn’t take the threat of radical Islam seriously, we could have our own “no-go zones” in the near future.
“Did you know the term ‘no-go zones’ was wrong?” Fox’s Neil Cavuto [ http://www.mediaite.com/power-grid/person/?q=Neil+Cavuto ] asked. “We reported the same and we were wrong. We botched it. We apologized for it,” he said of Fox’s series of apologies for similar statements [ ]. “You are not, I take it?”
Jindal said that while Fox apologized for calling “an entire city” a “no-go zone,” that he was merely referring to certain neighborhoods in those cities. “You can call them whatever term you want, but absolutely there are neighborhoods, we have communities of people that don’t want to integrate or assimilate,” he said.
As an Indian-American, Jindal argued that we have to start removing the hyphens from our identities here in the United States. “If people don’t want to come here to integrate and assimilate, what they’re really trying to do is set up their own culture, their own communities,” he said. “What they’re really trying to do is overturn our culture. We need to recognize that threat.”
“If we don’t, we’re going see a replica of what’s happening in Europe in America,” the governor continued. “We’re going to see our own no-go zones if we’re not serious about insisting on assimilation and integration.”
Asked once more if he wanted to take any comments back, Jindal replied, “Absolutely not.”
Nonetheless, Jindal made clear that as president, he plans to “hunt down, exterminate and kill” Islamists, which he, unlike President Obama, will apparently do by ignoring political correctness.
“He can’t seem to find the words ‘terrorism’ or ‘radical Islam’ in his vocabulary; he continues to think of this as a criminal act, that is not what this is,” Jindal said. “Other people want to tiptoe around the truth, they can do that if they want but I’m not going to do it anymore. We cannot be intimidated by the left or all of these liberals who don’t want us to speak about this. The reality is, we can pretend like it’s not happening, we can pretend that it’s a good thing to kill journalists, to kill teenagers for watching soccer, to kill over 150 schoolchildren, to treat women as second class citizens, but it’s not.”
Jindal said extreme Islam “sees weakness in the West and is trying to attack that weakness. According to Jindal, the radicals “use our freedoms to undermine our freedoms,” and liberals are letting them do it with political correctness and multiculturalism: “that’s not immigration, that’s invasion.”
Profiles the Louisiana governor and his wife, Supriya. Looks at Jindahl’s faith, rise to political fame, and more.
The Most and Least Bible-Minded Cities in America [...] The rankings are calculated using data collected by Barna Group. Each city’s Bible mindedness is determined by analyzing survey respondents’ Bible reading habits and beliefs about the Bible. The most Bible-minded respondents said they had read the Bible in the past seven days and believe strongly in the accuracy of the Bible. Nationally, only 27 percent of the population was considered Bible minded. [...] http://www.americanbible.org/features/americas-most-bible-minded-cities
Priced out of New York, American Bible Society decamps to Philadelphia Roy Peterson, president and CEO of American Bible Society. January 28, 2015 (RNS) After almost two centuries in New York City, the nonprofit American Bible Society [ http://www.americanbible.org/ ] is moving its headquarters to Philadelphia. “New York has become so extraordinarily expensive that nonprofit staff cannot afford to live in proximity to headquarters,” said Roy Peterson, the society’s president and CEO. “We don’t have a cohesive, synergistic global headquarters staff right now. And that’s why we wanted to find a city that was diverse, rich with culture and churches and language, but yet affordable.” Some staffers have long commutes to the current headquarters on prime real estate near Lincoln Center. Others work from a rental location in Valley Forge, Pa., that will be closed when the new headquarters a block from the Liberty Bell opens around June. Peterson said a small staff will remain in New York. The Museum of Biblical Art [ http://www.mobia.org/ ], which is independent but affiliated with the ABS, will also remain in New York. The new headquarters, 401 Market St., will be housed on the eighth and ninth floors of a building shared with Wells Fargo & Co. under a 25-year leasing agreement that can be renewed for another 25. The Bible society also has proposed a ground-level “Bible Discovery Center.” ABS leaders realized they were sitting on a valuable asset in midtown Manhattan; the current location, a 12-story building at 1865 Broadway, is for sale [ http://www.religionnews.com/2014/03/25/american-bible-society-sell-12-story-nyc-building/ ] and is estimated to be worth about $300 million [ http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/03/25/bible-publisher-aims-for-300m-pay-day-with-sale-of-columbus-circle-hq/ ]. Peterson, whose society supports Bible reading and seeks to have the sacred text translated into all the world’s languages, said he expects a staff of more than 200 will occupy the Philadelphia building within two years. [...] http://www.religionnews.com/2015/01/28/priced-new-york-american-bible-society-decamps-philadelphia/ [emphasis added; with comments, including "Next up, the American Flat Earth Society is moving it’s headquarters to a place more centrally located on the flat plane of the earth........"]
Bobby Jindal's Extremist Prayer Rally Brings Together Prophets, Bigots And Far-Right Activists
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 1/22/2015 1:00 pm
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/bobby-jindal ], who only a few years ago was lamenting the GOP’s decline into “the stupid party [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83743.html ],” is now staking out a position on the party’s far-right fringe in preparation for an expected run for the presidency [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/election-2016 ]. Jindal has reached out to the party’s increasingly extreme base by undermining the teaching of evolution in public schools; promoting wild conspiracy theories about Common Core, an effort to adjust school standards that he supported before it became the target of the Tea Party’s fury; and hyping the purported persecution of Christians in America, specifically citing the plight of Christians with reality television shows.
The group’s chief spokesman, Bryan Fischer [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/bryan-fischer ], has won nationwide notoriety for his remarks about homosexuality and religious and ethnic minorities, which he shares on his daily program on the AFA’s radio network. Fischer has:
He warned that America may be next, unless his upcoming prayer rally [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bobby-jindals-extremist-prayer-rally-brings-together-prophets-bigots-and-far-right-activists (above)] ushers in a spiritual revival: “Folks, if we don’t get serious, that’s what is going to be in our future. One of the reasons we’re doing something called The Response this Saturday at LSU where we are calling Christians together in prayer, just to pray to turn back to God for a spiritual revival in our country. When you talk in those terms, the media, the academic left, they go apoplectic. Just like they will call you a racist for calling out radical Islam, they will attack you for talking about a spiritual revival. That is what our country needs.”
BOBBY JINDAL, governor of the Great State of Louisiana, on his life, conversion to the Catholic faith and the important issues he faces in Louisiana including school choice, the regulation of the abortion industry and health care...and whether or not he has aspirations to run for president in 2016.
Perkins asked Gaffney if President Obama is aiding terrorists because he won’t blame terrorist attacks on Islam, prompting Gaffney to say that Obama is a Sharia law proponent who sounds just like Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the leaders of Boko Haram.
“When the president says at the United Nations, ‘The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,’ we could’ve found those words coming out of the mouths of Osama bin Laden, or Mullah Omar of the Taliban, or the leaders of Boko Haram or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of Islamic State,” Gaffney said. “This is the doctrine of Sharia and its blasphemy codes. So it not only gives people latitude to say, ‘The president is saying we mustn’t exercise our freedom of speech or maybe we should give it up altogether lest it offend these folks.’ It is also, and this is really in a way much worse, emboldening our enemies, who when they see this behavior, they think we’re submitting to them.”
Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As President of our country and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day and I will always defend their right to do so.
Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.
We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech -- the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.
Gaffney also conveniently left out the sentence immediately following the president’s remark on “those who slander the prophet of Islam”: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.”
Gaffney also said that criticizing Jindal’s remarks amounts to enforcing Sharia blasphemy laws, decrying the “people who are trying to silence him, effectively to try to put Sharia blasphemy restrictions on his speech and his political prospects.”
this is part seven of a ten-part, and accordingly more accessible (. . .), repost of http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=110400989 -- the "in addition to ..., see also...:" linkings at the end of which are hereby incorporated and will be included again in the final tenth part of this repost -- part eight of this repost follows as a reply to this post